Sermon on Easter 3A: Where can We find Truth?
Today’s gospel, the story of Jesus on the road to Emmaus, is only told in Luke. It follows immediately upon Luke’s version of the resurrection story, which has its differences from those in Mark, Matthew, and John. In Luke’s version, which we did not read, but is summed up by the two men walking to Emmaus, a number of women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary mother of James, had been to the tomb, talked to two men, identified as angels, had no encounter with Jesus, and told the other apostles about all of this. The reaction of the men to the women’s story? “[T]his story of theirs seemed pure nonsense” (NJB). The men did not believe the women who reported factually, what they had seen and heard.
In that story and in today’s gospel story, people fail to see the truth that is right there before them.
To sum up the gospel briefly: on the road to Emmaus, the eyes of the two disciples who were discussing current events about Jesus “were kept from recognizing him.” What kept their eyes from recognizing him? The text does not say. They knew something was up: their hearts burned. But they remained blinded until the breaking of the bread. Then their eyes were opened. What exactly made their eyes able to see reality fully? Again, the text does not say.
The common assumption is that Jesus was working some of his mumbo jumbo to prevent recognition until an appropriate moment. I find this explanation rather silly—why would Jesus not want to speak with more authority? And those blessed, lucky men, who had the scriptures interpreted to them directly—how much more would they have paid attention and perhaps reported to be written down what Jesus had explained, if they had recognized him all along?
I say, their eyes were unable to see because they did not know how to see. Likewise the apostles told the women their story was nonsense, because they themselves could not see sense. People often blind ourselves often to what is true and real, even when it is right in front of our eyes. Jesus himself chided the men in their conversation on the road to Emmaus that they should have paid better attention to Moses and the prophets. Fortunately for them, and us, a symbolic action broke through to the truth: “he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
We Episcopalians have made this way of knowing Jesus essential to our worship, through the eucharist. This encounter with Christ in the bread, and in the wine, may not offer the clarity as provided by Jesus himself when speaking as he did around Emmaus (and again in Jerusalem as Luke’s gospel ends with another appearance of Jesus to the apostles and companions).
Because of this pandemic, we have recently been deprived of the encounter with Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
We will return to eating together at the common table.
In the meantime, we should not to be blinded by prejudices and expectations, but to keep our eyes open to truth, to seek it out, mull it over, talk about it, and then do what is sensible and sometimes hard, not what is foolish and easy.
Written for the parish of St. James & St. George 2020 April 26
URL: <http://therev.brianpavlac.org/srms/20200426.html