Open: Into the Light
Luke 24: 13-35
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
April 30, 2023
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3EHUuQoNT8
Today’s reading takes place on the evening of the first Easter. We celebrated Easter a few weeks ago. It may be that a lot has happened in your life since then, but I expect you remember the gist of the story. You might not remember the details of Luke’s telling of the Easter story. In Luke’s version, the women go to the tomb and find it empty. Two angels appear to them. They say that the tomb is empty because Jesus has been raised from the dead. The women run from the tomb to tell the rest of the disciples. The male disciples think this is nonsense, although Peter does go to the tomb to see it for himself.
In Luke’s version, no one sees the risen Jesus on Easter morning. All anyone knows is that the tomb is empty and the women supposedly had a conversation with an angel, but you know how women are. They tend to tell outlandish stories or to imagine things. By the afternoon, there are rumors and speculation and the testimony of the women. That’s pretty much the same situation that you and I and millions of others find ourselves in two thousand years later. We were not there. We cannot cross-examine the women. We cannot go to see the tomb like Peter did. We have to decide about the truth of Easter without those things. Perhaps that is why this story about the road to Emmaus is so well-loved. It is an Easter story we can relate to.
On that first Easter afternoon, Cleopas and another disciple get out of Jerusalem. They head for Emmaus, which Luke says, is about 7 miles away. Maybe they’re going home. Maybe it’s just far enough away to feel safe. It probably takes a couple of hours to walk 7 miles. So, they talk. Walking and talking is a way to process some of what has happened – the trauma of the crucifixion, their profound grief over Jesus’ death, the incredible story the women are telling. It’s a LOT.
The conversation is deep and thoughtful. Luke’s implication is that the disciples talk familiarly with each other. They don’t have to stop and explain the background. They can probably speak in abbreviations, but this is not simple chatting. They are trying to understand, examining all the available evidence. They are analyzing everything. When Jesus approaches, he asks them about the words they are “throwing back and forth.”[1] It is important that we grasp how hard they are trying to understand.
They walk and they talk. It’s what you do when you’re grieving, when you’ve lost something precious. It’s what you do when you’re bewildered. It’s what you do when you don’t know what to do, but you need to do something.
Archeologists have never located this Emmaus which was 7 miles from Jerusalem, but you’ve probably walked towards it before. Barbara Brown Taylor says, “It is the road you walk when your team has lost, your candidate has been defeated, your loved one has died—the long road back to the empty house, the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual, if life can ever be usual again.” [2]
The grief is heavy. The disappointment is crushing. When the stranger, who turns out to be Jesus, walks beside them, they say “We had hoped.”
“We had hoped Jesus would be the Messiah we imagined. We had hoped that he would overthrow Rome and liberate us and return our county to its former glory.”
“We had hoped” is what people say when their hopes have collapsed.
We had hoped it wasn’t cancer.
We had hoped the marriage counseling would work.
We had hoped that our children would live in a more peaceful, more just, world than we did.
We had hoped for elected leaders who would unite us for the common good.
We had hoped that people would return to church in record numbers when the pandemic ended. Or at least that our resilient church would come out stronger.
We had hoped that the endowment would sustain the building for another fifty years.
We had hoped that things might change. We were wrong.
On that road to Emmaus, the disciples are coming to terms with profound loss. And then, finally they realize that the stranger is Jesus. They are overjoyed that he is alive. But I expect that their disappointment is also still there.
Jesus is still not the Messiah they thought he would be. And he is never going to be. Whatever comes next, they still have to live under Roman occupation.
It takes 10-14 days for a butterfly to fully form inside a chrysalis, and then the casing splits open and the new creature must begin to emerge. The butterfly can't say, “Whoops, I am not quite ready!” Once the chrysalis splits open, it is time to start emerging.
There is no unhearing the truth the disciples learned on the road to Emmaus. After meeting Jesus again, there is just no going back to being fishermen who live simple, uncomplicated lives. There is no going back to that close-knit group that kept company with the teacher and healer Jesus. Jesus has defeated death. He is not just their rabbi anymore. Jesus is Lord.
We humans experience change as loss. Even if it is a good change, a necessary change, we are likely to grieve. When our daughter Molly was about 5, she had a red jacket. It had a hood and blue trim and pockets and she loved it. But she outgrew it. She wore it until the sleeves didn’t reach to her wrists and it was hard to snap. One day I told her that we were going shopping for a new jacket. First she said that she didn’t want to, she didn’t need a new jacket. When I insisted, she said “OK, but the new jacket needs to be red with blue trim and a hood and pockets.”
And I kept that jacket all these years, because change is loss for parents too.
The disciples cannot go back. They have to live in the now.
We cannot go back. We have to live in our now. If what you are feeling is loss, if what you are feeling is keen disappointment, if what you are feeling is grief, then you are not alone. It is right to acknowledge what has been lost, even to mourn for it, and then to emerge into what is now.
Here's what I notice about the Emmaus road story. The disciples are trying hard to understand. They are examining all the evidence, throwing words back and forth, wanting to know what to do next. Their intellects are fully engaged.
And then Jesus comes along. He listens to what they are telling each other and then he reminds them of other stuff they also know. He walks them through familiar Bible stories. Finally, he breaks bread. He shares a meal with them in the familiar ways and they recognize him.
Jesus walks along an ordinary road with ordinary people. He doesn’t go to the Temple. He doesn’t show up at Pilate’s palace or thumb his nose at King Herod. “The risen Christ comes to those who are trying to follow, trying to love him, trying to be his people, trying to remember. He doesn’t come as proof to power but skeptical unbelievers. He comes to his friends, to those who know him, and it is his gift to them.”[3]
The disciples have all the information they need, but they don’t put it together until Jesus walks beside them. And when they do, it is more than an intellectual exercise. Later they say that their hearts burned within them.
Frederick Buechner wrote "Sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only...a garden, a stranger coming down the road behind us, a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with our being and imagination...what we may see is Jesus himself.[4]
Friends, we have emerged into a new reality. We cannot go back to life as it was before. If we try to dwell in the past or if we are too fearful of the future, we may abandon the opportunity to be alive in Christ in the now that is now.
As another pastor has said, “The past can haunt us; the future is filled with unknowns; and yet today is the only day we most surely have. The church is not a museum which protects the teachings and memory of Jesus. The church is the people who recognize that Jesus is alive and active, on the journey with us, in what we already know, and in whatever change comes next.
As we walk this road together, talking about all the things that have come to pass, participating in the business of living, let us keep our eyes and our hearts open. We may just glimpse a stranger catching up to us. When that happens, may we recognize the Christ who is present with us now and always. Amen.
[1] https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2017/04/25/a-provocation-the-third-sunday-of-easter-april-30-2017-luke-2413-35/
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Blessed Brokenness” in Gospel Medicine, (Lanham, Maryland: Cowley Publications, 1995), pp 20-21
[3] John Buchanan in his sermon “Remember” https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/1999/041899.html
[4] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, (San Francisco : Harper & Row, 1985), pp. 87-88