The Road to Emmaus (3rd of Easter, 2024-04-14)

The Road to Emmaus

Easter 3, 14 April 2024, Acts 3:12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3:1-7; Luke 24:13-35
© W. Kirchmeir The Gospel is not that listed in the RCL.

May the words of my lips and the meditations of our hearts be ever acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

Dear Friends in Christ,
     Today we’ve heard one of my favourite stories, the story of the two disciples travelling to Emmaus.
     They met a man going the same way. They started chatting with him about the recent events in Jerusalem. They became so engrossed in this conversation that they didn’t notice much about their fellow wanderer. What caught their attention was what he said, the questions he asked, the way he connected their thoughts and ideas to the scriptures. They wanted to continue the conversation, and besides, it was getting dark. In those days, night was definitely not a safe time to travel. So they invited him into their home and prepared a meal. When the stranger said the blessing over the bread, then they saw who he was: Jesus, the friend they had mourned since the day of Crucifixion.
     Try to imagine the shock.
     Try to imagine the mixture of joy, astonishment, awe, and hope when they recognised him.
     You can almost feel the twinge of self-doubt, knowing they had been talking with him for an hour or more without knowing who he was.
     Quite an emotional scene, this: so much so, that they hurried to tell Peter and the others about their wonderful encounter with a stranger who turned out to be Jesus.
     Why didn’t they recognise him? Well, there’s the odd psychological fact that we don’t actually see what’s in front of us. We see what expect to see. We don’t see what we don’t expect to see. In other words, we don’t see, we perceive. This odd and uncomfortable fact explains otherwise inexplicable collisions at intersections. But I didn’t see the stop sign! Yeah, tell me another one! – But psychologists have shown that in fact the hapless motorist did not see the stop sign.
     This error of perception is so common that psychologists have given it a name. They call it “selective inattention.” That’s a very helpful name, I think. Every parent, every teacher, every married couple knows exactly what it means.
     “Selective inattention.” It certainly helps explain what happened on the road to Emmaus. Cleopas and his friend certainly did not expect to see a dead man walking along the road with them.

     Simply as a story, the road to Emmaus is an impressive achievement. There’s grief and hope. Could it be true what those women reported, that their murdered friend was alive after all? Hope aroused will be either fulfilled or denied. The disciples meet a stranger, and they talk to him about the very things that depress them, and that also give them hope. When they recognise the stranger  as the risen Jesus, hope is fulfilled.
     They now see the events that led up to this moment from a different angle. They now recall how intense the conversation was, how it led to insight and understanding, how they were absorbed in it. No wonder – for the stranger was Jesus.
     When the turning point in a story not only resolves the tension of the plot but recasts it in a new light, that’s great story telling. Maybe that’s the reason I’ve liked this story so much. A well-told tale has always pleased me.
     But as much pleasure as we may get from the sheer telling of the tale, there’s a good deal more here. There’s our reaction to the contents of the story. Surely, we think, we would have recognised Jesus! Surely we would have had some suspicions when Jesus begins his conversation with Did not the Christ have to suffer this and enter into his glory? Surely we would not have suffered from that selective inattention that plagued Cleopas and his companion?

     H’m. Really?

     It’s easy to forget that we have the benefit of 2000 years of hindsight. We suffer from a different kind of selective inattention. We don’t attend to the fact that we would have known exactly as much, and exactly as little, as those two disciples. I think it’s pretty certain that we would have behaved exactly like them.
     I’ll go further: I don’t think we have progressed much further from that incomplete understanding that the disciples had.
     We are no further along the road to Emmaus than they were.
     We too, suffer from selective inattention.
     We too fail to recognise Jesus among us.
     For Jesus is among us. He really is. I am with you always, he said.
     He’s not safely tucked away in some sunny blue heaven filled with fluffy white clouds and angels with golden harps. The right hand of God is not some place beyond this universe. Jesus has not left us behind to ascend to some unearthly planet beyond the sky, from where he watches us with some kind of super-telescope to make sure we do as we’re told.
      No, he’s here and there and everywhere. We just don’t always recognise him.
     Well, who am I kidding? We hardly ever recognise him!
     Why don’t we recognise him?
     Do our assumptions about class and respectability get in the way?
     Do our stereotypes about young and old, male and female, friends and strangers prevent us from seeing who is right there in front of us?
     Do our ideas about intelligence and smarts, about common ground, about people like us and people who are different, do these expectations interfere with our perceiving what our eyes and ears are telling us?
     Yes, and yes, and yes.

     Where is Jesus, then?
     Or maybe better, who is Jesus?

