Luke 24:13:35
April 19, 2026
When I was little, I was a terrible
sleeper. If I fell asleep too late in the day, even for just a few minutes, I
would be up and going long past midnight. So, to try and avoid this, my older
sister and brother were charged with keeping me awake at any cost. This was
especially true in the summer when I had been out playing, swimming, and just
generally being physically active all day long. The dangerous time for me to
fall asleep came in those moments when Mom was getting dinner on the table, and
we would be in the den watching tv. I would relax, get comfortable, and my eyes
would start to close. When my sister or brother noticed my eyelids drooping,
they would say, “Amy, don’t go to sleep! Amy! Amy!”
If warning me verbally didn’t work,
then they would resort to other methods. One of those methods was to take my
hands and hit me with them. And while they were doing this, they would say,
“Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!”
Now, I need to say that the hitting
wasn’t hard. I wasn’t left with bruises. But I still hated it! I hated it with
a passion. It was annoying. I didn’t like the feeling of not being able to
control my own arms and hands. And I hated hearing, “Stop hitting yourself!” But
it did the trick. I was awake and I would stay awake no matter what, because I
did not want them to do that.
Flash forward to many years later
when I was in seminary. I was playing a lot of basketball with the youth group
I worked with, and I strained some muscles. I was a student and I was broke, so
I didn’t want to spend the money to go to the doctor. The spouse of one of my
theology professors was a physical and massage therapist and she invited me to
come see her, free of charge. So I did. When I was there, she was checking me
out, and she went to lift one of my arms. Without knowing that I did this, I flinched
and resisted her picking up my arm. She stopped and she asked me,
“When
you were little, did you people take you by the arm and make you go places you
didn’t want to go?”
And
without pausing for breath or thought, I responded,
“No,
but they used to take my hands and hit me with them.”
I
want to pause here and say that my sister hates when I tell this story. But if
my sister and brother are watching this, or read this later, please know that I
know you were just doing what mom told you to do, which was to keep me awake. I
love you both very much. It’s all good.
I
tell you this story because I see it as an example of how our bodies remember
things that our minds may not. My siblings were not trying to traumatize me
when they played the Stop Hitting Yourself game. They were just trying to keep
me from falling asleep. But I clearly hated it so much that years later when a
therapist tried to gently move my arm, I unconsciously flinched. When that
happened, I wasn’t thinking about that game or that time in my life but my body
remembered.
There
is research being done that suggests that our bodies are often way ahead of our
conscious minds. Books such as The Body Keeps the Score and My
Grandmother’s Hands detail how we carry the traumas we endure physically as
well as mentally and emotionally. Dealing with trauma requires dealing with the
physical aspect as well. But I suspect, I hope, that it is not just trauma that
we carry in our bodies but also what is good and loving as well. When I look at
the apron my mother wore every Christmas, my body responds to that loving
memory as well as my mind. I feel her wearing that apron as well as remembering
her in it. It is muscle memory as well as conscious thought.
Every
time I read this story from Luke’s gospel, I wonder at what the disciples mean
when they say, “Were not our hearts burning within us?” Is it a poetic turn of
phrase only, or is ti a reference to a physical sensation, a muscle memory, a
heart burn of emotion?
Surely
these two disciples, Cleopas and his friend, were not describing the heartburn
that results from a spicy meal or too much caffeine. No, they were describing
something else that was happening within them as they walked along the road to
Emmaus with this stranger.
While
our calendar tells us that Easter happened three weeks ago, in the biblical
timeline, our story takes place later the same day as the discovery of the
empty tomb. It is later the same day that the women returned from the tomb with
a fantastical tale of meeting two men in dazzling clothes who told them that
Jesus was resurrected. Although Cleopas and the other disciple are not part of
the twelve disciples, they must have been part of the larger circle of people
who followed and worked with Jesus because they heard the women’s news, along
with the others. But the disciples dismissed the women’s good news as an “idle
tale”. And these two, Cleopas and the other guy, must have accepted the
disciples’ interpretation because they are burdened with sorrow and
disappointment at the horrific death of their beloved rabbi. The women’s good
news has not broken through.
So
Cleopas and his friend were leaving Jerusalem and heading seven miles down the
road to Emmaus. While they were walking and talking about all that had
happened, a stranger joined them on the way. He asked what they were
discussing, and with shock and grief they told him that he must be the only
person around who had not heard about the terrible crucifixion of their teacher
and leader, Jesus of Nazareth.
