The Road to Emmaus

Sunday 26^th – Easter 3 - The Road to Emmaus

Acts 2: 14a, 36-41. In the Lukan scheme of the giving of the Spirit on the Jewish feast of Pentecost, Peter stands to address the crowd and this truncated (by the lectionary compilers) version we have set for us today concentrates on the fact that because of the Easter events – the crucifixion, resurrection and the giving of the Spirit, God has declared “Jesus is Lord” that is Jesus and not Caesar. Therefore, what the people need to do in response is repent. To turn their lives around and accept that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). This requires a mental, spiritual, and behavioural change so large Jesus said it would be like being “born again”

1 Peter 1: 17-23. Christians are called “exiles” in this letter which most agree is meant metaphorically, meaning that a Christian’s real home is in heaven. And we are to live in “reverent fear” of God. Reverent fear would be best described as reverent awe nowadays as a reaction to a divine experience. In this letter again it talks of being “born anew” – not just a private spiritual experience but affecting the whole way we act, think and see the world and others.

Luke 24: 13-35. This masterful “Road to Emmaus” story is a perfect example of the parabolic nature of Luke’s storytelling. It answers the question, how is disbelief dispelled and Jesus revealed to followers? Jesus had been travelling with them unawares but was revealed through him interpreting the scriptures to them (placing their former teacher in a cosmic divine context)  and finally being revealed in the breaking of bread – something that doesn’t happen mechanically, or through intellectual endeavour but is a gift of God. Here we have the basic eucharistic structure taking shape that would underpin Christian liturgy until the end of time.

No resurrection appearance story better reveals its parabolic nature than Luke’s “Road to Emmaus” story.

It concerns a couple described as disciples – so followers of Jesus in his life – who are as yet confused and disorientated regarding his wider, indeed cosmic significance. They describe Jesus as a prophet.

And doesn’t this describe a lot of people who acknowledge Jesus as a prophet or great teacher, or a healer or a combination of all those things but stop short of accepting him as Son of God and God’s anointed one to reveal God’s eternal saving will for all creation

The story tells us that Jesus travels with the disciples without him being recognised (which is significant), even while they recount the strange rumours they have been hearing about events around Jerusalem.

Significant because the recognition sought is not just recognising a person but recognising the deeper meaning and being of that person.

How does Jesus reveal himself to the pair?

He expounds the scriptures to point out where he has been foretold. Now the mere fact that he has to do that is testament to the fact that it is not obvious. It is hidden in plain sight we might say nowadays.

St. Paul, writes that Jesus died and was raised “according to the scriptures” without giving much of a clue where in the scriptures these passages occur. There is little that is clearly stated, just hints and nudges and symbols. I think the servant songs of Isaiah have served the church best and can be most clearly interpreted as relating to a suffering messiah, but they are no silver bullet.

In the end it comes down to faith and faith is a gift of God. A crucified Messiah is as Paul says “foolishness to the gentiles and a stumbling block to Jews”. You may be able to convince yourself intellectually of the truth of the resurrection but I wouldn’t bet on it. For Christians faith comes first and understanding follows.

So when we look at the pages of the Hebrew scriptures through the lens of our faith in the resurrection of Jesus and when we do that certain things leap out at us and speak to us.

Seeing the Messiah and the Spirit of the Messiah in the pages of scripture is the first thing that Christians do. And the Church has been doing that ever since.

Then they invited Jesus to stay with them, and I think for Christians the invite is important. For Jesus to become visible or tangible to us we have to invite him to stay with us, in our hearts. We have to open the door of our hearts to him and invite him in, just as it is implied in the famous Holman Hunt painting “The light of the world”.

Jesus accepts the invitation and sits down, takes bread, blesses it, breaks it and shares it with them and this is the point that Jesus becomes real to them – in the moment of love shared in a tangible way.

Here the last supper and the feeding miracles are recalled in this symbolic act.

Then Jesus disappears from sight. We don’t and can’t have Jesus with us as a physical presence. He is carried with us in our hearts when he is made real in our lives, both through the Eucharist itself and spiritually through Eucharistic living.

