EASTER AT DUSK: ON THE ROAD TO BELIEVING
Text: Luke 24:13-35

We have in our five New Testament witnesses to the Resurrection – Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul - - a wondrous variety of resurrection appearances: Jesus appearing to the women on their way to tell the disciples (Matthew); Jesus as a gardener to Mary Magdalene, and as a fisherman and cook (John 21); Jesus in the blazing sky on the road to Damascus. So variously does the risen Christ come into our lives.

Luke's most unique contribution to the Easter stories is his painterly depiction of Jesus' appearance on the road to Damascus. I call it "Easter at Dusk: On the Road to Believing."

I

It is late afternoon on the Sunday of Easter. Two of Jesus' followers were trudging along the road to Emmaus, a village seven miles from Jerusalem. One is named Cleopas. This could be the "Clopas" and his wife Mary mentioned in John 19:25. They were discussing the sad and strange events of the last three days. A stranger suddenly joins them. Luke says it was Jesus who drew near them and walked with them. This is grace: We work so hard to draw near Jesus; here he draws near us.

But the text says "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Here is a curious but important detail in almost all the resurrection stories: The mix of recognition and non-recognition. More than physical seeing is needed; we need the eyes of the heart to be opened.

The strangers asked, "What are you discussing?" They replied in richest irony: "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened these days?" He is, of course, the only one who does know what happened. Jesus said, leading them on, "What things?"

And they told him of Jesus' death, and of the rumors about the women who saw the empty tomb and heard the angels' announcement.

Then Jesus chided them - - it seems a bit harsh to me, as Luke tells it: "O foolish ones, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?"

"Was it not necessary?" cannot mean for me a divine predestination that required Jesus' death, that God needed Jesus killed for our sins in order for us to be forgiven. To be as transparent as I can be, the words about Jesus as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world" move me to the core of my being. I cannot understand how this works, I deeply believe it. It is important to my faith that Jesus' death and resurrection are forgiveness of sin and are the victory over the power of sin. It is impossible for me to believe God "needed" the death of Jesus. I do believe God used the death of his beloved son for the redemption of the world. Jesus helped them see the connections:

And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). This is how we read scripture: With Jesus beside us, reading over our shoulder, pointing to this and that saying: Look here; this is important.

We cannot know fully what happened along this road. Scripture is not a videocamera. I cannot go as far as Dominic Crossan, who has said: "Emmaus never happened; Emmaus always happens." That, as the expression goes, is too clever by a half.

What I can say is: Something like Emmaus happened (Luke is telling this story fifty years or so later); and something like Emmaus has been happening ever since.

II

This is what happened next. As they drew the village Jesus appeared to be going on further. They constrained him: "Stay with us. It's toward evening." They still had not recognized him, but they did not want to lose him. I can understand that. And Jesus went in to stay with them.

Then they provided hospitality to this stranger. Remember the words from Hebrews? "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews 13:2). We might even entertain Christ!

Then at table that evening Jesus - - listen for the verbs - - took bread and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them. Taking, blessing, breaking, giving: This is how Jesus always did it, how he did it at the Last Supper.

And at that moment, in the breaking of the bread, they recognized who he was. The eyes of their hearts were opened. And at that moment of recognition he suddenly vanished from their sight.

Here is the mystery of the Easter appearances: He is suddenly here, he is suddenly gone. The divine presence present then absent, but present still by its traces of light, warmth and love. It's how Samuel Terrien describes the experience of Divine: "the elusive presence."

Then the two said to one another, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?"

Here we ponder the importance of memory in the experience of God. It is memory that allows the whole of who we are to be open to the divine: Mind, heart, spirit, the conscious and the unconscious, left brain and right brain, waking life and dream life. Memory lets all be more fully involved in what has happened and what continues to happen.

Then that very evening the two went to share with the eleven what had happened and how Jesus "had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread."

III

The road to Emmaus is the road to believing. Easter at dusk. Easter faith does not happen the same for all. For some it happens in the brilliant morning light. For others in the warm shadows of early evening. For some it happens in an instant. For others it happens over time, as with our two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Emmaus tells us that Easter faith happens as two or three are gathered in Christ's name. That was Jesus' promise: "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them."

Easter faith happens as we open scripture together and talk together, and suddenly Christ joins us in our conversation.

Easter faith happens as we break bread together, and remember together and dream together.

We are embarking this week as a church on what we call "Holy Conversations." It feels like an Emmaus-like thing to me. "Holy Conversations" are structured conversations which lead us to share with one another what is most important in our lives. Questions like the ones we've been asking as we've read Luke together: Who am I? What is God calling me to do, to be? And who is my neighbor?

The deacon leadership has crafted five questions, about our life together in Christ here, about ministry and spirituality and calling. We want you to come and carry on holy conversation around these questions. The first time is this afternoon at 5 p.m., then two times this Wednesday: 5 p.m. and 6:45 p.m.

I hope you will come. I pray that these times will be Emmaus-like: Holy conversation with one another, and with the risen one at our side.

IV

The Emmaus story is for some of you your favorite resurrection story. Perhaps it's because faith here dawns slowly. Perhaps it's because faith happens in a home, amid pots and pans and around a dinner table.

This week a painting and a poem about a painting have drawn me deeper into Emmaus. The poet is Denise Levertov and the painting is by the Spanish artist Velazquez; both poem and painting are based on Emmaus. I offer them to you as you travel toward that village and journey toward believing.

Let's look at the painting first. Let your eyes rest on it. For many years until 1933 the painting showed only the servant girl at the kitchen table. The outer edges were blackened. We thought it just a domestic scene. Then when the painting was cleaned the figures at the left top corner appeared. This is Emmaus-like, isn't it?!

You see the main figure, an African servant girl. In Velazquez's Spain the black, Islamic Moors were an under class. Velazquez made her the center, the hero. She is handling the rich, gleaming serving vessels. Her left hand is holding a porcelain wine pitcher. She is about to glance, or has been glancing, over her right shoulder into the next room where three figures sit at table. In your print you can see only two, but in a larger, clearer print you can see the hand of the third figure reaching toward Jesus in the middle.

If you look at the beautiful young woman's face you can see her eyes. They seem to know something. She is about to turn toward the three at the table again. Is she about to serve the wine?

Now the poem. Levertov enters Emmaus through the servant girl's eyes:

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his – the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
Had seen her? Had spoken as if to her?

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he'd laid on the dying and made them well?

Surely that face– ?
The man they'd crucified for sedition and blasphemy.
The man whose body disappeared from its tomb.
The man it was rumored now some women had seen this morning, alive?

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don't recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the winejug she's to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening,

swings round and sees
the light around him.

She swings round, as Mary Magdalene swung around and saw the risen Jesus in the garden (John 20:14).

Yes, he is the one who had spoken love and healed the sick, who had befriended the outcasts and been executed on a Roman gallows. He is here. He is with us again. We see the light around him.

It is a light that feels like a light within. Our hearts are strangely warmed.

Emmaus is the road to believing for us where doubt and faith live together. Denise Levertov, who wrestled herself with doubt and faith, wrote two poems about Thomas the doubter. Here is what Thomas says in one when Christ agrees to let him touch his wounds:

...what I felt was not |
scalding pain, shame for my
obstinate need,
but light, light streaming
into me, over me.¹

This is what the servant girl sees, feels. This is what happens at Emmaus, when Emmaus happens to us, on the road to believing.

Alleluia.