It’s a familiar story: Two disciples on the road to Emmaus late on the day of the resurrection encounter a stranger, share with him the sorrowful news of the crucifixion, and invite him to supper. As he breaks bread with them, “their eyes were opened.” One might easily read past this simple declaration and miss the enormity of what it reports. Rembrandt didn’t miss it, however. His 1628 Supper at Emmaus takes bold measure of the amazement, shock, even terror of that moment of revelation. However much any one of us might wish we could see the Risen One face to face, Rembrandt reminds us it is good to remember that the darkened glass through which we see protects us from something few could withstand. 

At the very center of the picture, eyes wide with fear, recoiling from the sudden glory of Christ unveiled, one of the two men seems caught between recognition and disbelief, unable immediately to reconcile the traumatic loss of the previous days with the closeness and solidity of this familiar stranger who is, and is not, the Jesus he knew and loved and mourned. Joy may come in the morning, but here it is still nighttime, and the light shining in the darkness around the Lord’s resurrected body is not a comforting dawn but something like a “flame of incandescent terror.” 

Jesus’ face is barely visible against the blazing light he seems to emit, though he leans back fully exposed to the disciple’s view. His energy seems barely contained in the material form he has resumed. Still, there is a calm in his posture that suggests an unhurried willingness to allow his bewildered friends whatever time they need to take in who he is. Despite the highly charged distance between the two figures who lean away from each other, it seems a moment of deep intimacy: The wide-open eyes of the disciple and the wide-open exposure of Jesus’ breast to his gaze suggest the utter vulnerability of this God, incarnate again, offered up to a fickle and uncomprehending human gaze. 

A very different kind of intimacy is being shared with the other disciple—very much like Peter in his full-bodied response, having overturned his chair and cast himself onto his knees. He buries his head in Jesus’ lap, unwilling or unable to look him in the face. On the face he hides, we might imagine shame or fear or a flood of tears. Unlike his companion’s recoil, this disciple dives in instinctive, childlike trust toward Jesus’ lap and is allowed that refuge. Like his companion, he is overcome, but his self-abandonment to the very one whose presence has overpowered him recalls Peter’s poignant question when Jesus, forsaken by the crowds, asks if they too will leave him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68). As children seek comfort in the arms of the very parent whose power they may fear, so this disciple finds his comfort at the very heart of his fear. 

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01.  The Threat of Too Much Reality

The artist situates us in close proximity to these figures— too close to maintain critical or academic distance on what we see. “And where would you be?” he seems to ask. Would you be shrinking away, protecting yourself from the threat of too much reality (which, as Eliot reminded us, humankind cannot bear)? Or would you find yourself moving inward toward this figure of terrible beauty, drawn by the magnetism of his almost intolerable love? Or might you find yourself looking beyond either of them to the woman in the background who might seem irrelevant but for the fact that she is lit by a light all her own, as if some ray of blessing was reserved just for her? Might her untold story invite you to enter the story from a corner of silence that can only be lit by reverent imagination? 

In light of the high drama and complex tensions in the foreground, the busy figure of a woman in the background, bending over her work of preparing or cleaning up after supper, seems oddly incongruous, but she provides an important reminder to the viewer. Unaware of the astonishing revelation taking place in the next room, she goes about ordinary work in ordinary time, serving the Lord who, to her, remains an anonymous guest. Still, she is very much a part of the story that is unfolding nearby. She provides the hospitality and prepares the food and the space, participating in a divine drama, apparently completely unaware of her own role or significance in it. The light around her seems a softer, more natural light than the blaze in the next room, yet it offers a visual echo of the light of Christ, hallowing her quiet work. Blessed in her innocence and ordinariness, she is a sign of hope for those of us who inhabit what seem to be very ordinary worlds, going about unremarkable, repetitive tasks: Christ is nearby. God’s purposes are unfolding in our very midst. And like that woman, we entertain angels—and the Lord himself—unaware.See Hebrews 13:2.

