The Pentecost Diaries: The Road Home 

The first of four creative and immersive pieces which chart the journey from Easter to Pentecost. By Jonathan Vaughan-Davies

Read below, and listen to a recording of the story here: 

 

Saturday 

For me, Jerusalem now was a city of ghosts. 
Everything reminded me of Him. 
Everywhere I looked there were memories. 

The hillsides where the crowds had flocked to hear Him; arriving hungry, leaving full… 
The street corners where Jesus had stopped to talk with people; some needing healing, some needing hope, but all finding help at His hand… 
The Sheep Gate where lameness itself had got its marching orders from His lips… 
Streets lined with now semi-naked palm trees; their branches stripped of their leaves to carpet the way for the One whose arrival they had declared as blessed… 

These past years have been, quite simply, the most powerful experience of my entire life.  

Following Jesus - every day scattered with these miracle moments… 
Feeling your heart and mind swell with a capacity you never knew possible... 
Sitting around Him listening, as the flow of His words birthed new worlds, new possibilities, new opportunities… 

The Kingdom of God He had called it, and it seemed to be turning every place we went completely upside down. But the Kingdom of Rome had called time on His party, and the festival He had started had been brought to a very brutal and very definite end. 

It felt all too… premature… a story cut short far too soon. 
 

Happier Days  

I remember as a young boy, being up late one Passover with my grandmother. I was sat outside, leaning on the wall of her home. She had just finished packing everything away in the kitchen and came out for the cool of the late evening. Seeing me there, she collapsed next to me, and threw her big arm over my shoulders.  

It was a stunningly clear night. The stars were beautiful. 

“Can you count them?” she would ask me, her old eyes still alive with wonder. 
“Count all those??!” I would say… and every time the answer came the same: 





“And yet, we’re more than all of these stars – we’re Abraham’s children my boy, we are God’s Own People - the People of the Promise!”  


I loved my grandmother so much, there were times when the sheer force of her faith felt almost tangible to me. The way she would lay the Passover table, and then tap her hands excitedly on the empty chair left for Elijah. Looking up, she would address the God whose promise still held hope for her despite the long years the chair had been left untaken: “He’s welcome anytime!” she’d giggle, disappearing back into the kitchen to retrieve yet more food and yet more wine. 

And then at the end of the Passover meal, she’d sing with tears streaming down her cheeks: 
“Next year, next year, next year in Jerusalem!” 
Somehow around this table the past, present and future all sat as welcome and equal guests. 

“Why does that song make you cry Grandma?” I had asked her that night. She turned her eyes once more to the stars. Her eyes glistened, tears gently gathering, and her broad smile quivered. I couldn’t tell for a moment if she was about to burst into floods of tears or fits of laughter… 

“Because He’s coming…” she said finally. “One day, Messiah will come, and we’ll feast with Him in freedom! Abraham’s True and Greater Son - The Prophet Moses foretold - the heir to the throne of David. And we will have a King, a land we can call home. Now that will be a party to remember! One day, my boy. One day! And who knows – maybe next year, next year, next year in Jerusalem…”  

My young heart believed her every word. 

In her stories, the hope of God danced even through her tired old guest house, the power of God moved in the breeze of her garden, the peace of God rested on her weathered face. Hers was a story as yet unfinished, but the quill of its author was still in His hand, still hovering over the parchment. Hers was a table laid waiting for a king; a home with view of the promise yet to come - a life poised in prayer and kept warm in the waiting. 

“One day,” she continued, getting back to go inside. “Any day now my boy – just you wait and see, He will send us His king. He’s always been the God of surprises after all!”  

I have no way now of knowing how old I was that night, but I do know that every single Passover has been different for me since then. 
 

The Day 

All these years later, the day I met this Jesus, I knew… this was the day my grandmother had longed to see. This was the day that the whole nation, that the whole of the heavens, were waiting for. 

He was my King. 
Jesus was my Messiah. My Promised Freedom. 

This Kingdom of His, that held so much hope and promise for all, was just going to grow and grow from strength to strength until the time came when His rightful claim on David’s throne would be undeniable. 
Being around Him, you could feel it in the air: the redemption of Israel was near, it had to be! 

That is of course, until Thursday evening. 

The Chief Priests had conspired together to get rid of Him for good. In a garden where He’d sought the sanctuary to pray, a whole garrison of soldiers invaded the serenity with torches blazing and swords raised. 

It was unthinkable, unimaginable. 
Watching Him chained and lead away… 

But the very worst was still yet to come. Friday held yet more horrors too terrifying to recount. Overnight they put Him on trial, and handed Him over to Pilate, who had somehow consented to their calls for crucifixion. 