“We
had hoped,” they told him, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
We had hoped. I did some brushing up
on my grammar, specifically the tenses, to dig into these three words.
Grammatically, this sentence is written and spoken in the past perfect tense. I
don’t want to do too deep a dive into grammatic details of the past perfect
tense because this is not a grammar lesson. But for the purposes of this
sermon, the simplest definition is that past perfect tense describes an action
that was completed before another one took place. We had hoped that he was the
Messiah, the one to redeem Israel, but he must not have been. We had hoped that
Jesus would change everything, but he didn't. We had hoped that he truly was
the Son of God and that all this talk about death was a mistake, but it wasn't.
He died anyway. We had hoped, but Jesus died anyway.
As far as these disciples could see or
understand, everything was lost. Their dreams and belief that God would rescue
them, that God's long-promised Messiah would free them from occupation -- those
dreams were dead, done. Jesus died and so did their hope. We had hoped.
We
had hoped. It is easy to skip over these words. It is easy to breeze past what
they convey. I know that as many times as I've read and preached this story, I
haven't given those three words much attention. Yet I think that moving past
them too quickly is not only problematic, but it also reflects what we too
often do in our daily lives. We want to move past our broken hearts, our
grief. We need to get over it, move on,
pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get back to life. We express those
sentiments to others. We tell them to ourselves. Yet, I don't think there is any way that we
can get around the fact that the disciples have broken hearts. Their hopes and
their dreams for a different outcome for Israel have been disappointed. They have broken hearts. They had hoped.
Even
though we may attempt to ignore or quickly dismiss them, we too have broken
hearts. We too have hopes that aren't realized. How many times have we heard
someone say as they leave a funeral, “we had hoped that she would recover?” Or,
we had hoped to make it to another anniversary. We had hoped that he would move
past the depression. We had hoped that this time the rehab would work. We had
hoped that he would have found a job by now. We had hoped. We had hoped. We had
hoped.
There
is no age limit for loss or broken hearts or disappointed hopes. None of us are
immune. The only way to move through life without a broken heart or a dead
dream is to live without love or relationship. That's not living, though is it?
So it seems to me that every one of us comes here today with some lost hope.
Every one of us is here with a disappointment. Every one of us sitting in this
sanctuary could probably tell a story that begins with the words, "We had
hoped."
Maybe
that’s why these two had hearts that burned the whole time Jesus was with them.
Maybe that’s why their hearts were burning when he told them once again what
the scriptures about the risen Christ meant, how the whole arc of the story of
God and God’s people led to this moment. Maybe their hearts were burning
because they were broken, because they were filled to the brim with loss and
grief and pain. But maybe they were also burning because their hearts
recognized what their minds could not yet grasp, what their eyes could not yet
see. Jesus was risen. Jesus is risen. Their hopes were not lost or dead because
he was not lost or dead.
When
the two convinced this stranger to stay with them, he took the bread and
blessed and broke it. Jesus would have done this at every meal he shared with
them. So when Cleopas and the other disciple sat at table with the risen Christ
like they had so many times before, when they heard his blessing, when they saw
him break the bread, muscle memory kicked in. Their minds caught up with their
bodies. Then their eyes were opened and they could see this stranger for who he
really was. Perhaps their hearts were burning with joy and hope and exultation
at the sight of him, but their minds had not yet caught up.
Last
week we heard that our faith is a living thing because our belief walks side by
side with doubt. Doubt does not destroy faith; it is a part and parcel of a
living faith. And today I think we understand a little more that our faith is
not just a mental exercise. It is embodied. It does not reside in heart and not
mind, nor does it live in our minds but not our hearts. It is both and. We live
our faith in our bodies, in our muscle memory, in our hearts which burn even if
we do not yet understand why. And what brings all this together? The breaking
of bread, the breaking of bread that we experience around this table and at
every table we share. The breaking of bread that is fundamental to our
relationship with each and with God. Our faith grows and deepens in meals
shared, in time spent, in prayers offered, in relationship. That is the good
news of this story and every story. The risen Christ meets as we meet one
another in relationship. The risen Christ meets us even if our eyes and our
minds don’t yet recognize him. Our faith, our living faith, exists here – in
our minds, and here – in our hearts, and here – in our arms and legs and feet.
Our faith is what we believe, our faith is what we feel and experience, and our
faith is what we do.
Our
hearts burn with faith, our muscles remember, even if we do not yet see or
understand. Our hearts are burning and that is good news, that is good news
indeed. Thanks be to God.
Let
all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!”
Amen.
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