THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER A

[cappie]

Today, we are transported back to Easter evening,  we meet two of Jesus’ disciples on the road from Jerusalem to a village called Emmaus. The two—one is named Cleopas, we’re told—are discussing all that has happened: how Jesus had taught and healed; how that same Jesus was betrayed, had breathed his last and was laid in a sealed tomb. Add to all this the report that Jesus’ body was apparently now missing. The two disciples have a while seven miles, to ruminate on this loss and wonder as they trudge on to Emmaus. “Really’s?” and “what if’s” animate their footsteps amidst exhaustion and abandonment.

The Emmaus road is one likely familiar to many of us, this side of heaven. It is a well-worn path, dotted with defeat and disappointment, marked by inevitable questions, and disbelief. The beauty we experience week in and week out in the scriptures is that the living God meets us on this road. The living God comes alongside us unexpectedly in moments of loss and difficulty, walks with us in times that tempt despair and despondency, whether we realize it or not. And this is precisely what Cleopas and his friend experience on the Emmaus road, as they encounter a stranger mid-step.

 ‘What matters are you discussing as you walk along? he asks. He must have been hiding under a rock, they think. Otherwise, why on earth would he ask about the strange things which had transpired? Little do the disciples know that this is the One whom they have been mourning. Maybe its grief obscuring their vision. Maybe  the disciples are too entangled in the weeds of dashed hopes. Whatever it is, they fail to recognize the One in their midst.

But Jesus is there still and hears them out. Jesus listens to their stories of disappointment. He hears of how he was handed over, condemned, crucified, and buried along with the hopes of Israel. He hears of how his body is missing, the disciples’ hearts and dreams are, spilled out before this stranger. “Have you not heard the prophets? Have their words not sunk in?” Jesus asks. Remember Moses and your forebears in the faith. Remember the prophets. Remember the scriptures, dripping with promise.
The disciples’ hearts begin to burn, as they wonder after the identity of this stranger. But there is still some distance, some doubt, that clouds their vision and obscures their eventual recognition of who is walking and talking with them.  Jesus is known in the blessing, breaking, and giving of bread.

It seems near impossible for those disciples not to have connected this supper with the last supper, when Jesus said he would not eat with them again until the Passover had been fulfilled. There seems to be too strong a connection with the two meals not to see a common bread, a common host. In this simple action of blessing, breaking, and giving of bread, we are told, something dramatic happens. As Jesus tears apart that simple loaf, crumbs of disbelief and hopelessness fall to the ground. The disciples’ eyes, once clouded with tears, become open to the realities of the resurrection and the provisional character of death.

If the Emmaus Road narrative teaches us anything, it is that God has a preferential option for brokenness, which we see repeatedly in the life, death, and ministry of Jesus.

With the sun setting on their hopes for Israel’s redemption, Cleopas and his companion are forced to acknowledge their lives broken open; their dreams scattered on that dusty highway. But it is precisely in that moment that Jesus comes alongside them, opens up the scriptures again, and reminds them afresh of the very foundations of their hope. The disciples hear the great narrative of God’s history-altering love from the lips of love himself.

 In the joy and wonder of their new-found faith, the two disciples ‘set out that instant’ to re-join ‘the Eleven and their companions’ in Jerusalem.  the disciples who encountered the Risen Lord now become apostles: people impelled to share the good news that had transformed them.