The Emmaus Experience – Part 2

In my last post, we traveled with the two on the road to Emmaus and recorded their initial responses to their Savior. We closed with the biblical statement that, even before they recognized him, their hearts burned within them as they heard him speak (see Luke 24:32).

Opening Their Hearts

Jesus’ words do that to us still. It’s more than an impartation of information. Words usually tell us things we are supposed to know. But Jesus’ words have a powerful authority in them that is far greater than the impartation of information. Something actually happens inside of us as we hear the word spoken. Christ’s words are meant to create within us, in fact, a kind of sacramental impartation, a change in us that redirects how we think that does more than inform; it enlightens. It opens our hearts to things we never ever could have imagined without the change agent that Jesus’ words are.

And so when he begins to walk forward as if he’s not going to stop for the night at the place where they are lodging, they want more of this, and they ask him to stay. And then in a wonderful turn of events, the invited guest becomes the host. And he takes the bread, breaks it. And they immediately recognize him as who he is. They dash from that dinner table in the dark of the evening to go back to the 11 remaining disciples and tell them what they have seen.

It’s in some ways a real description of Jesus’ work in our lives. He is always at work, helping us to try to see things from a perspective that is bigger than what we know from our own experience, from what we believe, in a way that can occasionally be shocking. There are these times when Jesus breaks through and shows us things we never ever would have known otherwise. One author put it this way: “If the God that you believe in always agrees with you, then you’re probably not worshipping the God of the Bible.”

I always suspect that there are things about what I believe, even though I might hold them deeply, that may not actually accurately reflect the life and ministry of Jesus. Something about Jesus is meant to disturb and upend, to challenge our most deeply held assumptions.

You see, the commitment you and I have made as baptized Christians to be disciples is to place all our assumptions on the table. Jesus is not here to reaffirm our assumptions. He’s actually here to upend them and speak words that at times are disturbing, to break into those assumptions and form each of us in a new way as a disciple of Jesus rather than merely a disciple of our own deeply held convictions.

Going and Telling

And so we walk with him as learners, as people who are humble enough to admit that it’s not just that we don’t have it all together, or we haven’t figured it out, that even some of our most deeply held convictions should be challenged. And out of that we are always invited, often in a way that feels profoundly uncomfortable, into that childlike place of admitting that we don’t know, and that we need him to teach us.

And it is in that moment, as we learn, that things do begin to change within our hearts. And we begin to see him in an entirely new way, including as the host at the Eucharistic banquet. But as this Scripture teaches us, the end is not the meal. That’s only true in the next life, when we gather together to feast in our heavenly home. But for now, the end is not the meal; the end is the mission.

Sure, we recognize Christ as the host of the Eucharist. But in the end, we are commissioned. There are things that God wants us to say that he has worked in us. And so as we look over the story, we see that from the very beginning what Jesus is doing with these two men along the road was to change their hearts, to allow them to see him as he is and then to go and tell.

That’s the cycle: Jesus meeting us where we are, listening patiently to all of our thinking, even if it’s wrong, to work in us a new capacity to receive the things that we did not know, to correct our assumptions and to draw us closer to him, creating new hunger just to be with him, and to learn from him and finally gather with him at a meal that eventually releases us into a place of mission.

“Open our eyes to see your hand at work,” we pray. What is God doing? What is God doing in you and in me as his children?

This is what he is doing. He’s listening. He’s teaching. He’s changing. He’s feeding. He’s commissioning. And that’s a cycle He repeats in our lives, again and again and again.

Oh Lord, help us to be available for what it is that you are doing to make room in our hearts, to be loved, and to be challenged. Awaken us from the lethargy of our grief, that we might see a bigger world where you are at work and hear your invitation to adore you and to be a part of what you are doing. For that’s where true joys are to be found. Amen.

 

How has your heart been opened to “go and tell” by your experience of the risen Christ? Share this blog and your response on Twitter. Please include my username, @revgregbrewer. 

(This post is an adaptation of Bishop Brewer’s sermon recorded for April 26, 2020, in the Diocese of Central Florida’s Chapel, Orlando.) 

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.