"Nothing the Same"
Luke 24:13-35 George C. Anderson
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" 19He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some 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." 25Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
We remain in the season of Easter, and yet the anniversary observance of the coming week takes us back to Good Friday. All of us remember how it was a year ago. It was a Monday. Just over a week after the magnificent celebration in this sanctuary of the resurrection of Jesus, news started filtering in of shootings on the Virginia Tech campus, and bit by bit over the course of the day, and then the course of the week, the scope of the tragedy grew. The world was paying attention, but we who live so close to the New River valley were stopped in our tracks. What happened was too horrific to comprehend. We were fortunate as a congregation that none of the 17 members of this church attending Tech were physically hurt. Still, the shock over what Cho had done- or what dark forces working in Cho’s mind and heart had done- never left us. It was a somber evening when we gathered here in this sanctuary on Wednesday night, and lit so many candles symbolizing the dead.
Maybe our experience of a year ago can help us understand in a deeper way our passage. Two Jesus Followers are walking on the road that leads home in Emmaus. These travelers knew all the world; a world small on the map, but all the world they would ever hear of- all the world knew of what happened to Jesus, their famous messiah. But for these two travelers, the impact of the news is all the more devastating because it is local and it is personal. Maybe Cleopas and his friend are not of the inner circle of the now 11 disciples, yet they call themselves disciples. They are admirers, followers, even devotees of the one who they believed would redeem Israel.
They are traveling toward home and are talking about what everyone is talking about. Suddenly, a stranger joins them and asks them a strange question; "What have you been talking about?" What about?! "How about what everyone is talking about?" After 9/11, would you ask what people are discussing in the break room? After April 16, would you ask why everyone seems so upset?"
The question stops them dead in their tracks. The passage says they stand still, but they are also stopped metaphorically because the answer to the questions has brought their lives to a standstill.
A death can do that, can’t it? The world keeps spinning, colors don’t change, natural laws still operate, and yet everything is different. Everything has to be re-considered in a new way. Some of you know of what I’m speaking because of a significant death of a loved one. All of us can remember that after 9/11, terrorists were no longer over there, and that after April 16, school shootings no longer happen somewhere else.
These two are at a standstill. They have given up on where they were going and are returning home. They no longer are "on the way." "On the way" is an expression Jesus followers used to speak of a journey of faith they were going on together. In fact, a day will come when Christ’s followers will be known as "people of the way." Right now, though, the way seems blocked. Jesus was innocent, he didn’t deserve what happened, but he was arrested and killed. And because he was killed, he could not have been who they thought him to be: the messiah of God.
They heard rumors that only made them feel worse. Women have returned from the tomb with a rumor of a missing body and a visit of angels. That rumor is spreading like crazy. Jesus’ death cut deep grooves through the community and the rumor is rushing like water through the grooves. It can’t be true. It is cruel to the grieving to say it is true. False hopes become dashed hopes.
But this stranger seems to know nothing of any of this; the death or the rumor. And so the Cleopas and his buddy tell the stranger all about it. In the stylized storytelling of the first three Gospels, quotes tend to be short. What Cleopas says, though, goes for 179 words; which is to say he goes on and on about it. Cleopas answers the stranger’s question in exquisite detail, because that’s what people who grieve tend to do. They give the minutia of their experience while trying to do an autopsy of their pain.
"Here is what happened?" It takes a while to tell it. "This is what it did to me." It takes a while to tell that too. And when the grieving asks the question, "Why?" they find 23 ways to ask it.
People grieving need to get it out before they can take in. The stranger listens as Cleopas gets it out. When Cleopos is ready to take something in, the stranger finally speaks…, and I’ll be honest with you, the first thing he says doesn’t sound that pastoral: "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!"
That seems to me to be a bit harsh. Even people of faith can become disillusioned, and often it is suffering and death that makes them so. We Christians get it figured out: who God is and how God works. We don’t mean for it to happen; we practice praying for God’s will, not ours, to be done. We tell ourselves that God is a mystery beyond our theology’s reach, and sometimes we have to believe despite our unbelief. But when tragedy strikes, what we feel shakes what we believe. Panic can do a number on reasonable thinking. Worry can test trust, real pain can knock the knees from under patience, anxiety can weaken hope, and fear can close many an open mind. Sometimes ministers, and other Christians, and maybe even this stranger need to understand that when something happens that is truly offensive to the personal holiness code; what we so carefully have worked out about what is acceptable and unacceptable in a world ruled by a powerful and loving God; that our trust can be shaken and our hope can seem a naïve mistake.
