Luke 24:13-35
April 26, 2020
18 was not an easy time for me. I
was going to college at a Junior College in Nashville, but I had not yet left
home. I was technically an adult, but I could not have told you what being an
adult meant. I loved my parents, but I was not relating to them very well,
especially my father. Life seemed to be getting more and more confusing, so I went
to see a counselor for the first time, to try and help me sort through my
struggles. After seeing him for a couple of months, my counselor gave me an
assignment. My dad and I had to go to dinner, just the two of us. He wanted us
to spend time in a situation where there were no distractions of television or
the newspaper or homework. We had to be in a place where we could not leave the
table and disappear into another room. My assignment was to go to dinner with
my dad, and we had to talk with one another.
I went home and told my dad this,
and he took it seriously. He made a reservation for us at a restaurant. You
remember going to restaurants, don’t you? Those were the days. Anyway, Dad and
I went to Maude’s Courtyard. It was a nicer sort of place, and I was 18 and
awkward already. Being on a dinner date with my dad at a nicer restaurant where
the maître d did things like pull my chair out for me and help me take off my
jacket made me feel even more awkward and embarrassed.
The evening started off a little uncomfortably
– the last time my dad and I had eaten out like this was when I was nine – but as
we ate our meal, something changed. We relaxed. My dad, who was very shy
relaxed and opened up. He started to talk, and he started to tell me things
about himself; things I never knew. I relaxed and started to listen to him. I
do not remember everything we talked about that night, but I do remember that
he confessed he almost failed geometry in high school. This was a revelation
for me: first, because I barely passed geometry as well. Secondly, because I
never considered that my dad might fail – or almost fail – at something, at
anything. My dad was such a responsible, get stuff done person, I never thought
about him struggling to understand something. Up until that night, I had not
thought about him being anyone more than my dad. He was the guy who worked
really hard, traveled a lot and went to endless meetings, took us to church on
Sundays, helped my mom with cleaning the house, worked in the yard, killed bugs
when necessary, etc. I loved him, but I had never really seen him before. But in
sharing that meal together, my eyes were opened to my father. It was in the
breaking of bread that I finally saw him.
It was in the breaking of the bread
that Cleopas and his companion realized that this stranger they had invited to
dinner was Jesus, their Teacher. Phrases from this story in Luke’s gospel are
often used to preface our coming to the communion table together.
According to Luke’s gospel, when
Jesus took the bread and blessed and broke it, their eyes were opened and they
recognized him.
But scholars that I turn to for help
in preaching emphasized that this meal Jesus shared with the two he met on the
road to Emmaus was not necessarily a eucharistic meal. This story was not told
with the purpose of instituting something. It was just another meal that they
shared with a stranger they met on the road to Emmaus.
Hospitality was and is the mandate
of that land and that culture, so it should not surprise us that Cleopas and
the other one asked this stranger to join them for a meal when they reached the
village.
Cleopas and – I hate that I don’t
have a name to use, so I’m going to call him Burt – Cleopas and Burt were walking
to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles away from Jerusalem. As they were
walking, they were discussing all the things that had happened in the last
three days. Jesus, their beloved Teacher, was executed by the state. His body
was placed in a tomb. Some women who had come with Jesus from Galilee, went
back to the tomb with their spices to take care of Jesus. But they didn’t find
Jesus, they found the stone rolled away and Jesus’ body gone. Two men in
dazzling clothes suddenly appeared next to them and asked them why they were
looking for the living among the dead. The women ran back and told the male
disciples what they had seen and heard, but the men thought their words were
nothing more than an idle tale. Peter did get up and go to the tomb to see for
himself, and yes he was amazed, but there was nothing more he could do so he
went home.
As Cleopas and Burt were discussing
these things, Jesus himself came near them. But Luke tells us that their eyes
were kept from seeing him, recognizing him. So when he asked what they were
talking about, they both just stopped walking. And they looked as bereft and
sad as they felt. And they were clearly astonished that this stranger did not
know what they were talking about; the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth was the
biggest news in Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. They said as much to
Jesus.
“Are you the only stranger in
Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these
days?”
Jesus encouraged them, “What
things?”
“The things of 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. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
They give Jesus a summary of what
happened, of what the women said. And Jesus responds with his own astonishment
at their foolishness and slowness of heart to believe all that the prophets
have said about the Messiah. So he interprets the scriptures concerning the
messiah for them. They reach the village, he starts to leave them, they invite
him for a meal. At the table he does something that they had seen him do
hundreds of time. He takes bread and blesses and breaks it, then their eyes
were opened. The man that they knew, the Teacher they followed, the prophet
they learned from, the Messiah they put all their hopes into, was with them
again. Then he was gone from their sight.
And the two look at each other and
smack their foreheads at their inability to recognize him. “Were not our hearts
burning within us?”
There’s a lot more that is said, but
what stood out to me in this time of preparation of this familiar and beloved
passage are the words, “We had hoped.”
One colleague of mine said this week
that hope is tied to anticipation. In spite of what the women had seen and told
the men, in spite of what Jesus himself had been telling and teaching to the
disciples while he was still with them, in spite of the promises of scripture
that they both knew, their hope was tied to their anticipation that Jesus would
be the messiah they thought they wanted. But Jesus was killed, and even though
recent evidence pointed to the contrary, dead is dead. So with their
anticipation at who Jesus might be gone, so was their hope.
We had hoped.
I bet we had hoped for a lot of
things by now, hadn’t we? We had hoped that the church would be open. We had
hoped that all of this strangeness and uncertainty would be behind us. We had
hoped that we would have returned to normal, whatever our normal might be, by
now.
But even without a pandemic, I hope
for so much in the days leading up to Easter. And every year it feels as though
my hopes are not only disappointed, but severely dashed.
I had hoped that I would be different,
that I would feel different, more like the Easter person I am supposed to be. I
had hoped that I would act more like an Easter person is supposed to act,
joyful, grateful all the time, hopeful all the time.
I had hoped the world would be different,
reflecting the resurrection. I had hoped that the whole world would reflect new
life! Love! Peace! Joy! But the world never seems to get the memo.
Yet, maybe just maybe, this year, this
Eastertide more than any other we have ever experienced, is really a tremendous
gift. We have been given the gift of seeing that Jesus really does meet us
wherever we are. Jesus meets us in this sanctuary, and Jesus meets us in our
family rooms and living rooms and kitchens. We see that the risen Christ is not
bound to the walls we build. We see that God is alive in strangers and visible
in the breaking of bread or in the breaking of a Triscuit.
We are walking down a road we never
expected or wanted. We hoped to be on a different road, a normal road, but
isn’t that Jesus walking with us? Are not our hearts burning? Jesus is here,
and Jesus is there. We had hoped, but maybe what we hoped for was limited by
our anticipation of what we think is normal and to be expected. In this time
when normal no longer exists, Jesus meets us where we are. Our hopes are not
only fulfilled, they are expanded. Jesus meets us where we are. Jesus meets us.
Amen and amen.
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