III Easter – May 8, 2011 – Year A
So our celebration of Easter continues.
Today’s story from the Gospel according to Luke offers us still more testimony: The Lord is risen indeed!
Two of Jesus’ followers meet a stranger on a road outside Jerusalem.
It is Jesus, but they do not know it is Jesus, and they proceed to tell him everything that is weighing on their hearts: how the one they had hoped would be the Messiah was handed over to the Romans and crucified; how some of the women had found the tomb empty and seen a vision of angels who told them that Jesus was alive—how they are so upset about what has happened that now they simply don’t know what to think.
Whereupon Jesus tries to help them understand why all this has happened—why all this had to happen—by explaining to them how these momentous events have fulfilled what was written in the scriptures.
Still, they don’t recognize Jesus, but they are strangely drawn to this stranger and invite him to stay the night with them.
Only when they are gathered at the table and he takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it—only then do they recognize him, but by then he’s gone.
John Dominick Crossan, one of the theologians featured in the video series we’ve been watching in the Adult Forum, has an interesting comment to make about the Emmaus story; he is willing to call it a parable; he even goes so far as to say, “Emmaus probably never happened, but Emmaus always happens.”
The first time I heard those words, I was taken-aback, and I suspect my fellow-listeners were, too.
But then I began to think about all the good people in the world whose education has made it practically impossible to take the Bible seriously because they can no longer take it literally.
So I started to listen more closely because I, too, certainly don’t take the Bible literally, but I do take it very seriously, and I definitely consider myself a Christian.
Prof. Crossan went on to suggest that the story of the meeting with Jesus on the road to Emmaus may well serve as a dramatic summary of several different experiences that the disciples had after the resurrection, all of which had one thing in common: an encounter with a stranger, to whom they offered hospitality, only to realize once he was gone that they had been in the presence of the risen Christ.
We know from the New Testament record that Jesus appeared to the disciples in one form or another on numerous occasions immediately following his resurrection; some of the appearances are described in great detail, like the Emmaus story; others are simply referred to in passing.
We also know, either from personal experience or because we have seen it documented somewhere, that supernatural encounters of this sort (for want of a better term) do occur, even in this day and age.
I remember my mother telling me, years ago, when I was a child, about a letter she had received from a friend describing a vision this friend had had of my sister, in which my sister, who had died a few weeks before, assured her that she was all right; when my mother took note of the date and time of the vision she realized that it coincided exactly with the hour of my sister’s death.
I mention this incident not to engage in sensationalism—in the first place, there are lots of ways that such “supernatural appearances” can easily be explained away—but simply to point out that what I have chosen to describe is at best a vague recollection of a recollection; I never saw the letter, and, as far as I know, nothing was ever written down about it.
By the time the accounts of the disciples’ encounters with the risen Christ found their way into writing, they had likely been told over and over again in several different versions.
So what happens when you offer hospitality to a stranger?
I suspect that you may have guessed what John Dominic Crossan believes will happen, even if you haven’t seen the video: You find yourself experiencing the presence of Christ.
Something else can happen, too, not always, but quite often: When you offer hospitality to a stranger, the stranger can cease to be a stranger.
First, the stranger you reach out to becomes a companion—literally, “someone you share your bread with”—a companion on the journey; later the companion can become an acquaintance, then perhaps a friend, but always, as another one of God’s children, your neighbor and a brother or a sister.
(It doesn’t quite happen with the efficiency of Facebook, but it happens!)
Not until the two disciples reach out in love to a stranger, concerned that he might not have a place to stay for the night, and invite him to break bread with them do they recognize him and recall how blessed they had felt while they were talking with him on the road.
Why, he could have chided them for not recognizing him right away, but he didn’t.
Instead he had displayed the utmost patience with them.
Now, Jesus’ patience with these disciples on the road to Emmaus is hardly out of keeping with what we have seen in the stories we have already heard from the Gospel according to John: his patient treatment of a sorrowing Mary Magdalene in the garden, his patient treatment of the disciples while they were anxiously meeting behind closed doors in the upper room the night after the resurrection.
Seeing Jesus alive again must have been a stunning experience; Jesus’ patience in revealing himself to his followers was intended to be reassuring and comforting.
But Jesus had another reason for being patient with his disciples—whether it was reassuring Mary Magdalene in the garden or instructing this couple on the road to Emmaus (they could easily have been husband and wife; we can’t tell for sure)—Jesus had another reason for being patient that went far beyond consoling his friends over their supposed loss and getting them past the initial shock of the resurrection: Jesus was establishing the post-resurrection community, the community that would eventually become the Church.
Just as they had traveled together and learned together and eaten together and ministered to others together during Jesus’ earthly life, now they were to travel together and learn together and eat together and minister to others together with the assurance that Jesus, the Christ, their risen Lord, was present among them in a new and more powerful way.
It was necessary to reconstruct the community that had fallen apart when Jesus was put to death.
Today’s Gospel lesson, as well as other passages from the Gospels, suggests that Jesus deliberately chose to reconstruct his faith-community around the meals that they had together, whose centerpiece was the sacramental meal which would eventually be known in the Church as the Eucharist.
How significant that Jesus should take, bless, and break the bread for them—recalling to their minds the ritual of the Last Supper that had taken place only days before—take, bless, break the bread, then vanish from their midst!
It was as if he were preparing them for the time that was coming soon when they would no longer see him, as if he were forever linking the assurance of his abiding presence among them to the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup.
After Jesus was taken up from them into heaven, his disciples would become apostles—literally, “those who are sent”; their mission would be to proclaim that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God.
All who believed the message they proclaimed would “[devote] themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers,” as the writer of the Book of the Acts puts it—something Christians promise that they will continue to do every time someone is baptized.
Thus the community which became known as the Church was re-established, and the shape of the Holy Eucharist, the central act of Christian worship, was determined for all time.
And surprisingly little has changed from then until now.
Basically, we gather in the Name of Christ, tell again the story of how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection from the dead shows God’s love for each and every one of us, offer prayers for ourselves and others, give thanks, bless and break the bread, bless and share the cup—really a very simple outline for worship.
Oh, we may choose to complicate it a bit; our liturgy can get pretty involved—which is a good reason to return to the simplicity of the original once in a while.
Those of you who were able to take part in our Maundy Thursday observance this year will recall that when it came time for us to share the bread and wine, after we had read God’s holy word and reflected on it, offered our prayers and thanksgivings, and blessed the holy gifts of bread and wine, we simply passed the plate and the cup from one to the other, as we sat in silence at the tables.
That was all we needed to feel God’s presence in our midst.
Ornate vestments and elaborate ceremony can be nice; they serve to express our reverence before the mystery of God’s self-offering to us and to all people.
But none of these extras is absolutely necessary; none of them is essential.
Theologian Isabel Anders puts it very well, when she writes: “When[ever] words become flesh and truly live among us, when[ever] the weekly practice of breaking bread and sharing the Cup with our fellow believers rouses our vision of things eternal, Christ is present.”
“Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread.”
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