“We
had hoped he was the one.” “We had hoped.”
Our
Gospel story begins in dejection.
Clopas and his companion had seen sorrow all
their days.
The
nameless disciple is probably nameless because she was a woman.
It
wasn’t the greatest time and place especially for women.
She
and Clopas lived in a poor country where life was short and hard.
Their
ancestors had been a great empire,
but the empire feuded, then split,
and in its weakened state, it was
conquered.
10
of Israel’s 12 tribes had been deported and scattered,
lost forever.
The
remaining two were overrun by Assyrians,
then Babylonians, then Persians,
then
Greeks, and finally Rome.
They
were a defeated, disgraced people,
living under foreign rule, which
respected
neither their culture
nor their God.
Then
along came Jesus and gave them hope.
They
had hoped Jesus would drive out the Romans
and restore the independent kingdom
of David,
that
he would feed all the hungry, heal all the sick, cast out all the demons.
“We
had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel,” they said.
“We
had hoped.” A poignant past perfect tense.
Then
came Good Friday.
The
bloody humiliation of their hero
showed how wrong they had been,
how foolish to have hoped
that things could be
different.
The
world is as it is.
They
were as they were.
Hope
dashed and discarded.
They
walked back home as the sun was going down.
Maybe
you know how they felt.
We
may not live in a conquered nation.
But
we know that life is often disappointing to say the least.
We
know full well what Coleridge meant by
“the tears in the nature of things.”
So
many of us have at one time or another
found some kind of deliverance.
It
may have been a relationship with another person
we thought could make everything ok
like in the love songs.
Or
maybe we thought we could make it ok for
our children
even if it hadn’t been
so great for us,
and they would become the people we
should have been.
We
may have found our hope in a new psychology
or diet or exercise plan or
investment strategy.
There
are as many paths to redemption
as there are slot machines in the Las Vegas Valley.
So
we have placed our hope in this or that redemption.
We
may even have tried the Christian faith,
but if we tried to practice it on
our own,
we found out pretty
quickly, that doesn’t work.
Christianity
is a team sport. It’s a family meal.
So
to place our faith in Jesus, we had to place our faith in a church.
And
maybe we found one
where the worship felt holy, the
sermon was uplifting,
and the people were
friendly.
And
we thought, “I am home now.
This is a safe place.”
But
before long,
we discovered that even the best of
churches
all have the same problem.
They
are infested with people,
and human frailty does not disappear
at the
narthex door.
Our
church may have done something
unjust, insensitive, or morally wrong.
Maybe
the priest said something or did something
that a priest should never say or
do.
The
people may have resorted to power politics
or character assassination.
The
church we thought was the Body of Christ,
the demonstration model for the
Kingdom of God,
turned out to human, all
too human.
Each
of us has our own version of this story.
Each
of us has found our path to redemption
and has seen it come to a dead end.
That’s
how it was for Clopas and his companion,
on the road to Emmaus.
It
was on that road they met Jesus,
but they didn’t recognize him.
He
wasn’t the same old Jesus as before.
When
we have been deeply disappointed
it’s hard, it’s very hard, to open
our hearts again.
Disappointment
falls over our eyes like cataracts.
That
may be why it took the disciples all day
and into the night to even recognize
their Savior.
But
let’s give them credit.
Even
in their despondent mood,
they were willing to walk the road
with a stranger.
Better
yet, they were willing to open their minds
and to study the Scripture.
Many
of us are so sure we already know what the Bible says
about this or that –
so sure we
know the Bible’s basic themes.
But
the deeper I go into the Holy Scriptures,
the more wild, wonderful, and
surprising they become.
If
we assume we know what the Bible says,
if we stop with a simple literal
reading,
it closes our minds.
The
simple literal meaning of the texts
Jesus was teaching Clopas and his friend that day
did not//
point to a crucified messiah.
It
took a bold new way of reading the Bible
to open these people’s hearts.
Jesus
gave them a new creative, imaginative interpretation,
and to their credit, they listened.
And
to their credit,
they welcomed the stranger into
their home.
How
often do we come to a church or any path of redemption,
wanting to be healed and consoled
ourselves?
But
the healing and consolation don’t happen
until we drop that agenda for self,
and serve or welcome
someone else.
So
the disciples and Jesus broke bread together.
It
was a Eucharist.
They
hadn’t expected it to be a Eucharist.
But
there it was.
After
hearing the good news from Scripture –
the blessing, the breaking, the giving of bread.
They
joined innocently in this simple domestic ritual
– with no expectation.
In
that moment, their eyes were opened and they recognized the Lord.
Then
Clopas and his friend got it right again.
They
hurried by night back to Jerusalem
to share the good news with the
other disciples.
But
Jesus had been meeting with them too – at the same time.
Stop.
How did that happen?
Jesus
was now appearing to people in different places at once.
Wonders
just keep multiplying when broken hearted people
share good news with each other.
So
what can we learn from our story?
The
first lesson is about dejection.
It
happens.
It
is a common part of the spiritual life
maybe even a necessary part of the spiritual life.
Masters
like St. Ignatius Loyola and St. John of the Cross thought so.
Necessary
because dejection is the opportunity
to open our hearts to grace in a new way,
perhaps a deeper
redemption
than we had hoped for to
begin with.
Disappointment
is the opportunity to open our hearts and minds
to grace from the lips of a
stranger,
grace showing us the Bible means
something
quite different from
what we had thought,
grace that slips into our lives through the back door
while we
were helping or befriending someone else.
The
eyes of these disciples were opened
when Jesus broke the bread.
“Open”
is one of the most frequently used verbs
in the Gospels for what Jesus does.
He
opens eyes. He opens ears. He opens graves.
May
Jesus open our minds to his truth
and our hearts to each other.
“Be
present, be present Lord Jesus,
as you were present to the
disciples,
and be known to us in the breaking
of the bread.”
