Luke 24:13–35
Presented April 13, 2008, by J.D. Kline
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
Cesar Chavez, noted for his tireless efforts on behalf of the rights of poor and often exploited migrant farm workers, once was asked what has kept him motivated through the years. Responded Chavez,
What keeps me going? Well, it’s like a fire—a consuming, nagging, every-day and every-moment demand of my soul to just do it. It’s difficult to explain. I like to think it’s the good Spirit asking me to do it. I hope so . . . . If you really want something, you have to sacrifice. Because of my faith the concept of sacrifice is understood.
What creates compassionate stirrings deep within our souls, and the courage to respond to those sometimes troubling stirrings? When have you and I experienced burning hearts within us—this consuming, nagging every-day and every-moment demand of the soul that compels us to walk more deeply along the journey of faith, to expend passionate energy in the call to live for the glory of God and the good of our neighbors, to take the risk of responding to an inner fire?
This morning’s Gospel lesson, the familiar and dramatic story of the walkers on the road to Emmaus in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion, offers a picture of two followers of Jesus who, for a period of time, glimpsed something markedly new. But now they are beaten down, discouraged, convinced that with the death of Jesus, the dream is forever lost and the nagging fire they once believed to be reality—this fire is forever extinguished. Indeed, the two walkers have come to display what Joan Chittister in her book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope rather graphically describes as a “dancing is bad, drinking is bad, hemorrhoids are good” perspective towards life and faith. You know what Chittister is talking about, don’t you? Who among us hasn’t encountered someone with this perspective? Truth be told, we may even have been raised with it—the kind of religious faith that assumes that the more uncomfortable we are in this life, even the more miserable our lives become, the better off we will be in the long run. Someone once suggested that the Puritans, early Christian leaders in this country, were haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, might be enjoying life, and so, for them religious faith came to be equated with all manner of prohibitions and restrictions heaped one upon another. And within our own tradition, with a long history of urging the faithful to count the cost of discipleship, we too have stood in danger, at times, of taking ourselves so seriously that we lose sight of any joy in the faith.
The Emmaus Road story has it all—deep discouragement and dawning hope, intense confusion and astonished recognition, painful grief and joyful freshness. But as the story begins that first Easter day, with Cleopas and his walking companion making their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they are convinced that a positive view towards life was now unthinkable, given the heart-rending events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. When Jesus was alive, the two had hoped for much more. At the very least, it seemed to them as if new possibilities literally filled the air, but sadly, that same air had now become stifling and suffocating. All their hopes and dreams had seemingly been shattered. There’s nothing to do, lament the two walkers, but to embrace a far more dismal perspective towards life, to return to a faith that offers little more than a series of Thou shalt nots, a faith that keeps everyone in their place.
Suddenly a stranger appears on the road with the walkers, questioning what they have been discussing and why they look as if the whole world is caving in upon them. No doubt there were moments of awkward silence, and then one of the walkers responds, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” (Luke 24:18).
As hearers of the story, we know the stranger to be the risen Jesus, but the two walkers, overwhelmed by their grief, do not yet recognize him. And so they pour out their hearts to this stranger, speaking of their dashed hopes. In response, the stranger begins to interpret the scriptures, reminding them that suffering and pain, brokenness and grief, while intensely real, do not have the final word in life. In his commentary Luke for Everyone biblical scholar Tom Wright says of the Emmaus Road walkers,
They, like everybody else in Israel, had been reading the Bible through the wrong end of the telescope. They had been seeing it as the long story of how God would redeem Israel from suffering, but it was instead the story of how God would redeem Israel through suffering; through, in particular, the suffering which would be taken on by Israel’s representative, the Messiah. When Luke says that Jesus interpreted to them all the things about himself, throughout the Bible, he doesn’t mean that Jesus collected a few, or even a dozen, isolated texts chosen at random. He means that the whole story . . . pointed forward to a fulfillment which could only be found when God’s anointed took Israel’s suffering, and hence the world’s suffering, on to himself, died under its weight, and rose again as the beginning of God’s new creation, God’s new people.
Later, when Cleopas and his friend invite the stranger to join them for a meal, their eyes are suddenly opened as Jesus blesses bread and shares it with them. It is a meal that Tom Wright labels “the first meal of the new creation,” the first meal in which God’s new life and joy and hope and peace burst in upon a world of darkness, fear, decay, and sorrow, proclaiming that something radically new is in the works.
Once the eyes of the two disciples are opened, they can scarcely contain their excitement as they question, Were not our hearts burning within us while Jesus was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us? (v. 32). Cleopas and his companion, who had wearily walked the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, now scurry back to Jerusalem to share the good news. The fire in their souls has been re-ignited, only this time, it is far stronger.
A key component in the disciples’ inner fire is the experience of wondrous gratitude—gratitude that God is doing something markedly new in life. In a recent issue of Weavings: a Journal of the Christian Spiritual Life, Deborah Smith Douglas reminds us that “the more we grow in gratitude, the more we see that it is God alone who authors all the blessings in our lives, the more we come to trust God’s love and goodness at all times and in all places.” Surely this is the experience of the Emmaus Road walkers, whose experience of gratitude is transforming, moving them from lethargy to new energy, from fear to new levels of courage, from despair to profound hope, from grief to joyful celebration.
We are in the midst of a Sunday School series, Piecing Together the Brethren Way, celebrating the 300th anniversary of the Church of the Brethren. Last Sunday’s session focused on worship, and discussion quickly centered on the long-held Brethren conviction that worship is not simply one activity among many in the church; worship is central to all we say and do. Worship and life cannot be separated. Warren Groff, former president of Bethany Seminary, some years ago wrote an article in Brethren Life and Thought in which he listed several qualities that define the heritage memory of the Brethren—those qualities that give shape to how we understand ourselves as a unique community of God’s people. First on Groff’s list is the conviction that “we understand that no person’s faith can be vital in abstraction from life.” That is to say, our faith is not simply an intellectual exercise, divorced from our daily living. Rather, our faith impacts how we live, day-by-day, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute. And worship stands at the heart of our faith. Helen Steven is a Quaker who, in reflecting about worship in her own tradition, parallels much of Brethren experience as well. Writes Helen Steven,
I often wonder if we really know how dangerous meeting for worship is. By making ourselves totally open to the working of the Spirit, by reaching down beyond our deepest selves to the very ground of our being, who knows what may happen? We are in effect offering a blank check of our lives. This may lead us in directions we had never dreamed of, to new challenges and new ways of living adventurously. Those who think that worship . . . will give them a quiet life may be in for a surprise. It is this kind of prayer that breaks us out of the cycle of apathy, despair and helplessness, to acts of prophetic resistance we never knew we were capable of.
Cleopas and his fellow journeyer to Emmaus never dreamed of the challenges that lay before them, as they invited the intriguing stranger to break bread with them. But their eyes—and their hearts—were opened as Jesus broke bread with them, and life would never be the same again for the two disciples. Touched by the presence of the Risen Christ, the burning hearts of Cleopas and his companion are broken open to new levels of awareness of God’s gracious love, new levels of conviction that faith and life are integrally connected, new levels of compassion for hurting humanity, new levels of gratitude for the abundant gifts of life, new levels of relationship, as they recognize afresh their interconnectedness with all God’s people.
Another quality defining the Brethren “heritage memory” listed by Warren Groff is the affirmation that “no person enters the kingdom of God apart from sister and brother.” You and I were created for relationship, and it is in the gift of community that our worship most comes alive. Writes Groff,
While it is deeply personal, discipleship is not a private affair. In Christ we are called to be members one of another . . . Personal discipleship is set within the prior servanthood of Christ and the community called to share Christ’s obedience.
Is that not a critical learning for Cleopas and his companion? As Jesus breaks bread with them, not only do their personal lives take on a new direction and quality, but their first impulse is to connect with their fellow disciples, and they run breathlessly back to Jerusalem, so eager are they to share what they have seen and experienced. A new fire is in their souls, a fire from the Holy Spirit that compels them to embrace the adventure of living for the glory of God and the good of their neighbors. A consuming, nagging, every-day and every-moment demand of the soul prods the two disciples forward, so much so that with the hymn-writer they are able to affirm,
My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation.
I catch the sweet, through far-off hymn that hails a new creation.
No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.
Since love is Lord of heaven and earth, how can I keep from singing?
This is our calling, to pay attention to the nagging inner fire, to hearts burning within us—hearts that guide us to lives of gratitude, wonder, hope, and new life.