How do you live Eucharistically? Always remember that Eucharist means “Thanksgiving”. To live thankfully and gratefully for life itself and its beauty and diversity is to open up our minds and souls to God, the creator and sustainer and redeemer of all life.

We give thanks in the Eucharist for God’s loving sacrifice and service in Jesus Christ so we try to love as we ourselves were first loved.

The Eucharist is not just a church service, it is an attitude of heart and mind, an attitude that unites Christians from every land, language and culture.

The Spirit of God or the Spirit of Christ (the same thing) revealed in loving service transcends denomination and is at the heart of church worship and church life.

God in Christ reconciled the entire world to himself. The church are God’s agents proclaiming anew to each generation that reconciliation to a world that, just like those two disciples in Luke’s story, didn’t quite yet understand the significance of Jesus. We need to understand that we have to be Christ to the world – that he wouldn’t be a physical presence with them.

In his Spirit we are his presence in the world which is my cue to end with that wonderful saying by Teresa of Avila.

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

   

My Lord and my God.

Next Sunday – Easter 2

Acts 2: 14a, 22-32. Luke links Pentecost to the Easter events by placing an account of the death and resurrection of Jesus into Peter’s mouth on the day we celebrate the coming of the Spirit. Paul tells us that Jesus was raised “according to the scriptures” without telling us where those scriptures are exactly though here we have one such prophetic passage mentioned – psalm 16: 8-11.

1 Peter 1: 3-9. The Jesus of the past is affirmed, and we expect him in the future, but this is a faith that includes the love of Jesus in the present. This letter is addressing people far removed from Jesus’ actual life in Palestine, in terms of time and location, much as we are ourselves.

John 20: 19-31.  Many scholars believe this to be the original ending of John’s gospel and it certainly reads like it. We have John’s equivalent story of “Pentecost” happening on Easter Sunday and the story of “doubting” Thomas. This episode is to underline the nature of resurrection faith. Thomas in fact proclaims “My Lord and my God” without needing to touch Jesus’ scars. Then follows the statement that all who believe without seeing the actual wounds of Jesus are blessed.

Saint Thomas is forever saddled with the epithet “Doubting” which I’m sure must annoy him!

After all, from his lips comes the most straightforward and direct statement of belief in Jesus in the Bible when he says “My Lord and my God” and he does so without actually putting his hands in Jesus’ wounds, even though that’s what he said he wanted to do.

Thomas also became a great evangelist to the Indian subcontinent and founded the church named after him there – the Mar Thoma church of southern India.

He exists as a great example of someone who can change their mind when confronted with truth and his subsequent missionary exploits mean that he would have been led by the Spirit of Jesus, a spirit that Jesus breathed on the disciples earlier in the scene.

In my Easter sermon, I connected Good Friday, Easter Sunday and Pentecost  as being all of a piece, each of which can only being understood in connection with the other two events.

Liturgically, in the church, we wait fifty days to celebrate the giving of the Spirit on the feast of Pentecost but we only do that because it suits us liturgically to  follow the scheme of events in St. Luke’s book of Acts and not John’s version.

But in John’s gospel the giving of the Spirit happens on Easter Sunday which connects those three great events into one weekend.

This is what I meant by not worrying about the historicity of the different gospel accounts and concentrating on the MEANING of the giving of the Spirit.

The cornerstone of the preaching of Jesus was “The kingdom of God”. The first time we hear Jesus, in Mark’s gospel, the earliest gospel, his message was “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand”.

Being energised and led by the Spirit of God is what it means to be a conscious part of the Kingdom of God.

Drawing on John’s gospel some more, his conversation with Nicodemus expands this very well. And remember Nicodemus was a respected religious teacher, but Jesus tells him that he cannot see or perceive the Kingdom of God unless he is born from above or undergoes a spiritual re-birth by being born again by the Spirit of God.

