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| A screen-grab from All Saints' Livestream from April 26, 2020 |
© Seth Olson 2020
April 26, 2020—Third Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2020—Third Sunday of Easter
View video of today’s sermon by following this link: https://vimeo.com/412085929 (sermon begins at 16:22).
Today’s Gospel lesson features the familiar story of the walk to Emmaus. In it, two disciples head out of Jerusalem on Easter night seemingly unaware of or unable to comprehend the magnitude of the empty tomb. While Mark’s Gospel account gives a brief outline of this story, the full depiction is unique to Luke. What is not unique within Luke is the setting of a journey.
Today’s Gospel lesson features the familiar story of the walk to Emmaus. In it, two disciples head out of Jerusalem on Easter night seemingly unaware of or unable to comprehend the magnitude of the empty tomb. While Mark’s Gospel account gives a brief outline of this story, the full depiction is unique to Luke. What is not unique within Luke is the setting of a journey.
Journeys
are everywhere in the Third Gospel. Mary and Joseph had to take a trip to get
to Bethlehem. The Parable of the Good Samaritan occurred on a road. Where did
the father embrace the prodigal son in that famous parable? Out on a road! For
a huge chunk of this gospel account Jesus was on the road to Jerusalem—and that
was where so many of his greatest teachings happened. Even in the “sequel” to
Luke, the Book of Acts, the apostle formerly known as Saul was blinded on the road
to Damascus, before God changed his life for good and his name to Paul.[1]
Embarking on a journey was not only important in Luke though, journeys are vital
to us too.
How
often do we describe our lives as a journey? We tell each other to take the
high road when someone is dragging us down. Some people advise taking the road
less traveled. And, what graduate has not received the journey-focused
children’s classic Oh The Places You’ll Go, which compares life to one
big, challenging adventure. And, our life in Christ is no different. Do we not
often ask one another, “How is your faith journey going?”
And,
all of our journeys (faith and otherwise) took a weird turn a few weeks back.
Maybe some people projected the challenges of this virus, but I do not think
anyone could see the full extent of how the COVID-19 pandemic would upend or
turn around our traveling down our paths. As we all still struggle with what to
do and what the next steps of our journeys will be, we would be wise to consult
today’s story of the walk to Emmaus for guidance. What does this Easter evening
trek teach us about our individual and collective journeys? Let’s look at three
lessons because y’all know how much preachers like to talk about examples in
groups of three.
First,
it’s good to travel together. The Bible does not tell us why these two
disciples decided to leave Jerusalem just hours after their fellow female
disciples had seen the empty tomb, but they did. While this might seem crazy,
what was not crazy was going together. There’s a wonderful African proverb,
which reads: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go
together.” Cleopas and the other disciple may have only been traveling to
Emmaus, seven miles down the road, but they still understood the importance of
traveling together. Likewise, on our journeys we yearn to travel together.
It’s
in our very nature to walk the road together. I think one of the most
challenging aspects of our current situation comes in that we are not able to
have the normal interactions with those in our support networks. A basic belief
we have as Christians is that we believe in a Triune God, as in God is Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit—three-in-one. To me this means that God’s most elemental
nature is communal. We come from God, so we come from community. Thus, we want
to have fellow pilgrims on the way. This is challenging to do in this moment,
so we have to use creativity—phone calls, Facetime, Zoom calls, letters,
emails, Facebook messages, and countless other ways can connect us. And, there’s
another way that involves the third traveler who came alongside the disciples,
but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Our
life journeys right now are challenging enough and even with a fellow pilgrim
on the way, we may not know exactly where we are going, and this gets us to a
second lesson we can learn from today’s Gospel story.
Sometimes
on our journey, it is appropriate to wander. Now, maybe this is a stretch
because the way Luke tells this story Cleopas and the other disciple knew where
they were going. They were traveling to Emmaus, which according to the text was
seven miles outside of Jerusalem. However, if you look on almost any historical
map and consult most any Biblical scholar they will tell you there is some
confusion as to where Emmaus is. Now, just last year archaeologists uncovered a
massive Hellenistic wall that some believe identifies the location of the
ancient city of Emmaus.[2]
Still,
I wonder if the disciples’ journey that Easter night was more of a wandering
walk into the grief of losing their Lord than a Point A to Point B excursion.