     He’s the homeless beggar sitting in front of Tim Horton’s on a busy downtown street.
     He’s the fellow parishioner sitting beside you in the pew every Sunday with whom you exchange the peace.
     He’s the bus driver taking you and 50 other tired people home after a long day.
     He’s the teacher who made you do an essay over again because he knew you could do a better job.
     He’s the girl at the checkout who rings up your groceries and smiles Hello.
     He’s the old lady who walks her dog up your street every day.
     He’s the scruffy man who holds the door for you at the post office.
     He’s the waitress who brings you a glass of water.
     He’s the neighbour who watches your house while you’re away for the weekend.
     He’s the club member who volunteers (yet again) to sit with you selling raffle tickets.
     He’s the guy staggering under an enormous backpack who’s getting on the bus to go planting trees up around Kenora.
     He’s the kid at the gas station who comes out to fill up your tank in a blizzard, while you wait in the warm car for him to finish.
     He’s the young man, oh so handsome in his uniform, who’s been deployed to Afghanistan, where he will see things you don’t want to imagine.
     Jesus is all these people and more.

     There’s more.
     Marie said she thought the story of the road to Emmaus is about sociability, about companionship on the journey. I think she’s right. She’s right because we need someone to accompany us on our journey of faith, someone to open up the scriptures to us, someone who will listen to our questions and help us grope towards an answer. That someone is Jesus.
     But like the disciples, you may not realise it. And when you do realise it, it may be not so much because of the serious discussion that you had, but because of a simple gesture of faith, such as saying the blessing over a meal.
     These insights may come in other ways, too. There’s the story of  the little boy whose Sunday school class had to memorise the 23rd Psalm. Although he practised and practised, he could hardly get past the first line. When his turn to recite the psalm came,, he stepped up to the microphone and proudly said, "The Lord is my Shepherd, and that's all I need to know!"
     A charming story, isn’t it? Did the boy know the full meaning of what he was saying? Probably not. But we grown-ups are a little further along, we understand it, right?
     Well, maybe we do. These aha! moments are very satisfying. Finally, we’ve seen a truth we didn’t see before. But they are also troubling, for how many truths have we not yet seen? How much have we not understood?

     When a grown-up presumes to teach us what we need to know, we are less likely to be charmed. We may even be offended. Every pastor knows that sooner or later a sermon will upset someone in the congregation. Every preacher has felt the temptation to soft-pedal a hard message, to use the familiar words that comfort us because they are familiar, and won’t raise questions.
     Why? Because we all have different takes on what the Bible teaches. When we read the Bible we often suffer from selective inattention, and it prevents us from reading what we don’t want to hear.
     There is one message among many that these days seems to be selectively ignored: What you do to the least of these my brothers you do unto me. We like to think in terms of those among the poor that deserve our help and those that don’t. Not surprisingly, we tend to think that most of the poor don’t deserve our help. They aren’t like us, you see.
     There are those who believe that Jesus has gone away to some other place, and will return on some specific date to judge us all. He will take those who have the true faith up to heaven with him. For some reason, those who make this prediction are convinced only they will be among the elect. Well, we can scoff at these and other notions as the effect of misunderstanding biblical language. But when we do so, we may be selectively inattentive to the core of the message, which is that Jesus has risen, and lives.

     Remember what Paul wrote to Timothy, that all scripture is given to us for our understanding, that we may learn what we need to know. I think Paul really did mean “all scriptures”, that is, all written texts. Paul knew that the old texts he had studied as a young man were written by people long dead. But the insights and knowledge of those long dead seekers after truth were just as valuable as anything he heard anyone say. Writing is speech preserved for us, that we may hear what our ancestors have said.

     We need to listen to each other. We need to discuss, not argue. We need to share, not declare. Jesus showed Cleopas and his friend how the old writers from Moses onward had told the same story. How they had spoken of the Anointed One who heals us from sin. How asking the right questions leads to the best answers.
     We all have insights and understandings, and those insights and understandings are gifts of the Spirit. We need to pray that our eyes may be opened, that our selective inattention becomes more complete perception, that we may know Jesus in whatever form and person he reveals himself.

     We are on a journey; we have not yet reached its end.
     We are surrounded by travelling companions; Jesus travels with us.
     We wonder whether what others have testified is true; Jesus will reveal the truth.
     We are anxious about where the journey will lead us; Jesus assures us that we will arrive home safely.

Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, show yourself to be present among us. Give us the grace to see you in each other. Give us the heart to have compassion as you had compassion. Give us the wisdom to recognise your truth, and the humility to know how little we know. Guide us by your Holy Spirit, that we may live as you have shown us how to live, so that in our words and deeds your glory and your love may be revealed to all the earth. We pray in your name, O Lord, you who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.