Dinner With Friends

Scriptures: Acts 2:14a, 36-41, 1 Peter 1:17-23, Luke 24:13-35


If when you were young – or maybe not so young – you read Mark Twain’s book Tom Sawyer, you may remember the scene in which Tom and his friends walked in on their own funeral. Tom had gone fishing with his friends. Their raft had disappeared and was later found downriver, and those who found it assumed that Tom and his friends had drowned. So a funeral service was held, and the townspeople, who hadn’t previously had a whole lot of patience with Tom and his friends and their capers, listened to the minister eulogize Tom and friends right up to the heaven of heavens. How could they all have missed all the good that had been in Tom and his friends, that had been right before their eyes? Of course, by the time the minister has got everyone in the little country church, including himself, to sobbing, wracked with grief – why, right on cue, Tom and his friends, who had been up in the gallery listening to their own funeral, saunter down the center aisle of the church, to the wonderment of all assembled. As Aunt Polly and others smothered Tom and his friends in hugs, the minister shouted: ‘Praise God from whom all blessings flow – SING – and put your hearts in it!’ And their singing of Old Hundredth, which we sing here each week as the Doxology, shook the rafters.

Mark Twain’s story has more than a little in common with our Gospel reading for today. Our Gospel reading takes place on the first day of the week, the day of resurrection, after Mary and the women had told the disciples of their encounter with the angel, and after Peter had gone to the tomb and come back, reporting that it was empty. Two followers of Jesus – we’re told the name of one of them, Cleopas; the other is unnamed – are leaving Jerusalem. Their teacher, Jesus, had been crucified. They didn’t know what to make of the idle tale that the women had told them, and in any case there was no longer any reason for them to stay in Jerusalem. Any memories of Jerusalem would only bring them grief – or so they thought. So they headed toward Emmaus, a small town about 7 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Here they could get some distance and perspective on their disappointment and grief, before returning to the lives they’d led before they had met Jesus.

As they walked, they talked about all that had happened. And as they walked and talked, and sighed and hung their heads, a stranger joined them, who asked what they were talking about. They asked the stranger, “Are you the only one who doesn’t know what just happened in Jerusalem?” Today they’d have probably asked the stranger, “Have you been living under a rock for the past week?” And they unfolded their tale of woe. The stranger, whom the pair don’t recognize but whom we know to be Jesus, listened as they talked. It may have been a bit like listening to the eulogy for a funeral that had not been held, but perhaps Jesus wanted to hear their understanding of what they’d just experienced.

And then the stranger brought them up short, calling them foolish and slow to believe the prophets – and then the stranger began to unfold his own tale. He offered much better news, telling the pair that all that had happened had been spoken by the prophets, and that the end was not death, but glory. Perhaps the pair began to feel that they, not the stranger, were the ones who had been living under a rock. As the afternoon wears on, the two invite the stranger to the place where they were staying. And as the stranger blesses and breaks bread with them, suddenly they realize that they had been walking and sharing bread with Jesus – who at that moment vanished from their sight!

Last week we read John’s account of Jesus’ two appearances to the disciples, for one of which Thomas was present. Thomas had said he would not believe until he could feel the print of the nails in Jesus’ hands and the mark of the spear in Jesus’ side. We could say that for Thomas, seeing was believing. By contrast, the two disciples on the Emmaus road found that believing was seeing – their grief had blinded them to the presence of the risen Christ in their midst, and it was not until they had taken in all that the stranger had taught them on the road, that in the breaking of the bread, they recognized the stranger as Jesus.

Believing is seeing. It’s striking that, in effect, both the pair on the road to Emmaus and the stranger told the same story. The two travelers on the road told of the crucifixion of Jesus, and the stranger in their midst told of the crucifixion of Jesus. But the stories told of the crucifixion came from two very different perspectives. The two travelers spoke out of their immediate experience. The stranger on the road was able to take the pair’s story of the crucifixion and add context by tying it into the words of Moses and all the prophets, to show them that this was all within God’s plan.

Believing is seeing for us as well – or at least it can be. As Christians we are called to see, not only with our physical eyes, but with spiritual eyes, with the eyes of faith. Through the eyes of faith the cross - an instrument of torture and execution - becomes a symbol of God’s love. Through the eyes of faith, a splash of water, a cube of bread, a sip of wine become elements of the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, moments in which we encounter the Divine. Through the eyes of faith our weaknesses can demonstrate God’s power; through the eyes of faith our struggles and failures can be opportunities for God’s glory to shine through. Just as one of our Scriptures for two Sundays from now will tell us that the stone which the builders rejected – the stone that from their viewpoint belonged on the scrapheap – becomes the cornerstone, chosen and precious

But our spiritual eyes need to be open. We can go through life with blinders on, so caught up in our own daily routine, our own set of priorities, that we don’t give God a chance to break into our lives, or so wedded to preconceived notions of what God’s glory will look like that we can miss that glory when it’s right before us, but in an unexpected form.

Like Thomas, we can be so fixated on our need to see and touch that we allow no room for the mystery of God. For example, some listen to the History Channel explanations of how the parting of the Red Sea was due to an earthquake or a windstorm or such, seeking a computer model to give a literal explanation for this or that Biblical miracle. This approach turns Scripture into something flat, one-dimensional, linear. It turns the Scriptural narrative of our faith, the Great Story of God’s dealings with humankind and the cosmos throughout time and eternity, into a newspaper article. It leaves no room for the mystery of God, for the majesty of God. Such models may or may not tell us “how” something happened, but they have nothing to say on the more important questions of why it happened, or what its inclusion in Scripture tells us about God – about God’s holiness, about God’s love, about God’s justice, about God’s mercy. Or, if we are wedded to preconceived notions about where God is to be encountered – only on Sunday morning, only in church, only among church members – we may miss the presence of Christ in a chance encounter with the stranger we meet on the road.

The Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard said that “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” The two travelers on the Emmaus road, living life forwards, were engulfed in despair. Having encountered Jesus in the breaking of the bread, understanding backwards from that point, they could affirm, “did not our hearts burn within us as he opened the Scriptures to us.” And they acted on that understanding. Today’s Gospel ends with the two travelers retracing their steps, returning to Jerusalem, from which they had previously fled. Jerusalem, which had been a place of dread and despair, had become a place of hope, and a site to break bread with the apostles and do ministry among the masses.

C S Lewis caught something of this in his book “The Great Divorce” when he said that, as Christ works in peoples’ lives, their self-understanding and their memories of their lives are reinterpreted over time. Faith in Christ provides context for all that happens in our lives. For those in Christ, their memories of even difficult times are transformed in the light of Christ, and they can see where God was present in their struggles. Their earthly lives become outposts of heaven.

Believing is seeing. So may our spiritual eyes be open to seeing the risen Christ in the stranger on the road, the chance encounter on the bus, the conversation at work, and even dinner with family or friends. May our hearts be strangely warmed by Christ’s presence in all we say and do. Amen.