Prime
The only ignorant one in Jerusalem
Prof Timothy Wangusa
What you need to know:
- When we suddenly recognised him as the Lord Jesus – and he simply vanished
Cleopas: Yes, that is what I asked him, ‘Are you a stranger to Jerusalem or are you the only one in the city who is ignorant of these things?’ And he asked me, ‘Which things?’ pretending to have just landed from nowhere or perhaps from outer space.
Mary: Oh, husband of mine, wonders never cease! So, of course, you told him it is the things concerning the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth, the foster son of your elder brother Joseph; you told him about the unique prophet that Jesus was, mighty in what he said and did before God and before all the people that came to him: both those who came with a genuine need for healing or spiritual enlightenment as well as cynics who came expecting to amuse themselves at his expense or to catch him out by asking him tricky legal or religious questions that he might not answer satisfactorily.
Cleopas: Correct, and everything that we both told him about Jesus was no mere hearsay, but facts from our personal interaction with him. I count the two of us to be not just a lucky or fortunate couple but a divinely favoured one. Clearly, it was not by chance but by divine magnetism that we went up to Jerusalem this past week two days before the Sabbath. By arriving there on Thursday, we were able to witness the terrible events of Friday: Jesus’ horrendous nailing and death upon a cross, with you Mary and the other women of valiant compassion, including Mary the mother of Jesus herself and Mary Magdalene, watching from nearby – while we men kept safe distance!
Mary: You then told him how Jesus was no ordinary parrot teacher of religious law, not of the types of Nicodemus who three years ago crept under the cover of darkness to go secretively and naively ask him if being born again entails a grown-up person pushing his or her huge head and massive rest of the body back – without a placenta – into the mother’s (by then narrowed) womb, the very opposite of the first birth. No, you stressed Jesus’ brand new style of uttering eternal truths; not with the second-hand ‘Thus says the Lord God’ but with the first-hand and authoritative ‘This is what I pronounce’.
Cleopas: But above all, I highlighted how every miracle of Jesus was absolute: how not a single one of them was a partial or failed attempt at healing or demonstrating God’s purpose – how, for instance, he did not drown into the lake two years ago but he instead smartly walked upon it! This is the very Jesus we were all trusting to dramatically and once-for-all throw off our nation’s yoke of enslavement and to send the Romans terminally fleeing back to Rome, never to ever return to oppress our chosen Jewish nation again.
Mary: But when you told him how Jesus was killed and buried this last Friday; and the amazing story this morning of the women who went to his tomb and found it empty, but instantly had a vision of angels announcing that he is alive – how he abruptly switched from the mood of inquiry to the mood of upbraiding us for what he called our being ‘slow of heart’; and how, with all-knowing authority, he aligned for us all the scriptures that declare and affirm that the one and only God, who is spirit and is from everlasting to everlasting, would in the fullness of time be incarnated into a human body, be crucified in terrible agony, die, gloriously resurrect, and revert to life in eternity!
Cleopas: And then when we invited him to our home, he the guest took over as host, blessed and served us bread – when we suddenly recognised him as the Lord Jesus – and he simply vanished through the closed door!
Prof Wangusa is a poet and novelist. [email protected]
