Sermon for the 3rd Sunday of Easter – 23rd April 2023: Luke 24, 13-35
Of all the stories in the Easter Narrative collection it is perhaps the St. Luke inclusion of the Journey to Emmaus, with its famous supper details that capture the popular imagination most of all.
Beyond the context, the text, and the story itself, perhaps the most memorable reminder of the Supper at Emmaus is the set of ‘Suppers’ painted by the outstanding Italian Renaissance artist Caravaggio. There are two painting that I am aware of. Art historians among you will be able inform us if there are more.
I am passing around a postcard of the more famous Caravaggio Supper just to remind you, or in case you have never experienced Carravaggio’s art.
There are two lines from St. Luke’s narrative that I would like to focus on today.
The first is ‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’
Secondly ‘Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.’
It is a very common feature in Anglican Church life to have parish bible studies. The purpose of such bible studies is to look at a book from scripture, or a set of themed texts, and study them more closely, not just so that we can apply some textual criticism to them, but so that our reading of such texts brings a more life-enriching understanding of scripture.
Of course we have to be careful how we understand the word ‘criticism’ in our modern context, because usually we associate criticism as a negative activity. In our sense it is about getting into and under the text – trying to see a particular passage or story in its wider context, so that we can be informed by what is written; formed by how the understanding of scripture shapes us and our lives; transformed by how the scripture is a ‘light to our path and a lantern to our feet’. Informed, formed, and transformed.
In a good bible study we learn not just from a leader or teacher of scripture, but also from sharing ideas, experiences, and interpretations of the text, so it is not a ‘bookish exercise’ but one way of building each other up in the faith, and helping us to bind together as the Body of Christ – especially as the scriptures are the possession of Christ’s Church and they are best heard, studied and applied as a corporate activity, working against individualized and ec-centric understandings of the Christian experience
In our time together we have studied – largely through ‘online’ methods – St. Mark’s gospel, Paul’s Letter to the Colossians, the 1st Letter of Peter, various passages in the Book of Revelation, Prophecies of the coming Messiah in the Book of Isaiah, among other things. These have always been profitable times, albeit virtually. I hope participants would agree.
So, ‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’ Can you just imagine this? The two men travelling to Emmaus are probably experiencing the best bible study class that could ever have taken place – and the annoying thing is that apart from being told where he began and where he finished, we don’t know a single word he said in that ‘class’. Its scope was huge – he began with Moses, of course, symbolizing the history and the content of Jewish Law; then he moved to the prophets, the living words of God spoken through the inspired prophets of God. Jesus said that he had come not to abolish the Law and Prophets, but to fulfil them – and this is what we might speculate he was showing on the road to Emmaus, and his arrival point, his destination is himself. ‘The Word becomes flesh’ as we read in John 1.
My goodness what a life changing thing this must have been for the two down-hearted travellers, and we know it was, because their hearts burned within them when he shared it all. Do our hearts burn within us when we hear or read the scriptures? ‘Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest’ the Holy Scriptures, as the Anglican Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent admonishes us.
And so to the second quote: ‘Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.’
The first historical reference to the Christian community gathering together to share bread and wine together is to be found in St. Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthian Church, a few decades before the gospel writers began to hang together some coherent record of the life of Christ. St. Paul gives this a very specific and clear context ‘On the night before he died’ so it is an indisputable reference to what we refer to as the Last supper.
The inferences of the words used by Christ at this supper – and his specific actions with very normal ingredients for a Jewish meal – are recalled with great significance after he has died, and risen again. It would not have had this real significance until things had been truly resolved ‘on the third day’.
If this was a Passover meal, as it seems to be with Matthew, Mark and Luke, or a meal on the evening of the Day of Preparation for the Passover, as it is in John’s gospel, the words and the actions stuck fast, and before long the first generation of Christians were ‘doing this in memory’. We know from references in the Acts of the Apostles that groups met ‘for the breaking of bread.’ ‘Doing this’ is central – and indeed the way in which ‘doing this’ is done has the effect and power of being ‘like it was in Christ’s presence at the Last Supper’.
So our two travellers encourage the stranger on the road – who had delivered a very good bible study with them – the bible scholar (who is in fact not a Professor of the Word of God, but the Word of God in flesh) to stay for a meal with them.
The events of the last few days are writ very large on the hearts and minds of the two travellers, including ‘that meal’. They had been blind to the significance of that meal, just as the two are blind to whom it is they have invited to eat with them.
Then he is revealed in an action. It is an action that is so intrinsically connected to the one who does it, that what happens when the bread is broken, what they understand, feel, know, is that this is the Risen Christ. His body is broken on the cross and in the broken bread it is made real to them, and his body is pierced, so that blood outpoured is seen as the cup of salvation, really his blood shed for them.
So much more could be developed about this. Enough said, they recognise the Risen Christ for who he is, and for what God had done for him, and who Christ had become for them. So for us, when the bread is broken at the table and when the wine is in the cup, it is no less than the body and blood of the Easter Christ for his Easter people. They ran back from Emmaus to Jerusalem, ‘Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.’
When we gather for our worship there are real times of revelation – revelation of the Risen Jesus. ‘Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.’ And ‘they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.’ Amen.
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