So, it turns out that the phrase “born again” isn’t a phrase invented in the 20^th century by American charismatic Christians, it goes all the way back to Jesus.

Spiritual re-generation can be a dramatic life-changing event like it was for St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or a gradual process of awakening. And even for Paul the dramatic event would only have introduced a process of spiritual regeneration, which according to Paul took place over about 14 years and would then have been honed in the cut and thrust of theological debate.

Spiritual awakening (judging by my own experience), comes in fits and starts, in dispersed by fallow periods, and even dark nights of the soul.

It is not a linear progression and will sometimes even sometimes contain periods of regression.

I admit that this period of enforced lockdown has nudged me towards a much more disciplined prayer life than I have ever had before, and I have researched and read more than I have done previously. So, you could say that for some of us, an unexpected bonus of being forcibly contained, was to spiritually reach out beyond our physical homes to seek God’s Spirit in a more disciplined and conscientious way.

And I do hope and pray that this occurs to each of you as well. For the events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday are history. For them to affect the way we think and act in the present we need to be enlightened by the Spiritual regeneration that completes the process.

The amazing thing about Easter and Pentecost is that each and every one of us believers is an integral part of it.  It all happened because of us and for us. Pray to God to enlighten your mind soul and spirit, to align your thoughts more with his thoughts, and empower you to love more freely.  

Jesus Lives!

Acts 10: 34-43. This thumbnail sketch of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus ends with the statement that all who believe in Jesus can be assured that their sins are forgiven. The main theme is the universal scope of Jesus’ life and mission (verse 34) even though his roots were in Israel (verse36)

Colossians 3: 1-4. Whilst we are assured of future glory in the future, Christians have to live in this world now. For believers, our true location is in God or “hidden in Christ”. This is not a doctrine of mindless euphoria, because this new status carries with it a new imperative. “Seek the things that are above” (verse 1), so the Christian community must live out our new “risen” status in practical terms.

John 20: 1-18. This is my favourite of the various different accounts of that first Easter morning because of its intensely personal nature. Mary Magdalene sees Jesus in the dark of the garden and doesn’t recognise him. I have always found it significant that recognition came when Jesus addresses her by name. Then she calls him teacher. When he stresses that he is yet to return to the Father she refers to him as Lord. We are not ever in this world going to discover exactly what happened. But the main point is that Christians believed something stupendous had happened. They believed that God had vindicated Jesus. The disciples were transformed, and the church was born. Can we share in their gladness and trust, and let the risen Christ transform our lives?

I will reflect on the meaning of the resurrection in this reflection.

I will draw on all the gospel accounts and St. Paul to do this, not just the account from John which recounts the meeting between Jesus and Mary Magdalene in the Garden, even while it is my favourite of all the accounts.

Let’s be frank. All the gospel accounts differ from each other and there are discrepancies both large and small, but whatever the historical accuracy  of the various accounts we get nowhere discussing whether they are all historically accurate or not.

To understand Easter Sunday we need to discover the meaning behind the resurrection rather than enter fruitless discussions as to whether there was one woman or three go to the tomb, whether there was one or two angels, or whether Jesus appeared only around Jerusalem as in Luke, or Galilee as in Matthew.

And to help us differentiate between historicity and meaning I’d like you to consider the parables of Jesus.

I have never talked with anyone who has ever been bothered about whether there really was a man who had two sons and one left and ended up working with pigs, or whether there really was a man who was attacked and robbed who was ignored by a priest but helped by a Samaritan. Their factual basis doesn’t affect one iota the fact that these parables contain TRUTH.

They are truth filled without necessarily being historical events.

By saying this I am not suggesting that the resurrection was not a historical event, only that the historical accuracy of what may or may not have happened is far less important than the meaning of what happened on Easter Sunday, which is why I invite us all to consider the resurrection in that light.

The three truths that are attested to by the Bible common to all the gospels and Paul are;

1.     Jesus lives

2.     Because Jesus lives it follows that Jesus is Lord

3.     Because Jesus lives and Jesus is Lord, this is seen as the beginning, the “firstfruit” of the general resurrection of all things known in the Old Testament as “The day of the Lord”.

