Hearts Ablaze!

(Scriptures: Acts 3:1-26, I John 3:1-7, Luke 24:13-48)


The 1950 movie Roshamon, by famed film maker Akira Kurosawa, tells the same story – the assault of a bandit on the wife of a samarai and the death of the samarai – from the viewpoint of several characters – among them, the bandit, the wife, and a woodcutter who had witnessed the events. As one might expect, while the stories have some points in common, they are all mutually contradictory. The viewer is left to wonder at how a single sequence of events can be described in such contrasting ways.


We have a sort of a Roshamon today in our reading from Luke’s Gospel. Two followers of Jesus are leaving the city of Jerusalem to return to Emmaus. Encountering a stranger on the road, who seems strangely unaware of the events that had brought the pair to despair, the travelers tell the stranger about Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty in word and deed whom they had hoped would liberate Israel, but who was condemned to death by the Temple religious establishment. The travelers mention – oh, by the way, some women were telling some silly story about seeing angels who said Jesus was alive. But the travelers dismiss the women’s tale, and their story ends on a note of hopelessness.

And then the stranger – who we of course know is Jesus – tells the same story back to them. The same story, but with a very different ending. Yes, the Messiah was to suffer – but suffering was not the end of the story. The stranger’s story had much in common with that of the travelers, but, informed by Scripture, was a story, not of hopelessness, but of triumph. Arriving at their home village, they want to hear more, and invite the stranger to join them for dinner. As the stranger took, blessed, and broke the bread, suddenly the travelers knew who had been the stranger in their midst.

The travelers returned the seven mile trip to Jerusalem and told those gathered there what they had experienced. And as they were talking, Jesus himself appeared. Their first reaction was terror – they thought they were seeing a ghost – but again Jesus interpreted the events in a different way, turning their ghost story into a reunion story.

In our reading from Acts, Peter and John, newly empowered at Pentecost by the Holy Spirit, encountered a beggar and changed his story from that of dependency to dancing. Accosted by the beggar asking for alms, Peter responds, “Silver and gold I have none, but what I have I give you – in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, get up and walk. Formerly lame, now he was leaping for joy.

So what’s your story? Perhaps more importantly, who will write your story? The media, the culture, have written scripts for us to follow. There’s the “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” script, for us to watch on TV to see how happy money supposedly makes a lucky few people. For those of more moderate means there’s the “life in the suburbs” script of a McMansion and an expensive car. Advertisers have lovely scripts, that if you buy their product, friends and fun will surround you all your days. For many of us, there’s the Horatio Alger “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” script – that in this day of economic distress doesn’t seem to be working all that well. For people of color and people who grow up in disadvantaged homes, there’s a script as well, a script of hopelessness – drop out of high school before graduating, make some fast money selling drugs, get arrested, and spend your days hanging on the corner because nobody wants to hire somebody with a prison record. These stories are pre-written – all we have to do is learn the lines our society teaches us, and we’ll fit right in.

Perhaps you, like I, are not crazy about any of these stories. Jesus has a much better story – a story of his comforting presence in times of trouble, a story of sorrow only being for a night, but joy coming in the morning. Stories of alienation being overcome by reconciliation. Stories of crucifixion followed by resurrection. Where our society tries to put a period, God places a comma – because ultimately God is the author of the only story that matters, and it’s a story that God is still writing – because God is still speaking.

The travelers on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize Jesus during all that seven miles of walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus. We’re told that their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. Perhaps we could say that their grief affected their vision. No doubt as they walked and talked on the road to Emmaus they thought “where was God” – when Jesus was walking right beside them, unknown to them. It was only in retrospect, looking back, that they could see how their hearts were ablaze, burning within them – as one translation puts it, “strangely warmed” – during their encounter with the stranger on the Emmaus road. As we emerge from times of struggle, it may only be in retrospect that we can recognize those times and places in which Christ had been with us, had sustained us.

Many among us – perhaps all of us in various ways – have difficult stories to tell – stories of grief, of hardship, of abuse, of injustice. Some of these stories we’ve shared around the table during coffee hour. This congregation, and those who are members of our congregation, have been through a lot. As Christians, though, it’s important that, in the words of the old radio commentator Paul Harvey, we remember the rest of the story – that we did not and do not go through these things alone, that Christ was and is with us, that nothing – neither height or depth nor anything else in all creation – can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. And because of our experience of having experienced God’s presence in the struggle, our stories of hardship can become testimonies of faith, can become a source of strength and hope for others.

I’ll close with the words of an old gospel hymn – and here at Emanuel church, may we be able to make these words part of our story:

“By and by, when the morning comes
When the saints of God are gathered home
We’ll tell the story how we’ve overcome
And we’ll understand it better by and by.”

May it be so with us. Amen.