I believe that this stranger, though, has a bemused smile on his faith when he says what he says. And, I remind myself that the tone of debate is a normal part of conversations in Palestinian Judaism. A rabbi calling another foolish in debating a point is often more playful than personal.
I have grounds for believing this. After all, this stranger is invited into their home to sit at their table. In their Palestinian culture, one breaks bread only with those you respect. These travelers respect the stranger as a teacher, because their guest goes on and on himself; beginning with Moses and the prophets, interpreting to them all the things in scripture concerning Jesus. I guess you could say the stranger gives them a lecture series.
We know what the theme of this lecture series is because the stranger reveals it right after his initial scold. "Suffering, death and the glory of God," is his theme. He asks, "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" "Why would a messiah have to suffer and die? Isn’t a messiah supposed to come to rescue us from unjust suffering? Shouldn’t the people of the way- God’s way- be spared the same?"
The answer is, "No," by the way, but it can be a hard answer to hear. It can be a hard answer for Christians today to hear, because sometimes the church sets us up not to hear it. Sometimes the church belittles the sacrifice and suffering that sometimes is part of life by offering the promise of an escape from the valley of the shadow. The stranger would tell us today that’s a false promise. Faith does not mean escape from suffering and death, but rather that we do not face suffering and death without God.
My Pastoral Care professor at Union Seminary, Bill Ogelsby, didn’t make that mistake. He used to say, "The Gospels never say, ‘Hurt not,’ ‘Suffer not,’ ‘Doubt not.’ They say, ‘Fear not.’"
The stranger goes through the scriptures to help the travelers understand how their messiah had been the suffering servant, the one by whose stripes others are healed. He lived for God, and that means he lived for others. He died for God, and that means he died for others, even those who had a direct hand in his execution. He died so that others who die, whether through natural or unnatural causes, whether in due season or shockingly out of season, whether by the power of nature or the power of sin, will not have lives negated by their deaths.
Maybe another way of saying this is to say that a tragedy that was not avoided did reveal the glory of Jesus. Tragedy has a way of revealing people, doesn’t it? After 9/11, we saw the most noble and the most base parts of human nature in how people wanted to respond. After April 16 of last year, we saw some of the best and worst of human nature revealed. And we have seen sides of people revealed when they go through a crisis, or a fight, or a tragedy, or a loss, or an affront to their dignity or an attack on their reputation, that have inspired us and have disgusted us. Tragedy reveals human nature in all its complexity.
Jesus was revealed in the tragedy of the cross, and so was humankind. This arrest and death exposed human nature for what it is in all its glory, such as the criminal being executed beside him confessing his sins and wanting to be remembered, Joseph offering his tomb, and the women going to the grave to take care of the body. Human nature was revealed in all its depravity, such as those who betrayed, abandoned, falsely accused, and crucified Jesus; as well as those who lashed Jesus in the way we sometimes want to lash out in mindless revenge.
The messiah exposed the true nature of humanity, but also the true nature of God. The one executed, then was raised, not to bring the power of the sword of revenge that satisfy base emotions but only make the world worse, but to bring the nail marked hands of love that redeems, and makes of the world a more graceful place.
Cleopas and his mate see it, I think. They get it, so to speak. They see it when the words Jesus spoke became the word that were broken. When Jesus takes the bread and breaks it, and gives it to them, it’s almost as if they then see the nails in his hands holding the bread, and it is almost as if they can hear him say the words, "Take, eat, this is my body broken for you."
When they see it, they see him, and at that moment the risen Jesus disappears from their sight. But, Cleopas and his pal still see. We know they do, because they become again people of the way. When death stopped them in their tracks, they had decided the way was blocked and they were to return home. But, seeing Jesus who has gone on through the shadow of death, they decide to be on the way again. The passage says, they leave their home, and go back to Jerusalem to be a part of the emerging church that is beginning there. It is a church that will spread from there throughout the world, reaching even to this part of the world.
And as we, this week, remember the tragedy of a year ago, we remember that the lives that were lost were not negated. We still don’t have satisfactory answers as to why, but at least we are spared the unhealthy delusion that good people can be immune from suffering and death, even the suffering caused by sin. We are not immune, but we also know that when we have to face it, we do not face it alone. And if we are going to be a people of the way, who follow Jesus, we will face it with faith knowing that we have redemptive work to do. Whether we live or we die, we are the Lord’s, and by God’s grace, lets seek to live and die in a way that honors the one who lived and died for the sake of the world.