"Jesus Himself Came Near and Went With Them"

Sermon Preached by John C. Hall on Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010

Text — Luke 24:13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles* from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then 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?’ He 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, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But 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. Moreover, 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.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

 As 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. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They 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?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

“We had hoped that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel.” What the disciples are saying here is that, now, after Jesus is dead, they realize, too late, that he obviously wasn’t the Messiah. The disciples, like all Jews at the time, had traditional, inherited, sacred assumptions about what the Messiah was supposed to do. Mainly, the Messiah was supposed to make things better for Israel. That included getting rid of the Roman occupation and bringing peace and prosperity — the kingdom of God.

The Messiah was not supposed to get crucified. There is a passage in the book of Deuteronomy that says “Cursed is anyone who hangs on a tree.”  Anyone who gets executed by crucifixion is not only disqualified from being the Messiah but cursed by God. Getting crucified is to become “unclean” in the ultimate sense.

So, put yourself in the mind of Jesus’ disciples. One day, they know that Jesus is the Messiah. They’ve listened to him; they believe in him, they’ve left everything else behind and followed him.  They’ve seen him heal the sick, cast out demons, and feed the hungry.  No doubt, Jesus is the one. The next day, Jesus is dead by crucifixion, and the only logical conclusion is: we were wrong. Jesus was not the Messiah.

You can imagine the disciples’ heads now.  How did this happen?  What are we going to do? Is Pilate going to crucify us? Pretend we don’t know Jesus. Leave town. Let’s go where no one knows us. Maybe go back to fishing.

So, two of these distressed and disoriented disciples head for Emmaus — 7 miles outside Jerusalem. They’re walking, when a stranger comes and walks with them. From the disciples’ perspective, this stranger seems kind of stupid, because he seems totally ignorant about what happened to Jesus. But in this case, stupid is good. At least the stranger won’t report them.

They go to the inn.  They invite the stranger to stay. And then, while they’re eating Easter happens for these 2 disciples.  They recognize Jesus, in the stranger, which is amazing because the stranger doesn’t look anything like Jesus. But they feel Jesus alive, with them. Their eyes were opened, as we say, to his presence.

Now that might sound wonderful, but at first this must have troubling too. This is the 2^nd mind-blowing experience in 3 days. Jesus getting himself crucified totally destroyed their assumptions about who Jesus was. Now, having Jesus alive destroys their assumption about basic reality, living and dying. Think about it. When someone dies, that person is supposed to stay dead, especially if the person is NOT the Messiah. So not only were the disciples’ hopes and dreams about Jesus destroyed. Now their religion has been destroyed too. 

But they have Jesus’ presence. They have his Spirit. They feel his power. And that is what changed the world from that time forward. This is the one thing we can say with historic confidence about this fantastic story. The disciples experienced Jesus’ power after his death.  Otherwise, the whole Jesus story would have ended with a corpse.

Millions of other people since that first Easter have also experienced Jesus power and been lifted up from the pit.  This is what we celebrate today. 

But let’s go a little deeper into the Easter event for us. What happened to the disciples — this whole arc of the story that I’ve described — happens to us, maybe not on that historic scale.

The disciples got it wrong in terms of what the Messiah was supposed to do. But after they got it wrong, they still got Jesus; even though Jesus came in a form that messed up their heads.

We all get many things wrong. I know there are some people who feel great confidence that they do know how the world works.  The mystery has vanished.  Age 18 is the peak of wisdom, as all of us over 18 know. But even if we are very smart, sooner or later we recognize that we got something … if not totally wrong, at least not completely right. I’m not talking about conceptual mistakes. Life doesn’t happen the way we plan and expect it to happen. Plans fall apart. We get hurt. We screw up.

It’s not necessarily a total disaster, but the time comes when we see we have to change our minds, or have a change of heart, or put the pieces back together again in a new way.

This is where mercy comes in. A big part of the mercy is that we can learn something in the process, and how we “get it wrong” becomes gradually less catastrophic as we go down the road. This is how we learn compassion — including compassion toward ourselves.

The disciples couldn’t have had this new experience of Jesus without Good Friday. They had to lose him in order to find him.

To grow spiritually, to go deeper into this mystery that is our life, we need to lose Jesus … in order to find him. We need to lose Jesus in order to find him — in a new way.

Where are you in this story? Maybe you’ve lost Jesus but haven’t found him yet. I hope you will. Maybe you’ve found Jesus but haven’t lost him, yet. You have that to look forward to. Maybe you’ve found him, lost him, and found him many times over, having passed through Emmaus many times.

Without Easter, Good Friday is a dead end.  But without Good Friday, there is no Easter. Without both, there is no revision possible, no new way of seeing our lives, or seeing each other, or experiencing Jesus power.

I hope none of our worlds ever fall apart. I hope there is no sickness or trouble, of any kind, ever.  I mean it. 

We dread those things.  We do everything we can to keep our worlds from falling apart. But resurrection, life, mercy, power, compassion, and wisdom can only emerge from catastrophe.  Nature is a really a series of catastrophes; think of the beauty of nature.

How about this? Let’s pray for little catastrophes. They’re better than big ones.

In life, we lose Jesus.  We lose who we thought Jesus was supposed to be. We lose the way we thought life would be.  We don’t expect anything new to happen.  Then Jesus comes near and walks with us. And we recognize him — just when we thought he was dead.