Road to Emmaus

Scripture: The Third Sunday of Easter, A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

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

In our Gospel reading this morning, two of Jesus’ disciples take a little walk with God. 

Now wouldn’t that be something?  Deep down, I suspect that’s what we all want, that for which we all yearn: to walk with God, to have Him beside us, every day. What a comfort, what a miracle, what a wonder that would be.  Oh, the questions we would pose!  Oh, the comfort we would feel.  What joy to have our God manifest in the here and now, in the everyday, rather than just in the pages of Scripture. Last week Jesus said unto Thomas—and thereby unto us—“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.”  And this is most certainly true.  But at the same time, isn’t that exactly what we want: to see God in our lives, and to believe?

The old Roman philosopher Seneca once wrote: “Without gods and goddesses in the heavens, it is not possible for the soul to be sane.” What he meant by that was that human beings, in order to be truly human, need wonders, need miracles, need the divine in our lives. We long to see the supernatural amidst the natural, the paranormal amongst the normal, the daily intermixed with the divine.  We want God walking beside us.

Just look at the grand old myths of human culture: Greek, Norse, Hindu, it doesn’t matter.  All the old stories, our favorites, our folklore, consist of normal people, in real settings, interacting with gods and monsters and heroes. During the Middle Ages, the various peoples of Europe wove together a glorious worldview that harmonized faith with reason, ancient legend with everyday life. Their world was full of saints and angels, ghosts and fairies, wonders of every kind. Today we have this same longing, whether we admit it to ourselves or not.  Our televisions bring us ghost hunters, our bestselling books involve boy wizards, and Hollywood never tires of offering the latest monster flick or fantasy epic.

These things are all popular for the same reason that Halloween costumes and Christmas songs and Disney World are popular: they bring magic into our lives.  They lift us up from the daily grind, from our mundane existence, and they provide escapism, an adventure beyond the norm, into glorious realms of wonder and awe. All of these things give us glimpses of the Divine, however diluted, however distorted.  They grant us just a little walk with God.

In our Gospel reading this morning, brothers and sisters, we encounter a pair of Jesus’ disciples on the road to Emmaus.  It is late in the day on Easter Sunday, and they are leaving Jerusalem to go back home. One of them, we are told, is Cleopas; the other is likely his wife. Tradition tells us that Cleopas was related to Jesus’ father Joseph, and that Cleopas’ wife was related to Jesus’ mother Mary. Their son, the Apostles James, was the one whom Paul called “the brother of the Lord,” the first bishop of the church in Jerusalem.

The couple is traveling the road to Emmaus in dejection and despair.  They had come to Jerusalem following Jesus, trusting in His promises, praying that He was indeed the Messiah come to inaugurate the Kingdom of God. But then He was murdered, and all the Apostles fled. Still these two disciples remained.  They remembered, surely, what Jesus had said: that the Son of Man would be killed by those He came to save, and that on the third day He would rise again.  Alas, here it is, the third day, late in the evening—and no Jesus.

Thus, our two travelers utter perhaps the four saddest words in Scripture: “But we had hoped…” No more messianic dreams; no more healings and prophecies and miracles.  The Christ, or would-be Christ, is dead.  Time now to return home, to life as usual, to the daily grind.  Time to abandon hope.  And the day grows dark.

When suddenly, Who should appear, but the Risen Lord Himself!  Christ is alive, and He comes to them even as they turn from Him!  Yet they recognize Him not. Why is that?  Indeed, it is a common thread in the Resurrection accounts that even those closest to Jesus, His dearest disciples—even His aunt and uncle—do not at first realize Who He is. Not until He says or does something particular does the recognition click into place, and then those who encounter Him cry aloud in joyous surprise. Clearly a person resurrected is still the same person, but different somehow: fulfilled, completed, renewed; obviously recognizable, but only in hindsight.

When Jesus inquires as to that of which they speak, the disciples look at Him incredulously and say, “Are you the only one who hasn’t heard?”  So they relate to Him His own story, along with their own befuddlement as to what it all means. Then Jesus, gentle and laughing, says to them: “This is why you’re mourning?  Oh, how foolish you are and slow to believe!  Why, this is no story to grieve; this is reason to rejoice!  This is the fulfillment of all that God has promised unto us.” So Jesus goes on to demonstrate how the entirety of Holy Scripture testifies to God’s loving promises, and how these very promises reach fulfillment in God’s own Incarnation, in His becoming human in order to free all the children of earth from slavery not simply to Rome, but to sin and death themselves!

Cleopas and his companion are enthralled; their hearts burn within them!  By the revelation of Jesus Christ, their sad story, their dashed hopes, have been cast in an entirely new light.  Suddenly the very things that had grieved them now fill them with fiery hope and life. “Stay with us,” they beg Him. “Come share our food.”  And it is in this subsequent meal, as Jesus blesses and breaks the bread—in this hospitality that they show to a Stranger—that suddenly they see Him clearly and realize Who He is. Immediately, He vanishes!  And the disciples, their hearts burning within them, fly back to Jerusalem, heedless of the dark, rejoicing ecstatically and proclaiming to the world, “He’s alive, He’s alive, He’s alive!”

Their situations have not changed; their stories remain the same.  But by the light of Christ, they have a completely new understanding. They had wanted to walk with God, and had mourned the dashing of that hope.  Back they went to their dark, daily grind.  But now they realize that Jesus was with them from the start: they were walking with God all along. They just hadn’t recognized Him until now.

This story of Cleopas and his companion on the road is in fact our story today.  We too lead daily lives that sometimes grow mundane and dark We too hope for the Messiah, for the Kingdom, for God to greet us on the road. We want to see miracles in our lives. We want the daily to intermix with the divine. But how will we know the Lord when we meet Him?  How will we recognize Him on our way?  The Gospel’s answer for this is clear: we gather with one another as one body. That is, we go to Church.

It is here, in this community, that the Spirit of Christ opens to us the Holy Scriptures and enlightens us as to God’s promises for all of mankind, both ancient and ever-new. It is here, amongst the stranger, amongst the other, that Christ blesses and breaks the bread that is His Body, sanctifies and pours the wine that is His Blood. Here, suddenly, through Word and through Sacrament, through Baptism and the Meal, we see Christ, we recognize Him, alive amongst us still!  And that revelation changes everything. Our mourning turns to dancing, our hearts within us burn, and we are driven out into the world crying for all to hear: “He’s alive, He’s alive, God Almighty, He’s alive!”

It’s not that we come to Church to meet God.  Oh, no.  God is with us all the time.  He is with us on the road; He is with us in the dark; He is with us in our travels, in our worries, in our discussions, and at our meals.  God is with us when we doubt, when we ponder, when we say in grief, “But we had hoped…” We come to Church not to find God, but to recognize how God already walks with us.  God is not in Church, not exclusively.  God is out there, in the world, in our daily lives. God comes in the everyday, in the needy stranger, on the fringes of society.

It is out there that God calls us to Church, gathers us in, and makes of us a community in this place.  Here, through the Scriptures, through the Sacraments, He then cures us of our blindness, showing us that the daily is divine, that He meets us in our lives!  And when that miracle reinvigorates us, resurrects us, we cannot help but to run back out, into the world and down the road, proclaiming Christ to all.  That’s why the old Christian word for worship is the Mass: because Mass means sending out.

We walk with God every day of the week.  We come to Church to meet Him, but also to see Him, and share Him, out there, in every day of our lives.

Thanks be to Christ, Who walks beside us along the way.  In Jesus’ Name.  AMEN.