The road to Emmaus - ‘Faithfully following Jesus’.

           Luke 24: 13- 35

 

At the Bible exploration group on Tuesday, we were looking at the journey those two disciples make, on the evening of the first Easter Sunday. (using the Trussell Trust "Walking Humbly" Bible study booklet)

 

We thought about

-       how they were feeling

-       how Jesus joins them

-       the importance of them inviting Jesus in

-       and the moment of revelation of who Jesus is.

We also wondered what it might mean for us.

 

How the two were feeling

The two people are grief-stricken, puzzled, desperately questioning all that has happened.

It is Easter Sunday, but they have not yet grasped the Easter message that Christ truly is risen.

And so they begin their journey home, grieving and puzzling and constantly stumbling over their own lack of understanding of what has gone on.

 

I think we get a sense of the difficulty they have in the language used in telling the story  - it is so full of ‘buts’.

‘Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.’

‘Our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel…’

‘Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’

 

Jesus is walking alongside them on the road – but they have so much they don’t understand, so much to ‘process’, we might say, they almost miss the revelation that the risen Christ is with them.

And how does the risen Jesus help them in this moment of terrible grief and confusion?

 

How does Jesus join them?

Instead of dazzling them with a ‘ta-daa’ moment, Jesus quietly comes alongside them, allowing them to talk & explain how they feel. He gently explains the scriptures to them, pointing them towards the fact that God’s chosen one was bound to suffer and die.. but that God promises to raise him up.

At the point when they’ve walked together to the end of the day, and arrived at their home in Emmaus, Jesus appears to be walking on…

 

They have to invite him to stay.

Imagine how different the story would be if at the point when they reach home, the two just went indoors and let Jesus walk on, on his own journey!

 

But they do invite Jesus to stay – and when he does, something amazing happens.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 

Then their eyes were opened.

 

This is the moment that sends them scurrying back to Jerusalem to share the good news of how Christ had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Then, back with the other followers of Jesus, the two are able to hear about other appearances of the risen Jesus

 

What does this story mean for us?

We are continuing to celebrate the resurrection of Christ, the coming of new life, the victory of life over death.

Easter is a time for singing and feasting, for flowers and chocolate.

We have the privilege of knowing the whole of the Easter story, and so we know we are in a time of rejoicing.

 

But as we look into the future from here, we may well find that the path for our church, and our own path, feels as bumpy and unsure as the road to Emmaus felt.

We can be honest about how we are feeling.

 

Because even as we sing that Jesus is alive –  the bombs fall in Iran and Ukraine, tensions continue in the strait of Hormuz  and lives are lost in Israel & the occupied Palestinian territories.

 

Even as we sing “death where is your sting”, we suffer the pain of grief when someone we love dies.

 

Even as we declare the good news of life for all people, we know that some lives are blighted by illness or poverty.

 

These are real feelings, and we can be truthful in telling Jesus how we are feeling.

 

And yet.. Jesus joins us – Jesus is with us wherever our mental or physical journeys take us. He does not always come to us in a blinding flash, but might come quietly alongside us so that we begin to know we are not alone.

 

And Jesus waits for us to invite him to be part of our lives.

I don’t just mean the kind of once in a lifetime invitation that some of us might call ‘conversion’, or ‘faith coming alive’. Jesus can turn our life around in that way, we know – but there is also the more regular, more ordinary way in which we can pause and ask for help, for strength, for Jesus to be with us in whatever we face each day.

If we ask, if we invite Jesus to stay with us, he will.

 

We, too, can have moments in our lives and in our fellowship when we might say ‘then our eyes were opened’.

It may well come when we break bread together.

It may come as we break open God’s word together.

It can come as we open our lives and our hopes to one another.

 

For when we recognize the presence with us of the living Christ, our eyes are opened and our way to life in all its fullness, the way of Easter hope, becomes more clear.

Amen – so be it.