There are many stories told about the famous orchestral conductor Sir Thomas Beecham. Here’s one of them. “In the foyer of a Manchester hotel, Beecham saw a distinguished-looking woman who he thought he knew, though he could not remember the name. He paused to talk to her and as he did so vaguely recollected that she had a brother. Hoping for a clue, he asked how her brother was and whether he was still in the same line of work. ‘He’s very well’, the lady answered, ‘and he’s still king’.”

I have my doubts about that story, so let’s think about an experience all of us have had, of watching a television drama when an actor who we recognise but can’t quite name or place appears. “Oh look”, we say, “It’s what’s-his-name … You know … Wasn’t he in that programme about the fairground murders in Lincolnshire … or was it the one about big-game hunting in Aberystwyth?” We wait for the closing credits, to see if we can identify him, but they are pushed into a tiny corner of the screen and whizz by so quickly that we can’t read them. Are we bothered enough to look for the information online? Probably not.

That’s annoying. But what about those embarrassing times when we bump into someone who we ought to recognise but can’t quite identify? Like Sir Thomas, we may ask leading questions which, with luck, will enable us to set the person in context – but, as we’ve seen, this can backfire badly. Perhaps there are other ways of dealing with this dilemma. I read about a man who, when he met someone he half-remembered but couldn’t place, would say, “You know, I’ve always had a bit of difficulty writing your name, perhaps you could spell it for me”. That worked fine until, one day, the man he was talking to said, “Oh, I never thought that ‘Smith’ was a hard name to spell”!

I’m sure that the two disciples were puzzled as well as embarrassed when they recognised Jesus at Emmaus. They’d been walking along the road and chatting with him for some considerable time, yet they had never twigged who their mysterious travelling companion was. It was only when he used familiar words of blessing over the food, that their eyes were opened. And, at that exact moment, he seemed to disappear.

So why didn’t the disciples recognise Jesus? Perhaps they couldn’t see him clearly as it was twilight – although it must have still been light when they started out. Perhaps he’d wrapped himself in his cloak and that muffled his voice. And there do seem to be grounds for believing that Jesus’ resurrection body was in some way subtly different from the human body he’d had beforehand, which they’d known for three whole years. However the biggest reason for the disciples not recognising Jesus was surely because they just weren’t expecting him to be there, they’d never even conceived that their companion might be him. For they’d seen him dying. They knew where he had been buried. And they certainly hadn’t thought that he really would come back to life.

All this is familiar territory. Indeed, this tale is standard post-Easter preacher fare. A minister friend of mine once arrived at a church a month after Easter and was horrified to be told that three lay-preachers in succession had based their services on this story, and that the congregation were heartily sick of it! – fortunately the theme she had chosen was different! But where I want to go this morning is somewhere you might not be expecting: for it seems significant to me that Jesus revealed himself at the meal-table, as he reiterated the familiar words of blessing. And this makes me ask the question: how does Jesus reveal – ‘unveil’ might be a better word – himself to us when we share Communion?

First, though, we must ask if we ought to think of this Emmaus meal as “Communion”. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t – this was before Pentecost so the Christian Church hadn’t even started, let alone worked out formal services with ministers and hymns and liturgy. Indeed Paul’s letter to the Corinthians hints that the first Christians didn’t have Communion “services” as we understand them today; they merely took time during a shared meal to stop, eat and drink in conscious memory of Jesus.

That’s true; but we must remember that Luke wrote his Gospel several decades after the events he relates, at a time when the Church was getting itself more organised. He certainly uses the phrase “breaking of bread” in the book of Acts as a metaphor for the Lord’s Supper, and of course many Christians set the eating of bread and the drinking of wine (in tiny amounts!) at the very centre of their worship. However some scholars believe that Luke wasn’t much interested in eucharistic theology. They say that Jesus’ actions of taking the bread, giving thanks, breaking and sharing it meant little more than saying grace before a meal, and that Jesus wanted the disciples to recall his feeding of the 5000 rather than the Last Supper. That may seem strange but it’s worth considering because it was after that event that Peter declared, “You are God’s Messiah”: his eyes too had been opened to recognise Jesus.

Well, we may differ as to whether the Emmaus meal was a foretaste of Communion or not – my view is that it probably was. But Christians would, I think, agree that we meet Jesus in a special way when we share Communion: as an old hymn says, “Here, O my Lord, I see you face to face, here faith can touch and handle things unseen”. The great Scottish minister Horatius Bonar who wrote those words clearly had a high expectation of the mystical element inherent in this service. It’s clear that to him the bread and wine, although only a symbolic tasting and drinking of Christ, offered a genuine spiritual unmasking of Jesus and an intimate experience of divine fellowship. Perhaps the very rarity of communion services in the Scottish Church at that time – they were rarely held more than two or three times a year, and included a lengthy time of build-up and preparation – increased its sense of anticipation.

