“THE JOURNEY TO AND FROM EMMAUS”
Luke 24:13-35
(04-06-08)

Our text this morning from Luke’s gospel account
takes place during the day of the first Easter.
According to Luke, on the first day of the week a group of women came to the tomb where Jesus was lain with spices which they had prepared.
Finding the stone rolled away from the entrance, they went in,
only to find that Jesus’ body was not there.
Suddenly there appeared to them two men in dazzling clothes.
They said to the women,
“Why do you look for the living among the dead?
He is not here, but has risen.
Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,
that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified,
and on the third day rise again.”
The women returned to where the other disciples were
and told them of what had happened.
But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

They did not believe them.
And who could blame them.
The disciples were crushed.
John’s gospel tells us that they were so afraid
that they locked themselves up in a room, hiding from the authorities.
Try to imagine what these disciples were going through.
They had been called from their various backgrounds to follow Jesus.
As they traveled with him, listened to him, watched him perform miraculous deeds,
they became convinced that something new and wonderful was afoot.
Jesus did and said things they never imagined anyone doing.
He stilled the storms, he cast out evil spirits,
he rebuked the scribes and the Pharisees,
he spoke of loving one’s enemies, of doing good to those who hate you,
of the poor and the hungry and the weeping being blessed,
and the thing was that when Jesus spoke those words,
they seemed somehow believable.
With only a handful of bread and a couple of fish
he fed thousands on the side of a mountain.
He raised the dead.
If anyone could redeem Israel, if anyone could stand up to the Roman occupiers,
if anyone could break the monopoly of power
that the religious leaders exercised over the common folk,
surely Jesus was the one.

But alas, it was not meant to be.
When push came to shove the archaic, entrenched local leadership
manipulated the representative of the occupying power
to have Jesus arrested, condemned and crucified.
And just like that it was over.
His body was taken down, placed in a tomb and a stone rolled in front of it.
Just like that all that they had been living for was just as dead as Jesus.
Everything they had believed in was buried behind an immovable stone, just like Jesus. The disappointment must have been excruciating.
Couple that with fear, fear of persecution, fear of retribution,
fear of having to admit that what you left your family for,
what you left your vocation for, what you left your reputation for,
was all just a big deception,
and you can begin to understand the level of disillusionment and despair
that must have been running through the disciples on that first Easter day.
No wonder they didn’t believe the news that the women had brought.

We know that the number of disciples who traveled with Jesus
and who were with him from his baptism to his crucifixion
numbered far more than twelve.
There were many other men and women, some named, most unnamed.
Among those whose name we know is a disciple called Cleopas.
He, along with another unnamed disciple,
were traveling that first Easter day from Jerusalem to a place called Emmaus.
Emmaus was a town about seven miles from Jerusalem,
but its location has never been conclusively identified by modern archaeologists.
Do you know the way to Emmaus?
The surprising thing is that I’ll bet that all of us do.
You see, Emmaus isn’t only some unidentifiable place in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Emmaus is the place we go to when we’ve just got to get away from Jerusalem.
The disciples, Cleopas and his friend, they were there when Jesus was crucified.
Their dreams, their hopes, their expectations were snuffed out when Jesus died.
And now, in their despair, in their desperation, in their desolation,
they do what many of us do in similar situations.
They retreated, they withdrew, they sought out a place of solace, any place but Jerusalem. They needed to get away from the place where their dreams were shattered,
where their friend was crucified, where, in some way, their hopes had been betrayed. And so they set out for Emmaus that first Easter day.

Where do you go when your hopes are shattered?
Where do you go when you feel betrayed?
Where do you retreat to when the pain is too great,
when the hurt is too deep, when the wound is too fresh?
Where is your Emmaus?
Maybe it’s a physical place, somewhere only you know,
maybe its to the mountains, or to the back roads.
Maybe your Emmaus is the bar down the street,
or maybe it’s somewhere even more unspeakable.
Maybe your Emmaus isn’t a place, but a state of mind.
Maybe Emmaus for you is retreating to that space in your mind
where you just won’t have to engage, where you just won’t have to care,
where you just won’t ever have to be vulnerable again.
We’ve all gone to Emmaus from time to time.
I don’t know what drives you there, but its different for all of us.
It might be the loss of someone we love.
It might be the leaving of someone we trusted.
It might the be the breakup of something we believed in.
It might be great disillusionment or disappointment with people,
with situations, with the plans we had made.
It might be bad news in our health, in our jobs, in our expectations.
Whatever it may be, the journey to Emmaus is a journey we’ve all made at some point.

The Emmaus journey that Luke tells us about
takes place three days after Jesus was crucified, it takes place on Easter.
As Cleopas and the other disciple were walking along, there came another,
and he joined them and even though it was Jesus,
the eyes of the disciples were kept from recognizing him.
I wonder why?
Most people think it was because God kept them from recognizing the resurrected Jesus, or that Jesus looked somehow different after his resurrection.
But aren’t there times on our journeys to Emmaus
when we really can’t recognize even those who are the closest to us?
In the fog of pain and hurt, we can sometimes walk through our despair and grief, physically present, but not taking in anything around us.
And sometimes the last person we want to acknowledge
as being present in our hurt and suffering, in our pain and grief,
in our disillusionment and disappointment, is God,
because God is the one who is supposed to be keeping us
from experiencing such pain and hurt in the first place.
And yet the truth is
that just as he walked with Cleopas and the other disciple that first Easter day,
the risen Christ, our resurrected Saviour,
walks with us on our journeys to Emmaus.
Like the disciples, we don’t always recognize him, for whatever reason.
But Jesus persists.
And just as he did that first Easter, he continues to walk with us.
Sometimes like Cleopas and his friend,
we pour out our disappointments to those who will listen to us,
not recognizing the presence of the risen Christ in those who walk with us.
And often through those same people, Jesus offers insight and revelation,
not perhaps into why we have to hurt or why we have to suffer,
but into how much God still loves and cares for us and is still very present for us.

