The Unexpected Road

Propers: The Third Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2017 A

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is Easter morning in the Gospel. And Cleopas, along with another disciple—in all likelihood his wife—is on his way out of Jerusalem along the road to Emmaus.

They are disappointed, confused, and afraid. When a fellow traveler meets them on the road and inquires as to their distress, they look at him as though he has a third eye. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” they ask him. “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed Him over to be condemned to death and crucified Him.”

Then Cleopas utters perhaps the saddest words in Scripture: “But we had hoped …” Ah, how we had hoped. We had hoped for a Christ who would unite God’s fractured, fallen people and liberate Israel from the yoke of pagan Rome. We had hoped for a better age, a Messianic Age, in which the world would be reborn and the promises of the prophets fulfilled. Instead we found suffering, persecution, disappointment and death. And what are we left with, but wild stories of an empty tomb and the hysterical ravings of grief-stricken women who claim to see angels in the night?

“Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!” their bold companion replies. Wasn’t this necessary? Wasn’t this foreseen? Wasn’t this part of the plan all along? And beginning with Moses, the very first books of Scripture, he expounds with verve upon all the things written of the Christ throughout the Hebrew Bible. And Cleopas and his companion are amazed, their hearts burning within them, as though encountering the Word of God for the very first time.

And they don’t turn around, mind you. They don’t hightail it back to Jerusalem right away. But they listen, astounded, as they begin to realize not that Christ had failed their expectations but that their expectations had failed the Christ. And as evening sets, they turn toward a village to find shelter for the night, and their companion moves to continue on alone—until they entreat him, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening, and the day is now nearly over.” They are eager to rekindle their hope.

So he comes to share dinner with them. And as he takes the bread, blesses and breaks it, suddenly their eyes are opened and they recognize him—it is Jesus Himself, Christ the Lord, whom they had known so well in life! And the moment their eyes are opened—the moment they see Him for who He truly is—He vanishes abruptly from their sight.

Looking back now, their whole journey is transformed. Christ was with them the entire time along the road to Emmaus, even as they lamented their disappointment at His death. And that very hour, to heck with the darkness, they rise up from the table and rush back to Jerusalem, where they find the Apostles in an uproar, declaring that they’ve encountered the Risen Christ victorious over the grave! And as Peter shares his story, so Cleopas and his companion share theirs: how Jesus made Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Of all the Resurrection appearances recorded in the Scriptures, the Road to Emmaus proves one of the most memorable and evocative. Because we’ve all been there, haven’t we? We’ve all known disappointment and despair in our lives. We’ve all returned with mourning from a hope beyond all hope. And to have our mourning turned to dancing, our disappointment drowned in joy—why, that’s nothing less than a little resurrection of our own!

We all plan fantastic futures, we all dream great dreams. And then when something unexpected erupts and sweeps all that away—the best-laid plans of mice and men—we find ourselves turning back, commiserating in the universal refrain: “But we had hoped.” And we encounter fellow-travelers along the way who walk with us in our grief, who encourage us and support us and tell us how foolish we are when that’s really what we need to hear.

Yet for the faithful, for those who have eyes to see, we get these brief flashes that reveal to us the divine reality hidden beneath the surface of things. We see that God has been with us all along, with us in our turning, in our grieving, in our lamentations. God has never left our side! And indeed, He has foreseen the troubles that befall us and in His mysterious Providence has devised ways to extract good even from them. Evil cannot produce a result that God cannot anticipate.

And sometimes the detours, the disappointments, the tragedies, in the end, turn out to be best things that ever happened to us—not because God caused us to suffer, but because He was with us in it, working to heal, to resurrect, to bring about new beginnings and new birth. That’s the way He works: always surprising, always making things new. But rarely can we see that at the time, until we look back upon our lives in the Light of the Risen Christ. And we see our entire story is transformed.

The Road to Emmaus is the story of all of us who had one life, one set of expectations, all laid out in our heads, only then to collide jarringly with a reality we never saw coming. There was the future we wanted, and the future we got. But the Resurrection of Christ means that we have a new future, the one God has always intended for us: an immortal future, an infinite future, a future of love and joy and healing and life: a future in which every wound is healed, every sin forgiven, and every hope fulfilled in ways far more wondrous and surprising than any we could have dreamt up for ourselves!

And we can see this future—we can see the Risen Christ—when He opens to us the Scriptures, when He breaks for us the Bread of Life. We find our Lord in Word and in Sacrament, which is why we gather here together every Sunday. Yet He is with us all the time, even when we can’t see Him. He is with us in the stranger, in the hungry, in the homeless and the poor. He is with us in every person we meet wheresoever the journey may take us.

Remember this, when despair creeps in and we turn back upon the road we’re given. Remember this, when we lament in our mourning, “But we had hoped.” Christ is Risen! He lives! He is with us even now! And it’s wonderful when we see Him so clearly, when reality deep and true is revealed to us in the opening of the Scriptures and the breaking of the bread. But such moments, alas, in this world are fleeting, like glimpses of glory glanced in a shattered mirror. Then they vanish—and we are left transformed by wonder.

Such glimpses remind us that the promises of God are so much greater than our hopes could ever hope to be! And they invigorate us with their reality to rush headlong through the night, proclaiming to the world that Christ is Risen!—He is Risen indeed! Alleluia!—and He is with us even now along this unexpected road.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.