EASTER 3-A, April 6, 2008

Wonderful Gospel story, isn’t it? It’s one with which we can all relate. These two men, Cleopas and his buddy, were out for a long walk. That was just what they needed at that moment in their lives. The man they believed was the Messiah had been arrested and crucified. Now all their hopes and dreams had been smashed to smithereens and they did not know what to do next. They had heard reports that some of their friends had seen him raised from the dead, but who could believe that?

So they had to get away to take some time to think things over, to talk about what happened, to process it all, to see if they, somehow in some way, could make any sense out of any of it. And so they did. Then they met Jesus, and the real processing began to take place.

These two men were very fortunate, blessed, even, and for two reasons. First of all, they took the time, made the time to get away. Would that every time any one of us needed time to get away to do some serious thinking and reflecting, time to make sense out of what makes no sense, that that time and place would be available. Most of the time it is not. Even worse, when given that time and place, that space in our lives, we often do not take it. And then when the situation seems to go from bad to worse, we wonder what in the world has happened and what we are going to do next.

The second reason why these men were blessed is that the one who could make sense out of what had happened just happened upon the scene. Would that would happen to us every time we find ourselves in a similar situation. Would the right person or persons would come along and help us sort thorough all that is going on inside our hearts and heads. Sometimes he or she or they do, but not always, as we know from experience.

Bad things, crazy things, nonsensical events happen to everyone. There is no escape. Good people get hurt. The best-laid plans go awry. The sure thing is a failure. Even if we could have prevented what happened from happening, it is now too late. Now all we can do is deal with the results. Somehow in some way there will be that space, that opening, through which God’s grace can get in and help us move on. What we have to do is find that space and then grab God’s grace when it appears in it.

Finding, even making that space is not always easy, if it is ever easy. It wasn’t for these two men. Their hopes and dreams had just been dashed to pieces and now they were left with trying to pick up the pieces of their lives and putting those lives back together again. They knew that would not be easy.

At that moment in their lives it probably did not help, or so they thought when Jesus appeared on the scene, to talk with a stranger and, even more, have this stranger ask them what was troubling them so. They did not need to tell their story to this stranger. They simply needed time to grieve among themselves. That, I think, is what they were doing.

And then Jesus appears and forces them to talk about what is on their minds. It is difficult because they are in a state of shock, a state of denial. They do not want to believe that what happened really did happen and they do not want to talk about it, at least not with him. It was too, too painful. Yet, as they soon discovered, what they needed to do at that moment was to do just that: talk about those events.

The same can be said for any one of us when we find ourselves in a similar situation, when we are in shock. When a loved one suddenly dies, when we are summarily terminated, when the diagnosis comes back with results we did not expect or wanted to hear, our body and mind go numb. We are in shock. We cannot speak. We cannot think. We cannot do anything.

At that moment in time what we need is someone to come up to us, as Jesus did, invade our space, if you will, and walk with us on our journey. We need to talk, as difficult as it is to do so, and they need to listen. We need to allow them to talk and we need to listen. And sometimes we simply need to be with one another in silence in that space. Over time the shock will wear off and we will begin to be able to cope with what is next. Just as these two men did not know what was going to be next in their lives, neither will we. But we know in faith that Jesus will walk with us.

There are many levels to this story, of course. The obvious level is the reminder that we have all needed to walk our own road to Emmaus when we had to deal with issues that seem to overwhelm us at the moment. On a deeper level it is a reminder that we’ve all found Jesus along that road even if we didn’t recognize him at first.

Going even deeper we can ask ourselves the same question we would like to ask about these two men: "Why did you not recognize Jesus until after he vanished? How could you not see?" I don’t know what their answer would be. What I do know is that there are times when I do not see Jesus either. I do not see Jesus living in the person who is walking the road with me, the Jesus in the person who lives next door to me, the Jesus who lives in you. I did not see Jesus until after he was gone. I suspect there have been times when you have been as blind to Jesus as I have.

On another level a further question to ask is why these two men invited this stranger not only to stay for dinner but also to stay the night. I wonder if I would be so welcoming, so accommodating, and especially so trusting. Human nature being what it is, even 2000 years ago, people did not usually ask complete strangers to stay the night. We may invite a casual acquaintance to do so, but Jesus was not even that, not in this instance anyway. He was simply a stranger they met on the road and with whom they struck up a conversation. But that seemed to be enough to open their home to him.

Such an attitude, it seems to me, could only have been developed because they had spent so much time observing that same attitude in Jesus. For Jesus no one was an outcast or a stranger. Everyone was welcome. And so for these disciples of Jesus, even a crucified Jesus, a Jesus who at this moment is their lives obviously was not the Jesus they hoped him to be, for these disciples this stranger on the road was as welcome in their home as if he were a member of their family and he was treated as such. It was only when they were acting as Jesus acted, being as open and welcome and loving as Jesus, that their eyes were finally opened to the stranger in their midst who really was no stranger after all.

Would that we were so welcoming, so trusting, so open to the strangers we encounter. Yes, there are many caveats about being so trusting. Yet, on a deeper level what this story says to me is that during those most disturbing and fearful times in our lives when we want answers to questions, what we have to do is be like these two men. We have to find our Emmaus Road and begin to walk it.

We have to know that somewhere along that road Jesus will appear. Like these two men we will only recognize him once we have developed the habit of trying to see the Jesus who lives, some how in some way, in everyone. It is only when our eyes are opened that answers to our questions and concerns will begin to come and resurrection to new life will begin.