When Cleopas and his friend reached Emmaus,
they invited the stranger in, as the day was almost over.
At the table, when the stranger took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them, suddenly their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus.
It is incredibly instructive that at Emmaus,
in the place where they had gone to escape from their pain and anguish,
that by and through this sacramental act,
Jesus is revealed to the disciples.
In the breaking of bread, and earlier in this service,
in the administration of water at baptism,
we affirm that we are a sacramental community.
And that word, community, is very key for us.
From the heart of our Emmaus’,
suddenly we can get a glimpse of the Resurrected One
in our midst through moments of epiphany.
And often, that eye opening revelation of Christ’s presence
comes by way of the sacramental community, the people of God, the church.
The role of the church, of the people of God,
in helping people manage and move past their Emmaus experiences, is vital.
In our times of grief and hurt, haven’t we known the love of the church,
the body of Christ, the people of God,
through whom the risen Christ ministers and reveals himself to us?
Hasn’t it often been the prayers and faithful presence of those who love us
that has sustained us in our journeys to Emmaus?
It’s the food delivered to our door when we haven’t the energy to cook for ourselves,
it’s the flowers and the cards which people take the time to send and write
that unexpectedly brighten our days and tells us that we are not forgotten or alone.
It’s the gentle hand on the shoulder, the look that says,
even if I can’t know your pain, I hurt for you,
its all these things and more, by which Jesus works to reveal himself to us
through the community, the body of Christ.

Haven’t there been moments in our lives
when the burning of our hearts have told us in no uncertain terms
that Jesus had been present and we had not been aware of it?
Haven’t there been times when something so extraordinary has happened,
when someone has done something very ordinary,
but it has had an extraordinary impact on us
because through that simple act, we saw Jesus,
we understood that Jesus had always been with us
and we found the strength to live again,
to be resurrected in our hopes and dreams and even in our faith?

Its important to acknowledge that our journey to Emmaus is a valid one.
Jesus never tells the disciples that they shouldn’t be going to Emmaus.
Instead he goes with them.
The good news, friends, is that wherever or whatever our Emmaus’ may be,
in our journey to Emmaus, we don’t go alone.
The Resurrected One goes with us
and he wants to give us newness of life,
he wants to resurrect us from whatever has led us to flee Jerusalem for Emmaus.

Cleopas and his friend, when they suddenly recognized Jesus
as being the stranger who had journeyed with them to Emmaus,
they didn’t spend the night there, they didn’t linger and tarry.
No, that same hour, the text tells us, they got up and returned to Jerusalem.
They returned to the place where their hopes had been dashed,
but it was no longer the same place,
it was no longer the same world.
They had good news to share, they had convictions to confess,
they had to tell of their experience of the risen Christ to the rest of the community.
And they found, probably to no surprise at all,
that Jesus the Risen One, had already appeared to others as well.

Some of us are making the journey to Emmaus right now.
Its not wrong to do so.
God knows that we need to.
But God won’t let us go it alone, Jesus goes with us.
It may take us a while to really recognize him,
but I pray and trust that there will come a time when we will.
Some of us have been in Emmaus for a while now.
What keeps us from recognizing Jesus in our midst?
What keeps us from going back to the Jerusalem’s of our lives?
Sometimes whatever has brought us to our Emmaus’
makes it awfully tempting for us to stay there, detached, uninvolved,
unwilling to risk again, to be vulnerable again, to love again.
But God knows that we can’t remain there forever
and we know that even in Emmaus
we never truly get away from the life that we need to live.
When we recognize that Jesus is alive in our midst,
we need to journey from Emmaus back to where God wants and needs us to be.
The journey from Emmaus is even more important than the journey to Emmaus.
The journey from Emmaus is the one where hope is our guide,
where potential is our companion,
where faith is our friend.
It’s the journey of one who knows the healing and wholeness
that comes from being resurrected with Jesus
that comes from knowing that the world will never again be the same
and who can’t wait to share it with others.

The journey from Emmaus is the journey back to community,
back to the sacramental community
which God has chosen as his way of being present for so many in the world.
It was this small group of disciples,
men and women who had been bitterly disappointed and severely tested,
that became the core of the first Christian community.
And the risen Christ sent them into the world
to share the gospel and the presence of Christ.
Friends, we are called to be part of that community.

The journey to and from Emmaus is a resurrection story.
It is the story of a God who in Jesus his son, who in Jesus our Saviour,
says that there is no place, there is no space, in our lives
where he will not be present with us.
It may be in the most ordinary things and places,
through the most ordinary people,
but God will be present for us, with us,
inviting us to open our eyes and see, truly see.
Whether we are on our way to Emmaus, or on our way back from Emmaus,
may the restoring, resurrecting hope of God be with each of us this day.

And to God be the Glory, now and forevermore, Amen.