We are traveling people. Living where we do, we spend a fair amount of time on the road. If you doubt me, look at the mileage on any car or truck in our parking lot. Unless it’s new, you will find clear evidence, we are traveling people.
Janet and I love to take a day trip to eat at our son Kevin’s restaurant in Rosenberg. It’s only 3 hours - one way. Chuck, our other son is in Boerne. That’s only about 2 hours. Janet’s sister, Sue, is in Brenham, another 2 hours, all one way. I’ve heard many of you tell similar day trip stories. Two hours here, three hours there. The hours add up, the mileage adds up, and the fuel costs, they add up too.
This morning, in Luke’s gospel, we have the road story to end all road stories. The road is to Emmaus, an easy day trip of roughly seven miles from Jerusalem, it is a road we too will take sooner or later. The Emmaus story is for us Christians the story of the walk of our life, the walk where we just may encounter Jesus.
The two men in Luke’s gospel were on that road from Jerusalem when the experience of a lifetime began. They were innocently on their way, talking about the things they had heard about Jesus, how he had been raised from the grave. One day, there he was hanging on the cross, then three days later people they know said he had actually appeared to them alive.
Unknown to our two men, Jesus himself came near to them and walked with them, but, according to Luke, their eyes were kept from recognizing him. They were on that road, traveling, and Jesus was there too. They were telling their story, unloading what was on their heart. Yet, they were blind to Jesus’ presence, walking right beside them, right there along that same way they were taking. Their way, as it turned out, was also Jesus’ way.
Of course, this is the way Jesus falls in with all of us. This journey called life is just the place where Jesus wants to be. He wants to be in our hearts, our minds, our souls, traveling along with us. Jesus, we discover, is a traveling man too. He never shies away from the road, from the difficulties encountered there along the way our life follows, in the midst of its straight and narrow and its twists and turns. Jesus goes with us as we unload what’s on our minds and what’s in our heart. He comes near and goes with us along our way listening as only one who loves us listens. And just as honestly, so often, like those same two on the way to Emmaus, we don’t see him either.
Yet, from the gospel we know there is hope for us. Though these two men did not recognize Jesus at first, they ultimately did. It happened when Jesus was with them at table. They did not recognize him until he breaks bread with them, then God’s most amazing grace, God’s most thankful miracle, give us this day our daily bread, their eyes were no longer keeping them from recognizing him, they could see and they knew exactly who he was. Jesus, it is our Jesus who is breaking this bread with us! He was here with us all along. Oh, how blind we can be!
It may not be so comforting putting ourselves on that road with the disciples. We don’t need to be reminded of our blindness, our sin, our seeing the world the way we do with our eyes not recognizing Jesus. We’ve been there.
Knowing Jesus’ traveling habits, I wonder how often we’ve missed him. I wonder how often we’ve felt separated from him and felt desperate for his company and he’s been there with us all along. Making the ride in to work with us or stopping at the store with us. Getting home to the chores and jobs that steal our time and attention from him, longing for that day trip to reconnect and finding ourselves even more alone. Missing the bread Jesus has broken and offered to us daily, praying our longings for him and he’s been with us all along.
How would we have known it was Jesus? That’s a fair question isn’t it?
In Luke’s gospel, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him with bread in his hand being offered to them, and thankfully, to us. That is how they knew it was Jesus, but we don’t see our world like that, do we? We seldom see nutrition and sustenance in the dull and mundane. We’re actually left feeling starved time and time again.
But, we do seek after him, don’t we? The scriptures are clear, Jesus is with us always, we’re just not so sure where sometimes. We do know if we will pray and have our attention and our eyes focused on him we open ourselves to at least feel his presence. We’ve all felt the miracle of God’s presence in our lives or what we thought at the time was God’s presence.
It’s just that we don’t wake up in the morning, make it through the first cup of coffee, turn to right our list of things to do and script “See Jesus Today”. Even when we pray for his help and his guidance we finish our prayer and the day takes over and we seldom give Jesus another thought. Where then do we expect Jesus to be while we are so busy with our day? Will he be as others have said, in a sermon, a theology lesson or a book? How about a painting, a piece of music, a drift down our favorite river or a sunset out where there are no city lights to interfere? Or is it when we are held by someone we love? How do we know it is Jesus?
