Third sunday in the easter season

THIRD SUNDAY IN THE EASTER SEASON [YEAR A] The Risen Jesus meets us on the journey. [Luke 24:13-49] A sermon by the Revd Dr Ross Fishburn, Academic Dean, Yarra Theological Union At Holy Trinity Kew, 4th May 2014 In many ways the gospel reading today is an old favourite for a lot of preachers. It’s an easy temptation to dust of an old sermon, or rerun the favourite theme: “and he was known to them in the breaking of the bread”, and preach on the presence of the risen Jesus when we gather for the eucharist. Or maybe we have been a bit more balanced in our liturgical approach, and we might hold that text together with “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking with us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” The preacher could explore the balance between Jesus’ presence in word and in sacrament, and how there are two “tables” from which we are fed at each eucharist, on for each two parts of the service.

Well you’ve probably guessed by now that I’m wanting to go in a different direction; or at least that I want to say something more than those things today.

The reason for that is this: staying in those readings of the text misses out on an important element in the story that we’ve just read. They aren’t wrong readings, just partial ones. Staying with the presence of Jesus to feed and instruct as the primary message would just be a limited reading of the gospel text. So I’ll come back to those when I’ve put it all into a bit more of a context.

What stands out to me as I read this story this year is the theme of surprise and reversal.

So we start with two disciples of Jesus walking to a village called Emmaus. We probably don’t think too much of that, isn’t it just any other Palestinian village? Maybe not.

You see Emmaus was a bit notorious at the time, an old wound in the Jewish psyche if you like.

Emmaus as the site of a particular piece of Roman enforcement of their power and control, a place where an example had been made of rebels and trouble makers. In 4 BCE, the Romans had crucified some 2,000 rebels after a failed revolt after the death of Herod the Great.

So that makes a seven mile journey to Emmaus potentially a very odd things for a pair of depressed disciples to do. It sounds almost as odd as taking a pleasant weekend trip to Auschwitz.

Or maybe it had a deeper intentionality? Our rabbi Jesus has been crucified, so let’s go to a nearby crucifixion site to really enter into the mourning and grief?

But whatever the reason they went to Emmaus (of all places), grief was not where they remained, even if it was where they began. As they meet the stranger, whom they were kept from recognizing, they find themselves telling the story of their grief, and of Jesus’ death, and discovering that there was a deeper story than they were aware of that was wrapped up in the events of the previous days. The stranger opens up the scriptures to them and reads the events of Jesus’ death in the light of that bigger, deeper story, and indeed reads the rumour of Jesus’ appearance in that light as well. This re-reading opens them up to the possibility of new life and hope were all before was defeat and despair. Only with that work of re-education accomplished, with that re-reading of events beginning to work its way from their ears and minds into their hearts are they ready for what we might call the “reveal” at the end of the story. The stranger stays with them as the day is almost over, and takes bread and breaks it, and in this new context of recalling Jesus in a wider context than just his dying, they recall his frequent meals, and especially his last one, and suddenly they know who the stranger is, and he is gone from them, even as he is known by them.

Surprise and reversal. That’s what happened for Cleopas and his friend. Jesus wasn’t where they expected to find him. He wasn’t in the tomb, he wasn’t in their past, but instead he was ahead of them on their journey, he was on the road to meet them, to surprise them, to turn doubt, despair and defeat into hope, new life and victory. Surprise and reversal. That’s at the heart of this story, because that’s at the heart of our Easter faith.

As it was for Cleopas and his companion, so it is for us: Jesus isn’t always where we expect to find him. Or at least not just there.

Certainly Jesus is present when we gather for worship, and found here to feed and sustain us in word and sacrament, in sermon and eucharistic fellowship. Of course he is. The church remembered this story to keep that memory and lesson alive. Our hearts burn within us when the word is broken open; we know him in the breaking of the bread. It works for us just like it worked for Cleopas and co. The early church remembered the story and kept telling it because it enshrined that lesson, and so it found its way into Luke’s gospel, and into our lectionaries to remind us: Jesus meets us in sermon and sacrament, in gathering to read scripture and break bread.

But that is only the beginning of the new life, the Easter surprise and reversal which Jesus can bring. Jesus is ahead of us on the road, in the unexpected people and places and situations of our journey.

Where do we think Jesus can’t be?

Well, the gospels keep teaching us that Jesus is encountered in the stranger and the outsider. The Samaritan was the neighbor to the man who fell among thieves, the Samaritan woman at the well was the one who drew water for Jesus, the tax collectors and the sinners were the ones who unexpectedly found Jesus to be a teacher and who responded to him. Who are the strangers and the outsiders in our world in whom Jesus might be found? We don’t have far to look, do we? Just pick up this month’s Melbourne Anglican to be reminded of the folk whom both political parties want us to forget, to exclude and to shut out as illegal immigrants. Refugees and asylum seekers are those in whom we can find the resurrection life and surprise of Jesus when we welcome them into our nation and our communities. Just ask our Sudanese Anglican friends, and our Vietnamese catholic ones!

But even closer to home, where are the places where we think it isn’t possible for anything to change, where we think we cannot grow, where we think that all is signed sealed and delivered?

Maybe Jesus is waiting for us there to re-write the script, to reframe the story, to open up new perspectives, new possibilities, even new life.

I have been helped by a phrase in a prayer that a colleague often used in funeral services which asked that God might gently restore to us a sense of the goodness of life, and “turn our hearts to deeds that bless the living”. Isn’t that the experience of Cleopas and his friend? They were closed up in their grief, and thinking that life was closed up in the tomb with Jesus. Then Jesus meets them on the road, and he re-writes the script, opens up depths in their memory and their hopes that they didn’t think possible, and quite simply, he turns their hearts to deeds that will bless the living. And we’ve kept telling that story ever since.

Where is Jesus waiting for us on our journey? Where is the new life waiting for us to break out of our darkness, to break out of the old closed ways? May God help us to recognize him there as well as here in word and sacrament, and find anew the possibilities that turn our hearts to deeds that bless the living.