Sunday 26 April 2020 – Easter 3: Luke 24: 13 – 35

Sermon preached by the Revd James Harris to the Anglican Church in Greece (by Zoom!)

Today, we hear the story of a walk. In the UK at the moment, we’re getting pretty used to walks. It’s more or less all we’re allowed to do that gets us out of the house. Maybe it’s the same in Greece.

 

Yes, today we hear the story of a walk – but not just a walk in the park; not a permitted daily exercise walk, nor an essential journey to the corner shop to buy wine… I mean, milk and bread. No, a life-changing, re-orienting, kind of a walk – a pilgrimage, in other words, where the experience of the walk itself is as important as the destination, indeed becomes part of the fruit, the prize of the destination.

 

This morning, I want to invite you on a little pilgrimage, a spiritual walk, as we explore our own experience of journeying through life, in the light of St Luke’s account of that Resurrection walk to Emmaus.

 

There are four stages to the journey I have in mind – not necessarily always consecutive or linear – and it will be interesting to note where each of us feels we are today. But, as we prepare to set out, let’s remind ourselves that we are in the company of pilgrims throughout the ages, who have embarked on a journey of seeking God, including those heading for Canterbury perhaps…:

 

When April with his showers sweet with fruit

The drought of March has pierced unto the root

And bathed each vein with liquor that has power

To generate therein and sire the flower;

When Zephyr also has, with his sweet breath,

Quickened again, in every holt and heath,

The tender shoots and buds, and the young sun

Into the Ram one half his course has run,

And many little birds make melody

That sleep through all the night with open eye

(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)-

Then do folk long to go on pilgrimage…

 

(Chaucer – from the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales)

So, on this April morning, as Zephyr is perhaps ‘quickening’ the plants on your balcony, let’s set out on our walk with Christ.

Stage 1 – ‘Jesus himself came near and one with them but their eyes were kept from recognising him’

 So, two people set out on a journey in the late afternoon after a tumultuous few days, what we could properly describe as a rollercoaster experience of high’s and low’s. We don’t know why they’re travelling – are they going home from Jerusalem? Or going to Emmaus for another reason? Do they plan to stay long? Perhaps they don’t know either. But they walk on, just like us, talking about life and circumstances… and a stranger joins them and asks a question – what’s happening? Ti kanete?

 

I wonder if you can remember when your walk with Jesus first began.

 

Maybe there’s a really clear memory of an event or occasion which you can pinpoint – maybe the first time you entered a particular church building, or met a certain person, or people; maybe it was at your baptism or confirmation; maybe as a result of trauma or crisis. Or maybe you would say he’s always been walking with you; that you can’t remember a time when he wasn’t. But even for what we might term ‘cradle Christians’, there might be a moment when the journey became real, or took a different turn. Maybe it is only in hindsight that it has become clear that it was Jesus you met back then; past events take on clearer significance from where you are now.

 

Maybe you feel you haven’t really met Jesus at all yet, or at least haven’t recognised him – if so, look around now; who’s alongside you; who’s making a difference; who’s speaking into your circumstances? Are you sure there isn’t a companion, seen or unseen, who is gently questioning how things are with you, drawing out the things that are occupying or concerning you, pointing to the presence of God?

 

The first stage of our journey is to take a moment to look back, look around, with fresh eyes, and to consider that Jesus may be closer than we had imagined.

Stage 2 – ‘But we had hoped…’ (v.21)

 

I find this one of the most heart-breaking verses in Scripture – those four short words express such disappointment, dashed hope, confusion, perhaps resentment. Everything had been going so well – ‘we had hoped…’ but now, nothing. Emptiness. Abandonment. Uncertainty. Fear. The way forward unclear. Not the outcome they had been led to expect. Does some of that resonate with us in these times? Have there been times in your walk when you thought everything was sorted and then… bang. All change.

 

Again, Jesus intervenes with a question – tell me how it is – drawing out their experience from them. And the floodgates open… The whole story is told in a torrent of tumbling phrases: ‘and then… and then… and besides all that… moreover… some people said… others disagreed.’