The combined testimony of the gospels tell us that Jesus is alive and continues to be experienced but in a very different way and these things are still true for all of us and our experience of Jesus today.

 He is no longer confined to time and space.

He can journey with his followers without being recognised.

He can be experienced in different places at the same time.

He can vanish at the moment of recognition.

He can be experienced in the breaking of bread and

He will abide with his followers to the end of the age.

As we read in John’s version of events, our recognition of Jesus is very personal. Mary Magdalene only recognises Jesus when he addresses her by name – “Mary”.

The essential truth of “Jesus lives” is that Jesus is a figure of the present, not just the past and this is grounded in over 2000 years of Christian experience – and even if you haven’t experienced that Jesus says in the gospel.

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe”

Because Jesus lives this leads us to our second affirmation that Jesus is Lord.

Because Jesus lives, God has said yes to Jesus and everything that he said about himself and his relationship with the Father is just as he said it was and so Jesus is Lord.

Interestingly when Mary Magdalene first recognizes Jesus she calls him “Teacher”. When Jesus then says he has to ascend to his Father she then refers to him as Lord.

It also says that God has vindicated all that Jesus said and the way he lived his life, and a giant No to the powers that put him to death. The Kingdom of God trumps all the oppressive and unjust systems of this world and affirms that they will never have the final word.

Jesus Lives and Jesus is Lord leads us to the final disclosure of reality articulated by Paul which is that the resurrection of Jesus is the first act – the first fruit as he says of the process that will eventually bring all things in the world together in God. The fervent hope that God will break into world history and start a giant clean-up of a violent and unjust world started with the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

We cannot divorce Easter Sunday from Good Friday. To do so risks sentimentality and vacuity.

Easter is the reversal of Good Friday. We believe not in resurrection alone but death and resurrection.

This is true not only for all mortal life, not even just for every dark and bleak situation in life, from genocides to Pandemics.

It is essentially true for every human response to Jesus.

We also have to die to old ways of doing, and being and being re-born to a new way of seeing and doing.

This is the Christian WAY that results from uniting ourselves with Christ in his death and resurrection – a process that Paul equates with baptism into Christ. Immersion in water (the original way of baptising) represents death and resurrection.

That means that we move from being self-centred to being more God-centred, which for most of us is a livelong process. Paul calls this “Christ living in us” or through us, which involves us becoming more Christ-like.

Easter means that God’s great clean-up of the world has begun, but it won’t happen without us.

St. Augustine said “We, without God cannot, God without us, will not”

Just as we cannot separate Good Friday from Easter, we cannot separate either of them from Pentecost, when God’s Spirit inspires his followers to take up their cross, and follow him on the way that leads to life.

This is the Christian way – the way of personal transformation – based on Jesus Lives and Jesus is Lord.   

Which procession are we in?

Isaiah 50: 4-9a. The most intensely personal of the “servant songs” of Isaiah (even though the word “servant” is never mentioned) mentioning the tongue, ears, cheeks, beard and face reminding us that it is real human beings that are called to follow and execute God’s will. Christians have always from earliest times applied this prophetic writing to the trials of Jesus. Verse 4 talks about the servant being taught, and it becomes clear that his teacher is suffering and through that suffering his faith grows that God is with him.

Philippians 2: 5-11. This may be the earliest statement of Christian faith that the church possesses because the New Testament letters all predate the gospels and we’d have to wait about 300 years for the Nicene creed. Scholars believe it may be a hymn that pre-dates Paul which is extraordinary because of its exalted view of Christ – a view that is of the same order as John’s prologue. It assumes Christ’s pre-existent status, his self-abasement to earthly life and death, and exultation to universal Lordship.  

