On ‘The Road to Emmaus’. Luke 24:13-35

Have you ever felt like walking away from grief? When things are hard to take, or when all hope seem to have evaporated and it seems that there is no way forward.

Our gospel reading this morning is more than a physical journey, I think that it is more like a “walk-through grief” here two followers of Jesus are leaving their hopes behind in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. Maybe they were trying to get some space and clarity about the events of the past few days.

This Emmaus Road reading of the resurrection account can only be found in Luke.

I believe it was of key importance to the early church, who needed to have two questions answered: How did the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ fit into the plan of God as revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures? And how did the death and resurrection of Jesus fit into the current experience of the early church.

This account of the walk to Emmaus I believe responds to their questions, and to ours, because we are also walking a similar road, a road full of high and low emotions.

I would like you to walk with me on that road to Emmaus, we may encounter new insights from the passage that we may have missed before, we may even see Jesus in a new light, and we may even meet him on the road we are on.

Now the average person walks at about 3 miles an hour, the speed of God’s love. You could say that we have a 3 mile an hour God. For He meets us, and He walks beside us but only at our pace.

Now those two disciples were downcast, why, well their world had just been turned upside down, all there hopes of a Messiah had turned to dust, or so they thought!

Suddenly a stranger appeared on the road, we know that stranger to be Jesus, but those two disciples didn’t recognise him.

Why did the disciples not see Christ’s wounds? This has been puzzling me for a long time. I know that Jesus chose not to reveal who he was but there would have been five wounds, each hand or wrist, the feet and the side. Not to mention the deep cuts on his head from the crown of thorns. But the hands or wrist wounds would have been the easiest wounds to see as they would have been holes where the nails had pierced the flesh. Scholars now believe that the nails we driven through the wrists not he hands.

But we must remember here that those scares, those wounds of sacrifice on the body of Jesus, he will bare for all time.

So, Jesus speaks to the two men and asks them what they are talking about.

Jesus was inviting them to tell their story, which they did.

Do we as Christians tell others about our journey of faith? And do we listen to other people’s stories?

The disciples’ story was important to Jesus as they walked along the road. He is also interested in our story and where we are on our own road of faith.

He listened to them as he listens to us and then explained using the scriptures why the Messiah must suffer, die and then rise again.

Jesus explained that he was the promised offspring in Genesis and then went on to explain that He was the suffering servant in Isaiah.

He was the pieced one in Zachariah and the messenger of the covenant in Malachi.

Jesus was reintroducing those two disciples to the Old Testament. Jesus Christ is the thread

 woven through all the scriptures. He is the central theme that binds the Old Testament together. Sometimes we shy away from reading the Old Testament as it can be a difficult read. So can I encourage you to spend some time looking through and reading some of the books in the Old Testament and let the Holy Spirit guide your thoughts.

As Jesus was explaining all this their hearts burned within them, as I believe it will with ours. Surely, they would recognise him now but no.

They invited Jesus into their home, if they had not invited him in Jesus would have passed by and they would never have known who that stranger was, who walked with them on the road to Emmaus.

How many times has Jesus spoken to us along the road and we have not invited him in?

When they had reached the house they were ready to eat, so sitting down at the table Jesus gave thanks and broke the bread and instantly their spiritual eyes were opened and they recognised Jesus.

He was recognised by the breaking of a simple loaf of bread. Can we see Jesus in the ordinary?

At that house in Emmaus Jesus the gift became the host. Going back to our gospel reading, it actually holds together the two ways in which people experience Christ.

It actually links the scriptures with the sacrament. Because we need to study the scriptures to hear the truth.

And we need to experience the sacrament of the Eucharist to see the risen Christ.

The scriptures make it very clear that the account of Jesus is about a person who was rooted in a place and a time in history. These accounts witness to real people and to real events.

This Jesus was acknowledged as a prophet, who declared God’s purpose and will in action and in teaching. He was crucified by a combination of opposing forces. Those who had power over religion and those who had power of state.

These are the facts, and the record is clear. The scriptures also record the evidence of the empty tomb and first eyewitness to the resurrection.

It is our duty to to tell others the facts and the hope that we have in the resurrection. The sacrament of the breaking of the bread calls us to have new eyes to see our risen saviour.

For we experience the same spirit of Christ in the scriptures and in the sacrament. Words are not tangible, but bread and wine can be touched and felt.

We can look at the sacrament with the eyes of logic and see bread and wine, but we can also look at the sacrament with the eyes of faith and see Jesus Christ.

You see an Emmaus experience involves seeing things with new eyes or in a different way.

Sometimes we walk away defeated and disillusioned, but Jesus meets us.

Sometimes we are not at our best when we speak to one another, but Jesus stands alongside us. As we tell others of our broken dreams, our hopes our missed opportunities and our grief, Jesus listens to us.

As we stand still gloomily Jesus waits patiently.

Then Jesus breaks in, as He did in that house in Emmaus, he walks with us, explaining and teaching us, until we realise that He was the one whom we have been waiting for all along and He has been present with us all the time.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Every blessing, Rev Ian.