Episcopal
Church of the Incarnation
The Third Sunday in
Easter (A)
Acts 2.14a, 36-41 Psalm 116.1-3, 10-17 1 Peter 1.17-23 Luke 24.13-35
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
The Lord
is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Who is the third who walks always
beside you?
When I count, there are only you and
I together
But when I look ahead up the white
road
There is always another one walking
beside you ...
These lines are found in T. S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland,
evoking the imagery of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. What do we know about the disciples who walk
along? We know the name of one of
them: Cleopas. The other is never identified. Perhaps it is Cleopas’ wife, or perhaps St.
Luke has left the person unidentified as a literary device to remind us that we
each walk along our life’s pathway accompanied by Jesus; that He is with us
even when we fail to recognize Him.
There a lot of layers to this story,
but let’s look first at the visual imagery.
Many of us have seen Mel Gibson’s powerful cinematic account of the
Passion of our Lord, a movie which brings home in the most graphic terms the
price which was paid to grant us life and salvation. So far, however, no one has put the story of
the resurrection of Jesus, of His appearances to His disciples, on the big
screen. Maybe this is because
resurrection and new life are foreign to our senses. Our hearts and minds may reel in shock at watching
torture and suffering, but as inhabitants of this fallen world, we can grasp
the horrible reality of the scourging Jesus, of His pain and thirst.
Without the benefit of the big
screen, picture with me, then, the two disciples walking to Emmaus. We’re told that this is a journey of about
seven miles, and that the disciples journey on the day of the
resurrection. It’s probably mid- to late
afternoon, after the noonday prayers and after the mid-day meal; so it’s
hot. That very morning the women among
the disciples have come to them and told them that Jesus is not in His grave;
that angels have told them that their Lord is alive. But the tale seems too good to be true, and
so the disciples trudge along in the hot sun, dejected in weariness, a
weariness made all the more sharp because they have themselves rejected the
women’s report as “an idle tale”. They
trudge along, Cleopas and another, and another traveler falls in with them.
Who is this other? They don’t know Him, but he reacts to their
weariness and dejection by opening the scriptures to them, feeding them with
the very word of God. The Gospel tells
us that Jesus instructs the disciples “beginning with Moses and all the
prophets”. In other words, He starts at
the very beginning of the scriptures, the five books of Moses beginning with
the account of the creation of the world in Genesis. He works His way through the story of
Israel’s call and exodus, of the wandering in the wilderness, the giving of the
law, the entry into the promised land, the trials in Israel’s history, the word
spoken by the prophets, and sums all this up as pointing to one fact: “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should
suffer these things and then enter his glory?”
What happens next? St. Luke doesn’t break the story to give us
the disciples’ reactions on the road. He
keeps the action moving along, in good cinematic fashion. There follows a scene in which we can focus a
little bit more on the characters. They
have come to Emmaus, and in the stylized and oh-so-correct Mid-Eastern fashion,
their guest makes to go on, and they protest, “Stay with us.” We can hear Him say something like, “No, I
can’t impose on your hospitality,” and them going on to say something like,
“But wait, it’s getting dark. Really,
you must stay with us.” And so Jesus
comes to supper. And then things get
even more interesting.
Here’s Jesus as an unknown fellow
traveler. He speaks with authority, and
so maybe Cleopas and the other disciple think of Him as a rabbi, but we’re not
told that. What we are next told is that
at the table Jesus “... took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to
them.” In other words, contrary to all
custom and expectation, the host does not bless the bread and offer it. The guest does, and it is in the blessing and
offering of the bread that the disciples now recognize who their guest is: Jesus their risen Lord. And then He’s gone.
It’s now evening. Dark is at hand, and it’s at least a two hour
walk back to Jerusalem, but the disciples get up immediately and return to
Jerusalem, for their hearts are burning both with how the scriptures have been
opened to them and in how they have now seen their risen Lord.
What does this story tell us
today? Quite apart from reminding us
that Jesus walks beside us in our own journeys, the story tells us that from
the very first God has spoken to His Church clearly. We sometimes wonder what message there is for
us in the Bible, but from the beginning He has made that message clear to us.