When the disguised Jesus asked the disciples what they were talking about on
their way, they stood still looking sad. They were heartbroken.
Right
now, we can see stress, loss, grief, depression, anxiety, illness, and death
are all looming large during this part of our collective journey, as we
experience the ramifications of this pandemic. And up until a few weeks ago, we
may have thought we knew where we were going until the world turned upside-down
and caused us to stand still and feeling sadness, like those disciples on the
road to Emmaus.
Sometimes
we are told not to experience, express, or process our emotions—we should just
keep going on our journey—but Christ Jesus and these disciples model something
different. In them, we see that it is appropriate to stop, feel our emotions,
and even get lost in them. For Christ found these disciples when they were lost
in their own sadness.
This
brings us to the last lesson I want to bring up from this Gospel text: Christ always
walks with us, but we don’t always know it. The disciples walked with Jesus for
long enough to have a killer Bible study in which the Risen Lord revealed
throughout all of Scripture all that pertained to his being the Messiah. In that
moment, the disciples did not see the true identity of their fellow pilgrim.
What dropped the scales that had obscured their vision? Breaking bread together
with Christ Jesus!
During
this pandemic when we are not able to have communion together, when we cannot
break bread at God’s table or even in each other’s homes, this detail makes me
stand still in sadness. Even here though on this daunting leg of the journey,
Christ is with us. We may just have overlooked Christ in his many disguises. It’s
almost as though Christ sometimes wears a mask.
Speaking
of masks, a few weeks ago there was a National Public Radio story about how to
politely greet one another while wearing a facemask. The reporter suggested using
a friendly wave, giving a thumbs up, or smiling with your eyes, Tyra Banks
calls that “smize.”[3]
Me personally, I like the peace sign, touching my heart, or saying “Love” in
sign language. However, this whole report got things backwards. People are
looking for ways to portray themselves as friendly, which is good. But, I think
it’s more important for us to truly see the one beneath the mask.
During
this difficult time it has been amazing seeing all the doctors, nurses,
chaplains, and medical technicians; the bus drivers, train engineers, pilots,
ship captains, and flight attendants; the delivery drivers, food delivery
drivers, and mail delivery drivers; the grocery baggers, clerks, and managers; the
police officers, firefighters, and EMTs, and the many, many, many other people
who are risking their safety and their lives to keep essential services going.
And, most of them we don’t actually get to see and even when we do see them we often
don’t get to see their faces because their faces are covered by masks.
Underneath
those masks though, we might just see the face of Christ. Many of the people
wearing those masks are loving each other, sacrificing for each other, healing
one another, just like Jesus did. And, we, just like Cleopas and the other
disciple, might not have been able to see that Christ Jesus has been walking
beside us on this road the whole time. Those disciples could not see Christ
Jesus because of their grief, and we might have missed seeing God’s face
because of all our emotions and of course the masks. So I urge you to look
again and see who is walking next to you.
We
are definitely traveling on a strange leg of the journey. But, we do not walk
alone. You’ll never walk alone. Even if we are socially distant, we are
spiritually united. And, it is okay to wander or even get lost. Because it is
when we feel most lost that Our Risen Lord shows up in the most profound and unexpected
ways. This week, as you continue on this path that is life, I pray that you see
Christ’s face, even if it is hidden by a mask. Amen.
[1] Eric Barreto, “Commentary on Luke
24:13-35” WorkingPreacher.org [published April 23, 2017, accessed April 26,
2020]
[2] Ariel David, “Israeli Archaeologists May
Have Found Emmaus, Where Jesus Appeared After Crucifixion” [written September
03, 2019, accessed April 26, 2020] https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-israeli-archaeologists-may-have-found-emmaus-where-jesus-appeared-after-crucifixion-1.7774167.
[3] Sharon McNary, “In L.A., It's Now
Mandatory For Everyone To Wear Face Coverings” NPR.org [published April 10,
2020; accessed April 26, 2020]. https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/831480486/in-l-a-its-now-mandatory-for-everyone-to-wear-face-coverings