Now Nonconformist Christians tend to play down ideas of “mystery” in the Communion service, possibly because they don’t like elaborate ritual or they don’t want to be confused with the Catholics! They declare that the bread and wine are nothing more than visual aids which help us think more easily about Christ and his death. When I was younger I sometimes heard the Communion service being called a “memorial” – I found that confusing because, to me, memorials were monuments, statues or plaques found in parks or city squares and made of metal or stone! This view of Communion says that it is merely a remembering of Christ and that any spiritual benefit we may gain from it comes simply from the way it helps is concentrate on him.

But I actually think that there’s more to it than that: that, although no magic or spiritual jiggery-pokery are involved, the Holy Spirit comes alongside us as we eat and drink, giving us a special revelation of Christ, an opportunity to see his love in ways which we don’t have at other times. Indeed, we might even say that the Spirit feeds us with Christ. As the famous Baptist minister Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote (we’ll ignore his awful poetry): “When at the table sits the Lord, what generous food adorns his board; when Jesus comes his guests to meet, the wine how rich, the bread how sweet”. That sounds like more than merely remembering Christ, doesn’t it?

I think that there are a couple of intriguing points that one can make about this story. The first is this: if the two disciples, when they arrived at Emmaus, hadn’t been so insistent that Jesus stop and share their meal, they would never have recognized him. Yes, they might have spent the evening discussing their mysterious companion; but it was only as Jesus broke and blessed the bread that their thoughts came together. Of course Middle Eastern culture thrives on hospitality – I suspect that it would have been considered very rude for the disciples to let Jesus wend his way without offering him refreshment. Yet they were taking a risk, if only a small one, by inviting him into the house or inn where they were staying. For at that point he was still a stranger. Yes, they’d been intrigued by his conversation – but was he to be trusted? In modern terms, did he present a Safeguarding risk? They didn’t know.

However we can recall Jesus’ words of praise in Matthew’s Gospel, at the scene of final judgement: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me”. When we squeeze out the stranger, we are squeezing out Jesus and may fail to recognize him. Communion – and other occasions when we eat or drink together, such as coffee after church – are times when we can and should make the effort to offer hospitality to people we don’t know; they should include rather than exclude. As a prayer we sometimes use at Communion says, “Gather us in, the lost and the lonely, the broken and breaking, the tired and the aching who long for the nourishment found at your feast. Gather us in to meet, to eat, be given a seat, be joined to the vine, be offered new wine, become like the least, be found at the feast”. We often say that Jesus invites us to his table – but perhaps we need to be inviting him instead.

The other thought I had about this story is, “Who prepared that meal?” One has to assume that, unless the men did the cooking and served themselves (very unlikely in first century Palestine), there was a woman behind the scenes, doing the work. However Luke never mentions her; it’s left to the medieval artist Diego Velázquez to imagine the scene, which he did in two paintings called “The Kitchen Maid”. In these the maid is the centre of attention, with Jesus and the two disciples vaguely visible in a dark corner. And the maid herself doesn’t look Jewish or Palestinian: in fact she is depicted as the dark-skinned daughter of a Spanish Christian and an African Muslim – someone who, in Valesquez’s day, would have been regarded as the lowest of the low.

The maid is glancing over her right shoulder, listening carefully to the conversation in the back room. And she is stunned. Why? Because what she hears confirms her initial suspicion: one of the men is none other than the risen Christ. While the men had been blind to his identity as they walked and talked, the servant has recognized Jesus while working in her kitchen. A poet, reflecting on these pictures, has written:

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his — the one who had looked at her, once,
across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?

Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?
Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the wine jug
she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,
swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

In the artist’s imagination, the unnamed and unknown servant girl recognises Jesus before the men who knew him so much better. Once again he reveals himself at a table; once again the humble outcast sees him more easily than people in society’s mainstream. We must make sure that such people get a place at our table; and we must listen to what they say about Jesus.

We’ve come a long way from Emmaus, in both time and distance. But perhaps we haven’t. For we believe that our risen Lord still reveals himself through the Scriptures – which the disciples listened to on the road – and as we eat and drink in his name. At Jesus’ table, his glory and presence are made known. Let’s make sure, through our hospitality, that everyone who wants to see him will be given that opportunity.