Easter 3 - St Mary's

Luke 24:13-35

Whenever I read this passage the question that niggles at me is how did Cleopas and the person,  who for the purposes of the sermon I’m going to call Mrs Cleopas not realise it was Jesus they were talking to? We’ll park that for the moment but we will come back to it.

But first we’re going to follow the Cleopases as they travel to Emmaus on the first Easter Day - a seven mile journey which is about as far as St Mary’s is from St Thomas Becket in Chapel-en-le-Frith  - we’ll watch them and eavesdrop.  

But before we set out what do we know about them?  Only what we learn by reading between the lines of the passage - the Cleopases don’t seem to have been in Jesus’s inner circle - the men and women who had followed him from early days - but nonetheless they were people who had heard him and hoped in him and despite the crucifixion still held he ‘was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,’ the one they had hoped ‘was the one to redeem Israel.’

From the passage it sounds as though after Good Friday a core of those who had loved Jesus had gathered together to give each other support - they’d all thought he’s be part of their future but he was dead now so what could they do with the hope they’d invested in him?

Into that grieving confused company news had come that morning  ‘some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’  

Now we know how the story carried on but Jesus’s followers didn’t. And an empty tomb and an angel message aren’t self explanatory. 

Why aren’t the Cleopases happier, this first Easter Day - people they trust have told us something extraordinary, but they have no idea what difference it makes so when Jesus asks them ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.’

Now we can eavesdrop “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. It would have been wonderful to hear what he said to them, how he took the stories and the prophecies they learned at their mothers’ knees, the things  they knew inside out and told them what they really meant, showed how what had happened to him was inevitable. 

Steeped in the OT they were sure they knew what God wanted, the kind of leader his Messiah was going to be - away with oppressors, away with corruption - when the Messiah comes everything will change - nobody will be able to stand up to him. And after the triumph of Palm Sunday it looked to them like Jesus was that kind of leader. Till the crucifixion they had been able to look at Jesus and with a bit of squeezing and stretching fit him into their existing ideas. 

After the crucifixion that was impossible. First all their hopes collapsed, but then came the  resurrection.

Augustine wrote this for Christmas but it gives a sense of how Jesus went against the grain of what they expected of their Messiah,

Man’s maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;

that the Bread might hunger,

the Fountain thirst,

the Light sleep,

the Way be tired on its journey;

that the Truth might be accused of false witness,

the Teacher be beaten with whips,

the Foundation be suspended on wood;

that Strength might grow weak;

that the Healer might be wounded;

that Life might die.

Jesus reworked everything they thought they knew - and it wasn’t just words, he was the reinterpretation  of the old ideas in human form. From now on they wouldn’t go to scripture to work out what the Messiah was like they would go to Jesus and then see what those scriptures looked like in the flesh. 

If we had been just a little behind them that day we would have seen Mr and Mrs Cleopas  begin to wake up “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ We would have seen the spring come back into their step. 

It was only at the meal table when he took the bread, blessed it and broke it that the penny finally dropped ‘they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight.  The unhappy confusion they had been left with that morning had been blown away. 

He showed them that what happened to him had been the only way to bring about not just Israel’s redemption but ours too. Jesus is the king of a Kingdom that starts by changing people’s hearts. What had been a confusion became a wonder. God in Jesus went far beyond their  hopes so That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

As I prepared this sermon I realised I had been niggling about the wrong question - the how of their not recognising him isn’t the point - it’s the why that matters.

The resurrection isn’t just about the miraculous escape of one man from death. Jesus’s appearances aren’t just the demonstration of a successful escape act. Before the Cleopases could recognise it was Jesus they were talking to they needed to know what his resurrection was for and how they had a share in it. 

The resurrected Jesus is our first sight of God’s pattern for all his people. The Jesus the Cleopases meet on the Emmaus road is God’s new order in flesh and blood - this new resurrection life is what he has in mind for all of his people. This is for us as well as the Cleopases.

It’s a human characteristic to try and second guess God, ‘We know what God is like. We know  what He’ll do.’ It’s as much a trap for us as for the early church -  they had to wait and see what God would do - he went far beyond their hopes and expectations - and he hasn’t changed.  

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, ‘For I greet him the days I meet him, and bless when I understand.’ We don’t need to understand the hows of God’s actions to receive his grace.