The Rev. Sara Warfield
Scriptures: Luke 24:13-35
The theme of our post-resurrection gospel readings has been the disciples’ inability to believe, indeed to see, that Jesus was resurrected. I talked about it in my Easter sermon. Shelley talked about it last Sunday. And here it is again in our gospel today. Cleopas and another unnamed disciple are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It’s two days after Jesus’ death, and they’re still in shock from all that had happened. Their shoulders are hunched. Their steps are slow and shallow. They speak quietly to one another, doing their best to process the horror they had witnessed their friend and teacher endure. It’s a long walk already, about seven miles, made even longer by the heavy despair they carry.
Just then, a man comes up to them. “What are you talking about?” he asks. The disciples look at him like he has two heads. It would be like meeting someone on the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, and them asking, “What’s wrong? What happened?”
“Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”
Now we all know that the stranger is Jesus. We’ve always known it was Jesus. The crucifixion is a reality that, in our lives and experience, has never been disconnected from the resurrection. We’ve never not known the end of the story. So it’s impossible for us to really understand the hopelessness and devastation that these disciples, who only knew the crucifixion, felt after Jesus was killed.
Well, maybe that’s not true. There were a few—maybe more than a few—dark moments for me after the end of my marriage when I thought Jesus was gone for good, when I believed God had abandoned me. I’m fairly certain that if Jesus had appeared to me during that time, I would have scoffed in disbelief and probably said something angry and inappropriate.
But looking back, I can see now that Jesus did appear to me. In friends who literally held me up while my body wracked with sobs, in a therapist who helped me to understand my part in the breaking, in people here who made small but beautiful gestures of understanding. Now I’m pretty sure I didn’t say anything angry or inappropriate to any of you, but I’m also pretty sure that my therapist heard some words they weren’t expecting from a priest.
Recognizing Jesus during these kinds of moments—of loss, of despair, of betrayal—is hard. Maybe even sometimes impossible. So I’m able to cut these two disciples a little slack for not seeing Jesus amongst them.
The truth is, recognizing Jesus is not a given, not even for the most devout Christians. It’s a practice. Like how playing scales over and over again is practice for hitting the notes you need to hit when you play the song. Like how running drills over and over is practice for when you’re actually in the game. We have to practice recognizing Jesus, noticing him amongst us, even when he shows up in ways we don’t expect.
And Jesus shows us on the road to Emmaus what this practice looks like.
First, we gather. We find other travelers on the road and walk together for a time the way the two disciples welcomed Jesus into their conversation, into their journey.
Second, we listen to and contemplate the meaning of our holy text. “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.”
And third, we invite one another to the table together. We set out bread and wine. “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”
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Sunday worship engages our entire being in the practice of learning to recognize Jesus. In an earlier draft of this sermon, I tried to break it all down by our different components of experience: physical, spiritual, social, emotional, intellectual. But no one thing we do in this place on Sundays engages just one or even two of those things. Our worship is a full-being workout.
So I think a better way to describe our Sunday morning practice is sacramental. Our catechism at the back of the Book of Common Prayer describes the sacraments as “outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace.”
On the road to Emmaus, the disciples stop, listen to Jesus’ questions, and answer him. The outward and tangible signs are the words being exchanged, the opening of the disciples’ body language to invite Jesus on their walk. Physical, sensory things. The inward and spiritual grace is the welcome the disciples offer to Jesus, the willingness to let in, to create belonging for, a seeming stranger.
When you first come through those red doors on a Sunday morning, your outward and visible signs are hugs, handshakes, bright smiles. But the inward and spiritual grace is the same: invitation and welcome and belonging.
When Jesus, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, interprets to the disciples the things about himself in all the scriptures, the outward and tangible signs are the words spoken and the listening while the brain processes and makes sense of what it’s taking in. But the inward and spiritual grace is the disciples hearing the stories they’ve heard over and over again in a new light, calling them to a new way of understanding their faith and how to live it out.
Sounds a lot like what we do when we hear the reading of our scriptures and the interpretation of them through a sermon does, doesn’t it?
Finally, the disciples once again speak to Jesus as he’s about to walk off into the darkness. “Stay with us,” they tell him, their words an invitation once again creating an even deeper sense of welcome, of hospitality. Their vulnerability of letting this stranger into their private space demonstrates the inward and spiritual grace of trust. Because of that trust, because of that welcome, Jesus is able to sit at the table with them, take the bread, bless and break it, and give it to them.
Like the disciples, you invited me to be your priest. You called me to be the person who takes on the actions of Jesus during worship. You gave and continue to give me the trust to say his words every Sunday: “Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me.’
And we all take and eat the bread and drink the wine, the outward and visible signs of the ultimate inward and spiritual grace. “Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized Jesus; and he vanished from their sight.”
Jesus returns the disciples’ trust:
“Now that I know that you are able to recognize me, I don’t need to be physically present with you anymore. I trust that you’ll recognize me wherever I am. That you will recognize in the world and people around you my now invisible, inward, and spiritual grace. And that they will recognize it in you.”
Amen.
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