READINGS

Luke 24:13-35

HOMILY

Here we have this wonderfully familiar Gospel – the road to Emmaus.

And I’d like to follow on from our two previous Sundays, showing how Jesus’s drawing close to people doesn’t follow things they understand is not obvious.

They don’t know what’s going on.

Аnd yet, he wants to make himself present.

There is a giving of himself to them.

That is to take them beyond themselves.

We saw that with Mary Magdalene, we saw that with Thomas, and now we’re going to see it with Cleopas and friend as they head to Emmaus.

So there they are, walking out of town, heading nowhere in particular, outside the village that no one has been able to identify.

And there they’ve heard about the visit of Mary Magdalene and other women to the tomb.

They know that something is very strange and they can’t make sense of it.

So while they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

So a third person appears, but he’s not a third person whom they recognized.

Again, the risen Jesus is never obvious.

But their eyes were kept from recognizing them and he said what’s this conversation that you’re having with each other as you walk?

They stood still looking sad.

A downcast mean, the same downcast mean that Pharaoh’s butler and baker had in prison when Joseph came upon them and asked, why are you standing still looking sad.

And then Joseph offered to interpret them all the things that bring their dreams.

So here Jesus is about to do exactly the Joseph role, which Luke very cleverly hints at us with that little phrase:

They stood still looking sad. It’s a direct quote from Genesis.

And Cleopas answered him: Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?

Okay, here’s the thing.

So the crucified and risen Lord is walking alongside these two and their first presumption is that he’s not from there.

He’s a visitor, someone who’s coming through, a resident alien, but someone who doesn’t get it.

They picked up on his accent.

Something about him gives away: the fact that he couldn’t really understand it.

I think that’s hugely important.

The voice of the Risen one is going to come to us from a strange place.

It’s always going to be experienced by us as a strange turnaround.

So Cleopas says: the only one who doesn’t understand these things.

Jesus says: what things?

Not anything silly to play with them, but because it’s only in the degree to which they start trying to tell their story that they’ll come to an end of the story.

They’ll screw up and realize that their story as they tell it doesn’t make sense.

And it’s only then that he will be able to intervene and start to give them a unified account of what’s really been going on.

But he’d only be able to do it if they’re not just being solidly silent and saying: no, we wouldn’t get it.

It’s as they start to try and explain to him … condescending and in a muddled way what’s going on that he’s going to be able to get into their story and turn it around.

And that’s what happens.

They said concerning Jesus of Nazareth: a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. 

But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.

So they’ve got a variety of different lines in their story: he was a man, he was a prophet, he was strong before God, but our chief priests and rulers who theoretically should have been in favour of someone like him, handed it over to the Romans to be crucified him.

We had hoped that he was the one to restore Israel because there was a prophecy.

There is a prophecy concerning the one who was going to come and restore Israel, bring back the new Temple, perform the ultimate sacrifice, and bring to an end the Temple.

This was all part of our expectations.

And now it’s the third day since these things have happened.

Some women from our group, however, have amazed us.

Because women’s capacity to give witnesses is second-rate witnesses in the law.

So we had to go and see whether what they said was true.

And yes, it was, just what the women had said, but although they said they had seen him and a vision of angels, we didn’t see.

In other words, they’ve at last got it out.

They’ve made themselves vulnerable in their attempt to tell a story and not really be able to make sense of it.

Oh, how foolish you are!

How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! 

Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?

In other words, what he’s saying is there’s always been a single unitary story going on here.

Something has been happening that was always going to happen, and in light of this everything will become perfectly clear.

All the prophets have been telling about it.

And now I’m going to explain it to you, explain the full unitary sense of what’s been going on.

And what’s been going on?

Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures.

At this stage, please remember, he’s an outsider.

He’s a third person. A third person, not an obvious teacher, because not the kind of person who they would expect to take very seriously.

And yet, he is offering them a unified account of all the things in their scriptures, which had been fulfilled over the last few days.

Which is basically ever.

It must have been an extraordinary exercise in having their world turned upside down as they discovered all the things that had in fact just over the last few days, mean: echoed, foretold in Isaiah, in Zechariah, and all the prophets.

And it’s difficult for us to do it now, but it’s amazing how much richness of interpretation of things that are being fulfilled can be found.

So there he was, doing this, giving them a completely new take on the story which they already knew, the take that was not obvious and that would not have come from somebody who they would have taken seriously.

So this is the strangeness of this thing that we have someone outside themselves.

From a not a very respectable position is giving them the whole thing.

They’ve been drawn out to the village where they’re going and now they are inviting him into their home.

This is very important for us as we find ourselves celebrating these Eucharists in our homes.

The voice has come from outside.

We have to learn to hear the unexpected, the strange, not very reputable voice, challenging us to turn our sense of what’s really happening upside down.

And then with them in the home, he is their guest and yet he performs a gesture, which is the gesture of a host breaking the bread, blessing it and giving it to them.

In other words, suddenly they find that the one who they thought they were hosting is the one who has been hosting them.

And immediately they perceive that all that he had been telling them as if about a third person was in fact, I Am.

He had been telling them in the first person about what he had been doing and what he was including them in.

And, of course, immediately they grasped that he was actually not a third person speaking to them, but the first person narrative.

They realized that this is a theophany, this is the presence of the Most High.

And immediately he’s gone.

So now they’ve heard the story from the one who was telling it.

Their version is no longer muddled.

They’re now able to speak with confidence about what had really been going on.

They go back and they tell those who are gathered in Jerusalem, who replied: the Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon.

In other words, they share the same story.

And it’s one of the reasons why I like what we are given in the first reading today, is that our first reading for the day is actually Simon Peter essentially giving the straightened-down version of the story that the disciples in Emmaus were giving the muddled version of.

In other words, now that the risen Lord has been amongst them and shown that he was in fact the protagonist, that it was deliberate, this was something that he was doing.

They are now able to tell the story straightforwardly from his perspective.

And that is exactly what happens in the reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Peter is able to basically tell the story that the disciples on the road to Emmaus were not able to tell.

So, as we celebrate our Eucharists at home, let’s remember that the word coming from outside, from this preacher, from many other much better preachers, but also from strange voices that you may hear talking about completely different things which nevertheless turn out to have an expertise that completely throw you and surprise you.

Our world is being turned upside down and us being given a new perspective.

Oh my God, I am actually being invited here rather than running the show.

And the One who is giving himself to me is giving himself to me as my host, even as I thought I had hosted him.

What I often pray for you all with this is that we are able to follow the paradigm that was opened up for us on the road to Emmaus and share in the presence of the Most High, who gives himself to us and reveals himself in the breaking of the bread.