April 26, 2020 – Luke 24:13-35
Luke 24:13-35
One Chapter in God’s Big Story
Third Sunday of Easter – April 26, 2020
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Many people I have spoken with recently have told me their experiences of how
their worlds have shrunk in the last month.
Our freedom has shrunk, our finances have shrunk, our social gathering has shrunk.
Our sense of safety has shrunk along with our well-being.
Along with this comes an inability to see the future clearly,
as if we are in a tunnel with no light at the end of it: it is a constricting experience.
What does the psalmist say? You have hemmed me in behind and before (Psalm 139:5).
Hemmed in – maybe that’s the feeling.
And all the dread and difficulty that comes with that.
When you’re hemmed in and overwhelmed by the experience
it is very difficult to see outside your current circumstances.
You begin to think this is all there is.
And it’s very hard to put your experience in any kind of larger perspective.
The present moment can tyrannize everything else.
And that is kind of a terrifying experience.
I think this is what happens to the two disciples in the story of the Road to Emmaus.
It is Easter Sunday evening in Luke’s telling of the story.
The two disciples in question – Cleopas and an unnamed companion, perhaps a woman –
are walking from Jerusalem back home after experiencing extreme disappointment.
Jesus had said, “On the third day I will rise again,” but here we are, on the third day,
and, well, nothing.
Yes: there were reports about an empty tomb, but so far, no Jesus.
Perhaps his body had been stolen – who knows?
So, after all the excitement and all the hope of listening to and following this Jesus
they are heading back home.
After readying themselves to be part of something great, something amazing,
something that will benefit all the peoples of the earth they are crushed with despair and
going back home.
After setting all their hopes on what Jesus had called the inbreaking reign of God,
after being certain that Jesus was inaugurating God’s coming commonwealth of
manna-sharing and mercy-giving and justice-doing and peace-making –
after setting all their hopes on that,
they have resigned themselves to the fact of a dead saviour, a dead movement, and dead hopes.
So they set out on the way back home – they set out on the road to Emmaus.
Now as they journey a stranger comes along and joins them on the way.
We know the stranger is Jesus, but strangely they do not.
The risen Jesus is hard to recognize, apparently, for them and for us.
But he walks with them and talks with them.
They tell him of the crushing things that have happened in the last few days.
They tell him of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem just the week before, of his arrest, unjust trial,
and execution.
They tell him, We had hoped he was the one to redeem, that is, set free, Israel.
I don’t know exactly what they mean by that.
Do they mean simply set it free from Roman political tyrrany?
Or set it free to once again be God’s instrument of
bringing blessing to all the families of the earth?
I take it to be the latter, but who knows?
Nevertheless, the stranger begins to talk about scripture.
Instead of just focussing on this one moment of time,
the stranger speaks of the entire scriptural story.
And he puts the present moment into a much, much larger story of God’s long-held desire to
bless, heal, feed, forgive, set free and love this whole world and every person in it.
He speaks to them of an expansive story of how God is bringing mending to a broken world.
And how the present moment of distress and difficulty have their place, too, in this story.
As he speaks, they begin to remember that in God’s story, death is never the end.
Human failing is never the end. Human mistakes are never the end.
They are part of the story, of course – but they are never the end.
Because God’s love for this world is stronger than human failings,
stronger than human mistakes, and stronger even than death.
Who knows? Maybe the stranger even quotes the Song of Solomon to them:
Love is as strong as death, passion as fierce as the grave.
And as the two disciples listen to him, their hearts begin to burn again within them.
They begin to get passionate again about God’s story and their place in it.
The stranger has put their present suffering into a much larger context.
Their suffering and the present moment is not the end of the story!
God’s love for a broken world and abundant life for all is the end of the story!
For on this holy mountain, promised God through the prophet Isaiah long before,
I will make a feast for all peoples. . .
When the day is almost – but not quite – done,
when the third day is not quite yet over, the stranger makes as if to leave.
But the two disciples urge him to stay with them – and he agrees, and –
as Melinda noted in her devotion on Thursday – the stranger assumes the role of host.
He takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.
And in that action the stranger is revealed to be Jesus.
Jesus had been with them all along – but they could not see it.
It seems clear that by the time Luke was writing, the church he was writing for was
meeting for weekly worship on Sunday evenings, following the pattern of this story:
they would read scripture together and then share bread and wine in a meal of holy communion.
And when they did that the risen Jesus was revealed to be still present with them,
and that would sustain them in their work as God’s people for the week.
This is still how Jesus is revealed to be present with us –
every week our Sunday worship follows the same pattern: Word and Meal.
And in that pattern we too experience Jesus to still be with us.
These days, however, we are not able to gather, and we are not able to share a meal.
We do, though, still have the word.
Melinda and Carolyn and I share the word with you daily in devotions and sermons.
Melinda is leading a Zoom meeting every Wednesday evening called
“Dwelling in the Word.”
And I am sharing the word with the children in weekly video Children’s Messages.
Like the disciples on the road,
it is hard to know and recognize Jesus when all we have is the word.
It would be better – much better! – if we had the word and the shared meal on Sunday morning.
But what I am taking away from this story right now is that the word, for now, is enough.
Jesus is still present with us, in the word.
The larger scriptural story – that is, the word – helped the disciples on the road
put their present difficulties into perspective.
Through the story of how God has been working working working through the ages to turn
death into life and mourning into dancing over and over and over
Jesus put their current mourning into perspective.
Through the story, Jesus is able to put their experience of “no hope” into a larger perspective,
the perspective of God’s hope.
The good news is that there is more to the world than we can see right now.
The good news is that is more to the world than our present experience.
The good news is that there is hope beyond our experience of “no hope.”
Currently we are experiencing life to be very restricted and shrinking.
This constricted reality feels overwhelming for many.
But Christians have gone through this before –
God has been with them and led them through the dark valley into plains of light.
Human beings have gone through this before and come through it.
Indeed, God’s love was present long before the world was created and
will be here long after we are gone.
That is the perspective Jesus gives the disciples on the walk that day.
And that is the perspective Jesus gives us on this day.
God raised Jesus from the dead – and God will raise us with him, over and over and over.
As many times as necessary.
Because that is God’s business – raising the dead to life.
“But we had hoped.”
Yes, of course we had.
We hoped things would be so very different from how things are right now.
And yet, as Debie Thomas writes this week,
The stranger who is the Savior still meets us on the lonely road to Emmaus.
This may not actually be all that we want.
We may want the Saviour to fix everything.
But apparently that is not how this Saviour saves.
I mean, one of the most amazing things in this story of the Road to Emmaus is maybe
the most prosaic thing, the thing you hardly even notice:
that the very first thing the risen Jesus does is take a leisurely stroll.
Hahahahahaha! Think about that!
On the evening of his greatest victory, he doesn’t find his enemies and gloat.
He doesn’t go the temple and tell everyone, “I told you so.”
He doesn’t head to Pilate’s house, or vindicate himself, or hold a press conference,
or shoot a televised special or livestream a raucus victory party.
And he certainly doesn’t avenge himself.
Instead, he takes an evening walk.
How like Jesus! Hahahahahahaha! Jesus is so weird and so strange, and so, well, different.
But thank God for that.
He joins two of his lonely, despairing followers and listens to them, and talks with them,
and puts their story into God’s perspective and
eats a very simple meal with them – and that is enough.
This is not actually what we might want – or all that we want –
particularly in our current moment.
But as I have said many times, we must accept God for who God is and
not what we would wish God to be.
Thank God Jesus can be found, right along side us, when we are hurting, and vulnerable,
and despairing.
Thank God Jesus will reveal himself to be present with us in our current, constricted time.
Thank God Jesus will reveal our present moment to be just that,
a moment in time that will pass into something more,
something that God will somehow make use of for a good purpose.
Somehow, God will bring something good from this.
And make this present time just one chapter of the ongoing story of
God’s mending a broken world – and making it whole again.
Let us pray: Thank you, Jesus, for walking with us on the road. Thank you for the word that puts our present difficulties in the context of God’s much bigger story of bringing love and healing to this world you so love. Thank you for being with us. Reveal yourself to us. Speak your word to us. Stay with us. And grant us your peace, as together we say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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