On the Road
Luke 24:13-35

April 14, 2002

The Christian year’s calendar sometimes cannot count. Two weeks ago was Easter; last Sunday was the tale of Doubting Thomas at its proper one week after the resurrection. But this week we revert to a road on Easter evening, two weeks late, but always right on time. It is a story that tells us a lot, but says very little of which we can make full sense. That’s why we have to keep retelling and reliving it.

The resurrection has taken place on the third day. The women told the disciples what had happened, yet they thought it an idle tale - except for Peter who checked out the tomb and came back utterly amazed. Evidently, the story quickly spread.

Yet it was still just another Sunday, the day after the Sabbath, during which the world continued much the same as before - cruel, self-absorbed, unknowing, bored. The evangelist first insists upon letting us know that two apostles were going to Emmaus, about 11 kilometers from Jerusalem, 60 stadia to be precise. That’s almost the same distance from Bethlehem to Emmaus in northeastern Pennsylvania. Maybe the evangelist wanted to make certain we had the right place in mind.

Emmaus has not been a known place to the readers of the Gospel before, and nothing is told about the town itself. The two apostles were on their way out of Jerusalem and we never hear why they were going to Emmaus. One apostle is Cleopas, someone unknown to us. The other one really remains unknown for no name is mentioned. Do you think Cleopas was walking with someone he shouldn’t have been? A woman? Or maybe he just made sure he had more lasting P.R.

Two nearly-forgotten apostles were walking and talking on their way to a town almost forgotten by time on the most important day of history. Whether they were going to Emmaus because it was home, or the nearest refuge from the madness of the past few days, we don’t know. Jesus himself then came by and walked with them. “But their eyes were kept from recognizing them.” The story now starts to become ours. Jesus has most likely walked with each one of us, but we too could not recognize him. We the readers and listeners know that it is Jesus himself, but nobody else does.

He asks them about their urgent conversation, for unless he is included, he might as well not walk with them. Poignantly, they stopped and stood still, looking sad. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know?” they ask back. Strangers seldom know what is going on, but given what has happened, every person is a stranger to this travesty and tragedy.

“What things?” Jesus wants to know how this has affected his companions. They were devastated by the things about Jesus of Nazareth, but were stunned by all that had happened that morning, and apparently did not know what to make of it. “But they did not see him” is the final conclusion. Thomas had his companions.

Jesus reprimands them for being foolish and slow of heart. He proceeds to give them a Biblical lesson of the prophecies concerning himself. No response is coming from the two apostles. They could not see that he was Jesus, nor could they hear him through his words and teaching. Yet something was tickling their inner being all along the road.

They came to Emmaus and Jesus from our perspective seemed to be politely bluffing his fellow walkers, walking ahead as if he were going on further. They insisted he stay with them and he did. When he ate with them, he took, blessed, broke, and gave them the bread and that was the sense to which they responded. They recognized him now in the way he ate. And then he vanished.

Hindsight is the best and most accurate sense we possess. Now it all became clear. That odd feeling in their hearts was the soul’s recognition of their risen Lord. Now they could see him clearly and it made no sense to them why they had not known that face.

They did not wait another second. That very hour, which must have been after dark, they got back on to the dark road and walked back to Jerusalem and found the disciples and all their companions. There always were more than 11 or 12 in Jesus’ company. “The Lord has risen indeed!” they declared. These two told them what had happened on the road, and how he had been known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Emmaus is the pilgrimage destination for all hindsighters. For some it is a kind of parable about Sunday worship. Everything happens on a Sunday, the first day of the Jewish work week, and most of it is in the evening. The early Christians mostly worshipped on Sunday evening and that explains why it is the Lord’s Supper - not the Lord’s Lunch.

As they walk along the road, a stranger greets them, and then “opens the Scriptures” to them after they had told him the Gospel story, which they really did not understand fully. Later, at the supper table, he does four things with bread - takes, blesses, breaks, and gives - the same four things he did during the feeding of the four thousand and during the Last Supper, the Passover Seder. Then his presence was physically experienced. We can do no more each Sunday, and may it be said, we should never do less.

We may not reenact the Lord’s Supper in its liturgical preciseness each week, though some churches do, but we should eat together in some fashion. In hindsight we remember how our souls became one as we ate together. A uniqueness of Christianity is that Jesus becomes present to us, not through sight, nor through sound, and often not through language, but through our inelegant eating and breaking of bread. The Church has stuck to its hindsight guns these 2000 years - nothing fancy, just plain simple food.

Hindsight has revealed to us the wonder that on our pilgrimages, it is not the destination which matters, but the journey itself. We do not know where the two apostles were really going and why. We certainly have no idea where Jesus was going.

There really are no holy places and holy events we can visit and experience. Places and happenings and people become holy only afterwards, when we remember the unthinkable, the unseeable presence of God, as the time when “were not our hearts burning within us?” Along the road, in the mundane and boring, in the cracks between what we think is important, that’s when we can remember that Christ is alive, Christ is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon Peter and to us lesser known apostles and disciples.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan