Our Easter themes during the holy season of Easter. Today, our church invites us to reflect on probably the most well-known story in Luke’s gospel: the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. This story has been featured in so many different songs, poems, paintings, and sculptures. There is something mysterious and beautiful about this story, and we will try to understand why it touches us so deeply if we just take the time and sit with it.
The story is structured in such a way as to help us realize that this is really about the Eucharist, or as scripture scholars tell us, the way in which post-resurrected Christians are supposed to encounter Christ. As Jesus himself commanded, we are to do it in the context of a Eucharistic gathering, a Eucharistic meal. You could say that this whole story is a beautiful, creative, romantic way of explaining what it is ideally that we’re supposed to be seeing and experiencing when we come to the Eucharist.
There are two movements to this story. There is the movement of walking and listening. First, Jesus listens to the disciples: “What’s going on? Why so sad?” And then Jesus speaks to the disciples and opens the scriptures to them. That is the first part of the Eucharist. It is supposed to be this movement of both us presenting our worries, our concerns, and our difficulties to God as we sing the “Lord have mercy,” and then listening to the scriptures and allowing God, allowing Jesus, to open the scriptures to us. This is important because the scriptures are not something that can be truly appreciated until they are opened for us. And who opens the scripture? It is Christ himself. So, whenever we listen to scripture, it has to be in a prayerful attitude, a prayerful mode. Even as we read it and put things together ourselves, we ultimately seek God’s inspiration to help us open the scriptures so that our hearts can be burning within us.
The second movement of the story is when they stop for the night. Once they reach this mysterious place called Emmaus, Jesus breaks bread and their eyes are opened. The most intimate encounter with God is the Eucharistic encounter of breaking bread, which was commonly used terminology for receiving the Eucharist, receiving the very body and blood of Christ, and in faith encountering the risen Lord.
This story has so many different elements where we could park and reflect. I want to touch on just a few to get you started, and you can do the rest on your own after today’s Eucharist. First, this mysterious place called Emmaus to which the disciples are going. Why are they going to Emmaus? Where is Emmaus? And why can’t we find it on any of the maps? This is interesting, and scripture scholars continue to debate this point. Is it true that they were going to Emmaus, or is it more true that they were walking away from Jerusalem? Both are true, but which is the more important focal point? Emmaus probably existed as a small village, but Luke tells us it’s very hard to find on the map. Even on the map of that day, most scholars say it was probably a military base and a tiny village, and maybe that’s why it didn’t really prominently feature on any maps.
But I think the focus here is not that they’re walking towards a non-existence, but that they’re walking away from existence—they’re walking away from life. And why are they walking away from Jerusalem, the epicenter of spiritual reality? Because they “had hoped.” This is a very beautiful phrase used in Luke’s account. “We had hoped that certain things would happen the way we thought they would happen, and they didn’t happen.” You can sense their sadness, their despair, their confusion, their lack of meaning. They lost their hope because they had hoped things would happen a certain way.
What does Jesus do when he listens to them first, allowing them to pour their hearts out? He simply helps them realize that what they were hoping for did indeed happen. Now, can you imagine what this must have felt like for the disciples? Imagine that you play Lotto 6/49 and you had hoped that you won a million dollars, and you know you didn’t. And then someone shows up and says, “Actually, you indeed did win.” The flood of emotions—regaining something you thought you lost, realizing something happened that you thought never happened, something you were hoping for, something you were living for. So Jesus doesn’t teach them anything new; he simply helps them see what they were incapable of seeing. God did indeed do what they were hoping for God to do, but God did it in such a way that they didn’t even realize it. Jesus did indeed rise from the dead, and his rising from the dead conquered sin and death and started this new era, this new life of the kingdom of God with new possibilities, new hope, and new revelation.
That is ultimately the movement of opening up the scriptures. What is it in our lives that prevents us from staying in Jerusalem, a place of hope, a place of meaning, a place of purpose, and substitutes it for things that don’t really exist on the map ultimately? Whether it’s fame, money, or becoming a political junkie and chasing after the newest and latest news cycle—that ultimately won’t matter because it doesn’t matter in the greater scheme of things. How many of us lose hope as we look around the world, or as we look at our own family and say, “Well, this is not the way it’s supposed to happen. My life wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.” But maybe the very thing I was hoping for, maybe that very gift that God wants to give me, has happened precisely in God’s way, even in the challenges and difficulties that I’m facing today. You see, the opening up of scriptures is not only revelation about God, about the world, and about heaven, but it is also really revelatory about myself. By revealing himself to us and what he did for me, God is able to reveal the depth of me to help me see in a way that I’m supposed to see.
In the breaking of the bread, the last movement of the story, we see this huge change in the disciples. They begin the journey with this sad statement, “We had hoped,” and they end the journey by being so excited that they cannot even stay in this little non-existent village of Emmaus. They must run back to Jerusalem. Notice they’re not walking anymore, and it’s not under the safety of the daylight anymore. They are willing even to take on the danger of making that trip back in the middle of the night when it’s dangerous, when it’s unsafe, when it’s not wise. But they cannot wait. Why? Because now they have meaning and purpose. Life makes sense again.
For a number of years, I had the privilege of working in a hospice and a nursing home as a chaplain. The work of a chaplain in those facilities was described to me as “meaning-making work,” primarily. It was described in this way because we were invited to speak to everyone—not only to those who believe in the faith I have or the ideas I have or the political leanings I have, but to encounter everyone. The job was described as helping people to connect the dots of their life so that it makes sense—meaning-making work.
I wonder how much of our Christian life has to do with precisely that. We have access to more knowledge today than anyone ever did before us, but unless we know how to make sense of it all, how it all fits together, unless we can have meaning in our life, then none of these individual pieces of information are going to improve our life. None of it is going to give us hope. None of this is going to give us that Easter spirituality that Jesus wants to give. Remember, when Jesus rose from the dead, something new happened—the new beginning, the era of resurrection. Life for Christians, for all people, was supposed to already begin in this heavenly reality. The kingdom of God is among you. Can I sense that in my life? Only through the meaning that comes from well opening up the scriptures, listening to God, and encountering God in the Eucharist, can we really begin to make sense of all the different elements in our life that are supposed to bring it all together into one beautiful, meaningful journey that has a purpose.
I pray that during this Easter season, we will continue to renew our ability to listen and experience what Jesus opens for us. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.