Sermon: 3rd Sunday of Easter
26 April 2020 – Archdeacon Mark Long
Acts 2:14a, 36-41 and Luke 24:13-35
Good morning to you all on this 3rd Sunday of Easter and 31st day of our National lockdown. Our Scripture readings today draw us into Luke’s account of the resurrection, a little different from our journey with John’s Gospel last week. For most of us the Gospel accounts all merge into a single story and we are hard pressed to remember the unique story of each Gospel. Luke’ story is significant in that Jesus’ first appearance is to two disciples previously unknown to us – Cleopas and his companion – on the dusty road to the little village of Emmaus; a village sufficiently insignificant that today we have no idea whether it was East, West, North or South of Jerusalem. More important than the village, is the encounter that takes place between these two disciples and Jesus.
The season of Eastertide is all about encounter with the risen Jesus, and this shared journey to Emmaus in which the two disciples eventually recognise Jesus is important to Luke; journey is important to Luke. Journeys lead to a recognition of what God is up to in Luke’s world, and there are a variety of journey narratives in both of Luke’s books (the Gospel and Acts). Significant events take place both during and at the end of journeys, beginning with Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem after a journey from Nazareth, to a shared supper in Emmaus, and beyond in a multitude of journeys in the book of Acts, all of which have significant impact on people’s lives and the spread of the Gospel in the 1st century. Luke’s focus on journey is a reminder that God’s people are a pilgrim people, journeying in response to God’s prompting, from Adam and Eve being driven from the Garden of Eden, to Abram responding to God’s instruction to go to a land God promised to show him, to an enslaved Israelite nation escaping Egypt to find a promised land, to Jesus journey to Jerusalem and crucifixion, to this Emmaus road encounter, and beyond through history to the present journey of lockdown that God’s people experience together with communities around our world.
Today’s Collect reminds us of those important words of Jesus that we focused on last week, “Peace be with you”, which gave the disciples a modicum if comfort in their fear and confusion. In meeting Cleopas and his companion we are reminded of other emotions and feelings that the disciples were experiencing, and the Collect focuses us on their feelings of uncertainty. I don’t know about you, but I must admit that I have always wondered why it took these two disciples so long to recognise Jesus, but of course they weren’t expecting to, and so didn’t. They are caught up in trying to make sense of everything, and as Jesus meets them on the road, he meets them in their confusion and uncertainty, gives them the time and space to tell their story. I shouldn’t be, but I am often amazed at how often talking through my own confusions and uncertainties with someone else, things begin to make sense; having things go round and round and round in my mind rarely gets me anywhere, but sometimes even a brief conversation with another person clarifies; perhaps it’s that in sharing the story the mind is focused and what hasn’t made any sense gains some order and new understandings arise. That certainly seems to be the experience of Cleopas and his companion: they tell Jesus the story of the week’s events, he mirrors the events back to them in the light of Scripture, and after some good exercise, a good chat, and an opportunity to sit down to a meal to restore their strength, at that point suddenly it clicks together for them; they recognise Jesus.
Movement is so important for settling the soul. Yesterday, during my time of reflection at midday in the Church, I found myself circling the altar as I worked through my own anxiety of what more time in lockdown will mean for me and for us, conscious of the Church building’s emptiness and anxious in my realization that gatherings will continue to be prohibited as we work our way from the hard lockdown of level 5 to an almost normal environment of level 1, and the reality that we will only able to gather as we have in the past when lockdown is completely lifted. But like the two on the road to Emmaus, I had Jesus circling that altar with me, and the Eucharistic Scriptures for the day, and it was Jesus’ words to the disciples on an earlier journey – one over water – when Jesus met them in their exhaustion, in their fear, and said, “It is I, do not be afraid” (more accurately in the Greek “I am, …”; John 6:16-21). I can’t claim that my anxiety lifted completely, but I was able to recognise God in the “I am”, and trust again in God’s presence on this lockdown journey, and that whatever lies before us, God is and will be our provision.
An important aspect of the journey to Emmaus is that the two disciples have an opportunity to lament, to rehearse again the events of the past week, and to express their unhappiness, to mourn the loss of their hopes and dreams, “… we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” As the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and its impact on our social, economic, and body-politic becomes clearer to us, we also need to lament all that we have lost. We need to find time to do this, and allow lament to be the pressure-release for our anxiety and fears, to have the courage to bare our souls and our lives to God. We’ve lost the art of lamenting, but really it’s just expressing our pain to God; being real in allowing our emotion to overflow into our prayer in all its raggedness and rawness; and trusting that God already knows it all and is infinitely capable of receiving and enfolding our anger with all its chaos. I really do encourage you to find time this week to lament, and allow it to be physical and noisy; allow it to be real. But also, don’t rush it: lament takes time, and sometimes – although not always – it is a journey that leads to recognition and new life. I had a Spiritual Director while I was an Ordinand who encouraged me, when I was struggling with a deep anger, to go into the Chapel and quite literally to shout at the Cross, to give God a good piece of my mind. I should own up to not finding the courage to actually shout verbally at the Cross, but I did sit there and quietly give God a good piece of my mind about whatever it was I was struggling with at that time. I’m alive to give testimony to the fact that lightening didn’t strike me down!
The journey to Emmaus for Cleopas and his friend ends with recognition, an awareness of encountering the risen Jesus, and a renewed resilience. What caused the recognition? The conversation during the journey had prepared them. They’d had the opportunity to lament, to be admonished for their foolishness, to reflect on their experience in the light of Scripture, and to recognise a greater purpose to all they had been through. And so, as Jesus “… took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them”, they were immediately taken back to an evening meal shared only a few short days before, and – boom – they recognise Jesus.
The journey to Emmaus has strong Eucharistic overtones, from lament and absolution to immersion in Scripture and prayer (conversation), and a shared meal in which Christ is recognised. Every time you and I celebrate the Eucharist together we experience our own Emmaus journey. The context in which we share the Eucharist under lockdown – in our homes either alone or with family, yet together despite our separation – we likely experience more profoundly the Eucharist as a shared meal, something more normal to our home experience, and something we can apply to every meal. There is something profound for me in this: it is more the experience of Cleopas and his friend than we would normally experience in the building-bound Church ritual (as wonderful as that ritual can be). We experience the resurrected Christ in the context of our homes, within all the goodness and pain of relationship in lockdown. In the midst of all the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic – in the midst of our personal and communal fears for the impact of a tanked economy on our own and others lives – of broken dreams and plans put on hold, we are reminded that this Emmaus journey is our journey. Draw courage from today’s Gospel: God walks with us – quite possibly unrecognized much of the time, but present none-the-less – in it all. Be open to the possibility of encounter, to the reality of encounter, in the everyday experience of life and relationship. Know this encounter as a source of resilience, of hope; a reminder that God is present. And may God’s presence be sufficient for the moment, for today, for our journey of lockdown, and for our future.
I close with a prayer from Padráig Ó Tuama’s wonderful book Daily Prayer with the Corrymeela Community:
Hidden Jesus,
Wandering along the way like a stranger,
hidden along the way in many stories and many faces.
May we listen to our hearts when they burn with life
knowing that you are speaking to us.
Because you are with us along the way
in the faces of many strangers.
Amen.
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