3rd Sunday of Easter

The Road to Emmaus story is my all time favorite Easter story.   I really like the story of Mary Magdalene so overcome with grief and confusion that she mistakes Jesus as a gardener through her tears and sobs, and how recognition instantly changes that.  Thomas' recognition of the Risen Jesus and how even for a fleeting instant he must have thought "I've been such a fool," just before he confessed Jesus as his Lord and his God.  That's a good one too.  But the story of the disciples walking to Emmaus is about us, about disciples.  Not apostles, not the big names, just two disciples, so insignificant in themselves that only one is mentioned by name.  Even he, Cleopas, is only credited with asking the question "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know what's happened there?"  From then on, the disciples’ responses are reported as coming from both of them, from "they".  And "they" come to represent us, every man and woman who turns to Christianity to see what this Jesus means to us--to me.

First we should note the situation of the two disciples and the report they give this stranger.  In telling him about Jesus and what has just befallen him in Jerusalem, the disciples reveal their own grief, disbelief, and disenchantment.  Not only has a friend died, what had giving their lives meaning had also been seriously shaken.  As they watched Jesus die, they watched their ship sail.  It's almost as if with each step away from Jerusalem, they are trying to close the door on Camelot.

Then this stranger proceeds to tell them all about the Messiah as it was fulfilled in Jesus.  This gave them hope, an intellectual hope that also began to stir something in them.  They craved more.  "Don't go," they tell the stranger.  "It is nearly evening. Come in and stay with us."  That's the same request we all should make when we find that the Lord has drawn close to us, “Come and stay within us."  But in our loud and frenetic day and age, so many miss the opportunity and dismiss it as a fluke or doubt it as just their own psychology playing tricks.  The disciples at Emmaus did invite the Lord in and they were blessed with an even deeper encounter.  The recognition of Risen Lord, Jesus, God, the Presence of the Holy Spirit, whatever word you choose to describe it, whenever it happens, that one moment is a life changer, and the moment is enough.  It doesn't have to go on for hours and hours.  If it needs to go on for hours and hours, the person really has no faith, no trust in the Lord and a lengthy duration won't make a difference.  That one instance of recognition put those two disciples on the road back to Jerusalem, back to the gathering of disciples.  They knew from that one encounter with the Risen Lord that the doors were not closed, Camelot had not crumbled, their ship had just landed for all eternity and Jesus was indeed alive and more powerful than ever.

Many of us can tell a similar story pointing to an event or time when the presence of God was so profoundly real that doubt no longer seemed an option.  And yet doubt is always an option.  The farther in time we get from the event the more we me ask, did I really experience what I think I did?  Is there some other way to explain it?  Our trust in what we, ourselves experienced is eroded usually not all at once, but little by little.  Others of us realize that we allowed faith to be built too much on the actions or reputations of others.  One example of this is when people lose faith in the face of human scandal.  Another is when some new guru like a trusted professor lampoons belief as unworthy of thinking or educated people, and yet the guru has never lived and therefore knows nothing of the life of faith.  And many such gurus will point to the coronavirus in the coming months and years and say, "look at this terrible thing.  This proves there is no God."  There was a terrible thing in Jesus' day called leprosy.  Disease and death have been a constant companion of all life not just human life.  They prove nothing except that we are mortal beings and something will eventually kill each and every one of us.

No doubt, the disciples who were bound for Emmaus felt some of that same life threatening terror that contemplating our mortality brings.  They had been cowering behind locked doors fearing for their own lives since Jesus' arrest.  No Jew would travel on the Sabbath, so the morning of the Resurrection was the first day they could slip out of Jerusalem.  Their encounter with the Risen Lord either made them forget that fear or made it seem trivial, because they immediately turned around and walked right back into what they had been running from just so they could share with their friends what they had experienced.  Many times in the Gospels Jesus says, "do not be afraid."  In the presence of the Risen Lord, even our mortal terror melts away.

"Weren't our hearts burning within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?"  The disciples said to each other.  This one quote tells us how to interpret this passage.  "The way" is the early Christian term for the path of discipleship, and the Risen Lord speaks to disciples along that way just as He does today.  Therefore, the journey to Emmaus is symbolic of living the Christian life.  The disciple's heart burns in the presence of the Lord as the disciple hears or reads of Christ in the Scriptures.  This is even easier for the disciple of our time because we have the writings of the New Testament that tell the story of Jesus and of the early Church.  And certainly then as now, we know the Risen Lord in the Breaking of the Bread.  Even though for a few more weeks you may need to be physically absent from the Eucharist, let that absence make you desire Him all the more.  And if you're thinking "well, that's easy for you to say, Father.  You're going to be receiving the Eucharist in a few minutes."   And you're right, I will be.  But there's something lacking.  I don't have my Jerusalem and my upper room to return to, because you all are not here to share the experience.  "We" should be knowing Him in the Breaking of the Bread and "Our heart should be burning within us,” all of us together.  I long for the day when the Body of Christ can be gathered as one again.  The Road to Emmaus isn't about one disciple.  Even though faith is a very personal thing, living the Christian life, celebrating the Sacraments, even the most basic element of loving our neighbor can never be a solo event.

- Fr. Paul Gebhardt