Easter 3 Reflection on Reflection on Luke 24.13 – 35 - Sunday 26th April 2020
Today’s Gospel invites us along on a journey that two followers of Jesus take after that first Easter. We see Cleopas and his companion trudging down the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It’s about 7 miles, a journey taking a few hours. They are deep in conversation when a stranger comes alongside them, checking out what they are talking about. He hears his own story recounted in their words, a story of an extraordinary life, and of a brutal death. They share the hope they’d had in him, the prophet mighty in deed and word, and the sadness they are feeling now. Yes, they’d heard stories that some women of their group had found the tomb empty – but, well, none of the men who checked it out had seen him alive! All this seemed a long way away from the shouts of Hosanna on Palm Sunday …
In this story of the Road to Emmaus, the two followers don’t recognise the Risen Christ until he breaks bread with them. Trauma, grief, sadness does that; we lose hope, and everything that was once familiar feels strange. We don’t recognise the face of someone we love and know well, especially when we see the person outside their usual context. Nothing seems ‘normal’ anymore. We wonder how the world can continue to turn if we have lost a loved one, when our world has changed beyond recognition. Right now newsreaders and the papers talk of our current experience as ‘unprecedented’- across the world we are in a situation which hasn’t happened before. This is deeply scary and traumatic.
Looking at us here gathered on Zoom, and thinking of all our community who are sharing in this service by other means, I wonder how we are all feeling at the moment? Anxious? Angry? Glad to be together as community even if we can only meet online? Are we allowing ourselves to feel, or are we too focused on getting things done, trying our best to keep worries at bay? So many of our choices have been taken away, and we are living in a reality we could not have imagined even a few weeks ago. There are days when I wake up in the morning, convinced that all this has just been a bad and rather surreal dream!
But let’s return to the road to Emmaus. I have heard this Gospel so many times but never before has it had such an impact on me. I can see myself on this road, in this situation now, trying to make sense of what has been happening. Working out what the new normal can be. The disciples were heading away from the dreadful spectacle of the crucifixion and pain of Jesus’ death only to be gate-crashed by this stranger who talks to them about the Scriptures as they are walking along companionably. They listen to his teaching but still seem clueless as to who this stranger could be. After all, they weren’t looking out for a dead man on the road to Emmaus!
Jesus engages them in conversation, he waits to hear their story. He takes time, shows real interest in what has been happening to them, to how they are feeling. His way of questioning rattles their cage and provokes a rather indignant response. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard …??” but by the time they arrive at their destination, and Jesus walks on ahead, a relationship has been established, and they invite him to come and stay for a meal. They reach out to him. While this is a gesture of everyday hospitality common in this time and place, it is also a moment of profound transformation.
It is at the table in the breaking of bread that they meet their Risen Lord - He who comes to the disappointed, the doubtful, those who don’t recognise him even when they are walking right beside him. Yet it seems significant that he didn’t reveal himself fully until they acted, and entered into relationship with him. Just as God is calling us into relationship, and to action. To a resurrection life where we’ll learn to see anew, together. A life where in the small ordinary acts of caring is the extraordinary presence of the Risen Christ.
Let me finish with the words of the great Spanish saint St Teresa of Avila:
‘Christ has no body on earth now but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes though which he looks with compassion on the world; yours are the feet with which he walks to do good; yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.’
Amen.
