The Third Sunday of Easter

6th April 2008 : 9:00am Sung Eucharist

Preacher: The Very Revd Andrew Chan

Readings : Zephaniah 3:14-end; Acts 2:14a,36-41; Luke 24:13-35

Our Emmaus

Friends often invite one another for a walk. Especially in time of trouble, one might receive such an invitation. Perhaps along a wooded path, two friends discuss the hurts and the disappointments found in family or at work. Unfortunately, there is the chance that the two friends might address one another in such a way that the conversation never really plunges into the depths of the difficulty. The two may mirror one another’s pain, rage and hurt. All told, the end of their walk finds them arriving only at more bitterness than they had at the beginning of their journey. However, there is the possibility that they will truly listen to one another. The end of their journey might find them not at the point of resolution, but at an understanding of the significance of life’s hurts within the large picture of life. This latter conversation only happens when the two friends are open to the presence of a third partner in the conversation : reflectiveness.

We hear today of Cleopas and his companion, two early disciples, on the familiar road to Emmaus. They have witnessed the death of Jesus. This Jesus was the hope of all Israel. This Jesus had seemed to be the one that would lead the people to freedom and peace. And yet he was executed as a political but innocent victim by the Roman authorities. Certainly the dreams of these two disciples had been dashed. The one in whom they had placed their trust was seemingly gone, and with him, the hope of liberty. But suddenly, someone was in their midst who guide them to see beyond their limited memory. This sudden partner in their conversation broke open to them the meaning of that death and once again their dreams were kindled. But this stranger was completely unknown to them. This seen and invited guest was revealed to them in the intimacy of their evening meal. Broken Bread and Blessing. The one who was dead lives. ‘And did not our hearts burn.’

If we take seriously this familiar story from Luke, we are given today a blueprint for celebrating the Christian life as an Easter people. Cleopas and his companion went for a walk. The journey they took was far more than the merely physical. They engaged in the journey of faith. And it began for them in the pains of hurt, disappointment and, perhaps, bitterness. Their conversation had no movement save for a circular bantering. It was not until the Risen One interpreted for them, in the large picture, the meaning of death, that they could see the realities of human living within the context of saving faith. But though they came to understand with their minds, they still needed to see the author of their understanding. In the breaking of the bread, they came to faith in the crucified and risen Christ.

All Christians, like these two companions on their way to Emmaus, must entre into the three rhythms of faith’s story as we find it today in this narrative.

First, the pilgrimage of the Christian life is not a guarantee that our daily existence will be exempt from the difficulties, misunderstanding and pains that are part and parcel of simply being human. We encounter the harsh realities of our personal and social lives, and we know that there is no escape for believers from the problems of loneliness, despair, violence and poverty. It is imperative that we walk the road if the word is truly to set the world on fire.

Second, in walking the road, we must take the risk and allow the Lord to walk with us and help us to understand. In our journey, we are not alone. Jesus walks with us. He walks with us in our lack of understanding, our hurting, our bitterness, as he did with the two disciples. Christians will encounter the evils of life. But there is the invitation from God that we surrender our lack of understanding into the hands of Christ who is always there to console and heal.

Finally, we must remember who it is that walks with us in our daily labours. This Christ is no mere supplier of answers to human questions. This Christ embraced the very and deepest questions of what it means to be human. Jesus embraced our fear of death, the abandonment of the cross, the frail wood of human nature. But where do we find the presence of the Risen one?

The story of Emmaus is a touching story. It concludes with a very significant action done by Jesus – the celebration of Holy Communion. At the table, Jesus was no longer a man who accompanied them on the way to Emmaus, they were his. At last, in the breaking of bread they knew him, then they were consoled and healed.

In the moment of recognition Jesus vanished from their sight. But that didn’t matter anymore. Jesus they could no longer see, but the truth remained. Jesus’ existence passes our human thought. Jesus lives – and he is known in the breaking of bread. Whatever Emmaus our roads lead back to, that is the truth that we find there, the presence we recognize, the bounty that is broken and given to us.

The truth found in Emmaus can always be found at the Holy Table – the Altar – the body and blood of Jesus which mark the very love of God. Whatever the disappointments from which we return, our misunderstandings of God’s ways, our heart-breaking discouragements, the place is always here, the body and blood of Jesus is always here, the very love of God is always here waiting for us. It is the place where we are always the Risen Lord’s guests; where, though unseen, he is always present.

No matter how long the road by which we come to the Lord’s Table, it is there, with unutterable joy, that we know him again in the Holy Communion.

Like Cleopas and his companion, we gather for our meal and we remember. We remember that God and all people discover one another in bread and in its shaping. There it is that we meet and discover life itself, a life that goes beyond death. We discover it again and again in the crumbs that fall upon our table of thanksgiving. We discover it in the crumbs that fall from the tables of our daily living. And when we, a pilgrim people, have taken our walk with a God who, in Christ, walks with us in this life, we then are sat down at table and there we break bread to satisfy our hungers. And when we do this, do not also our hearts burn?

Well, in our experience, at times we can experience his presence with us; at other times we can’t. He is like the sun in the sky, which at times is big and bright and clearly visible in the sky, but at other times, it disappears behind a layer of clouds and seems to have vanished from the sky. But we know from experience that the sun is always somewhere in the sky. So too, in our low points of our journey we should not be disturbed by the apparent absence of the Lord; we should rather use them as opportunities to show Christ our trust that he is still walking with us and he will appear to console and heal us.