EASTER III - A, April 10, 2005

I have never had the privilege of walking the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, but, God willing, I hope to be able to do so some day. Given the conditions in Israel today, however, I’m not sure that’s a good idea. It may not be very safe. But some day, if possible, I would like to walk the Jerusalem Road to Emmaus.

The truth is I already have, several times. And so have you. We've all walked that road because we had to walk that road. We had no other choice. Oh, we would have rather not had to, just as the disciples in today's Gospel would rather have been doing anything that Sunday afternoon -- anything, other than walking the road to Emmaus. But they, too, had to walk that road. They had no other choice.

Their world had suddenly fallen apart. Their hopes and dreams had been dashed to pieces with Jesus' arrest, his crucifixion and death. Whatever plans they had for Jesus, and however they saw themselves fitting into those plans, whatever dreams they had for the future with Jesus as their leader -- all of that came to a sudden, startling, dramatic and traumatic halt three days before.

Now they were lost, confused, bewildered. They really did not know what to do, these two men. Yes, they had heard some unbelievable stories from some of their friends about having seen Jesus that very morning. But women were telling these stories. And you know how women are. They can get so hysterical at times, almost seeing things that no one else sees. So you had to take what they were saying with a grain of salt, a large, a very large grain of salt. But still the problem remained for them: what were they going to do now, now that all those plans that they had been putting together these past three years had gone up in smoke? What were they going to do?

Well, they really did not know the answer to that question. But what these two men did know was that what they had to do right then was simply get out of town; take a walk, a good walk, a seven-mile walk to Emmaus. It would give them a chance to clear their heads; talk over the situation; try to discern and discover where they would go from here. And that they did.

As Paul Harvey says, we know the rest of the story. Paul Harvey himself has told that story hundreds of times, only the names and places and circumstances changed, but not the basic story itself. For the basic story is about a broken dream, an unexpected tragedy, life turned inside out and upside down in a flash. We have all been there. It has happened to us. What we did at that moment, probably more often than we would like to admit, or even realize, was to take a walk to Emmaus.

We set off down that road, began to walk that highway, that lonesome highway, all by ourselves. And that was by choice. We simply needed to get away, to take some time to think, to sort out matters, to get our heads together. "I'll be all right," we said. "I just need some time alone," we said. And off we went, down that road to Emmaus.

Oftentimes, and again, maybe more often than we would like to admit, that lonesome highway was very lonesome. No one came along to walk with us. In fact, it almost seemed as if everyone was avoiding us at that time. And, if we are honest, we will have to admit that at times when others did come along side us and offer to walk with us, we said, "No thanks. I can make it myself. I don't need any help." And off we went, even more lonesome than before. And the road became longer and lonelier and wider and more difficult to travel than ever. Yet, we trudged on, all by ourselves.

But eventually the road simply became too lonely and too difficult and too long. So we gave in and allowed others to walk the road with us. And they did. They walked with us and talked with us, held our hand and pulled us along. They helped us to take another look at the whole situation, take another look at our life. At first we did not want to hear them out. It was simply too painful to remember the past. That's why we were on that road in the first place: to get away from the past, the hurt, the disappointment. The last thing we wanted was to be reminded of those dashed dreams and deep hurts.

But we listened. We were too tired to fight any more anyway, too exhausted to argue, too worn out to even cry. So we listened. Others joined us on the road. And when we arrived, finally, at Emmaus, we had to rest. But we also had to celebrate the end of the journey, and we had to do that first. And when we did celebrate, when we broke bread together with the friends who had joined us on our walk to Emmaus, our eyes were finally opened. We could finally see passed the past, passed the tragedy that forced us to walk that road, see into new life.

What happened, of course, was that we had met Jesus along that road: Jesus, who came to us in our friends, friends who told us that they understood, friends who had been to Emmaus, too, in their lives; friends who shared their lives, their love with us; friends who would break bread with us; friends who would nourish us just as they had been nourished.

The story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus is every person's story. It is the story of a broken dream, a tragic hurt, turned into new life, turned into resurrection, turned into Easter. That is the rest of the story. That new life, however, only comes after we start down the road to Emmaus, after we decide we have to move on and not look back, after we meet others on the road who will walk and talk with us, after we find that supportive community who will break bread with us.

That supportive community is all of us, of course. It is the Church. Yes, the two disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. But, more importantly, what they recognized and what they realized was that Emmaus was not where they needed to be. Where they needed to be was back in Jerusalem with their friends, their church, those who had walked their own roads to Emmaus in their own ways. And that's where they went, immediately.

I am still haunted by the memory, the picture in my mind, of a man who, many Easters ago in Parkersburg, West Virginia, joined us for part of the Eucharist at the early service. He walked into the church at the beginning of my sermon. He wore only a pair of loose-fitting brown corduroy pants, nothing else: no shoes, no socks, no shirt. He left immediately after the service. What haunts me is that this man may have been walking to his Emmaus and I let him go -- alone. May God forgive me. May God forgive us when we refuse to be Jesus to those who are walking their Emmaus Roads.

We have all been down that Emmaus Road in one way or another. We are here today because we met and somehow recognized Jesus along the way, Jesus whom we met and found in other people. There are many, many people at this very moment walking their Roads to Emmaus. They may be wearing only corduroy pants. They may be dressed in Brooks Brothers suits or Liz Claiborne dresses or Levis and cowboy boots. We may not know them by name. They may be our closest friends. But they are walking that road. Whether they admit it or not, what they are looking for, waiting for, is Jesus to come along and walk with them, listen to them, talk with them, grieve with them, love them, support them. Just as others have been Jesus to us when we walked our Road to Emmaus, so we must be Jesus to others when they walk theirs.