For us, Easter was three Sundays ago, and we're still talking about it!
Like most of us, the Disciples put their faith in a specific person or thing that they had hopes for, and promises of dreams come true.
And they saw the man die.
Their hopes, their dreams, their faith, began to fade.
All of these things were caught up in the visible presence of this man from Nazareth, they knew so well.
And now where was he?
He was gone.
And where were they?
They were going - away, to Emmaus.
What the disciples did after Easter, was much more important than what they had done before Easter.
And what we do after Easter is of much more importance than what we did before Easter.
Easter is the one event in history that explains and gives meaning to Christianity.
Friends, there were no Christians until after Easter . . .
Cleopas and his unnamed companion on the road to Emmaus thought they were "well-informed".
They were amazed that this "stranger" who had quietly joined them while they were "deep in conversation," – or as Phillips puts it, "absorbed in their serious talk and discussion," –
[they were amazed that this stranger] knew so little, or nothing at all,
of the events in which they were so completely engrossed.
"How can you possibly have been in Jerusalem during these last few days without knowing what happened?" They asked the stranger.
And he replied, "What do you mean?"
"All this about Jesus of Nazareth" and they went on to spell out the facts they knew so well.
Friends, I really believe this story is of crucial
importance for each of us –
in order to understand about Christianity,
in order to understand about Easter,
in order to understand ourselves.
Of all of the stories that have great importance to our faith, I would have to pick this one as having the greatest significance upon my personal life and understanding.
For me, the first to keep in mind is that
We can be equipped with all of the facts in the world, and we still may not know what happened. We may be blessed with a wonderful Christian education,
We may know a catechism as well as our own name,
We may be able to recite the books of the Old and New Testaments and spout Scripture passages like a fountain,
We may be very proud of our knowledge of Bible names and Bible facts, and Bible history,
And someday, we may suddenly be brought to the realization that it means very little, if nothing
at all, if we have never grasped the true meaning and significance of those facts and events for ourselves and for others.
Cleopas and his friend blurted out their knowledge of the things they had seen and experienced while being with Jesus.
At the same time, they demonstrated that now they really doubted the whole business,
and that they were deeply disappointed in the Prophet from Nazareth, who had failed them so miserably.
"We had been hoping," they said, "that he was the man to liberate Israel."
"What is more," they went on, "today three days after his crucifixion, some of the women in our company have astounded us, telling us that they went to the tomb and found it empty.
They failed to find his body and returned with a story that they had seen a vision of angels who told them that he was alive.
Then others went and found things just as the women had said; but him they did not see."
You see, they were sure of their facts.
They had been personally involved with this Jesus of Nazareth.
They had even been granted the privilege that morning of hearing the good news for the first time. And they were sick about it.
They were sad.
As J.B. Phillips gives us the story, "their faces were drawn with misery."
You see, they still just didn't get it.
Oh, they had all the facts, – but no understanding of what they meant.
They had enjoyed the best opportunity for a Christian education ever granted to anyone.
They had lived with Jesus.
And now, it was he, still un-recognized, who made it clear to them that they actually knew so very little.
That they had almost no understanding of the true significance of what had happened.
So, I imagine, with a smile on his face, this "stranger" said, "You are so dense!
You are so slow to believe all that the prophets said!"
And then he proceeded to reveal to them the true meaning of the facts they knew so well
and the events in which they had been personally involved.
"This is your Messiah," he told them, "and beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he explained to them the passages which referred to himself in every part of the scriptures."
It was a Bible class five or six miles long on that road between Jerusalem and Emmaus.
By the time they reached the village they were so engrossed that they couldn't bear the thought of parting with the still-unknown stranger who was doing so much for them.
So they invited him to stay over and have dinner.
And it was at that time, at supper, when he took the loaf of bread, and blessed it, and broke it,
just as he had done in the upper room not many nights before, that "their eyes were opened and they suddenly recognized him."
Suddenly, everything was changed for them.
Suddenly Easter made sense.
Suddenly the whole message came clear.
And now they understood a whole new way of religion and a whole new way of living.
No longer sad and sick and miserable,
without a moment's hesitation,
they returned to Jerusalem,
crossing those seven miles in a fraction of the time they had spent in coming.
They immediately found the other disciples and, with great excitement, they heard that Jesus had appeared to Simon.
They then shared their own experience with the others that evening of Easter Sunday.
