He asked them, What things?

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS Dianne E. Deming Wicomico Presbyterian Church April 30, 2017 Luke 24:13-35 The lectionary story this morning takes place later in the day on the first Easter. Two of them Jesus close followers were walking to Emmaus a village about 7 miles from Jerusalem. We find out that one of the person s names is Cleopas. He had a wife named Mary, who is listed in John s Gospel as one of the women standing at the foot of the cross. Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother s sister, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Mary Magdalene. (John 1:25) It would make sense that the person walking down the road to Emmaus with Cleopas that afternoon was none other than the one who had watched their dear friend die only days before, Cleopas wife, but Luke does not specify. As the two walked what was certainly the longest 7 miles of their lives, they discussed what they had seen and heard over the past week. A stranger joined them on the road and asked what they were discussing. So distraught and confused were they that they stopped in their tracks and failed to recognize the one who asked the question. Cleopas asked the man, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days? He asked them, What things? Then Cleopas and Mary told the stranger on the road about Jesus a prophet mighty in word and deed before God and all the people. They told how he had been betrayed, condemned and crucified. They even admitted that they had hoped that Jesus was the Messiah. HAD hoped. Their hope died with Jesus, along with their faith and their joy. Even the news brought back from the tomb that morning by several of the women in their circle only confused them and increased their despair. Their message was one of death, sadness and a dead end. The stranger s reply was not very empathetic or polite. He said, Oh, how foolish you are!... He told them the Messiah needed to suffer and die to carry out his mission God s plan since the time of Moses! Then, for the 1

remainder of their 7-mile hike, he explained his own place and fulfillment of the Scriptures. He interpreted everything that had happened from the perspective of life, joy and a new beginning. And still they didn t recognize Him. Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead, up the white road There is always another one walking beside you, Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman --But who is that on the other side of you? The words are T.S. Eliot s in his poem, The Waste Land. The Waste Land is heralded as one of the finest poems in the English language in the 20 th century. The waste land itself a barren, sterile, desert environment, is a figure for the spiritual barrenness of the modern world. In this rich, evocative, highly allusive work, Eliot provides a meditation on the theme of the life/death conundrum and continuum. He shifts back and forth looking at life and death from both spiritual and physical perspectives. The interesting thing is that many living in the poem are spiritually dead, while the physically dead or absent are experienced as being very much alive. In the 5 th section of the poem, subtitled What the Thunder Said, Eliot used the Road to Emmaus story as inspiration. Two travelers are on a white road winding through an arid and desolate dreamscape. All is sand and rock. No water and even the thunder, which can be interpreted as the voice of God from on high, which might promise rain and relief from the dryness and the heat, seems at this point itself sterile and dry and no herald of any coming storm to end the draught. It is in this situation of oppressive heat and blinding light and parched tongues that one of the pilgrims speaks. Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead, up the white road There is always another one walking beside you, Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded I do not know whether a man or a woman --But who is that on the other side of you? 2

Is the pilgrim on this white road experiencing delirium? There are two which walk together, but here there is an uncanny experience of a third companion. Eliot wrote in his notes that in addition to the Road to Emmaus story being a basis for this part of the poem, he was also inspired by reading of an Antarctica expedition in which the party of explorers in the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted. The Road to Emmaus story points to an essential truth about the nature of our earthly sojourn. The Road to Emmaus is the road of life. It is the road to wherever you are going. But we do not travel this road alone. Someone always travels with us. And that someone is the Lord Godself acting as our protector, guide, sustainer and redeemer. The manifestation of God s presence, or at least our sense of God s presence, is elusive and disjointed. But even when we cannot see him, even when we do not sense it, the Lord walks with us. He does not allow us to walk through this life alone. Erin S. Cox-Holmes, an ordained clergyperson on staff for the Presbytery of Kiskiminetas, writes in an issue of Presbyterians Today of an episode she and her family experienced the winter her son was 6 years old. Graham is asthmatic and requires breathing treatments every night before he goes to sleep. One night, about one minute into the treatment, Graham made a strange choking noise and called out, Mommy! When Erin entered her son s room, she was ready to scold him for fooling around when it was time to go to sleep. She found him unable to talk and turning blue. Erin writes, My brain disconnected from feeling and began a series of calculations. Call ambulance? No. A raging blizzard, six inches of snow outside and our hill s too steep. Go to emergency room? Yes. Only 3 minutes away. Put on coat and shoes? No. Wrap my coat around his bare feet. When she got to the family room, Graham in her arms, Erin told her husband their son was in respiratory failure. They had to go. Now. 3