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02.  A Mirror and an Invitation

The painting offers a mirror for viewers, and an invitation. Like the parables, it allows us to identify with any of the three people portrayed in their fear, in their bewilderment, in their shame, in their unawareness, and also in their nearness to the risen Christ who has met them in their sorrow, taught them, offered them comfort, accepted their hasty hospitality, and given them a rare and generous glimpse of glory. It asks us to revisit the story, considering again the paradox it reiterates, that the God who is revealed in Christ is also hidden, and that even the moments of divine revelation we may be granted bring us to another threshold of an unfathomable mystery: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” 

Most of Rembrandt’s biblical paintings emphasize the paradox that, although we were called out of the darkness into the marvelous light, we still see in this life “through a glass, darkly.”1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV. Scriptures quotations marked (KJV) are from the King James Version of the Bible and is in the public domain in most of the world. “Light [does shine] in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it,”John 1:5, NIV. All Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™ but the darkness persists, and humans huddle in its shadows, uneasy and uncertain. “And where are our darknesses?” he invites us to wonder. And where in the midst of those darknesses has a light shone from an unexpected source? 

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03.  Different Views

He painted and etched certain biblical scenes repeatedly, coming at them from different points of view that offer surprisingly diverse perspectives and readings. He painted a very different supper at Emmaus twenty years after he completed this one. In his 1648 “Supper at Emmaus,” the gentle light from Jesus’ halo blends with the natural light of evening, as he sits, looking calm and very human, flanked by two disciples and a servant, none of whom seem to be overwhelmed, though each is in a distinctive way deeply engaged. The later painting emphasizes other themes in the story: Jesus’ kindliness, his humanity, his love for those he called his “little children.” In this later depiction he is clearly the one who only a short while before had also said, “I have called you friends.” Less dramatic, though still rich with emotional complexity, it is the reading of someone whose own maturing (the artist was by then forty-two) had perhaps led him to seek and find more sweetness in stories he had so long located at the edge of darkness. 

The 1628 version, however, retains its power to challenge all sentimentalities or efforts to domesticate either incarnation or resurrection. It reminds us that the one who so often, like the messenger angels, greeted his disciples with “Be not afraid,” did so because afraid was what they might quite reasonably be. It may well serve to remind us to be content not to seek too eagerly extraordinary mystical moments or paranormal experiences unless they come to us as gifts. We may not be ready to see God. If Christ appeared unveiled to any one of us we might also feel impelled to rush for cover. The word of common wisdom many of us have heard, to be careful what you pray for because you might get it, may well come to mind as we consider how strenuous are the terms of a love so absolute, cosmic, and incomprehensible as to surprise us with a kind of joy that might feel a lot like fear. Perhaps we have known such moments of apprehensive joy, uncertain whether to embrace or hide from the very thing we wished for. To grow out of the fear into the joy may take all the time we are given. It may be what that time is for. 

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04.  Supper at Emmaus (1628)

Supper at Emmaus  (1628)Marilyn McEntyre, Drawn to the Light: Poems on Rembrandt’s Religious Paintings (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), 56.

by Marilyn McEntyre 

 

One of them recoils. 

One buries his head in the Lord’s broad lap. 

 

What would you do 

if, mid-meal, light suddenly broke 

from a body rather like your own 

 

and a stranger suddenly became 

in very flesh the friend you mourned? 

 

You would be shocked, no doubt—horror,  

amazement, joy, dismay competing,  

no words available for the occasion. 

 

You might embrace him, weeping, 

or grasp instead at some shred  

of rationality while your pupils  

contracted and your heart beat in your throat. 

 

It might be harder than you think  

to give up three-days’ mourning, 

memories already being edited and arranged. 

 

The story had seemed complete.  

Having a tale to tell, you might already 

have found a way to tell it whole,  

rich with mystery, rounded and  

resonant with meaning. 

 

You might have been ready  

to go back home, tired of all that wandering, 

ready to sit at the lakeside and take up  

the nets again, writing a little, keeping 

your counsel, sharing a parable now and then 

with those who had seen him once, 

who remembered the picnic on the hillside— 

all that bread and fish. 

 

You would have had to give up yet again 

what you thought you had a right to claim. 

Turns out he meant it—the promise 

you’d already begun to turn to metaphor.  

 

Here in dazzling flesh, leaning back  

to let himself be seen, he leaves them no choice  

but to lay aside sweet sorrow and cancel all their plans 

for the aftermath.