This may sound strange, but today’s Gospel reading makes me think of Agatha Christie’s Poirot and, in particular, Poirot’s relationship with his friend Captain Hastings. The ITV series with David Suchet and Hugh Fraser as Poirot and Hastings made the character of the Captain a lot more prominent than he was in the novels. By doing this, the producers also popularised the trope of the genius detective having to explain things that are evident to him to his less apt companion, who, on most of these revelations, exclaims, in shock and disbelief, ‘I say, Poirot!’. Part of the appeal of characters like Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, or many other detectives that followed as the genre got extremely popular, is in their unique combination of very rational approach to crime-solving and mysterious, almost super-natural ability to access and exercise such an approach, seemingly not available to anyone else. Poirot is not just someone who has perfected the art of crime-solving; he is like an alien whose brain works entirely differently, who nevertheless is able to operate in this world of inferior minds and even explain his reasoning to them in ways that are understood.
If you are not yet sure where I am going with this, I will tell you plainly: at least in the context of the story of the road to Emmaus, Jesus and Poirot display very similar qualities, whereas the disciples most certainly share theirs with Captain Hastings.
The disciples have all the possible evidence in front of them: they have the prophesies, Christ’s own words, his teachings and his miracles; they have witness accounts of those who say they’ve seen the empty tomb and heard the angel’s message that Christ is risen. They go as far as saying ‘but he is dead, and that is three days ago!’ without even thinking that three days is exactly the time when Jesus himself said something might just happen. They have literally all the evidence laid out in front of them and yet they are seeing neither any connection between any of these events nor any clues that might lead to any conclusions about what might be happening on the third day. They are completely oblivious as to who this man, the only one in Jerusalem who has not heard of Jesus, might be.
Having listened to the disciples, Jesus cannot contain his frustration and explains everything to them. But it seems that even his exegesis on the prophesies is slightly lost on the disciples, because it is only after they invite him to stay with them, after he sits at the table and breaks the bread – only then they recognise him. His identity is finally confirmed, the puzzle is solved and the answer is clear: Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.
‘Did not our hearts burn within us when he spoke?’ is the disciples’ version of Captain Hastings’ ‘I say!’. This turn of events is indeed mind-blowing, not something they could have anticipated in a million years.
It is logical to then suggest that Jesus, to the disciples, is like an exceptionally perceptive detective who sees it all without any difficulty and lays it all out before them. However, this is where I am going to carefully separate Jesus and Poirot from each other. Poirot’s superb ability to solve puzzles and the extraordinary qualities of his mind appear in the novels and films as somewhat otherworldly and yet, their origins are not explained. They are merely part of the character’s fictional mystique, setting him apart from everyone else for no obvious reason. By contrast, Christ’s complete knowledge and understanding of the prophesies and his ability to lay it all out before the disciples have a very particular origin: they are divine. They are otherworldly in a very literal sense, bringing into this ordinary fabric of earthly life something of the heavenly omniscience, not available to humans probably by the virtue of them still being alive in this realm.
Christ appears not just ‘from the other side’ but in the kind of state that will be but is not yet available to the rest of us. It always strikes me, and I think I have said this before, that when someone dies, I have this feeling that this body in front of me is no longer them. I am so confident that they are gone from the body. This feeling may be familiar to you too. Apparently nurses in some hospitals used to open windows after a death had occurred – to let the soul out. There are also plenty of stories told by people who survived clinical death, where they describe, sometimes with great precision, a very real sensation of hovering above their bodies, hearing the voices of the paramedics or surgeons and seeing what they do. Some have described feeling overwhelmed by love and light as they are going to join God and sometimes even deceased relatives. Until quite recently all such evidence was anecdotal but academics are now looking into such experiences and conducting systematic studies. However, this is not what Jesus’ appearance is about. He is not a ghost, not a disembodied spirit. He has not gone away from his body and has not returned to the same mortal body like Lazarus; his body has been raised and he is in a completely new, resurrected, state. This is very different from the experiences I have mentioned. But how does one reconcile the two? Bishop Tom Wright has suggested that both can be true. If heaven is a place where God is, then if we follow Christ we then go to be with God in heaven after this life is over. Then, at some point in time, the New Creation, as anticipated, will take over and heaven will be right here, it will be everywhere and the bodies of all who have been dwelling with God will be renewed to become part of the New Creation, which will be physical, but in a different way from what we are used to, just like Christ is in the Gospels.
Both in last week’s and this week’s readings, Christ clearly appears as a physical body – he can be seen, touched and break bread. At the same time, he does not share the normal physical characteristics we all share: he appears and disappears, unstopped by locked doors, and he is somehow unrecognisable or rather possesses an ability to limit others’ recognition of himself. He has come back from the place no one has been to not just geographically but temporally, because the New Creation has not even yet arrived, and is our only unique chance to see what it is like in there. Last week we heard Peter emphasise in his address to the crowd in Acts that even David is most certainly dead and buried, but Christ has been raised from the dead. He appears in this realm in ways no one can experience or understand and can only believe. He does it knowing that all people are like Captain Hastings and won’t see the full picture even if it is right in front of them – only through the glass, dimly – so he shows and he explains.
I think it is a given that we will always be Captain Hastings – all of us: the Apostles, the disciples, the many followers of Christ over the centuries, the Pope, the Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Canterbury. Our humanity precludes us from understanding fully the whole fabric of God’s creation, both present and future. We can get glimpses of his heavenly glory and have seen the greatest of them in the resurrected body of Christ. Through Christ, God has given all of us a real and certain hope in matters and purposes that are for now beyond our understanding but one day will be seen in full. One day, we may even have the answers to the most burning questions – and not questions like who killed Roger Ackroyd – but ones that Christianity struggles with; we will finally know why Christ had to suffer and why there is suffering, how exactly atonement works, why there is something rather than nothing and what God’s justice and mercy look like. And isn’t this greater than any detective story we have ever heard! Amen.