They piled in the car, Graham nestled in his mom s lap. She doesn t remember it, but he told her later that she stroked his head all the way murmuring, It s going to be OK. It s going to be OK. By grace, they made it up the unplowed road to the hospital. Erin ran Graham in. He was hooked up to monitors within seconds. All of them were flashing. Beeping. Alarms going off. His pulse oxygen level was 28. The doctor pulled Erin and Kent aside and began the speech preparing them for the worst. They were asked to wait in the waiting room. The helicopters were grounded due to the blizzard. They couldn t life-flight him. They finally got him stabilized, but couldn t get his oxygen level regulated. He needed to go to a larger hospital, but how to get him there? Even though the roads were officially impassable, an ambulance crew and the hospital s chief anesthesiologist all stranded at work due to the storm volunteered to venture into the dangerous night and drive him to Children s in Pittsburgh. They sedated Graham to keep him one level above death. The anesthesiologist rode with him to guard the precarious balance. This meant there was no room for either parent. Erin and Kent followed shortly behind the ambulance in their car. When they finally arrived, the trip to Children s had taken 3 hours instead of the usual 1-1/2. Erin didn t run, but plodded through the snow from the car to the ER, afraid of what she d find once she got there. What she did find was her son, Graham, chattering away and elated that he d pulled his first all-nighter. Graham and his mother held hands and watched the sunrise. Finally, she said, Graham, I have never been so scared in my entire life. What was it like for you? He told her the part about stroking his hair, saying everything would be alright. Then he said that every night when he goes to bed, he and his daddy would pray together. Erin knew this, but they had never let her listen in on the prayer. Graham said, Every night my daddy prays there would be four 4

angels with flaming swords around the four corners of my bed, and the four corners of the house, to keep me safe. The first time my daddy prayed that prayer last night it didn t work. So when they put me on the bed in the ambulance, I prayed it again. I prayed all by myself for the first time. I closed my eyes and kind-of fell asleep. Then when I opened them again, there they were! There wasn t room on the ambulance for you or my daddy. But there was room for all four angels, and their swords, Mom! I saw them: One of them held the bed. One of them held the I.V. bottle so it wouldn t break when we banged form side to side. One of them held my head in her lap, and she sang a story to me. I wish I could remember it. And one of them, the biggest one, he took his flaming sword and cut a pathway down my air pipe so I could breathe! I saw them, Mom! They were there! Then I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, they were gone. Erin writes, When your child has seen an angel, what do you do with it? The angels who ride in ambulances are robed in ambiguity. They are not the New Age Nice Angels who ride around on my friend s shoulder (pinned to her jacket). They live in shadows I can t pierce. Do I believe in my child s seeing? Yes. Do I believe Graham s vision buys us safe passage the next time around? Not for one minute. Not in a world where mothers must line up outside refugee camps, waiting for their children to starve thin enough to slip in through the narrow gate. These angels came without guarantee. But no matter what happens in the journey of life, we are never left alone on the road. It was late in the day when Cleopas, Mary and the enlightening stranger finally reached Emmaus. The couple urged their companion to stay with them. He obliged. And then, when he was sharing the evening meal with them, he took the bread in his hands his scarred hands. He 5

blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. Jesus. Their friend. Their Master. Their Risen Lord. Their Savior. Their Hope. Jesus had opened up the Scriptures for Cleopas and Mary so that their hearts burned within in them while he talked to them on the road. But they finally recognized Jesus in the simple, everyday, sacred act of breaking bread together. We get to meet Christ, we get to know him better, we recognize him and experience his healing presence, his challenging presence, his assuring presence in those brothers and sisters who are around us whether they be strangers, or friends, or medical personal in the back of an ambulance battling a blizzard to get help for a desperately sick little boy. We get to meet Christ as we share with our brothers and sisters our hospitality, our trust, our hearts. The Bible and the Church calls this meeting, this sharing, this hospitality, this trust which we extend to friends and to strangers alike communion. Amy B. Hunter writes in Christian Century magazine, Yes, the (Emmaus) story resonates with a sense of the church and its mission and of the tremendous power of the word and the sacraments to connect us with the presence of God. But its image is of God and a church that walk alongside of human confusion, human pain and human loss of faith and hope. Emmaus invites us to expect God to find us. Emmaus challenges us to see that it isn t our unshakable faith and deep spirituality that connect us with the risen Christ, but our smallest gestures of hospitality and friendship. I d like to end with a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, which reads, Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen. 6