Easter 3, Year A

I love the poignant details in today’s gospel passage.  I love the way the Gospel of Luke, which is the gospel today’s passage comes from, often describes events with details that give us a sense of what they look like, and what they feel like.  Today’s gospel passage takes place on the day of the resurrection.  But these two disciples are not staying with the rest of the disciples.  Instead, they are leaving Jerusalem, getting out of town, getting away from the place of torture and crucifixion of their friend, their Lord, the one they’d put their faith in, where they were left with nothing but a sense of betrayal when the cruelty rendered him helpless and dead.  They are getting away from the place of so much trauma, so much bitter disappointment.  But while their feet are moving them away, their minds and hearts are still in Jerusalem, as their conversation is going over all the events that happened there.  

Jesus comes near and goes with them.  They think he’s just some random guy on the road.  Then Jesus asks the simple question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”  And the question stops them in their tracks.  “They stood still, looking sad.”  We can picture them, so overcome with emotion that they don’t know where to begin.  We don’t know how long they stand there, looking sad. And then Cleopas blurts out his question about how something so enormous in their lives could be completely unknown to this man, who must be a stranger, a foreigner: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”  Jesus asks them, even more simply, “What things?”  And then it all comes tumbling out: “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.”  We can picture their eyes lighting up at the memory of the prophetic and inspired words, and the memory of the miracles they witnessed.  But then it all turns, “and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.”  And most poignant of all: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”  Jesus listens silently.  Cleopas blurts out more: “Today is the third day since these things took place.”  Cleopas spills out what has astounded them: “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; but they did not see him.”  In this flow of words, the irony comes out.  The women say the tomb is empty and the angels told them Jesus is alive.  “Some of those who were with us went to the tomb”….and the part he doesn’t say out loud: but we didn’t go to the tomb; instead, we left town.   There is a sad irony here.  And it’s also a very common reaction to things that are beyond what we already know, that involve something divine or mysterious or miraculous or difficult to believe: the impulse to pull back from it, dismiss it, distract ourselves from it, get away from it. No wonder Jesus says, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe.”  They are running away from fear and pain, and in doing so they are also running away from hope and faith.  But Jesus does not give up on them.  Instead he says, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”  And Jesus goes on to interpret to them the things about him that were in the scriptures the whole time.  The disciples listen.  And they don’t want the conversation to end.  So as they get near the village they were going to, they urge him, “Stay with us.  It is almost evening and the day is nearly over.”  They share a meal together.  Luke tells us, “Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”  These four actions, take bread, bless it, break it, give it-- jog loose something in the disciples’ memory.  In Luke’s gospel the disciples have seen Jesus doing these four actions--take, bless (or give thanks for), break, and give--twice before.  When Jesus miraculously feeds the multitude in Luke 9:16, Luke tells us, “And taking up the five loaves and two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.”  Again when Jesus is at the Last Supper with his disciples in Luke 22:19, Luke tells us, “Then Jesus took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you.  Do this in remembrance of me’.”  Seeing him do these actions again, they remember, their eyes are opened and they recognize him.  He vanishes from them.  They say 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?”  I love the way they suddenly realize this is who they already know, the way they realize that their hearts were already burning within them while he was talking to them on the road. 

I like what the Episcopal priest Barbara Crafton says about how we know Christ.  She writes, “We want to know Christ the way we know other things -- like how many atoms of hydrogen and how many of oxygen there are in a molecule of water, or that Helena is the capital of Montana -- and we can't.  But wait a minute. I've never done a chemical analysis of a drop of water, and I wouldn't know how to begin to do one. And I've never been to Montana. I don't have firsthand knowledge of either of those things. Or of the many other things I accept without ever having seen the evidence for any of them. We all have a large body of secondhand knowledge we believe and act upon every day. Almost everything we believe, we take on faith.” She goes on, “I think we sense that the resurrection of Jesus isn't like all those other things. That it's not a fact like other facts, measurable by someone, if not by us. That it is an experience not removed from us by the long stretch of time since it occurred -- that it is, in some important sense, still going on, still available to us in a way that the coronation of Elizabeth I or the moment when Isaac Newton discovered gravity is not still available. Those moments are part of history. Somehow the risen life of Christ is part of our life. Everyone's life. Maybe we don't so much believe it as notice it, as something that has been true all along.”

The disciples are transformed by this noticing.  And I expect that part of the reason the Risen Christ vanishes, is that keeping his body there to be a fact, measurable by someone, is not the point.  The point is the relationship we have with the Risen Christ.  He stays only long enough for the disciples to recognize that relationship, or to be more precise, his physical body stays only long enough for the disciples to recognize that relationship.  But his presence remains with them as the risen life of Christ is part of their life.  

And not only theirs, but ours too.  When we gather for the Eucharist, our eucharistic prayer includes those four actions: Jesus “took bread, and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you’.”  Christ is no longer limited to one human-size body in one particular place and time.  The risen life of Christ is part of our life.  

Once the disciples are aware of this relationship with the Risen Christ, their lives are turned around.  That is literally true, because they literally turn around and walk back to Jerusalem on the same road.  Even though it is almost evening and the day is nearly over, they don’t spend the night in Emmaus, they start back to Jerusalem.  As Luke puts it, “That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. I bet they are walking along on happy feet, and the walk back feels completely different from the walking away.  “They found the eleven and their companions gathered together.  They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”  Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

This morning as we hear the scriptures, and we participate in the sacrament, remembering that Jesus “took bread, and when he had given thanks to you, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat, this is my body which is given for you’.”  It is my prayer that Christ is made known to us in the breaking of the bread.