On the Road to Emmaus

In some reflections that he wrote on the Emmaus road story, Scott Hozee recalls what C.S. Lewis wrote about his experience of grief after his wife Joy Davidson had passed away:

Lewis wrote that he thought that his grief might be less if he intentionally avoided the places he and his wife Joy had frequented and so he limited his travels to only those places where they had never been together.  He switched grocery stores, tried different restaurants, walked only along streets and paths that he and Joy had never taken.  But it didn’t work.  To paraphrase Lewis, “I found out that grief is like the sky above—it is over everything.” 

I suspect many of us have had seasons in our life when a deep sadness, like the sky above, seemed to cover everything. Or perhaps it wasn’t a deep sadness but a debilitating disappointment, a sense of despair, or a spiraling sense of shame. Many of us have known these moments or seasons, some of us are experiencing them right now.

What do we do in these moments or in these prolonged seasons?

The well-known writer and preacher Frederick Buechner in one of his famous sermons says, we all have our Emmaus. We all go to our Emmaus.

That’s right. It’s the place where Cleopas and the other disciple are heading to in this morning’s sermon text. Emmaus…about 7 miles outside of Jerusalem… place that we know very little about, we can’t even locate it, but it’s the place these two are going because in a very real sense they want to leave Jerusalem behind.

It’s hard not to imagine that these two disciples are experiencing the kind of deep sadness or debilitating disappointment that I described a moment ago. Surely they had pinned their hopes on this Jesus. He opened the eyes of the blind, he multiplied a few loaves of bread and some fish to feed thousands, he even raised the dead back to life. And then there was his teaching! Crowds of people gathered around him to listen to him spread Seed like a Sower and so many found that Seed taking root in their own lives.

We knew that his entry into Jerusalem was fraught with risk and uncertainty on account of the growing hostility he expreieced from the Jewish leaders and Pharisees.... but no one could have imagined that he would die!

We thought Jesus was the Messiah! We thought he was the One promised long ago, the One that the Scriptures told us would come who defeat the oppressors of God’s people an usher in a new age for them. An age of victory and freedom and hopefulness and prominence… but now he’s dead… and the two people in our story just want to escape Jerusalem....leave it behind and head for Emmaus.

Where’s your Emmaus?

I do find it interesting that Luke leaves one disciple in this story unnamed. It’s Cleopas and.... ?? Well maybe Luke does that very intentionally so that we can insert our names into the story: Cleopas and Andrew, or Marianne, or Tiffany, or Brad....? perhaps Luke invites us to insert our name into the story so that we might ask the question, where is our Emmaus road journey? As we face sadness, disappointment, or shame, emptiness, as we want to leave Jerusalem.... that place that had so much promise and hopefulness.... where is our Emmaus?

Listen to how Frederick Beuchner puts it:

“Do you understand what I mean when I say that there is not one of us who has not gone to Emmaus with them? Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for a the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want… Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest of ideas that men have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends. Emmaus is where we go, where these two went, to try to forget about Jesus and the great failure of his life.”

Where is your Emmaus?

Then we read,

Luke 24:15–16 NIV

15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16 but they were kept from recognizing him.

There’s something about this part of the story that struck me again this week as I was preparing. In fact it’s something that we notice in almost all of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Jesus manifests his presence to people, but no one truly sees him for who he is, at least not at first. Thank of Mary by the stone of the open tomb, she thought Jesus was a gardener.... remember the story right after this one when Jesus appears to his disciples…they thought he was a ghost. Or remember Peter and several other disciples out fishing when some stranger on the beach who they didn’t recognize told them to throw their nets on the right side of the boat to catch some fish.

It seems to me one of the points that all these stories are trying to make is that no one expected Jesus to resurrect from the dead. Sometimes people today talk as if because we are more scientifically aware then people were 2000 years ago, they were more likely to believe in fairy tales where someone resurrects from the dead. No these stories suggest that the people in Jesus’ day were just as certain as we are that ordinarily dead people don’t come back to life.

And so in each story, Jesus had to reveal himself....Jesus did something to disclose himself. The gardener spoke to Mary, the disciples thought he was a ghost so Jesus let them touch his hands and ate food with them, or the disiples on the shore, when Jesus filled their nets like he had done when they first met him..... and in our story today, when Jesus broke bread with them.

So all of that invites us to realize that no matter where we are on our Emmaus road journey, no matter how deep our sadness, or how desparate our disappointment or how severe our shame, Jesus is much closer to us than we realize.

In fact in our story, Jesus is walking right beside the two disciples and all they could see, all they could believe were events and circumstances that comported or aligned with their closed ways of thinking and experiencing. Jesus was right their with them and they talked about him as if he were dead!

They even had received testimony from the women and some of their companions about an empty tomb and a vision of angels.... but they did not see Jesus or believe in him.

They even heard this stranger open up the whole OT story and listened to him describe that all those stories pointed to the life of Jesus and what he would come to do....more than one preacher like me has said.... now there’s a sermon I would have like to hear! They even heard this stranger teach about the Bible in what surely must have been a remarkable way, but they still did not know it was him or believe in him.

And yet Jesus was right their on the road with them.... that is worth thinking about.....as convinced as you or I may be on our Emmaus road that Jesus is dead, or that God has forgotten you, or that all hope is lost....this morning we are invited to remember that Jesus is much closer to us than we realize.

Story of Alistar McGrath...

