Saint James UCC of Hamburg, NY

Luke 24:13-19, 27-35

Preached by Rev. Robert Matlack
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Easter is over for another year, and our focus has moved on to other things. After all Easter was last Sunday and a lot has happened in our lives since them. You wouldn't expect us to celebrate Easter every Sunday, would you?

Let me go on record as responding to that question by saying that I would. Easter is far to important to just haul out once a year, dust off, and then celebrate for an hour. After all, Easter is at the very heart of our faith. It is a message of hope, of trust, and most of all of love, for in our experience of Easter we find God's love shining through in unforgettable, life-changing ways. It is a message that we need to hear and to celebrate each and every week, for it has much to say to our lives.

Reflect with me on our text from the gospel of Luke so that we can better understand the lasting importance that first Easter held for at least two of Jesus' disciples. In our text we hear of Jesus' encounter with two of His disciples while they are walking on the road to Emmaus. I find this to be one of the most compelling and intriguing stories in the whole of the New Testament.

It has a sense of mystery - after all the disciples do not recognize Jesus even though they had followed Him, and knew quite well what He looked like. We could spend a great deal of time speculating about this mystery, but we really do not know and cannot know why they didn't know who Jesus was, so I leave that to your imagination. In some way Jesus was different, or in some way their eyes were veiled so that they did not recognize Him, as they walked along and discussed the events of the last few days. This of course provides the story with a great deal of suspense, as we wonder when they will see what is so obvious to us. When will they recognize that it's Jesus that they're talking with?

While we are wondering this, the chief characters - the two disciples - are undergoing a change in their way of thinking. They are led by Jesus' words to re-examine the Scriptures and to rethink the reasons that they feel that all hope has disappeared. Jesus does not offer them any new information, but rather a new perspective, an expanded perspective on what they had experienced and what it all might mean.

Then the familiar occurs - Jesus breaking bread with the disciples, reminding us of course of Jesus and the disciples breaking bread on Maundy Thursday, the night before Jesus was crucified. Yet the familiar happens suddenly, unexpectedly. Jesus "appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, ‘Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.' So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight." The disciples perspective suddenly changes as a result of the breaking of the bread. In that moment much of what they have been experiencing those past few days is reinterpreted and they are able to put the pieces together in a new way.

The theme of the disciples' discussion on their way to Emmaus was brokenness. They had seen Jesus' life broken on the cross; they had experienced the breaking of their own hopes and dreams as a result. As they walked and talked with this stranger, they shared the sorrow that this brokenness had created. The stranger led them through the Scriptures, showing them the redemptive quality of suffering, but they were not ready, they could not really understand all that He was teaching. That is why they invited Him to share their simple meal; they wanted to understand, but they simply could not get beyond their experience of feeling broken.

And then the stranger broke the bread, which in Jewish tradition was an act of establishing peace around the table. It meant that in a very real way a sense of community had been established between them. Suddenly the interpretation of suffering was joined to the action of making peace in the breaking of the bread, and in that moment the disciples recognized their Lord! They did not believe, they were not ready to believe until they allowed the peace of God to emerge in the breaking of the bread.

Back during World War II when Victor Frankl was first taken to a concentration camp, he lost the manuscript for the book which he eventually published as The Doctor and the Soul. Believing with all his being that a person's life is determined not by what life brings but by the response that is made, he demonstrated in his response how meaning could be found even in the inhuman circumstances that he found himself. He cites his own reaction to the loss of his manuscript which was confiscated on his arrival at Auschwitz:

"I had to surrender my clothes, and in turn inherited the wornout rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, ‘Shema Yisrael.' How should I have interpreted such a coincidence other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?"

In that moment Viktor Frankl encountered the risen Christ - an experience which changed his life, calling him forward to new patterns and new possibilities of faithfulness. After that experience, his life was never again the same - not just because a prayer book was left in the pocket of a ragged coat, but because of how Viktor allowed that experience to effect him. He opened his life, that this chance encounter might speak to him in powerful ways, changing his perspective. Even in a place where he was surrounded by death - not only the literalness of hundreds of thousands of people being executed in that one camp, but the death embracing patterns of deliberate starvation, torture, and hatred, which were so much a part of those camps. Yet even in that place - the last place in the world where we might expect to find life and hope - Viktor Frankl grew to become a better, more loving person. He found life in the midst of death, because of his readiness and willingness to embrace his chance encounter with the risen Christ.

Those early disciples, and then many centuries later Viktor Frankl - in each case their lives were forever changed by a chance encounter with the risen Christ. The same opportunity is there for us in our encounters with each other, for Christ is present in our midst. In our experiences of life we are challenged with those moments where, if we are ready, our eyes can be opened so that we can see, and in seeing find life in the midst of death, and in that discovery we are transformed to a new level of discipleship. It may come in the form of a question, or a chance encounter, or a shared experience, or in one of countless other ways. Often it is unexpected, unanticipated, and perhaps even unwanted, yet the challenge for each of us is to embrace those moments. When the bread is broken, when the chance encounter occurs, are we ready to see and to experience Christ's presence in our midst? In the question fo a child? In the need of a friend? In the death of a loved one?

Back in the early 70's disaster suddenly occurred when what was then one of our nation's newest submarines turned over and sank, trapping its entire crew in a watery prison. For a while it seemed as though rescue operations might be possible. Every effort was made. Contact was established with those inside and people worked feverishly to try and save them, but time just ran out. The last message from the crew, laboriously tapped out before their oxygen failed was this, "Is there any hope?" That's a question that we always live with, because life without hope is no real life at all.

The message of Jesus' encounter with two of His disciples as they were walking along the road to Emmaus is a message filled with hope and with love. True hope comes not because of what we are able to do, but because of what Christ has already done. Hope is not our accomplishment but a free gift that we just need to reach out and accept. In Jesus Christ God has come to us, and offered us a chance to encounter the Risen Lord and in the process to discover what we really need to live our lives to the fullest!

Amen.