Luke 24:13-35
Today is the third Sunday of Easter. Liturgically-speaking, we are a long way from today’s text. Good Friday was over two weeks ago. For Cleopas and his fellow traveler, it has been just a couple of days. It is Easter Sunday to them, only they don’t know it yet. It still feels like Friday. They’ve heard the rumors – the crazy tale those women came back reporting – but they don’t know what to believe, and they don’t know what to do. But they can’t stay in Jerusalem, which is supposed to be the holy city but today feels like the place of the dead. So they turn their backs on Jerusalem and head toward Emmaus.
Scholars don’t know for sure where Emmaus is. It could be anywhere . . . for Emmaus, according to writer Frederick Buechner, is: “the place we go to in order to escape—a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, ‘Let the whole . . . thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway’ Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car, or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. 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 humans have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish humans for selfish ends.[1]
Well, now, that’s a happy thought, isn’t it? That the world holds nothing sacred, and every noble idea has been twisted for selfish ends? But that’s where these disciples were, emotionally. The world had not held sacred the life of their Messiah. The world had not held sacred their hopes and dreams. The world had twisted Jesus’ ideals and ultimately twisted his body on a cross. Of course they went away. They went to Emmaus—the place we go in order to escape.
What is your Emmaus? Where is it that you go when you want to escape the trauma of the day and the terror of the night? Where do you go physically? Home? The mall? The internet? A bar? Where do you go in your mind and soul when it all gets too much? To prayer and meditation? To fear and cynicism? Or, when you are unsure, do you stand up on a soapbox of certainty and open your mouth and close your ears? What is your Emmaus?
Not all of our Emmauses are bad. After all, we do need a place of retreat, a place to get away, a safe place to recover and regroup. But there is a difference between retreat and escape. I don’t know which one Cleopas and his traveling companion are doing, but when they encounter a stranger on the road, they say four little words that speak volumes of their despair: But we had hoped.
“So much is said in those four words, as they speak of a future that is not to be, a dream that created energy and enthusiasm but did not materialize, a promise that created faith that proved to be false. It speaks of a future that is closed off, now irrelevant, dead. And there are few things more tragic than a dead future. . . . It’s not just the tragedy of what happened that hurts, but the gaping hole of all that could have happened but won’t.”[2]
We had hoped that this job would bring meaning to our lives. We had hoped that this relationship would fill the emptiness inside of us. We had hoped that this church community would be the perfect realm of God. We had hoped that this time our dreams would come true. We had hoped. But hope has died, faith has been buried, and our souls are shrouded and dark.
Too often in the church we tend to gloss over our brokenness. This isn’t only in the church, of course; we do it in the rest of life, too. But in the church we use religious excuses for the glossing over. We hurry too soon to the resurrection, or to eternal life, and when we do that, we deny the pain that is in the here and now. So let me say to you this morning: I know some of you are broken today. You’ve had bad news this week. You’ve lost loved ones this week. You’ve made bad choices and you’ve wounded those you love, or you’ve been wounded by the choices of others. And in your brokenness, perhaps you cannot see who walks beside you.
Neither did the disciples who walked the road with Jesus. The scripture says, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Some scholars understand the passive voice here to suggest that God keeps them from recognizing Jesus. I don’t think that’s the case. I think their grief blinded them. I think they couldn’t see what they weren’t looking for. I think that what kept them from recognizing Jesus is they couldn’t see what they couldn’t believe.
Sometimes it’s bad things we can’t see, because our need to believe makes us blind to the truth. But more often we can’t see the good.
An old friend of mine was raised by an unkind woman. She told my friend over and over in a hundred ways that she was unwanted and unlovable, didn’t deserve to have her needs met, didn’t deserve to be protected. My friend learned that her best way to survive was to hide inside of herself, that the only person she could trust was herself, that facades provide good protection. She learned to be the goofy life of the party so she could pretend that all is well. But all isn’t well because at age sixty, she still struggles to believe that she is loved. She still struggles to believe that she deserves to be cared for. And try as she might, she cannot see what is right before her very eyes: that she is surrounded by people who find her infinitely lovable. But she cannot see it. She cannot see what she can’t believe. She is on the road to Emmaus, and she doesn’t recognize the resurrection.
In our text for today, the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus through the journey or through the teachings. It wasn’t until Christ broke the bread that suddenly they recognized the stranger in their midst. I wonder why. Was it because this was such a familiar action—Jesus coming into a house as guest and acting as host? Was it because they had seen him, on a hillside, take and bless and break and give a child’s gift of loaves and fish and faith? Was it because the last time they saw him alive he took and blessed and broke and gave, saying, “This is my body, broken for you”? Was it because, when he broke the bread, they saw the scars? Or was it the brokenness itself? Did the brokenness speak so clearly to their broken hearts and broken dreams that all the rest broke as well? Their fears, broken. Their despair, shattered. Their expectations, pierced. Whatever the reason, they finally saw with their eyes and with their hearts.
They finally recognized Jesus, the Christ . . . and just as quickly Christ disappeared, vanishing into thin air. Boy, I wish this weren’t in the story! I wish Christ had stayed until all their questions had been answered and their fears dissolved. I wish Christ had stayed and they had laughed and talked and “remember when”-ed, until their doubts were just a memory. I wish Christ had been known, not in the breaking of the bread, but in the slicing of the cake, so at least we’d know God would stay through dessert! But that’s not the way the story is told. And it’s not the way most of our stories are told, either.
The good news is: whenever we try to run away; when nothing has gone the way we hoped and expected; when we can’t figure out, for the life of us, how we’re going to make it through . . . God is on the road, getting dusty and sweaty right along with us. God will be found in the breaking of the bread—the bread of sacrament, the bread of community, the daily bread of our everyday lives.
Be known to us, O Christ, in the breaking of the bread. Be known to us in all our broken places. Amen.