Alister McGrath, a former atheist who has become a believer in Christ, a theologian and a scientist, tells the following story about the first time he awakened to the hope of Christ's resurrection:

[As a young man], I was a grumpy and frankly rather arrogant atheist. I was totally convinced that there was no God, and that anyone who thought there was needed to be locked up for her own good. I was majoring in the sciences at high school and had won a scholarship to study chemistry at Oxford University, beginning in October 1971. I had every reason to believe that studying the sciences further would confirm my rampant godlessness. While waiting to go up to Oxford, I decided to work my way through a pile of "improving books." Needless to say, none of them were religious.

Eventually, I came to a classic work of philosophy—Plato's Republic. I couldn't make sense of everything I read. But one image etched itself into my imagination. Plato asks us to imagine a group of men, trapped in a cave, knowing only a world of flickering shadows cast by a fire. Having experienced no other world, they assume that the shadows are the only reality. Yet the reader knows—and is meant to know—that there is another world beyond the cave, awaiting discovery.

As I read this passage, the hard-nosed rationalist within me smiled condescendingly. Typical escapist superstition! What you see is what you get, and that's the end of the matter. Yet a still, small voice within me whispered words of doubt. What if this world is only part of the story? What if this world is only a shadowland? What if there is something more wonderful beyond it?

Source: Alister McGrath, "The Resurrection: A Bridge Between Two Worlds," Christianity Today

And in our story the truth that there is something more wonderful beyond what we can understand and experience is revealed to these two disciples over a meal…

There was something special about this meal…perhaps it was in the way that this stranger took the bread… but all of a sudden it was like the lights came on.

Blessed, broken, given.... Hey he’s the one who blessed broke and gave those loaves and fish to the 5000 in Luke 9. He’s the one who blessed, broke and gave at the Last Supper in Luke 22. It’s Jesus, the one Blessed by God, who’s life was broken for our sake and then given so that we would not die but live!

Their eyes had been opened, Jesus confirmed their burning hearts! It’s true! Jesus has risen from the dead and now everything is different.

As I think about this meal where the eyes of the two disciples were opened, I like to describe this as a behind the curtain moment. These disciples as it were are taken behind the curtain into the presence of the Living Lord Christ…and they see him in His glory....and then he disappears....I don’t know exactly why that is, maybe it’s too much to take in!

[Explain the “behind the curtain” metaphor....

temple curtain torn....access into the holy of holies has been opened up....

remember what is embroidered on the curtain? 2 Chron. 3:14 Cherubim

why cherubim? back to the end of Gen. 3

Garden

Nicole Cliffe became a Christian on July 7, 2015, after what she called "a very pleasant adult life of firm atheism." "The idea of a benign deity who created and loved us," she writes, "was obviously nonsense, and all that awaited us beyond the grave was joyful oblivion … I had no untapped, unanswered yearnings." But here's how she describes what happened to her:

First, I was worried about my child. One time I said "Be with me" to an empty room. It was embarrassing. I didn't know why I said it, or to whom. I brushed it off, I moved on, the situation resolved itself, I didn't think about it again.

Second, I came across John Ortberg's CT obituary for philosopher Dallas Willard. John's daughters are dear friends, and they have always struck me as sweetly deluded in their evangelical faith, so I read the article. Somebody once asked Dallas if he believed in total depravity."I believe in sufficient depravity," he responded immediately. "I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'" A few minutes into reading the piece, I burst into tears. Later that day, I burst into tears again. And the next day. While brushing my teeth, while falling asleep, while in the shower, while feeding my kids, I would burst into tears.

She read more Christian books and every time she cried all over again. She emailed a Christian friend and asked if she could talk about Jesus. She writes:

But about an hour before our call, I knew: I believed in God. Worse, I was a Christian … I was crying constantly while thinking about Jesus because I had begun to believe that Jesus really was who he said he was … So when my friend called, I told her, awkwardly, that I wanted to have a relationship with God, and we prayed … Since then, I have been dunked by a pastor in the Pacific Ocean while shivering in a too-small wetsuit. I have sung "Be Thou My Vision" and celebrated Communion on a beach, while weirded-out Californians tiptoed around me. I go to church. I pray …

[Evan after accepting Christ] I continue to cry a lot. [I read a news article] that literally sank me to my knees at how broken this world is, and yet how stubbornly resilient and joyful we can be in the face of that brokenness. My Christian conversion has granted me no simplicity. It has complicated all of my relationships, changed how I feel about money, messed up my public persona … Obviously, it's been very beautiful.

Source: Adapted from Nicole Cliffe, "How God Messed Up My Happy Atheist Life," Christianity Today (5-20-16)

On her Emmaus road, Nicole began to realize that Jesus was much closer to her than she thought, and one day, He took her behind the curtain..... her eyes were opened, and she found in Jesus a forgiveness, a mercy, a peace, a joy, a power that flows straight from life giving presence of the resurrected Jesus.

And that life is flowing here among us today....we’ve heard it in tesimonies, seen it through the waters of baptism, sung with pipes and strings and trumpets.... HOPE as filled the world!

As much as CS Lewis tried to escape the grief that he experienced when his wife Joy died…he realized that grief was like the sky, it covered everything.

But today, there is something more powerful that pierces through that sky, like rays of sunshine piercing through dark clouds.

And its HOPE.... the hope of glory has come to us in Jesus Christ…sin has been dealt with, death has been defeated....the curtain has been torn!

And together God’s people say, “Christ is Risen, Hallelujah!