Hope Over Everything

Easter 3A: Luke 24:13-35

After his wife died, the author C.S. Lewis wrote that he thought that his grief might be less if he intentionally avoided the places he and his wife Joy had frequented, and limiting his travels to only those places where they had never been together. So he switched grocery stores, tried different restaurants, walked only along streets and paths that he and Joy had never taken. But it didn’t work. “I found out that grief is like the sky above,” Lewis said, “it is over everything.”

The two disciples in this morning’s Gospel lesson seem to think that by getting out of Dodge maybe they, too, could escape their grief, could leave behind the bad memories of the previous Friday. Jerusalem had become like an empty house from which all the children had gone, haunted by memories, by pain, by hopes that never materialized. Jerusalem was the place where their dreams had died. It was time to hit the road and see if they could leave their troubles behind.

Most of us, I reckon, have traveled down “the road to Emmaus” at some point in our life. It is the road you walk down when your team has lost, when your candidate has been defeated, when you lost your job, when a loved one has died—the long road back to the empty house, to the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, if life can ever be the “usual” again.

But, of course, that doesn’t work, and it did not work very well with the two disciples. Grief is like the sky, over everything… The two disciples, Cleopas and his companion, thought maybe Emmaus would be the place to go. But as they set out, their conversation kept circling back and back again to the death of the One they had loved, the One in whom they had hoped. “Had hoped.” What a sorry phrase that is—"had hoped.”

In fact, they were talking about all that—failing miserably at forgetting their troubles—when another traveler comes up to them. "Shalom! Peace! What's up, friends?" The question catches them up short. After all, doesn't everybody know what happened in Jerusalem?!  “Where have you been?” Cleopas asks. “You must be the only one in the whole county who hasn't heard the horrible news!”

Now, to be fair, it’s possible that, despite the crowds that greeted Jesus upon entering Jerusalem and later condemned him, there were people in the city who hadn’t heard about Jesus, just like there are people today who don’t keep up with the news. But because of how Jesus’ death overshadowed them—grief is like the sky—they couldn’t imagine anyone not having at least heard about him.

For whatever reason, this stranger on the road acts like the clueless tourist, like he didn't know a blessed thing about any of it. So the two disciples bring him up to speed, informing him how Jesus, a “prophet mighty in word and deed,” had been handed over by the Jewish leaders, was put to death and was now rotting in a tomb back in Jerusalem.

In relating the events, they were more or less admitting in the end that the One on whom they had pinned their hopes failed to realize them. They had made, it appeared, a rather large mistake. We all make mistakes, of course, and when the mistake in question is no more significant than burning dinner or accidentally calling Harry "Richard," you can brush it off and move on. But when the mistake you've made is more along the lines of trusting a neighbor who ended up stealing from you or trusting your spouse only to find they’ve been a serial adulterer for decades…well, then, you feel not just embarrassed or a bit upset, you’re shattered by it. “How could I have gotten things that wrong?” we ask. Such was the death of Jesus to the disciples.

“Sure,” the two disciples admitted, “some of the women said that they had seen Jesus alive…

but that doesn’t make any sense. Some other disciples had gone to the tomb and said that Jesus’ body was in fact missing. But just because a body is missing doesn’t mean that it just got up and walked away. Besides no one else had seen Jesus besides these women. Can you believe that? They’re delirious with grief, I guess. We thought Jesus was the real deal, the answer to our prayers, but now he’s just…dead.”

But then, this stranger, who had appeared so clueless a moment before, suddenly changes. Looking dead at them, he says, "You sweet dummies! How could you miss this?” And He proceeds to do a little Bible study right there on the road. As they walk, He re-tells the story of God’s deeds and God’s promises over the course of thousands of years of salvation history. It is Israel's story, all right, but the stranger tells it in a quite new way. Starting with Genesis and ending with the prophets, he shows them how the Messiah, the long hoped-for Chosen One of God, would have to suffer before being glorified. The last time they'd heard anyone talk like that was . . . well, never mind.

So engrossed in the conversation were they that they nearly miss the exit to get off at Emmaus.

The time had just flown by! The stranger bids them farewell, but before he could get away, Cleopas stops him. “Look, friend, the sun is setting, which means the thieves along the highway will be out soon. It's not safe to travel alone—stay with us at least tonight." The man tries to beg off, but Cleopas insists. After washing up from the road, the three sit down for supper. Cleopas invites his guest to say grace. Before they knew what was happening, the stranger reaches for the flatbread and lifts it up in a strikingly familiar way. He then blesses the bread, breaks it just so, and hands it to the disciples. Immediately, their eyes were open, as if a light bulb went on above their heads like in a cartoon. For the first time since they met the guy, they recognized who he was, why he looked so familiar. But just as they were about to cry out, “Jesus!,” he disappears, and the two disciples are left just staring at each other.