The two travellers pour out their hearts, tell their unvarnished story to the stranger who calmly and with perhaps a little chiding, but also ultimately with compassion, I think, sets them straight.

‘Remember who you are. Remember who God is. Remember the story of God and his people, which is really much more straightforward than you are trying to make it. God loves you; this is his way of showing it; don’t lose heart; stick to the God-story.’

 

We all have two stories – the story of our life and circumstances and experience; and the story of God’s action in the world. Where the two meet and intertwine and enliven each other is often where Jesus is found. Our stories don’t need to be polished and perfect before we meet him. Indeed, all he really wants is our raw honesty and open-ness to him – ‘a sincere and contrite heart’ – into which he speaks peace and clarity for our striving and confusion.

 

In Evelyn Waugh’s semi-historical novel of 1950, he imagines the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, addressing the Magi on the Feast of the Epiphany, at the culmination of her lifelong pilgrimage to Jerusalem. She puts it like this:

 ‘You are my especial patrons,’ said Helena, ‘and patrons of all late-comers, of all who have had a tedious journey to make to the truth…

‘Dear cousins, pray for me,’ said Helena… For his sake, who did not reject your curious gifts, pray always for the learned, the oblique, the delicate. Let them not be quite forgotten at the Throne of God when the simple come into their kingdom.’

 

Whether our stories are simple or complex, however long or short the journey to the truth, the second stage of our pilgrimage is to offer it to Jesus seeking his clarity and inspiration.

 

Stage 3 – ‘Stay with us…’

 

Maybe it’s just me but have you ever thought about what might have happened if Jesus had carried on with his walk and the travellers and not invited him into the house?

 Of course, the answer is, I think, that God would have found another way of working out his purposes in due course. After all, God has a long history of learning not to rely on our faithfulness and obedience alone. That’s the point of the Christian life, isn’t it? As Empress Helena said, a long and tedious journey to the truth, a cyclical journey not a perfectly linear one, including many a wrong turn, many a seeming dead end, many a hiatus, many a trip round the same block, but ultimately heading in one direction – towards Christ.

 

If the disciples has not invited Jesus in that evening, their walk would have continued in a different way on the morrow but, at some point, there would have been another encounter, another opportunity.

 

However, on this occasion, they do make the invitation – they do pause their journeying, their seeking, for a while, and Jesus does accept and come in and eat with them. No words are recorded, no explanations, but, simply and ever so movingly, as he breaks the bread, they recognise him: not in breathless talking and tortuous over-thinking but in the experience of a moment, in relationship, in quiet but undoubted presence.

 Where are those places, what makes those moments of encounter possible for you? And during the times when perhaps those are not as easy or possible to achieve, how might we find other ways of being inviting the presence of Jesus?

Stage 4 – ‘Were not our hearts burning within us…?’

 The journey ends, not as they thought it would as they hurry back to Jerusalem to the rest of their company, hearts on fire with all they have seen and heard.

 

Encountering Jesus can indeed change us – change our direction, our perspective, our motivations and our desires.

 

What is burning in your heart this morning because you have met and walked with Jesus?

 

Would you like to set out on that sort of journey – again, or for the first time?

 

Do you have a story to tell that needs his clarity and perspective?

 

Are you longing to invite him in, hoping to rest awhile and cease your striving and seeking in his presence?

 

Are you being called to go, or do, or be something news in his service?

 

I encourage you to think on these things; revisit these questions in your virtual or actual walking; share the journey with others you trust: write to me if you like, talk to Fr Leonard, or Deacon Chris or a trusted friend in the congregation. You might even, dare I say, talk to God.

 

But let me encourage you not to keep your story and experiences to yourself, to share them somehow and try to make sense of them with others – because they may just be the things of God, the truth of God’s purposes for you and for others, for the blessing of the world.

‘Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.’

 

Let us pray:

God of our pilgrimage, you have willed that the gate of mercy should stand open for those who trust in you: look upon us with your favour that we who follow the path of your will may never wander from the way of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen