Luke 24:13-35 “Burning Hearts” Scott Hoezee

In the ancient Greek myth The Odyssey we read the epic tale of Odysseus. Odysseus was the valiant warrior who fought so bravely in the Trojan War. But, according to legend, his homeward journey after that war was interrupted for many years as the gods had decided to test Odysseus' true mettle through a series of trials. His journeys carried him far and wide as he encountered mythic beasts and lands, many of which have passed into common parlance: the cyclops, the Procrustean bed, Scylla and Charybdis, the sirens' voices.

Meanwhile, back at his home, Odysseus' wife and family presume he must have died en route back from Troy. Finally, however, the day came when the gods released Odysseus and he arrives back home at last. But instead of simply waltzing through the front door and crying out some Greek equivalent of, "Honey, I'm home!" Odysseus decides that he wants to determine if anything has changed during his long absence. Did his wife still love him? Had she been faithful? In order to find out, Odysseus disguises himself so as to approach his home looking like a stranger in need of temporary lodging.

The housekeeper, Euryclea, welcomes the apparent traveler and performs for him the then-standard practice of foot-washing. As she does so, Euryclea regales the stranger with anecdotes about her long-lost master, Odysseus, whom she had also served as a nurse when he was young. She tells the traveler about how long her master had been missing and she notes, too, that by then Odysseus would be about the same age and of about the same build as the man whose feet she was washing. When Odysseus had been a young boy, he was once gored by a wild boar, leaving a nasty scar on his leg. As Euryclea goes about her servile task, suddenly her hand brushes against that old scar and instantly her eyes are opened and she recognizes, with great joy, her beloved friend and master!

Recognition scenes like that have long exercised a strong pull on the human heart. Sometimes this can be used for comedic effect, as in any number of episodes on the old I Love Lucy show when Lucy would disguise herself so as to worm her way into one of her husband, Rickie's, shows. And you always waited eagerly for that moment when Desi Arnaz's eyes would widen right before he'd exclaim, "Luuucccy!" But such shocks of recognition are also the stuff of high drama, as in The Odyssey and any number of plays, novels, and films across the centuries.

But no such tale is as dear to our Christian hearts as the one in Luke 24. As we noted briefly this morning, there was something sufficiently different about the resurrected Lord Jesus that made recognizing him a bit difficult. Apparently it didn't require too much effort on the part of Jesus to keep from being identified until he was ready to make himself known. But seldom was the shock of recognition quite as strong as in this story, partly because of the sheer amount of time Jesus had spent with these two Emmaus-bound travelers. Cleopas and his walking companion had been with Jesus for some hours before they knew who he was.

After all, even at a good walking clip, and allowing for some brief breaks, a journey of seven miles will take a good three hours. That was the Easter afternoon trip that these two disciples set out on. The Sabbath was past now, but if it hadn't been for the Sabbath, they would have left Jerusalem the day before already. They simply had to get out of town. It was painful, way too painful, to stay there. The whole city seemed haunted by the memory of what had happened to their master Jesus the prior Friday.

Indeed, as the days passed, their grief intensified. Some of you know what that's like: it's the day after the funeral that is far more difficult than the days that had been filled with formal activities and rituals. It's when all the official ceremonies are over and you're alone in your home again that it really hits you. So also for these two: as the new week began on Sunday (the first working day of a new week), Jerusalem had largely gone back to business as usual. The vendors were in the streets, the marketplace was abuzz with commerce, and life quite simply went on.

But how can the world go on after you've suffered a loss so deep you find it difficult to breathe? And so these two disciples decide to "get away from it all" and leave town. There's nothing more for them there anyway. Jerusalem had become like a house after someone dies: it is at once too empty of people and too full of memories.

And so it's on to Emmaus. But just putting some distance between themselves and the Holy City didn't make them forget the terrible things that had lately happened. They can't stop talking about recent events. Maybe they were trying to make sense of it, trying to square what had happened to Jesus with the things they thought were going to be true of him. Or maybe they'd given up all attempts to figure it out.

True, some of the women had earlier that day told a wild story about a missing body, angels, and whispers of resurrection, but who in their right mind could believe it? They were just sadly shaking their heads over this new wrinkle when they heard the crunch of gravel from behind them. A stranger approaches and says, "Shalom! What's up, friends?" The question catches them up short. After all, doesn't everybody know the latest?! "Where have you been, friend," they ask. "You must be the only one in the whole county who hasn't heard about the recent disaster!"

It is probably a sign of the enormity of their grief that they reacted like that. In truth, there could have been lots of people who hadn't heard this. Sure, to the disciples this was headline news, but to some people it may have been noted only in passing. Just another Roman crucifixion. Happens all the time. It was just a side story buried on page 3 of the Jerusalem Gazette. Big deal. Pass the Sports section.

Well, this stranger on the road must have been one such clueless tourist because he didn't seem to know a blessed thing about any of it. So they explain things to the stranger, saying in one particularly poignant line, "You see, friend, we had hoped he was the one who'd make everything better again." Hoped. Worse, had hoped. Proverbs 13:2 says, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick," and oh my, did these two know what that felt like. The entire structure of their world had collapsed when Jesus died. They had hoped he'd be thee One, but since dead people can't achieve much, they had to deal with the depressing fact that they had made a mistake.

We all make mistakes, of course, and when the mistake in question is no more significant than burning your breakfast toast or accidentally calling "George" "Harry," you can pick yourself up and move on. But when the mistake you've made is more along the lines of trusting a neighbor who ended up molesting your child or trusting your husband only to find he's been a serial adulterer for decades, well then you feel not just embarrassed or a bit upset over your mistake but shattered by it. "How could I have gotten things that wrong?" we want to ask ourselves.

But then, suddenly, the stranger, who had appeared so clueless a moment before, changes. He has the audacity first of all to call these men foolish, and before they can object to this, the stranger has launched into a quite serious and thorough Bible study. And after that, the rest of the trek to Emmaus just flew by! With breathtaking sweep and exegetical precision, this anonymous fellow traveler re-tells Scripture's story. It is Israel's story, all right, but the stranger tells it in a quite new way. The last time they'd heard anyone talk about the Bible in such an invigorating a fashion was . . . well, nevermind.

Before they knew it they were standing in front of the Motel Emmaus. With a slight wave and a nod the stranger says, "Nice talking with you" and then keeps walking. So Cleopas pipes up, "Sir! Look, the sun is setting which means the thieves along the highway will be coming out soon. It's not safe to travel alone—stay with us at least tonight." The man agrees. After having washed the dust of the journey off faces, hands, and feet, the three find a place to eat. Before they knew what's happening, the stranger reaches for the flat bread, lifting it up in a strikingly familiar way. He then gives thanks, breaks it just so, and hands it to Cleopas and his friend. They knew instantly who he was but just as they are ready to cry out, "Jesus!" he was gone.

"I knew it!" Cleopas exclaims. "Didn't you wonder about this, too! The way he taught us, the way he applied Scripture, wasn't it eerily familiar all along!" Then, stuffing the bread into their pockets, they sprint back to Jerusalem, covering those seven miles in record time. A little of their thunder is stolen, however, in that before they can spill the beans of their news, the others say, "The Lord appeared to Simon Peter!" They then share the news of their encounter, making special note of the fact that Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

This evening we stopped at verse 35, but in the next section, Jesus himself pops into also this room in Jerusalem. What follows is still more eating but more importantly, still more Bible study. Partly Jesus has to prove to the disciples that he's no ghost—he really is there. But an equally vital task was to help them understand from the Bible itself that far from some weird accident from which God had to scramble to recover, the whole business with the crucifixion had been long anticipated by God as the necessary way to bring salvation. Until the disciples understood that this had to happen, even the wonder of the resurrection would leave matters incomplete. Jesus had to teach them that God was not falling back to re-group and start all over again after being blind-sided by the chief priests and their Roman executioners. God had not suffered a setback but was fulfilling and achieving exactly what he had set out to do from the beginning.

You see, resurrection is a good, grand, glorious thing, but if it amounts to no more than God's trying to fix something that should not have been broken to begin with, it's not enough. If Easter is about no more than God's doing an end-run on the people who thought they had gotten the best of Jesus, it's not enough. Easter must be the consistent continuation of a plan that had included that dreadfully deep sacrificial death.

There is something very revealing about the fact that before that first Easter Sunday was finished, the picture you see in Luke 24 is of the disciples sitting at Jesus’ pierced feet with furrowed brows, scratching their chins now and again, as they carefully try to understand the new things Jesus is teaching them. In a sense, that first Easter ended with what could be called a Bible study. That’s a fiercely quiet way to end a day that, as we said this morning, very nearly shattered the earth as the future burst into that very moment. Yet there is something wonderfully poignant about the fact that even that cosmos-shattering day ended on a mundane note like a Bible study session.

I suspect that this picture fits our lives today better than we may at first realize. We pulled out the stops this morning as always. We sang lustily, we had the “Hallelujah Chorus,” the full organ, the brass. But tomorrow we go back to work even as the music of this day fades and life “gets back to normal,” as we say. But Luke 24 tells us that we’re not leaving Easter behind just because things quiet down for us again. It's enough for our faith to go on even when Easter creeps up from behind, like the stranger on the road. It's enough to keep breaking the bread and spilling the wine at the Lord's table and there finding Jesus himself right in our midst. True, sometimes you no sooner spy him and he seems to disappear again, but the briefness of Jesus' appearance to Cleopas and friend in Emmaus did not lessen their joy at having seen him. Isn’t that the way it is for us a lot of the time, too? We catch a glimpse, and yet it brings joy.

One of the best sermons I've ever read is Frederick Buechner's sermon on this very story. Buechner also finds hope in the understated nature of this tale of recognition. Because, he says, all of us travel to Emmaus eventually. Where is your Emmaus? Do you have a place you go to get away from it all, a place to which you escape so that you don't have to think about how lousy life in this world can sometimes be? Maybe it's the mall where the noise of commerce and the rush of people keep you from thinking about life. Maybe it's a bar where the booze and the beer nuts help numb you to the more bitter truths that swirl outside the windows of that darkened, smoky room. Maybe it's a matinee at the movies where you go to take in what Hollywood proudly touts as "escapist fare." Maybe it's the TV remote that takes you away from it all as you mindlessly channel surf every single evening. We try to escape our troubles, but those troubles end up being like the sky above: they extend over everything and we finally know there is no escape.

But the good news is that it may be precisely in Emmaus where you are most apt to find Jesus. He cares enough for you to be there. Maybe he meets you along the way and walks with you as you silently trudge along; maybe you find him waiting for you once you get to wherever it is you were going. But he's there. You catch a glimpse of him in the kindness of a stranger. You see him in that note of encouragement that came in the mail on the very day you needed it most.

Maybe sometimes you come even to church but you don't take joy in it. The kids had been a royal pain in the neck getting ready that morning, spilling their breakfast cereal all over the floor, howling when you combed their hair. You and your spouse snapped at each other in the car on the way to church. The whole week had been one disappointing and frustrating moment after the next until you wanted to throw your hands up and say, "Aw, let the whole thing go hang." You settle into your pew feeling more surly than sanctified, more petulant than pious, yet before the service is over you catch a glimpse of Jesus and you just can't shake the sense that it made a difference. You can go on a while longer now. You can get out of bed on Monday morning after all and go back to work.

The simple fact is that we don't spend all of our lives in obviously holy places like Jerusalem. Sometimes we even think that a holy place is the last place we want to be and so we head out of town, head to Emmaus, go some place where, if we're lucky, we won't run into anyone from church. But then we do run into Jesus and even if our glimpse of him is momentary, we know for sure he was there, and we know all over again that the world changed and our future burst in on a day called Easter long ago. And it changes us.

There are any number of things in our lives that drive us to Emmaus. But if we can find Jesus even there, then we sense with renewed wonder the punch of the line, "Surely, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." The first time Luke shows us the reality of that divine presence was in Emmaus. Emmaus, of all places. Of all places! But that's just the point: all places, all the time. Were not our hears burning within us. Look! It's Jesus. Praise God! Amen.