'Emmaus Road': 6th April 2008: Datchworth at 9.30 & St. Michael’s at 11.15: Revd. Julia Boothby

Luke 24 v 13-35

Today we come to that wonderful passage from the New Testament resurrection appearances of Jesus on the Emmaus road. It picks up various themes that run through the gospel of Luke, one of those themes being journeys.

I was thinking about that theme of journeys as I took my son to the station in Stevenage this week. As a child and student I was lucky enough to have free rail travel courtesy of my Dad’s job working for British Rail. I have spent many happy hours on trains both here and in Europe. I was explaining to my Son that travelling with his grandfather was always an experience. First of all he insisted on explaining to my sister and I all about the train we were travelling on, the places it had been and was going to and the technical details of the signals which we would be taken to inspect and learn to read. If, to his seeming joy the train was ever halted unexpectedly, he would immediately go to a window, open it and lean out to see if he could see what the signals were telling him and what was going on. But in addition to this wherever we went, in this country and abroad, he would always meet someone he knew. At that time British Rail was rather like a large family and you could be sure that he would know the station master, the guard, the driver and very often the ticket collector. Each one would be greeted with great familiarity...“Hello, Geordie man, what are you up to?”

My sister and I clearly remember being in a supermarket in the middle of France once looking at something in an aisle and hearing my Father in the next aisle shouting out the familiar greeting.. “Why Geordie man, what are you doing here?”
.....as in the midst of embarrassed teenage daughters syndrome we quietly crept away hoping to go unnoticed! But having said all that it was great having a dad who knew the rail network inside out and would explain lots of things about it to us and make very journey interesting and fun. (Much of which it has to be said was derived from watching him hugely enjoying himself.)

Well as I said I was reminded of this because of today’s reading about the travelling companion that the two disciples meet up with on the road to Emmaus. Here again we have someone who seems to know how things work, even if he does seem a little ignorant about local events. The disciples, stunned by his seeming ignorance of all that has happened in Jerusalem over the festival period, quickly fill him in. To their surprise he begins to explain to them why such events must happen according to the Scriptures, and begins to expound them clearly to them. They were clearly very struck by all that he said and so, coupled with the custom of the time of offering hospitality, ask their travelling companion to stay with them. He goes in and whilst at supper takes bread, blesses it and breaks it. And then we read that wonderful sentence

"Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. Then they said to one another,
'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road and, while he was opening the Scriptures to us?' That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem...and told the disciples what had happened."

This is such a wonderful episode in the Gospels and Luke paints a fantastic picture of it for us... and there have been countless artistic interpretations of it, one of my own favourites being the work by Caravaggio of the moment of revelation at supper.
 
But I want to go back for a moment to the journey. We read that the disciples, their faces sad and their words telling of their grief and pain, do not recognise Jesus in the traveller. Their eyes, we are told, were kept from recognising him.
What caused their blindness I wonder? Was it their lack of understanding? Certainly Jesus upbraids them for being foolish and slow of heart. Was it that they were so absorbed in their own problems and situation that they did not look closely at Jesus? Was it that despite what the women had come back telling them of the empty tomb and the angels, they could not even for a moment begin to comprehend that Jesus was alive. A lack of faith, a forgetting of what Jesus had himself said and the miracles that they had seen and heard of?

Whatever it was they did not recognise Jesus. And I wonder if there are times in our journey of faith when we also do not recognise Jesus, times when our Lord himself is with us and we fail to perceive that he is there alongside, journeying with us. Because the truth is that Jesus is always with us. His very last words to his disciples in Matthew are;
“I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Elsewhere he promises the disciples that he will send the Holy Spirit, his very own spirit, to be with the disciples always. “I will ask the Father and he will give you another Counsellor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth.”

The truth is that Jesus is always with us, he is present, here and now, with us as we leave and go to our homes, with us as we sit down to eat our lunch or go out to visit family and friends. He is with us as we rise each day and go to bed each night. The psalmist cries out to God  “Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence? If I Ascend to heaven you are there, if I make my bed in Sheol you are there, If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, your right hand shall hold me fast.”

There is nowhere that we can go where God himself will not journey with us. But there are times when, like those first disciples, we are kept from seeing him and often, just like those disciples on the way to Emmaus, it can be at difficult or crucial times in our lives. Times of uncertainty about the way ahead, times of sadness and grief, times when we are afraid or confused, times of deep despair and loneliness. So what happens during those times? Why is that very often when we most need to feel and see the presence of God that we cannot?

I think that like those first disciples we often are blinded first of all by our situation. We are so preoccupied with the circumstances that we find ourselves in, that we fail to look for Jesus. We find our minds so full of what is going on that we do not seek God in prayer or in his word. As those disciples on the road learned, God's word is there to guide us and help us, especially perhaps in our times of greatest need. If we neglect this discipline, if we neglect prayer, then our spiritual sight is clouded and we cannot see God with us. Perhaps too, like those two on the road the situation we face seems hopeless and we give up. They had certainly, if their actions are a judge, given up all hope of Jesus being the Messiah. The facts were overwhelmingly stacked against that, now that they had seen him crucified and even stories of an empty tomb failed to convince them enough to hang around and see. No, they had left Jerusalem and were going home burdened down with loss and grief. They were not looking for a miracle, yet one came. Imagine how different the journey would have been if those two disciples had recognised Jesus at the start. Imagine the conversation they could have had, the things that Jesus could have told them, imagine the fellowship and intimacy and they could have shared.

As I pondered these things so I was reminded of that lovely story that is very well known called “Footprints”. In it, as someone looks back over their life, it is as if they see their footprints in the sand and alongside they see the footprints of Jesus walking with them. Yet, they see that at times of sadness and grief, difficult, doubt and uncertainty, there is only one set of prints and so they ask Jesus where he was when they most needed him. His response is that it was at those times that he picked them up and carried them.

My prayer for myself and for all of us is that we learn, through the disciplines of reading God’s word and through prayer, to have our spiritual eyesight sharpened daily. That we might see and recognise Jesus there with us more often, and be able to know and share more of our journey of faith knowing his presence.

It was finally in that moment of breaking bread that the disciples realised who Jesus was. We cannot know if it was the way that he broke the bread that stirred their memory, if in fact those things that he had been teaching them finally broke into their consciousness, or if they saw the nail marks in his hands. But they did finally see who he was.....and how great their joy then.

WE might struggle to see Jesus sometimes, yet he is always here with us and in a very real way when we break bread together. Here in the sacrament of the Eucharist, as we recall all that he has done for us and ask for him to feed us, as we feed on the bread and wine, so God draws near in a very real and precious way that is visible to us all. May our hearts be enlightened by his Holy Spirit so that we never come to his table in a casual or thoughtless way, that the beauty of what we partake in is not dulled by familiarity, but that with our senses sharpened and alert we may come and share at table with our risen Lord and know his very presence with us, feeding us and strengthening us for our journey of faith together.
Amen