Matthew 21: 1-11. What may be missed in this depiction of Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem is that it was a premeditated act. The donkey and colt had been prepared and waiting for people to turn up and give the “code word” for them to release the Donkey and colt to enable Jesus to act. You could call it a subversive pre-planned demonstration in modern parlance, a direct challenge to the domination system (Roman power exercised through local Jewish collaborators) that operated in the Holy Land at that time. Matthew quotes the prophet Zechariah to undergird what was really happening. In the rest of the quote from Zechariah, he states what kind of challenge this was. His kingship was to be one of peace, rather than the oppressive militaristic system operated by the Roams in collaboration with the Jewish authorities.

My views on “Palm Sunday” and Holy Week as a whole have been shaped by the insights of an American Lutheran theologian called Marcus Borg, now sadly died.

I have only made the effort to actually go and listen in person to just two theologians in my life. One was Keith Ward, Anglican priest and Professor of Divinity at Oxford university, that was just to Hertfordshire, and the other was Marcus Borg, for whom I travelled all the way to Edinburgh to listen to him.

His central premise is that the whole of Jesus’ ministry is the story of the clash of two very different ways of ordering society. One, represented in his time and circumstances by the Roman empire, based on force and subjugation and unjust structures and the other by the Kingdom of God characterised by peace love and justice.

This clash of kingdoms, two different mindsets, came to a head in what we now call Holy Week and that week starts with what we call Palm Sunday.

What is generally not appreciated is that there would have been two processions entering Jerusalem in the days leading up to the Passover festival.

The Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate did not live in Jerusalem. He lived on the coast in a city called Caesarea Maritime about 60 miles away which was the Roman administrative centre. But for important festivals he and a force of Roman soldiers would make the journey to Jerusalem, primarily as a show of force, and an attempt to keep the peace at a time of heightened religious fervour.

Can you imagine that procession entering from the Western side of Jerusalem to deliver Pilate to his seat in Fortress Antonia overlooking the Jewish Temple ?

A visual feast of cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, helmets, weapons, armour glinting in the sun, banners, golden eagles on poles, the beating of drums, the sound of marching feet. They represented not only Roman imperial power but Roman imperial theology. The emperor that they represented was not only emperor, he was called “Son of God”, “Lord” and “Saviour”.

Pilate’s military procession proclaimed not only Roman imperial power but also Roman imperial theology.

And the onlookers, the Jewish peasantry, looking on, curious perhaps, but resentful and quiet.

The other procession, entering Jerusalem from the other side of the city was very different. Jesus, unarmed and without any pomp or protection, rode down the Mount of Olives into the Eastern side of the city on the back of a donkey.

The onlookers, the ordinary people went wild throwing their cloaks on the ground, waving branches in the air and shouting “Hosanna!”

Hosanna’s meaning changes with the context but in this context Hosanna would mean “Save us!”.   

Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem was what we would call today a pre-planned counter demonstration.

Notice the donkey and colt had been prepared in advance by Jesus to be used and could be appropriated by two of his disciples when they delivered the right phrase to their keepers.

The clash of Kingdoms, the kingdoms of this world represented by Rome and the Kingdom of God represented by Jesus were entering the arena to confront each other for the final time in Jesus’ 3 year ministry.

As an aside, much is made in Christian sermonising that the crowd that cheered Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday had turned by Friday when before Pilate they were urging Pilate to crucify him but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that they were the same people.

The people who cheered Jesus into Jerusalem, were the ordinary people of Jerusalem, the peasants, the people Jesus spoke for, but the people baying for Jesus’ death would have been a smaller crowd, insiders, the collaborators. After all this confrontation happened in Pilate’s palace. Someone had to let them in, and they weren’t going to let the hoi polloi in there.

The confrontation there was an unsuspecting Roman authority surrounded by his Jewish collaborators who worked together to oppress the people and they could see their position threatened by this upstart preacher from Galilee.

But that lies in the future. Palm Sunday sets the stage for the final showdown between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this world.

Without giving anything away – spoiler alert – the Kingdoms of this world think they score a huge victory over the Kingdom of God when they crucify Jesus, but this turns out to be a short lived, apparent victory.

My next sermon on YouTube will be on Easter Sunday to find out God’s verdict on who really won this battle.