3^rd Sunday after Easter

Acts 2:14a,36-41

Psalm 116:1-3,10-17

1 Peter 1:17-23

Luke 24:13-35

Whenever I hear today’s Gospel story of the walk to Emmaus, I see in my mind the picture that used to hang over the sofa in my grandmother’s house. Some of you might know the one I’m talking about….

It is a large rectangular painting of the backs of three men in long hair and robes. The middle one with a red cloth draped over his shoulder. They are pictured going down a gentle dirt road surrounded by beautiful green trees. It looks a lot like a path in say, eastern Iowa, or Maryland or like the shortcut I used to take to the train when I went to school in Denmark and the beech trees where a fluorescent green…

Now, I have never been to Isreal. But I’ve seen pictures. And it doesn’t look like Iowa or Maryland or Denmark.

The land is rougher, rugged, roads are often large stones on the ground. The vegetation is more sparse and dusty, there are some Russian olive trees around Ames that might help with the picture.

I say all this as a way of saying that the picture by Grandmother had has made this story seem way too familiar. Oh yeah, the walk to Emmaus.

Two guys on a wooded path, then Jesus shows up. They don’t know him. They chat a bit, invite the third man to eat. And voila, he breaks bread and they see it is Jesus. Then he disappears. Now you see him, now you don’t. Another resurrection story.

And this story, while beloved by many folks, just doesn’t do much for me.

I prefer Mary and the gardener. Or Jesus eating fish with the disciples.

Perhaps we have domesticated the walk to Emmaus. Tamed it a little. Or used it too often in the where two or three are gathered there is Christ in the midst of them…

I don’t think it is that simple. There has to be more to the story than a walk in the woods on a nice spring day.

First, this wasn’t any everyday relaxing walk in the woods. This was more like a shuffle. For the two followers of Jesus were distraught. Their hearts were broken. Their hopes destroyed. You know…this is not the life I signed up for!!! The brokenness, the pain, the dashed hopes, the thwarted desires….

We have that! Discouragement, despair. The hearts of those two men where not happy and light, but full of anxiety and fear. What is to become of us? Where is hope to be found? Will my heart ever heal?

For haven’t you heard? The world is a broken place! It is cruel and unrelenting. The rain falls on the just and unjust alike.

Even our hope, the one we thought was going to be our savior, has been broken and scarred. The women say he’s alive. But the all we know is that even the body is gone.

The one we prayed for, longed for, hoped for…is gone. And with it all hope.

The two men, shake their heads and sigh. This stranger joins them, and listens. He lets them talk…listens.

Then speaks. The man in the middle speaks in great detail starting with Moses and all the prophets…he shares scripture with them, talks plain Scripture in a new way. They would have know the stories, but now heard them in a different way.

Through the eyes of the broken and restored Christ.

Yet it isn’t until the bread is broken that the Cleopas and the other disciple see. It isn’t until the bread is broken….that their eyes are opened and their hearts are opened and their minds…and they see the risen Lord.

In the breaking of the bread.

Maybe that is why church is not just about reading Scripture. It isn’t only singing hymns, it isn’t only prayers or silence or the passing of the peace.

It is all of these things and bread too. Because sometimes it is in the Word that we hear Jesus. Sometimes it is in the silence we feel Jesus, sometimes it is in the hymns that we sing Jesus, sometimes it is in the breaking of the bread…

On that day in Emmaus, it was the bread. Given for you. Given for the disillusioned, the lost, the broken, the heartsick, the weary, the oppressed, the poor, the lonely…

Given for you. From the God who cares enough to be in the midst of the world with us. To walk with us and listen to us and laugh with us and cry with us.

And then sends us out to share the bread of life with the world. We Do the word.

The two men who have seen Jesus go all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the eleven disciples what has just happened. The buzz has begun, the word is spreading. The hope has been restored.

It isn’t the plan the followers of Jesus had in mind. It isn’t the political overthrow of Rome that they had hoped for.

It is something more daring and life changing and everlasting than anyone could have imagined. Taking the form of broken bread….passed around and shared…and eaten and lived…

Giving healing and strength and hope and solidarity and liberation and power and wisdom and might.

This is not some sweet me-and-Jesus story. This is more than a walk in the park. This is more than “where two or three are gathered.”

This is a shift in the order of things. This is a radical new way of seeing the world and being the word. This is life given for you and all people.

The risen scarred Lord is being passed about in the breaking of the bread. The light shine is shining through the cracks. The followers of Jesus are being sent out to do the Word of the Lord.

This isn’t some nice picture hanging on a wall but a radical changing ongoing life giving story…

One about relationships, telling the story, sharing the bread, being the Word, changing the world…

One broken loaf at a time the world is changed. The kingdom arrives in our midst. And the risen Christ appears.

For Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia