Sermon 23rd April 2017

Today, our Assistant Minister, Gill Tayleur, preaches. The reading is from Luke 24: 13-35

ROAD TO EMMAUS

Two men are walking along in a forest and suddenly they come across a bear. As the bear sees them and starts coming toward them, they’re terrified! One man drops his backpack, digs out a pair of trainers, and frantically begins to put them on. The other man says, "What are you doing?

Trainers won’t help you outrun a bear." "I don't need to outrun the bear," the 1st man says. "I just need to outrun you."

Well our Bible story has two people walking along, and they come across, not a bear but a stranger. And then what a story it turns out to be! In terms of drama, it has: sorrow, suspense, puzzlement, gradual dawning of light, unexpected actions, astonished recognition, a flurry of excitement and activity.

It is a wonderful, unique, spellbinding tale! And it’s also (did Luke realise this?) it’s also a model for a great deal of what being a Christian is all about, from that day to this. Think about it. The slow, sad dismay at the failure of human hopes; the turning to someone who might or might not help;

the discovery that in scripture, All unexpected, are keys which might unlock the central mysteries and help us to find the truth; the sudden realization of Jesus himself, present with us, warming our hearts with his truth, showing us himself as bread is broken. As theologian Tom Wright says, this describes the experience of innumerable Christians, and indeed goes quite a long way to explaining what it is about Christianity that grasps us and holds us in the face of so much that is wrong with the world, with the church, and with ourselves.

The Road to Emmaus story as a whole is sometimes used as a focus for reflection or meditation, especially when people find themselves in difficulties. It goes something like this: Imagine being on the road to Emmaus with Cleopas and his companion, bringing with you your problem,

your difficulty or your pain. Be ready to share it with the stranger who approaches, and listen for his response as he sheds the light of scripture on your situation. Let this warm your heart and give you strength, direction, clarity, comfort, whatever is needed. And so on.

Living inside this road to Emmaus story could be an inexhaustible supply of spiritual riches.

BUT it’s not just a figurative story of metaphorical value. It’s a true story too! These events really, literally, actually happened! Gospel writer Luke presents this as a real live true story, not just a made up story or legend. We can be sure of this, for several reasons.

First is because Luke names Cleopas, as one of the 2 disciples who were there. Commentators think the other person may have been his wife, and that they may be the couple Clopas and Mary who were at the foot of the cross as Jesus died, in John 19, but we can’t be sure.

Anyway, theologian Richard Bauckham, professor at Ridley Hall Cambridge, is the author of a book called Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. In it he argues that the 4 gospels are closely based on the eyewitness testimony of those who actually knew Jesus. And he says that when a personal name was given to an eyewitness. It was significant because that person was still alive. So they could be approached to confirm the matter. There are other examples, but here we have one of the people walking on the road to Emmaus, as named, Cleopas, in verse 18.

These days we make footnote references to direct readers to the original source of what we’re writing. But in those days, you’d put in the name of the living eyewitness, as the basis of the account you’re writing. So Luke is saying, this is Cleopas I’m talking about – go and check it out with him! This is eyewitness testimony.

Another way Luke shows the reliability of this story is to do with the sort of witnesses given. In verse 22 we read again, about the women who found the empty tomb. If we look back to verse 10  some of them are named: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James –more specific eyewitnesses.

BUT they’re women. I expect you’ve heard this point before, but it’s worth making again. In those days, because of their social standing, women were not considered reliable witnesses.

Their witness was not admissible evidence in court. So if you were making this story up, you’d never include women

as eyewitnesses if you wanted to make a strong case. There was no possible advantage to the church to claim

that all of the first witnesses were women. It could only have undermined the credibility of their testimony. The only possible explanation for why women are shown meeting Jesus first is because they really did. In fact some have argued that there must have been great pressure on the early church leaders to remove the women from their accounts. But they didn’t – because that’s how it really happened. So the nature of the witnesses themselves is another reason why we can be sure Luke is presenting these appearances of Jesus as alive after his resurrection, as real live events that actually happened.

And there’s one more way that Luke shows this is reliable, objective event reporting – the cluelessness of the disciples! In verse 25 we read Jesus says “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” Really, you wouldn’t put that bit in, if you were making the story up, would you? In the gospels, the disciples are often portrayed as clueless, feeble, cowardly, stupid men who abandoned and betrayed Jesus, who let him down again and again – and some of these very men were the leaders of the church when these accounts were written.

These men had changed! After Jesus’ resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, they became effective leaders

of the young church who impacted their world profoundly. Think of Paul, or Saul as he was,as a devout Jew who found Christianity untenable, offensive even.

Many people in our society are sceptical of the Christian faith as Paul was – but literally overnight he changed his mind, was convinced that Christianity was true, that Jesus was alive and worth following, and became a Christian himself. Why? Because he met the resurrected Jesus for himself! on the Damascus road. And he changed.

My point is that the leaders of the church when Luke’s account of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, was written and being circulated, come off pretty badly in those accounts. The fact that Luke and the other gospel writers don’t gloss over them is again, because they were true! It actually happened that way.

There are other reasons to believe the resurrection actually happened, and if you’d like to think more about that I commend Tim Keller’s book The Reason for God, subtitled Belief in an Age of Scepticism. It has very well-thought out explanations and reasons for faith as it addresses the most frequently voiced doubts of our time.

But in order to believe, to know something is true, it’s not just the intellectual and reasoned arguments one needs to accept.

As well as the objective, for real faith there needs to be the subjective, the personal, the heart as well as the head. And this story about the travellers on the road to Emmaus gives us plenty of food for thought about that too, about how we might encounter Jesus for ourselves. What might we learn from them? First they were open about their doubts and questions. They were talking with one another, trying to make sense of what had happened, trying to come to terms with their shock, disappointment, upset - devastation may not be too strong a word.

When the stranger joined them on the road, I wonder if they thought he might be a spy?! It might have crossed their minds? And surely taken a certain amount of courage to reveal that the two of them were followers of Jesus. Maybe they were past caring at that point, who knows?! Well Cleopas tells the stranger how their world had been turned upside down. He spills out their confusion, disorientation, things weren’t what they’d thought. He tells the stranger that they had regarded Jesus as a prophet, that they’d seen God’s power mightily with him in his miracles & in his teaching, and they believed he was the special one long-awaited from God who would redeem Israel, set her free, in verse 21.They seem to have had in mind what might be called the new Exodus:  just as Israel had been redeemed, set free from slavery in Egypt at the first Passover, so they had hoped that now Israel would be redeemed, freed from the pagan domination of Rome’s tyrannical rule. That they’d be freed to serve God in peace and holiness. As Tom Wright explains: That’s why the crucifixion was so devastating. It wasn’t just that Jesus had been the bearer of their hopes and he was now dead & gone. It was sharper than that: if Jesus had been the one to redeem, free Israel, he should have been defeating the pagans, not dying at their hands! Cleopas’ puzzled statement only needs the slightest twist to turn it into a joyful statement of early Christian faith: ‘They crucified him - but we had hoped he would  redeem Israel’ would shortly become, ‘They crucified him – and that was how he did  redeem Israel.’ And it was the resurrection that made all the difference.

But before they could begin to understand what had just happened they had to be prepared. Like everybody else in Israel, they had been reading the Scriptures 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 himself by Israel’s representative, the Messiah, the Christ.

When Luke says that Jesus interpreted to them all the things about himself, throughout the Bible, he doesn’t mean that Jesus explained a few, or even a few dozen, isolated texts, verses chosen at random. He means that the whole story of scripture pointed forwards to a fulfilment which could only be found when Gods anointed Christ or Messiah took Israel’s suffering, and hence the world’s suffering, on to himself, and died under its weight and rose again as the beginning of Gods new creation, God’s new people. This is what had to happen; and now it just had.