If we accept the possibility that Jesus is with us always, walking along the road we might call our life, here on the road to our Emmaus, here in Austin or where ever we have come from, where ever we are going, we give ourselves a chance to see with opened eyes. Our faith can do that.
It is rightly said, becoming aware of Jesus’ presence changes according to whom we are and where we are. When we are struggling with life, Jesus may bethe friend who walks hand in hand with us and prays with us. When we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, Jesus may be the woman at the bank who helps us through the red tape of wills, insurance or safe deposit boxes. When we are anxious about a new home, a new job, Jesus may be the one who walks with us to show us where our new store is, where our new work space is. Dear ones, we do not walk alone!
Life will naturally unfold for us in ways unexpected and we will find ourselves thinking, what has happened to me. Like those men on their road, we try and understand about life and our hopes and dreams, especially when something goes wrong. We dissect and re-hash and are in disbelief. How have things become so out of control? What did I do?
These are the times we have a long walk and a long talk with ourselves. These are the times Jesus will have things to say to us. The times Jesus feels what is deep in our hearts and knows what we do not know about ourselves or what we won’t admit to ourselves.
These are the times Jesus shows up in our lives as a friend, a parent, a relative, a sibling, a co-worker, a teacher, a pastor or even a stranger. We will know in our hearts it is Jesus who is with us. It is Jesus speaking through the other, living through the one we least expect, loving through the one loving us back. With Jesus, we never walk alone!
Jesus shows up to be with us in these simple yet powerfully important people, but it is a gesture at this table: bread, broken and offered to us, that is how our eyes are opened to see Jesus in our lives! This bread is the miracle of God’s grace in our lives! This table sacrament fills us for each moment of our lives. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray. Jesus freely gives it.
The road to Emmaus is the road we will walk, sooner or later. We will walk that way more than once. When we aren’t walking it ourselves, we fall in with someone else who is taking their turn. Look around us this morning. See who is here and who is not. We know, without thinking twice, who has had to walk the road of despair, yesterday or today, and we know for some it will be a day trip and for others it will take longer. We know too who needs us to fall in with them so they will not walk alone. Because we love one another, we don’t want anyone to walk alone. So we fall in with one another; you and me, and Jesus.
Some of you may remember seeing the movie Schlinder’s List. It is a powerful and extremely difficult movie about the Holocaust. It is a movie about Oskar Schindler, who was a wartime profiteer, yet for reasons even he apparently didn’t understand Schindler became obsessed with the idea of saving as many Jews as he could by commandeering them to work in one of his factories and he ended up saving some eleven hundred of them.
The movie is filmed almost entirely in black and white like a documentary or an old newsreel, but every once in a while, usually in some crowd scene of children playing or people running or being herded into freight cars, you see, flickering like a candle flame in the seething grayness, one single touch of color in the form of a little girl dressed in red. It might have been better to never have noticed her. We first see her hiding herself, and then again, here, than there, until finally we see her for the last time.
Frederick Buechner tells us he believes “that although the two disciples did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus recognized them, that he saw them as if they were the only two people in the world. He believes Jesus also sees each of us like that. In this dark world where you and I see so little because of our unrecognizing eyes, Jesus, whose eye is always on the sparrow, sees each one of us as the child in red. And because Jesus sees us, not even in the darkness of death are we lost to him or lost to each other. Through people obvious or not, Jesus offers us, the way he did at Emmaus, the bread of life, he offers us a new hope, a new vision of light that not even the dark world can overcome.”
As Buechner says, hope “is the word that on Easter Sunday is sounded forth on silver trumpets. And when Easter is past and the silver trumpets have faded”, and we have sung Joy to the World, hope “is the word that flickers among us like a red dress in a grey world.”
This is how we know it is Jesus. Our eyes are opened to the hope he brings, our hearts are filled with his love, our lives are filled with his grace.
He lives in us so we may be the one who walks the road to Emmaus with our sister or brother. He lives in you and me so others will see Jesus as we become the face of Christ for them, so that they can recognize Christ for themselves, there beside them.
When will our eyes be opened? Jesus breaking the bread: that is what did it. Jesus breaking the bread: the ultimate sign of love given, Jesus’ body broken for ours. Breaking the daily bread, feeding our fractured souls: now we see clearly. He is risen, He is risen indeed!
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen
Additional sources:
Buecher, Frederick, “The Secret in the Dark”, pgs. 256-257.
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