Sermon Luke 24:13-35 April 3, 2016 Easter 2 communion
Walk to Emmaus
The road to Emmaus is a road to revelation.
It is a road of discovery.
It is the road we take for one purpose and recognize along
the way something entirely new and different.
The two followers of Jesus have
left Jerusalem. They have left the Passover feast duly completed and this was
the ‘first day of the week’ and it has been three days since these things took
place. As they were traveling they were deep in conversation with each other.
They were deep into getting away
from where they have been.
They were deep in disappointment
and perhaps even disillusioned.
They were in disbelief of the
events of the past few days.
What roads do we travel as we find ourselves in deep
disappointment and grief or disbelief about the events that surround us and the
events of our lives?
Frederick Buechner points out that our road to Emmaus might
be going shopping or for a drive or drinking or whatever method of escape where
we throw up our arms and say, “Forget it, what difference does it make anyway?”
“Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make
ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and
bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have
had-ideas of love and freedom and justice-have always in time been twisted out
of shape by selfish men for selfish end.”
We travel roads to places healthy or unhealthy when life is
too much for us and we become absorbed in the travel and oblivious to our
surroundings.
For some, the revelation and news that Jesus has risen from
the dead and is alive is incomprehensible. And it is. None of us who believe it
can explain it.
So, how can we expect others who have not heard and have not
seen to believe it if we can’t explain it?
Luke as he finishes out this gospel provides several
encounter stories of Jesus the risen Lord as a segue to the accounts of the
early church in the book of Acts.
This story of the road to Emmaus is a story about us.
How these men, who were followers of Jesus, had so many
hopes of who Jesus would be for them.
They had determined in their mind that he was a prophet and
he would fulfill the Scriptures for them, yet he died.
They could not imagine as they walked the road and shared
their story with the stranger that anything good could come to them after this
great grief of the loss of all their hope.
The person that joins them in travel does not impose himself
upon them about who he is. He merely joins them to listen and accompany them
along the way. He appears unassumingly and yet remains throughout all the
discussion.
And then when they tell him they did not ‘see’
the Lord risen, the traveler begins to share the words of Scripture to them.
We discover from this story that Jesus the risen Lord
accompanies us on the roads which we travel.
God’s presence is fully with us as we go our way,
whether we are taking the road to get away
or the road that takes us back,
God is there.
As I mentioned to the children in the children’s time, we
all see Jesus in a variety of ways. In the picture when they close their eyes
they could see an image of the picture they had been focusing on.
In the roads we travel our encounter with the risen Christ
will be experienced in a variety of ways and we will see Jesus in a variety of
ways.
As Cleopas was processing out loud
all the things that had taken place, Jesus was listening to him as he unloaded
his burdens of expectations. How do we process our burdens of expectations?
Do we have a companion that joins us on the road to hear our
words, do we have someone who comes alongside and shares some words of wisdom,
do we have someone who will join us for a meal if we invite
them?
When invited, Jesus enters in and joins the meal at the
table.
And when he does he becomes the host and takes the bread,
blesses it, breaks it, and gives it and in his actions he is revealed.
In the actions surrounding us,
Jesus the risen Lord is revealed.
It cannot be explained.
But it can be believed.
Their eyes were opened in the breaking of the bread.
After this event their lives were never the same.
They ran to tell the others about the actions that brought
the risen Lord to their view.
The events of Easter become a series of Easter events,
a series of actions and encounters that stretch across the
rest of our lives.
The moments of actions as we travel the roads to Emmaus
or back to Jerusalem
are ones where we are accompanied by the risen Lord and his
presence is revealed to us in ways we may never be able to explain, and
yet we believe.
Amen.
