The Emmaus Experience
Back in November before this whole pandemic started, I was part of a 2PC worship retreat. One idea that came up in a discussion with Barbara Willock was making greater use of art on the front of the weekly bulletin. I mentioned, as an arbitrary example, a painting that I’ve always loved, Caravaggio’s “Supper at Emmaus,” for the relevant Sunday after Easter. Well, on Sunday Travis preached about the Emmaus story (Luke 24:13-35) and I was too distracted to get organized and we missed that opportunity to do anything with the bulletin. “The Supper at Emmaus” is a painting that can be found in London’s National Gallery and, growing up on the outskirts of London, I would visit both the gallery and the painting often. In my last year of high school and I did a project on Caravaggio – a mixture of sketches based on his paintings and an analytical paper on his technique – and my high school art teacher, Mrs. Finch, turned me on to the idea that a painting could read closely in the same wa...