It took the Church some time to
write that message down. The Gospels
weren’t written until decades after Jesus’ resurrection, but from the beginning
they have testified with a clear voice:
Jesus is Lord. He is the way, the
truth, the life. There is no salvation
apart from Him. Even before the Gospels
were written, the Church understood this message clearly. In
Can God’s Holy Spirit lead us in a
new direction, into a new teaching? Of
course He can. God can lead us as He
chooses. But will He lead us in a
direction, will He lead us into behavior, that is expressly contradicted by
Scripture, that flies in the face of the teaching which has been given to us by
Him from the very beginning? If one of
us says that God’s spirit now teaches him or her that murder or stealing is
okay, or that adultery is no longer prohibited, is it not more probable that
what we are hearing is not God’s word, but the wish fulfillment of someone who
would like to live under different rules or no rules at all?
That, my friends, is our struggle
now. As troubled as these times now are
in our church, they are not the most troubled times which our church has
seen. We no longer burn people at the
stake if they disagree with us. We no
longer slay those who will not be converted, and call the imposition the sword
God’s saving work. But, these are times
of struggle, and the struggle is over whether we can see and hear what we like,
ignore what we don’t like, and call the result God’s guidance. To do so is to ignore all of the ways by
which God has revealed Himself to us, and His will for us, for more than two thousand
years. It is to see what we like and
fail or refuse to see the Lord. In the
words of the apostle John, “If we say that we have fellowship with [God] while
we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth ...”
Let’s look again at the disciples on
the road to Emmaus, walking in a temporary darkness in which they can not see
the Lord, and so do not share His fellowship.
Here they are, walking along. In
St. Luke’s words, they are “talking with each other about all these things that
had happened.” In other words, they’re
talking about Jesus’ life and ministry.
They’re talking about His Passion and death, and they’re talking also
about the fact that that very morning women in their company have come to them
with an astounding tale, an astounding first-hand account of an empty tomb, of
a vision of angels who have proclaimed that Jesus is not dead, but risen. They’re talking because they are
puzzled. Even though they describe Jesus
as “a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people” they don’t
get it. They think the women’s tale
astounding, and so they walk along blinded by their own unbelief, blinded so
that they cannot even recognize their risen Lord as He walks along the road
with them.
How does he unblind them? How is it that at last they recognize their
Lord as He who presides at the supper?
He starts by explaining God’s plan, by explaining how all that is found
in Scripture points to one truth, one way, one life. He makes their hearts burn, aflame with a
love for God which is kindled by the truths of Scripture which He sets before
them, from the story of creation through all the history of Israel, to His own
coming. Finally, their eyes are opened
when He blesses and breaks the bread, when they realize that they are invited
to His supper, and not He to theirs.
Jesus walks our journey with us, and
in walking with us He wills that our eyes may be opened to Him, and that our
hearts may burn with His truth. God
gives us His spirit to guide us, and the same Spirit who has given us all
Scripture reveals that in knowing and loving and serving God, we are not lead
down a pathway contrary to Scripture, contrary to the path which He has Himself
set before us from the very beginning.
Just as we have this morning again heard God’s word, and just as in a
few minutes we will again share in His supper, let us walk always in His
path: a path we follow by faith; a path
trodden and metalled for us by that tradition and teaching of the Church which
goes back to our Lord Himself; a path illumined for us by the clear light of
Scripture. Let’s open our eyes and see
that God is with us when we open our hearts and invite Him in. Let’s be that unnamed disciple with Cleopas,
who rises and takes the light of the Gospel to others, allowing the flame
enkindled in our own hearts to be the flame by which others too may see their
Lord and Savior walking beside them.
Let us pray: O Lord we thank you for all of the ways in
which you reveal yourself to us; for the ways in which you guide us, and plant
within us the spark of your love. Grant
the light of your truth to us always, that we may behold you as you will us to,
and that we may ever walk beside you on that one path which you set before us;
your way of life everlasting. Amen.
In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.