We held our breath waiting to see what would happen; hoping beyond hope that He had some miracle yet to show, some way of denying the Roman Cross yet another victim. 

But by the end of Friday, Jesus was dead, and with Him had died all our hopes and our dreams. After all, what use is a Kingdom without her King?  

The following day, the Sabbath day, was longest day of my life. Spent mostly huddled in hiding, longing for the light of the next day when the rule of Torah would allow us to travel far enough away from this palpable threat; from the pain of crushing disappointment, this accursed place: This city where the ghost of hope still haunts our steps. 



 

Sunday 

Fear has this cruel way of reinvigorating even the most heavily fatigued. And so, this morning, myself and Cleopas were up early. Though exhausted from the restless terror of the previous days and nights, we knew we had to keep moving to be safe. I was from Emmaus and that road would be full of Passover pilgrims returning home. Cleopas agreed it was the safest way to put as much distance between ourselves and this waking nightmare as quickly as we could. We would slip into the crowd together, I would return to Emmaus, and he would stay with me for the evening before slipping away once more at first light of dawn. 

But Mary, Cleopas’ wife, had got up earlier even than us. In fact, all the Marys had. There were three of them, and they were linked by more than just their first name – they were absolutely inseparable, doing everything together – so much so that Cleopas’ wife had earned the nickname: “The Other Mary”.  

Joseph of Arimathea, one of the members of the Jewish Ruling Council, had inexplicably offered his garden tomb for a place where Jesus’ body could be laid. His reasons for doing so were unclear for the moment, but the women had followed the soldiers there and had seen Jesus’ body sealed behind the stone entrance. Ever since they longed to return. 

The longer they were gone, the more anxious Cleopas was getting to leave. 

We began saying farewell to the brothers for what would probably be the final time, when the door suddenly burst open. It was the Marys. The still, careful silence of the morning was broken by the unwelcome volume of their celebrations. They were laughing, jumping; unable to string full sentences together without breaking down in streams of tears or peals of laughter. 

Sensing danger, Cleopas darted towards his Mary. In forced whispers he brought the energy down low enough to find out where on earth this weird excitement had come from. “Angels!” she kept saying, “Angels! An angel rolled the away the stone and told us to look inside – He’s not there Cleopas! No, He’s not! He’s not in the tomb, and the angel told us that He is alive again, He’s risen up from the dead!”  



At this two of the brothers were up and gone, Peter first – closely followed by John. I longed to go to the tomb too, but it was just too dangerous; this could easily have been a cleverly laid trap to draw the disciples out into the open once more. And so we waited for the two men to return. 

It was a completely bizarre atmosphere to be found in. This sheer, unfiltered joy had just burst in on the deepest and darkest disappointment. But like being woken up by a harsh light shining right in our eyes, we weren’t ready to see it – we couldn’t be shaken out of our grief. 

I could see Cleopas and Mary over in the corner of the room. Her excitement seemed to be giving way to frustration. Did he not believe her? Did he not want to? Could he really believe this was some sort of wishful thinking, or even worse – some big lie they had conjured up? 

Soon, Peter and John were back. They confirmed the women’s story… in part. The stone was rolled away, the body had gone, the grave clothes were still laying there - left in their place. But they had seen no angel from on high, and they carried no message from heaven. 

My tired mind began to spin, searching for possible answers. Why is it empty? Where had the body gone? Who would want to take it? And more puzzling still: who was it - what was it - that the women had seen?  

For Cleopas, it just confirmed what he already knew – this strange affair was only getting stranger, and the longer we stayed the less safe we would be.  

For Mary, leaving was the last thing on her mind. For her, this thing wasn’t over, on the contrary, it was just beginning. They spoke alone for a long time about Cleopas going ahead - with Mary journeying with the other women sometime later. The whole conversation was incredibly tense, eventually ending with Mary running off in tears. His disbelief in her story and worse – his dismissal of the angelic message she had been given to share – had utterly broken her heart and possibly, I suspected, their whole relationship with it.  

But there wasn’t the time to resolve that now. All I could think about was the road home. 
 

Home  

Emmaus is small town about seven miles east of Jerusalem but is, in some ways, in the middle of nowhere. The original settlement was built up around the warm springs from where Emmaus gets her name. Though it has more buildings these days, the purpose of the old town is still much the same as it was when she was simply an oasis in the wilderness. She’s more of a way station than a destination, having more guest houses than homes, more visitors than residents. 

