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But we had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.” There it is, in a short summary sentence: the end of their hope. When hope is placed in the past tense, it is over. You get up, share a last word and embrace with your friends, dust yourself off and begin to walk home. The Greek tense of the verb “hope” in this sentence indicates ongoing action in the past (“we had been hoping”). The hope the disciples had placed in Jesus was not momentary, but was at the heart of their ongoing lives. Now, for Cleopas and the unnamed disciple, hope had crashed to a halt when Jesus died on the cross.

Jesus had told his apostles and disciples on a number of occasions that he would die and be raised, but either this did not meet their expectations or they were unable to process the truth Jesus had told them. The women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Mary the mother of James, who had remained faithful to Jesus, were reminded of this truth when they went to care for Jesus’ body at the tomb.

Two angels greeted them, saying: “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? He is not here, but he has been raised. Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners and be crucified, and rise on the third day.” Only then, Luke tells us, did the women remember what Jesus had said and believe what had taken place. But when the women went to tell the apostles and the other disciples what had happened, they were unable or unwilling to believe the women and considered their story “nonsense.”

Permission must be granted for the doubt and reservations of the disciples, because, after all, dead men do not rise from their graves. When the teacher you had hoped was the Messiah dies a cruel Roman death on the cross, a death witnessed by many of his followers, you start to talk and discuss what might have been, how it went wrong, perhaps even how you could have been so mistaken.

The encounter of Cleopas and the unnamed disciple with the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus gives us insight into the nature of God and the means by which God came to save us and why it was so easy for the disciples to think in terms of hope in the past tense instead of joy in the present.

Apart from the humiliating death on the cross, there was no monumental rising from the grave, with strikes of thunder, lightning, earthquakes and the resurrected Jesus striding triumphantly across the world stage. There was only an empty tomb and angelic messengers, witnessed by a few women and later by Peter, and quiet encounters along a lonely road.

Yet joy breaks in with the presence of the risen Lord quietly walking alongside his bereft disciples, asking questions and listening to their answers, until he breaks in and says, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” They do not identify him as Jesus, but they need him near, as he seems to be leaving them. They cannot be apart from this wondrous stranger. It is only when Jesus breaks bread with them that “their eyes were opened”—and he was gone.

He was gone, but hope had returned. It is with hope that Cleopas and his friend returned to Jerusalem to meet with the other disciples. There they learned that their encounter with the risen Jesus was not the only one, as they are told that “the Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”

There could be no church without Easter, only broken disciples walking home with sweet and bitter memories; and there could be no Easter without Jesus risen from the dead. He can appear subtly and in numerous ways, but always in the breaking of the eucharistic bread that his disciples share. The mark of his disciples is hope and joy and the ability to say, “The Lord has risen indeed.”

This article appears in March 25 2013.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.