The Third Sunday of Easter, Year A

April 6, 2008

Luke 24: 13-35

The Rev. Thomas William Blake

There was a road, not paved, hidden in the woods near my house. Some friends and I discovered it on our bikes one day; we were in grade school. We weren’t sure where it led, but we had the sense that it led somewhere away, somewhere different, somewhere where there was no one to tell us what to do or to make our lives more chaotic and confusing. It was a place where we went to sort things out, to try and make sense of things, to ground ourselves as best we could.

Tucked away here in Easter season is the story of another road, a road leading out of the city of Jerusalem, a place in chaos, still rife with betrayal and blood and confusing discoveries of empty tombs. It is the road to Emmaus, a village only short distance from the city, but also someplace worlds apart, a place where things are presumed to be simpler and less chaotic. The story tells of people walking away from all the chaos, conversing, trying to get on with their lives.

Now, before I go on, let me clarify. With this talk about roads, you might have guessed this to be a sermon about spiritual journeys. It is not. That metaphor, I believe, is overused at best and inaccurate at worst in relation to the Christian faith. This is not a sermon about progressing along some continuum of personal fulfillment; this is a sermon about interruption—God’s way of abruptly interrupting our lives, intruding upon us, converting us, showering us with grace.

Roads rarely lead us where we expect them to, especially if God has his way. I’m reminded of another excursion, not long afterward, also on a road leading out of Jerusalem but this time toward Damascus. Someone is struck blind and has some sort of mysterious conversion experience, and suddenly his life is turned upside down, shaken up, turned in a new direction. His eyes are opened to something new. The road leads him to someplace unimaginable.

We all have our roadway surprises, no doubt. We think we know where we are going, what lies ahead, where our lives are leading. We envision a tidy, well planned excursion, but then God comes along and changes everything. A colleague’s spouse told me one day she didn’t marry a priest but she got one anyway, and it wasn’t an easy transition. The whole thing nearly caused their marriage to fall apart but they made it work. God has this way of shaking us, changing us.

C.S. Lewis wrote of his conversion experience from atheism to Christianity. “You must picture me alone in that room,” said Lewis, “night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.” (Lewis, 1966, Surprised by Joy)

Easter season is not about our journeys; it is about our intersection with God’s journey. Mary Magdalene, at the empty tomb, talking to someone she presumes to be the gardener, is actually standing in the presence of the risen Christ. Then, surprisingly, unexpectedly, mysteriously, her eyes are opened and she recognizes him. Thomas is a little more skeptical at first, but then he recognizes the Lord as well. God intrudes in these people’s lives and changes them, turns darkness into light.

“On that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus… talking with each other about all the things that had happened. While they were talking, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them answered, Are you the only stranger who does not know the things that have taken place?’”

Peculiarly, Jesus doesn’t reveal himself here; he lets them continue walking, continue trying to make sense of things, and he even calls them foolish and goes into some diatribe about the particularities of their scriptures and how somehow they all supposedly add up. They still don’t grasp it though; they still don’t know with whom they’re conversing. Faith, it turns out, isn’t something to be grasped; it is something to be received. They—we—are on God’s time.

Just beyond that dirt road near my house there were trails in the woods still further off the beaten path; we would leave our bikes behind and pursue them. Some of the paths were not very well cleared, some were adorned with thorny vines that entangled us and tore our clothes and pricked us till we were bleeding, but we pressed on. I don’t know why; I don’t even know where the paths led; we never seemed to reach the end, but we pressed on.

I suppose it is some innate optimism within us that somewhere ahead we’ll discover something helpful, something that’ll change our lives for the better, and so we press on—farther and farther from where we started, from what we left behind. We wander like the Israelites through the wilderness: the sun beating down on us burning our skin, drying us out. We step over logs where poisonous snakes make their homes. We worry about finding water and food. But we press on.

There’s one problem with that analogy, though. The Israelites might well have gone back if left to their own accord. For them it was God who kept them pressing on. God kept reminding them of the Promised Land. In the meantime they complained, second guessed God, and pointed fingers at Moses, their leader. It wasn’t that God wasn’t with them. It was just that, for some reason, God wanted them to wander first in wide open space, to explore, contemplate, discover.

God’s time is not our time. The Exodus from slavery in Egypt reveals this, but so does the Exodus from the chaos of Jerusalem. The roads to Damascus and Emmaus are more than a way out; they are places where God is. We don’t necessarily go to these places seeking God, but maybe that’s the point. God is not sought; God seeks us, and not on our own terms. God meets us in the unlikeliest of times and places such as when we are tired, torn, confused.

I used to try to tame the notion of radical conversion experiences. I thought they were out of sync with Episcopalians, and I was not alone in that thinking. I found among my dad’s belongings a dictionary of the Episcopal Church from the 1950s. It likened conversion on the one hand to something like a strike of lightning, and on the other hand to a flower slowly, gradually, opening. The dictionary suggested Episcopalians were more familiar with the latter.

It was probably an apt assessment, and even perhaps in keeping with my own experience, although I have not always experienced God’s prodding to be gentle; sometimes it is more like a brutally honest John the Baptist standing in my face yelling, calling me to repentance, or like Jesus exasperatingly overturning tables in the temple.

The Emmaus story comforted me, though, this week in the wake of Keith’s and Kris’ departure from Grace Church. Transitions can be trying. The Emmaus story underscores that the risen Christ walks with me even when I don’t recognize him. It is important and comforting to come to that realization as I—as we-- embark in a new direction without the Dobyns.

That notwithstanding, however, I don’t consider it to be the main point of the narrative. Remember, it is not our journeys that ultimately are important, but rather our intersection with God’s journey. That is a crucial distinction.

As they approach the village of Emmaus Jesus begins to walk ahead of them as if he intended to go somewhere else, but they urge him to stay. And here we come to the climax of the narrative. Listen carefully. “So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?’”

The Emmaus story is about radical conversion, about God’s intrusion into our lives when we least expect it, about God’s opening our eyes and setting our hearts on fire, about God’s not only assuaging our grief but also filling us with joy, about God’s empowering us to embrace and share the good news of his resurrection. Earlier I quoted from C.S. Lewis book, Surprised by Joy. It is, I believe, aptly named. The Emmaus story, Easter, is about being surprised by joy.

And so, God we pray, as we wander aimlessly along roads, through the woods, wherever we go to escape the chaos of the world, intrude upon us—yes, even upon Episcopalians like us. Open our eyes, set our hearts on fire, stir us up, transform us, surprise us with joy, empower us to share your good news with the world.

Amen.