They stuff the bread into their pockets, and take off back to Jerusalem, running nearly the whole way, which is in that culture wholly unbecoming of an adult, especially a man. But they are so overcome by what they had just seen, by what they had just experienced, they just could not contain it. Grief may be like the sky, over everything. But now, apparently, so is hope.

When they arrive back in Jerusalem, Cleopas and his friend find that they’re not the only ones to have met the risen Jesus. He had appeared to Simon Peter, they learn, and to the other disciples, as well. Still, he came to these two disciples in a unique way. They hadn’t just seen the risen Christ—He broke bread with them, just as he had the night before he died!

There’s a lot we can draw out from this story: How Jesus meets us on the way, even when we are trying to run away from things. How Jesus’ death and resurrection were prophesied in the Old Testament, right under the noses of the Jews who didn’t accept Jesus as the Messiah. How, even though people were expecting a kingly messiah, who would overthrow Israel’s enemies, Jesus showed himself to be the Messiah, not by being an undefeated champion, but by being a suffering servant, the broken one, who comes into his glory with his wounds still visible. You could draw all of these points out from the Emmaus story.

But, what strikes me as most powerful about this passage is what it says about Jesus today.

For the past two weeks, we have been celebrating Jesus, the Risen Lord who has come back to us from the grave. But despite all our triumphant affirmation of Jesus’ being alive again, we haven’t really said much about where He is now. I mean, someone not familiar with the story may well ask, “Ok, if Jesus is resurrected, if he’s alive again, where is he? Where can I find him?” Well, the story of the Emmaus journey is Luke’s answer to that question.

Look at where Luke says Jesus is. Sure, he’s walking with the dejected disciples. But they don’t know it, not at first. When they do finally recognize him, it is in two places. The first place is in the Scriptures, where Jesus as Messiah is spoken of and prophesied. Jesus teaches Cleopas and the other disciple how to interpret the Scriptures, so as to see Jesus there in the Jewish writings, to hear his voice, to find the Word of God in the words of God. As Jesus demonstrated to the disciples, the Scriptures, even the Old Testament, point to him, inspiring faith, instilling a longing, a hope, an expectation.

Then Jesus breaks bread with them. He takes, blesses, gives and eats. The Lord’s Supper, where Jesus is not just known in the mind but experienced, touched, tasted, ingested, where they become the Body of Christ by taking in the Body of Christ.

Through these two means, the risen Jesus is present to his disciples and to us. Through these two forms, Jesus reveals himself to us and we discover how he’s been there all along, walking with us, as he did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Scripture and Supper, Sermon and Sacrament—these are in fact the two central components of our Sunday service,—the Service of the Word (Scripture) and the Service of Holy Communion— the two “acts” around which we come together, which structure our worship. It’s not for nothing that our worship is this way. Just as was the case with Cleopas and his friend, we believe, the resurrected Jesus is revealed to us in these two powerful ways.

But there’s something else that happens in this story that we are likely to overlook: namely, the fact that, right after Jesus disappears, the disciples take off to rejoin the others and share the Good News with them. They don’t just keep the experience to themselves, a private religious experience, a privileged insight, an insider secret. No, they go out to share news of Christ’s resurrection. They run to tell others.

Here we see how the risen Christ is present not just in the Scriptures and in the Sacrament, but also in this spirit of witness that the disciples demonstrated and that we sometimes exhibit ourselves. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the encounter with the risen Christ propels us out—to proclaim, to make known, to share the joy of the risen Christ with others.

I said a minute ago that our worship service is composed of two acts, but that’s not entirely true. There are not just two acts, but three—the Service of the Word, the Service of Holy Communion, and the Service of Mission. In worship, we expound the Scriptures, explain them, and we share bread and wine with Jesus, have communion with him. But our worship doesn’t then end with the final hymn. Every Sunday, we are sent out with a charge—“Go in peace, Go forth in the name of Jesus, Go forth in the power of the Spirit.” And so, we “go forth,” carrying out that third Act—the Service of Mission, of making the news of Jesus’ resurrection known by word and deed. We leave Church each Sunday as witnesses, witnesses to the Resurrection, running to tell others the Good News that Christ is risen and present with us, and don’t you want to come and see?

The Emmaus Road story is then not simply a report about a particular event on a particular day, but a story about how the risen Christ comes to us, his followers again, and again, and again—through the Scriptures, through the Sacrament, and through the Spirit that empowers us to tell others about Jesus. If you want to know where the risen Jesus is, if you want to know why we worship, what we hope to find, to experience, when we come together, it is this: to encounter the risen Jesus, to meet him, to experience him as the first Christians did, so that we can bring others to meet him too…To know Christ and make Him known!

Scripture, Sacrament, Sharing the Good News—these three are at the center of the Christian life we share, the pattern for our common life, the graced way of living that shapes our identity. They are the ways that God has given us to sustain our hope, to keep our hearts burning, until Christ comes again. And for that we say, Thanks be to God!