So it wasn’t simply that they couldn’t recognise Jesus. Surely this is a very strange feature of the resurrection stories, in Matthew & John as well as here in Luke.  

Scholars say there was nothing in the Jewish resurrection hope to indicate that this would happen, but it seems that Jesus’ body had been transformed, as it emerged from the tomb. It was the same, yet different –

a mystery which we shall perhaps never unravel until we ourselves share the same risen life!

But the fact that they couldn’t recognise Jesus at first seems to have gone with the fact that they couldn’t recognise

the events that had just happened as the story of God’s redemption and freedom. Maybe Luke is saying that we can only now know Jesus, can only recognise him fully, when we learn to see him

within the true story of God, Israel and the world.

Having a grasp of the whole of the big story of the Bible and Jesus’ centrality to all of it, can be a lightbulb moment of understanding – and really helpful. This week I found a 5 minute clip online, if you have the internet, google Gospel Project, an American website, there’s 2 videos, one for adults and one for kids, they’re both only 5 minutes long. I like the kids one! But they both show the big story of the Bible and Jesus’ place in it. You might like to take a look.

Gospel project.

But whether we’re looking at the whole sweep of Scripture or hearing a passage read in church, or reading the Bible by ourselves during the week, the risen Jesus himself can help us and teach us. We need to pray for his presence and sense of guidance, whenever we read the Bible,

individually or together. Like he did with those two on the road to Emmaus, we need to be prepared for Jesus to rebuke our foolish and faithless readings, and to listen for his fresh understanding, interpretation and application to our lives. When we do receive such relevance it’s so exciting! Maybe our hearts will burn within us, in verse 32, and we will recognise & encounter Jesus for ourselves afresh.

So that’s one way we may encounter the risen Jesus, through our reading of the Bible. Let me take this opportunity to tell you about the small groups that meet during the week, where people chat and read the Bible and pray together. We bounce ideas off one another and together seek understanding and relevance from Jesus. There are half a dozen small groups that meet at different times – watch out for more info and a flyer about them, coming next Sunday I hope.

Another way of encountering the risen Jesus is in the breaking of the bread, as they did when they got to Emmaus.

Luke describes the supper in a way that is deliberately reminiscent of the meal in the upper room

the night before Jesus died, the Last Supper, and presumably of many other meals Jesus shared with his followers. Cleopas was not one of the Twelve so presumably not present at the Last Supper, but what Jesus did then in breaking the bread and giving thanks was probably typical of how he always did it. And it was this action that revealed Jesus to them! What a moment! Can you imagine how they felt, what they thought?! No wonder they rushed off,

the 7 mile walk back to Jerusalem, to tell the other disciples straight away!

After Jesus’ death and resurrection, the shared meal, breaking bread, quickly became the central symbolic action of Jesus’ followers,

just as he commanded them.  Though Jesus was no longer physically present, they were to discover him living with and in them through this meal. It was a sacrament, a sign of Jesus’ living presence with them, and it is with us, in Holy Communion. And it fits with the other way we thought of to encounter Jesus, namely through Scripture. They go together. Without Scripture, sacrament can become a bit of magic or superstition. Without sacrament, Scripture can become an intellectual exercise disconnected from real life. Together we have Christian living

as Luke understood it.

So, to conclude, how might WE encounter the risen Jesus today, with head and with heart?

Wherever we are on our journey of faith: some of us may not be at all sure whether the resurrection really happened, whether Christianity is true, or who Jesus REALLY is. Some of us would call ourselves Christians, followers of Jesus, but would love to know him better and follow him more closely. Some of us are facing particular difficulties or challenges, in faith or in life. Well, ALL of us can read for ourselves, the eyewitness testimony about Jesus in one of the gospels. We can find more truth, clarity, strength, comfort and guidance in the rest of the Bible. We can share our questions doubts and difficulties with other Christians. And we can come to receive Communion here at church.

Perhaps most importantly of all though, we need to ASK Jesus to reveal himself to us! And be OPEN to respond when he does! Let’s take that plunge today! And so we pray….