Burning

Luke 24:13-35

Why did they not recognize him? A member of our St Mark’s family asked me this on Tuesday morning at the coffee shop, and I don’t think he realized he was about to get a sneak preview of the Sunday sermon. Why, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to some of the disciples, did they not recognize him instantly? It is a good question. Jesus’s disciples were more than students who came to his classroom a few times a week, or back row sitters following a preacher on tour from church to church. They were more than fans of a celebrity whose face they only saw in immaculately retouched forms or from afar. They were Jesus’s friends, his chosen family, his brothers and sisters and mothers. They knew him the way we might know our siblings, or our closest friends, or our spouses. They knew what his eyes looked like when he was about to say something controversial. They knew what his voice sounded like after a long day of raising it to teach crowds and answer questions. They knew the slump of his shoulders after a particularly intense day of healing bodies and minds, and the tone of voice he reserved for the demons that plagued his people. They had felt his hands as he washed their feet, as he passed them the broken bread, as he reached for them whenever they fell down or began to sink in doubt. Why on earth would his closest and most intimate friends not know him, when he stood right there beside them?

A very good question, with many unsatisfying half-answers. They were deeply sad, and tired, and human, so perhaps they were too bleary-eyed to make him out. They were still living under the shadow of death, not knowing it had been vanquished, and they simply were not expecting to ever see Jesus again. Perhaps it was as simple as seeing someone unexpectedly, out of context, and not being able to place them. Maybe Jesus just has a gift for concealing his identity, among his many other talents. We saw last week that the resurrected Jesus has the ability to do many unexplainable things, like appear in rooms with no regard for the locked door, and have knowledge of conversations he was not present for. Perhaps he waited to reveal himself to these particular disciples out of respect for their grief, not wanting to compound their shock.

As I said, there are many possible answers to this question, and I don’t know which is the right one. I imagine it is some combination of all of them, but I am content to chalk it up to another mystery of faith. I look forward to the day Jesus will answer each of our questions, face to face, with the same earnestness and humor that he granted his first disciples. In the meantime, it is our job to look to our forerunners in the faith, and to learn from them, even in the moments when their eyes were not quite opened to the lessons.

Two unnamed disciples are walking away from Jerusalem, away from the site of their teacher’s public trial and execution, away from the place where their greatest hopes clashed with their greatest fears. In their grief, they are talking to one another, processing the events and puzzling through every moment and asking one another what comes next. An unknown traveler approaches them on the road, going in the same direction, and somehow has no idea about the events that have all of Jerusalem in an uproar even though he has clearly just come from that same city. They fill him in, even sharing with him the witness of the women who first preached the resurrection to them and the impossibility of it all. In response to their astounded disbelief and grief, the stranger interprets for them every single moment in the Hebrew scriptures that points to the meaning of the empty tomb. Essentially, two grieving disciples and a stranger share in a Bible study, walking along the country road.

The stranger makes to move along past them at the end of Sunday School, but they insist he stay with them and share in the hospitality of the village inn. The infant born in a manger because there was no room for his mother at the inn, now invited into another inn. The stranger joins them, and when the meal is served, he does the honor of saying the blessing over the bread, breaking it and sharing it with them as he did on the night they last saw him alive. And in that moment, they recognized their Jesus, their friend and teacher and Lord, and then he was gone, the glimpse just long enough to know that everything they had heard from him and from their fellow disciples was true. They look to one another in joy, and wonder, and rush right back all the miles to Jerusalem to tell their friends that the Lord is risen. When they arrive, they hear more stories like theirs, and everything has changed.

What takes place on the road to Emmaus is church. It is the pattern we follow to this very day in churches all over the world. We converge for a brief time on the same stretch of road. We share our hopes and sorrows and ask our questions of doubt and faith and discuss the news that affects us all. We encounter newcomers and visitors, and we tell them our stories and listen to theirs. We hear scripture read, and preached on, and perhaps we participate in Bible study too. We ask Jesus to come among us, to be in this place with us for a while. We break bread, and we see him with our own eyes and feel him with our own hands. After worship, we might reflect to ourselves or one another about what we have seen and heard and how it has affected us, how it has moved us or challenged us. We might even look back and see moments in the liturgy when our hearts burned within us, warming and energizing us and lighting up our vision. Every time the body of the faithful gathers to fulfill our promises to continue in the apostles teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers, we are stepping onto the Emmaus road. We are walking the way with Jesus, who is patiently waiting for us to recognize him. Very often, we do not fully see the working of the Spirit or the presence of the Lord in our midst in the moment. It is often only in hindsight that we can see how close we have been to the face of God. Like the disciples, we need practice, familiarity with the scriptures and the touchstones that signal the working of God in our midst. We need to hone our skills of listening and contemplation, attune our ears and keep our vision clear, so that we can recognize Jesus when he comes among us. I invite you to try this on for the rest of the season of Easter. Take some time at the end of worship, at the end of Bible Study, at the end of meetings and chance encounters with strangers and dinner with your loved ones, and ask yourself this question. What moment today caused my heart to burn within me? Put another way, what moment stirred my spirit or moved me to deeper thinking? Look at that moment again. You might find Jesus there. And then do it again, and again. Tell someone else, share with another person the moments that have set your heart on fire, no matter how small or brief the flame. It takes practice, and God always provides the spark.