My grandmother’s guesthouse, though now owned by my uncle, was on the outskirts of the old town; its garden still offering her guests a view up into the galaxies, and for me still holds that vision of a world my grandmother made sparkle with more light than a thousand stars.  

The Emmaus Way that leads there is a well-known road to Jerusalem’s visitors, a wide and winding path through the mountainous terrain carved out by thousands of pilgrim feet. With many other Passover Pilgrim’s exiting the weekend’s festivities, today that would be our road.  

The heat of the day was entirely unsuited to the task of walking, and to the heaviness we felt. We were physically and emotionally spent, simply content with placing one foot in front of the other and dragging our tired selves home one step at a time. 

We lifted our tallit shawls up from our shoulders to shield our heads and shade our eyes. For the first part of the journey we were glad for the trusted friendship between us that felt no awkwardness with silence. But the crowds started to spread out and break off into different groups and directions, and soon we felt safe enough to begin talking about what we had all been through once more.  

We weren’t alone on that road – the name Jesus was on the lips of many other travellers – everyone seemed to have something to say about it, theories, opinions, questions, some revelling in pleasure, some searing in disappointment. 

Not knowing who to trust, and not wanting to expose ourselves, we drifted through the sea of words like ghost ships. 

“Some seed fell on the path…” Cleopas said smiling sadly, breaking our silence. 

I glanced over at him, As we trudged along his eyes were looking down at his feet. He was kicking the small rocks in front him into tiny dust clouds, and it had clearly reminded him of one of Jesus’ stories: The Sower. I half-smiled back at the irony – here we were walking Emmaus’ hard and dry mountain path hearing the message of Jesus bounce off the hard hearts of the crowds, or simply resting at surface level to be swept away as the journey continues. 

“Yes,” I continued… “But didn’t He also say that the good soil would produce an incredible harvest?” Cleopas didn’t return my gaze. “Yes He did,” he said finally. Breathing out a long painful sigh, “I just never thought it end this way…”  

In all our long years, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my friend look so sad. Here we were trying to blend into that crowd and yet it felt like our sadness was simply impossible to disguise. 

“What’s that?” called a Stranger from behind us. “You didn’t think it would end this way, what’s ended?” 




The question caused Cleopas to freeze. His heavy eyes closed slowly. He half-angrily barked over His shoulder: “You must be Jerusalem’s only guest who hasn’t heard the news!”  

“What news?” said the Stranger, who had now caught up with us, and was stood between us. 

I could see Cleopas was about to break down, so I started recounting the story of all we’d been through. The stranger listened deeply as we began walking again. Occasionally, Cleopas would interject with details and the longer we spoke the more it flowed.  

Eventually we got to this very morning, the weirdness of the women’s story and the mystery of the empty tomb. And there our story hung in the air, an unhappy ending, an unfinished melody, an unresolved longing. 

The Stranger had been listening, asking questions, nodding… but at the end of our story, there was a long pregnant pause… 

“Has it occurred to you…” he started, “that you may have been more than a little… thick-headed here?” Sensing our reaction, he raised a hand of caution, “Forgive me, but perhaps you’ve been a bit… slow-hearted?” Cleopas flashed him a look from under his shawl that let him know he was on borrowed time to explain himself. He quickly took up the invitation. 

“You said that you ‘had hoped’ He might be The One – but don’t the Prophets tell us that The One must suffer before entering His glory?”  

His question alone gave me pause. Words of the Ancient Seers began to swirl around my mind… could he be right? Have we been looking at this all wrong?  

“It’s all spelled out quite clearly!” He continued, “So maybe, just maybe… His death could actually be what confirms His claims of Messiahship, not what kills it…”  

Cleopas immediately seized on this: “The Prophets…” he said… “Don’t stop there, tell me more…”  

We seemed to forget about the crowds, or our instinctive need for secrecy, even our pace seemed to quicken as he walked us through, line by line, exactly why Jesus had been crucified. It was beginning to all fall into place – the redemption of Israel, not of the land itself but her people – the Kingdom of God, not conquest of territory, but a new identity…  

I felt this warmth within my chest, this dizzying sensation of amazement mixed with joy that was spilling out through me like a sunrise. My heart burned within me. Jesus wasn’t murdered, no He had sacrificed Himself in our place! The women were right: He wasn’t dead, He had returned from the grave, just like it had been foretold all along! 

I had no idea where this Stranger had got all this from; but his grasp of Torah - his understanding was so rich and real – his very words formed vivid pictures in my spirit, moving images in full glorious colour…  

But in no time at all, were at Emmaus’ gates, not far from the familiar sight of my grandmother’s guesthouse I had come to know as home.  

