Recollections of a journey
Acts 2:14, 22-33; Psalm 16:1-2, 5, 7-8, 9-10, 11; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
In Recollection of a Journey (1952), Ray Coryton Hutchinson, tells the story of the Kolbeck family, who in 1940, under the Russian occupation of Poland, were inhumanely taken together with hundreds of thousands to forced labour in Siberia. The novel opens with the words: “Here it is my darling. You asked me to put together an account of those uneasy days, and I have done it as well as I can.”
It’s a well known fact that there is a healing power in telling our stories, especially if these concern traumatic events in our lives. Storytelling is an important feature in Luke’s gospel, whose opening verses resonate with those of Hutchinson’s novel.
The Emmaus narrative is in itself the storytelling of people who at first believe they are journeying with a stranger. There’s some ‘ironic tension’ in the narrative of Cleophas and his anonymous companion telling their story to the stranger, who in turn retells their narrative which is first and foremost his own story! Finally the narration of the same events from different perspectives and experiences start making sense as part of a larger scenario. With eyes wide open, Cleophas and his companion return to the apostolic group in Jerusalem to recount their story, enlightening the traumatic events of the brutal passion and death of Jesus. There, they also become receptors of a retelling of the same story by the apostles and their companions.
In telling our stories we connect, we stop being isolated, we are empowered, we emerge from anonymity, oppression, manipulation and oblivion. There, values are transmitted. In sharing their experience of events through storytelling, anonymous strangers become companions, namely “those who share the same bread”. Their eyes are opened in mutual recognition and new life is birthed.
Theories on the identity of Cleophas’ companion, kept in anonymity by Luke, abound. Some even suggest it might be Mary, Cleophas’s wife, who on Good Friday stood beneath the cross with the mother of Jesus and the beloved disciple. Luke perhaps chose not to disclose the name and gender to help the reader identify with the unnamed disciple and become part of the narrative. Whatever the reason, Luke gives voice to the first-hand account of someone whose memory would have been erased from history were it not for the power of storytelling.
In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter retells the Christ event, sharing his story through the use of other prophetic narratives from Scriptures. The powerful “with the help of wicked men, put Jesus to death by nailing him to the cross”, in a bid to banish him to oblivion together with the many who were executed and their body left to rot and whose remains were thrown to the beasts or dumped.
Storytelling can be harbinger of life and therefore of the future. Indeed, there’s great power in telling stories and to keep them in writing for future memory. Populist politicians, tyrants and dictators, conspiracy theorists, and adherents to historical negationism know this. Hence, throughout history, people in power resolve to ridicule, humiliate and silence courageous peripheral voices who in conscience persist to witness to truth and justice through their narratives for the sake of building a better future. Narratives preserve memory and do justice to past and present generations whose very existence and memory are threatened and silenced through damnatio memoriae mechanisms.
As heirs of the Judeo-Christian heritage of remembrance and memorial, we should never tire to use the power of narratives to hand on values. In a post-truth society, where conspiracy theories, denialism and distortions of history abound, this is a charge entrusted by Jesus Christ, God’s story among us, to us disciples, his story in human history.