THE PRACTICE OF SEEING BENEATH THE SURFACE
Luke 24:13-35 (in red letters below from the NRSV translation)
April 6, 2008,
It happens every now and then. You’re driving a familiar street or walking through the neighborhood for the umpteenth time. And you look over and there is a house, or a tree or a sign or something and you swear wasn’t there before. It was, of course. Houses and trees do not usually spring up overnight. (unless maybe on Extreme Home Makeover). But we become so used to seeing what our minds are programmed to see and to understanding in ways that were conditioned under other circumstances that we just miss what is there. It also happens with stories…we read through a novel in 12th grade English and with the help of our teacher we discern certain themes. Then we go back to the novel years later and hear something fresh and new. In Scripture…sacred story…this is infinitely true as we experience the living Spirit of God continuing to be revealed as we engage the texts from different points in our life experience and different places in history.
On the third Sunday of Easter we have a third resurrection appearance story. Luke tells a story that is in none of the other Gospels, a story that is both disarmingly simple and mystifyingly complex and multilayered. Luke is doing more than just conveying information like a reporter on the evening news. He wants this story to open our eyes to perhaps see something we haven’t seen…he wants to take us beyond what our minds can comprehend to a place and a truth that is deeper than factual description can take us. Story can do that in ways that other writing cannot which is why so much of our Sacred Text is written in story form. Today I suggest that we try to hear this sacred story as if we were hearing it for the first time, conjuring up images that perhaps earlier readers would have done more effortlessly than we, and reflect on why this Emmaus Road story has become such an important part of the Good News.
Reading from Luke Chapter 24, beginning with the 13th verse: Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all the things that had happened.
It is the Sunday after the crucifixion. Two people are walking along the road leaving Jerusalem. For some reason I’ve always pictured these two alone on the road. But there is no reason to think that. It is the first day of the week after the Passover…a time when countless numbers had swelled the population of the city almost to the breaking point. And so on Sunday the road would probably be teeming with people returning home from their pilgrimage in there. It would have been noisy on that road. And smelly. As they leave the city, off in the distance the travelers can probably see the crosses where public executions have taken place. Birds of prey perhaps circle overhead. Maybe a child cries in the distance. The heat from the late morning sun is already oppressive, and they have six miles to go.
There are two people in the story but only Cleopas has a name and is never mentioned anywhere else in Scripture. Some have speculated the compainon is Cleopas and his wife. Perhaps it is a business partner. There is nothing to suggest that they are anything more than just average ordinary people who had been captivated by the message of Jesus and speculating that he might be the great leader they had long waited for…the one that would lead the Hebrew people in opposition to the oppressive Roman occupation establishing a new kingdom…lead them into a future full of freedom, hope and possibility. And while they walked they talked…
While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.
Cleopas and his companion are joined by a stranger who claims to know nothing about what has happened. The narrator tips off the reader to the mystery of the stranger but within the plot line of the story the travelers see only another dusty pilgrim traveling on the road with them. They find it hard to believe he doesn’t know what has happened but they’ve got a long day of walking ahead so they recount what they know including that poignant confession: “We had hoped that he was the one.”
The closest we can come to imagining what Cleopas and his companion must have felt would be to remember or imagine what so many felt on the morning after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated…especially those close to him, who traveled with him and had late night conversations with him. We believed in his dream of a different kind of world and future…a dream that we feared had died along with him.
When hope dies we feel left alone in a very dark place with no way out… no viable options… no real possibilities on the horizon…a place where endless day gives way to another endless day and nothing we do seems to really make much of a difference and all the colors are drained out of life. And how does that feels when it comes packaged with excruciating grief?
When the disciples and other followers had been with Jesus so much seemed possible. They felt like a new creation just beginning. But now, they shuffle along…going back to wherever they came from. And tomorrow will be just another day in a stream of endless days
The travelers continue to describe to the stranger the recent events saying: Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; (pause here) but they did not see him.”
Is this the turning point in the story…this rumor of resurrection? Not the way Luke tells it. The report of an empty tomb is just that. It has, in no way changed the only thing they are sure about: that Jesus was crucified. It says nothing about anything else of significance. Bodies get moved for all sorts of reasons. They get stolen. They get relocated for safety. The report of the women mentioned an angelic vision. OoooKaaaay. The tone is one of pure skepticism. (Those women had some sort of a vision). When they sent some of the group to check it out they found an empty tomb (pause) but no Jesus. “There is a time to be born and a time to die,” the wisdom teacher of Ecclesiastes wrote. “The seasons come and go in endless cycles and there is nothing new under the sun.”
Then [the stranger] said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
When terrible things happen we always want to know why. When things don’t go the way we expect we ask questions of meaning and purpose within the framework of our intellectual and religious traditions. During the long walk home the stranger helps Cleopas and his companion with some interpretive possibilities. “OK…let’s look at this again. When you said you had hoped he was God’s anointed one, what did you think you meant? What were you looking for? What ARE you looking for? Does God only work within the predictable paradigms? You are part of a rich tradition that speaks boldly of a God of justice…a God of compassion…a God active in human history. What was it about this Jesus that captured your imagination, reinvigorated your faith, and gave you more hope than you ever dreamed possible? (pause) So, you didn’t get Rambo Messiah, or Dale Carnegie Messiah or some other two dimensional facsimile created in YOUR image. Does that mean there isn’t something very real and very holy in what has happened and is happening? Something that maybe we just don’t quite understand yet… Something that you haven’t been able to see yet? As they came near the village to which they were going, the stranger walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.
They come to the end of the long walk home. By now surely Cleopas and his companion are exhausted. By now they must want nothing else but to close the door behind them and between them and all that has happened. Instead they welcome the stranger into their home and they give the stranger a place at the table and they break bread together. And THIS…this act of hospitality…of welcoming the stranger…is the turning point in the story. For something of great significance is happening here.
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized [Jesus]; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. [Those who had remained in Jerusalem] were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then [Cleopas and his companion] told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
You can feel the energy that has come back into the story as Cleopas and his friend now race back to Jerusalem, having encountered what they least expected to encounter…a living presence they thought had died. And when they found the eleven disciples they are no longer talking about rumors and visions. Now they are talking about experiences and of something real that they never expected to see, something that is going to reorient them…and fill them with hope and energize them for an unimaginable adventure.
This story does not end with a closed door after a long journey back because the story is not over. It will continue in Luke’s second volume, “The Acts of the Apostles” where small communities are established from Jerusalem in the Syrian province in the south all the way to Rome itself in the north. Who could have imagined? Communities of hope and compassion and generosity…communities organized around the practices of radical hospitality and breaking bread together in the name of the crucified and risen one…communities that encounter a living Jesus in these defining acts. And the story keeps going.
The Emmaus Road story is the churches story. It is our story. In a world that so often seems to be teetering on the brink of despair….where hope is in short supply…where the forces of manipulation and violence and greed and death seem overwhelming….we keep living THIS story…about a reality that we are still learning to see…about a sacramental presence in with and under the most ordinary of things. Week after week we struggle through the church door weighed down by cynicism, stress, pretense, power. We are sophisticated people, skilled practitioners in the seductions of the world, but nervous novices in the realm of the Spirit. Like the first disciples we yearn for the living presence of God. So we gather to be shaped and formed by a different story…a sacred story…a story different that the one the world of commerce and politics tells…a story of mystery and wonder and hope that defies easy explanation in a world defined only by what can be grasped, or measured,…yet a story that comes to life in amazing ways as we welcome the stranger and break bread together in the name of Jesus…crucified and risen.