“Well, the night is closing in,” the Stranger said, “and the road is long… so I had better leave you here…”  

“Leave?!” Cleopas said sharply, his eyes looking at me intently. 

He didn’t have to ask… “You can stay with us,” I said quickly, “There will be plenty of room I assure you!” 

The Stranger seemed unsure, glancing anxiously at the length of the road ahead of him. “Please,” Cleopas said placing his hand gently on the Stranger’s arm, “It is already getting late, we really must insist.”  

 

The Table  

There around the table, the talking continued; untethered from the concerns of being heard or being caught. My aunt brought a plate of bread to the table and placed it before me to speak the blessing. But I had already decided what I wanted to do. Tradition honours the guest in speaking the blessing, but it was more than tradition that moved me to push the plate towards our unexpected travel companion: I wanted to hear him pray, with the faith that was alive in Him – with that understanding and love…  

The Stranger stood and paused to look at both of us with a warm smile on his face. For the briefest of moments, there was an odd look of familiarity about him. He had been reminding me of someone, but as I watched him stand, a flicker of recognition flashed across my mind… who was it that he remind me of? 



He took the bread, and raised it towards the heavens. “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe,” his voice seemed to change as he spoke…  “who brings forth bread from the earth…” he sounded just like Jesus! 

I opened my eyes to look again at His face – how could we have missed it?! There stood at my grandmother’s table, was Jesus Himself! Beaming widely, those unmistakable eyes of compassion now looking deeply into ours to watch the realisation dawning…  

Speechless, I looked over at Cleopas. My friend’s head was shaking slowly in wonder – tears streaming down his cheeks; healing flowing, hope returning... 

Jesus handed the broken bread to us – I looked down at the piece in my hand. In the corner of my eyes I saw the same chair my grandmother tapped every Passover, the memory of her faith-fuelled ritual resurfaced within me: “He’s welcome anytime!” “One day Messiah will come… and we will feast with Him, my boy… Any day now… you’ll see!” 

The God of Surprises indeed! 

I turned to look back at Jesus, but in a split second the place where He had been stood was left empty… my head spun around the room - in the blink of an eye He had just silently disappeared! Clearly, the normal rules that restrict you don’t seem to apply to the resurrected! 

Cleopas and I held each other for ages… It was hard to form a single thought – like the women this morning, we were laughing, crying, wanting to run, to jump, to tell the world… 

“My heart is just ablaze!” I said. 

“Mine too,” Cleopas replied, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it before – I’ve been so slow to believe…”  

He bit his lower lip, the look of regret sweeping over his face. His head turned towards the door. I could tell he was thinking about Mary, the woman sent by an angel to tell us this exact thing. 

“I don’t know about you,” He said slowly, “but there’s somewhere I need to be.”  

“Mary.” I said nodding. 

“Yes,” Cleopas said gently, “and the brothers too, we need to tell them.”  

Despite the late hour, within mere moments Cleopas and I were bidding farewell to my aunt and my grandmother’s royal guesthouse. My uncle had lit torches for us, and soon enough we back on the Emmaus Way winding our way through the mountains towards Jerusalem! 

How different this journey was the long, slow painful trudge we had made earlier that day!  

Tiredness all gone – our bodies and hearts had shed the heaviness like a wet robe cast off at the end of the day! We had to get back, had to tell the brothers. 

In the semi-darkness, there was the pounding of horses approaching us, alerting us to the fact that we weren’t alone on the road. As they passed us, I strained my eyes through the dancing light of our torches to get a look at the rider’s face. 

Cleopas had done the same. “Just checking!” he said to me, laughing.  

“Well you never know…” I said back to him, “He has always been the God of Surprises after all!”  

We picked up our pace once more – the brothers had to be told, the story was far from over. Hope was alive even in nowhere places like Emmaus. Even hearts like ours would beat again.  

 

Jon is the minister at Bethel Baptist Church in Whitchurch, Cardiff, and is also seconded to the Association Team in South Wales to explore Digital Communication and Digital Mission.

He has a particular passion for all things creative in mission and ministry, and blogs regularly at bethelcardiff.org.uk/blog. 

This is the first of four creative and immersive pieces which chart the journey from Easter to Pentecost.

• Read and listen to part one of The Pentecost Diaries: The Road Home here. 

• Read and listen to part two of The Pentecost Diaries: Re-entry here. 

• Read and listen to part three of The Pentecost Diaries: Uprising here. 

• Read and listen to part four of The Pentecost Diaries: Renewed here.