And the next words are startling to us, and tremendously significant. "As they were talking about all this, there he was, standing among them."
Understand where they were and what they were needing: having followed him to Calvary, they needed disparately to know the significance of the open and empty tomb,
having seen him die,
and having been shocked by his death into a kind of stupor of unbelief,
they needed to know and to understand what it meant for him – and for them – to be ALIVE AGAIN.
And this begins to get at the center of Easter and Christianity, and us (what we believe, and what we do, and how we live!).
For us, Easter was three Sundays ago, and we're still talking about it!
You see, what the disciples did after Easter, was much more important than what they had done before Easter.
And what we do after Easter is of much more importance than what we did before Easter.
Easter is the one event in history that explains and gives meaning to Christianity.
Friends, there were no Christians until after Easter –
until after these things started happening,
that those closest to him – the disciples –
finally understood [and believed and understood] a faith – a whole way of living –
that was indeed about liberating Israel!
Again:
We live and move about and be within certain boundaries, or human limitations.
We are obviously bound between points of time in space.
We experience a beginning and an end.
There is a point when we are born, there is a point when we die.
And even with all of our tremendous technological expertise, we have no way of transcending time – of getting beyond either point in time.
We have no time machine wherein we can go into the future or into the past.
We humans are pretty well limited to the time we have been given to experience.
And it's within this framework then, that the early Christians began to see that Easter was an event through which God breaks the chains of human limitation,
moves beyond the points of birth and death,
and expands the whole concept of life itself.
The early Christians saw, experienced and understood that a life for others breaks out of the
personal, the egotistical, the selfish, and transcends the limits of birth and death.
And, they say that Christ showed us the way of totally giving of yourself –
living for others –
giving of yourself so others may live –
that puts us in the company of the saints that have gone before,
and places an eternal, hopeful quality for future generations.
The Easter event liberated Israel from being slaves to the idea that their God must be restricted to a particular person,
bound to a particular time period,
or a given space in history.
Now, note, that like most of us, the Disciples put their faith in a specific person or thing that they had hopes for, and promises of dreams come true.
And they saw the man die.
Their hopes, their dreams, their faith, began to fade.
All of these things were caught up in the visible presence of this man from Nazareth, they knew so well.
And now where was he?
He was gone.
And where were they?
They were going - - away, to Emmaus.
There are two points of discovery in this story – and there are two points of discovery each of us must make before we know what life in Christ is all about.
The first point of discovery occurs at supper – when the bread was broken
(the story says, their eyes were opened)
they suddenly realized they were in communion with the presence of Christ through this "stranger".
And the second point of discovery was quickly made as they recognized the presence of Christ wherever they went.
You see, they understood Easter as taking the Presence of Christ, the idea of God working in history,
the idea of God-with-us (Emmanuel),
and separating it from the physical confines of the body of Jesus,
separating it from the limitations of time and space,
and placing it in the on-going process of life –
wherever life is lived.
Talk about liberation.
Talk about freedom.
Talk about redemption and salvation.
Brothers and Sisters as they found out on the road to Emmaus, Easter did liberate Israel (and liberates us)
from IDOLATRY.
In all of the stories in the New Testament,
no one ever believed until they had an awareness of the Presence of Christ.
Until they became aware that Christ was present and God was acting in their midst,
belief made no sense.
So, look again at your faith, and read this story again – at first, the disciples were totally
unaware of the presence of Christ as they walked along the road to Emmaus.
They were totally insensitive to that stranger in their midst that seemed to know so much.
They were so caught up in their own despair, their own struggle with their faith, that they couldn't recognize Christ was with them as they walked.
Friends, today the words of the hymn,
"Open my eyes that I may see,
open my ears that I may hear,
open my mouth that I may speak",
informs our task as Christian folk.
As we celebrate this communion today, we participate with a fellowship of saints from all the
ages, and we come to grips with the source of life itself –
through the images of the bread and the cup – symbols of sustenance and life itself –
where communion becomes a celebration of illumination,
where in the breaking of the bread and the sharing of the cup, our eyes and ears are opened,
to see and to be aware of the presence of Christ among us [in our neighbors along our road] and the significance of a life literally poured out for others.
My sincere prayer is for each of you to make some discovery about how Easter affects your faith and find some special significance in communion this morning. Amen.
These thoughts were presented to the congregation from the pulpit of The Connecting Place: Christ Presbyterian Church in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, USA, April 18, 2010.
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