This Burning Heart

Luke 24:13-35 - pg. 90

Luke 21:13–35 NRSV

13 This will give you an opportunity to testify. 14 So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; 15 for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. 17 You will be hated by all because of my name. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 By your endurance you will gain your souls. 20 “When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near.21 Then those in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those inside the city must leave it, and those out in the country must not enter it; 22 for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written. 23 Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! For there will be great distress on the earth and wrath against this people; 24 they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives among all nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled. 25 “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. 26 People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 27 Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. 28 Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 29 Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; 30 as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. 31 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. 32 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. 34 “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, 35 like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth.

Christ meets us on our resurrection journey.

Where are you at on your journey? Where along the road of life are you? Perhaps you are just setting out on this journey with Jesus, with God, with the church. Perhaps you are a longtime pilgrim, with years of wisdom and experience that help you know the path well, help you see where you’re headed.

Are you seeking understanding, that the story might be made clear to you?

Are you able to bear witness to God’s story, showing others what you have learned to see?

Maybe you are reluctant to venture out at all. Is it fear, is it uncertainty about the destination?

Think about this: You’ve had a pretty rough week. Nothing seemed to go right. You got bad news about a friend. You snapped at your partner. You missed another deadline. It seemed like you hit every red light.

We know what it’s like to have a rough week.

Or maybe just a rough day.

Or maybe a really difficult year.

We’re big fans of the TV show, Friends, in our house. The theme song, “I’ll Be There for You” says it like this:

“So no one told you life was gonna be this way. Your job’s a joke, you’re broke, your love life’s DOA. It’s like you’re always stuck in second gear, when it has been your day, your week, your month, or even your year, but...

“I’ll be there for you, when the rain starts to pour,

I’ll be there for you, like I’ve been there before.

I’ll be there for you, ‘cause you’re there for me too.”

It’s so good to know we have each other to lean on. And so it is with Cleopas and his travel partner. Some scholars think the other person might have been his wife, seeing as they intend to spend the night in the same place when they reach Emmaus. It says they were two of the disciples, two who had been with Jesus when the rain had started to pour, when the rough days had played out in Jerusalem.

And now, these two are out on the road, getting out of the city for a bit.

So, we know what’s like to have a rough week.

And I bet we also know what it’s like to just need to get out of town.

We need journey partners who will help open our eyes to what is truly going on around us. We need a trusted friend to help us see the way. And here’s the good news. We have this — in Christ. We have a journey partner, someone who will walk the road with us, has walked the road, and will help us to see what is right in front of us.

Now, we can stop here and rest assured that Christ’s presence will burn in us, lighting our way. But we have the joy of taking this yet another step further: Certainly, we can have a kind of faith that is built on an idea like the famous poem, “Footprints in the sand,” where we sometimes see two sets of footprints and at other times, only one, when God carries us along the way.

But the promise of the resurrection, the story of the Good News, is more than this: In Christ, we, God’s people, the church, the community that we are…we get to be Christ to one another.

Do you feel lonely at time? I do. Does it feel all well and good that Jesus promises to be with me, but boy, wouldn’t it be nice to have that physical presence feel a bit more…physical, tangible?

Well, that’s where this gets turned up another notch: You and me — we get to be Christ to one another. We get to journey alongside each other and help each other see. Sometimes, I’ll help you. And other times, you’ll help me. And we’ll walk the road together, knowing that as we do, Christ walks with us, burning in our hearts. Wherever we go, whatever challenges we face on the road, in every place we look, our hearts can burn with the knowledge and felt presence of Christ as we see Christ in each other.

When I’m in some of my hardest places, I know I need to get out the door and take a journey. Stacy will often remind me to go for a run when I’m feeling down. Or I’ve made it a practice of pilgrimage to drive East of the mountains to clear my head. Many times, when I’ve had a day with no commitments and nowhere to be, I like to get in the car and head over the North Cascades Highway. It’s one of the most striking roads I’ve ever driven, with beautiful, towering mountains and deep, ice cold lakes, trees blanketing the hillsides, twisting and curving roads through this incredible mountain range we have in our back yard.

For almost as long as I’ve had my driver’s license, I’ve known that a sacred space of stillness, for me, is to be on the road in silence. I spend time in solitude or sometimes with my family, and we cherish that time to slow down and hear the voice of God, the stillness we need to remember in our hearts.

Our hearts burn with lots of other priorities and ideas most of the time. We are busy people, hurrying about to accomplish our tasks and contribute to the world. But I have found, and I’m sure many of you have, that this burning in our hearts does not amount to fulfillment most of the time, but rather leads to another kind of burning: burning out.

The disciples walking to Emmaus were burnt out. They had seen their dear friend killed and now had to wrestle with this confusing news that he might have been spotted, living again, by some of their trusted leaders.

Their hearts burned, first, with pain and confusion, lose and dejection. They ventured out on this road bearing heavy emotional burdens. They needed to get out the door to clear their heads, like we all know and do.

And it is in this place of dejection and burn out that they meet Christ, the other traveler. But they are in such a place that they cannot comprehend what he is telling them right away, or even who he is.

You know how you can arrive at a destination but somehow, you don’t know how you got there? Like you were on autopilot, and you missed a lot of the landmarks along the way. What if that’s how these disciples are, unable to really see what is going on around them, but rushing onward to their destination in hopes of some reprieve, some way to let down for a bit and grieve their loss.

And Jesus meets them here.

And he begins to teach.

They begin to listen and hear all of the pieces of the story sewn together in a fresh way that helps them see.

Perhaps their at mile 3 and they start to listen and somehow, the stories of the Scriptures are interpreted and made clear and they begin to see the hope that they once had in this Messiah to save them, they see that hope begin to glimmer a bit again, like a candle that hasn’t quite gone out yet and could somehow spark again.

And Jesus, the Christ, walks with them, and they hear the stories unfold and they begin to sense something burning in them, the joy of some clarity, the possibility that there has been more going on in this story than they realize.

They reach their destination and while tired, they are invigorated, alive again as they hear their story told. They are reaching their terminus, but now they have a sense of familiarity with the story their lives have been telling, because this man has pointed them to the truth.

Everything finally comes into focus when the sit at the table and they break bread. This is probably the first time these two have sat for a meal like this since the passover, just days before. And now they’ve heard that Jesus has fulfilled even that part of the story, breaking the bread now as a marker of his sacrifice on the cross. (Mind you, this theological principle of the remembrance practiced at the table had to develop a lot more in early Christian thinking before they would have made the connections between the passover seder and what Jesus does with the communion table. But, bear with me and exercise some creative imagination here…) They have a sense of something sacredly different occuring in this meal, and as Christ breaks and blesses the bread and pours the cup, their eyes open: AH HAH! This is Jesus!

Their hearts burned in them. Because on their journey, they stepped out and made space for their lives to be reoriented.

I’ll ask again — where are you at in your journey?

Have you made space to listen on your journey, to attend to what the Spirit of Christ might be telling you, showing you, at this stage of the road?

Who is on the journey with you? Are you leaning on them to process all that you have learned and all that Christ has taught you?

We journey together, people of God, as a community seeking Christ’s presence, longing for that burning in our hearts together.

If we seek resurrection life, if we want to know what it means to be fully alive in this new way in Christ, we have to be willing to take a step forward, out into this new way, and pay attention to where God’s love burns in us…and then follow that, live with that, grow with that burning heart in us.

Wasn’t it all playing out right before our eyes? May we learn to see it, with eyes and hearts that burn with Christ’s love in them.

Amen.