Road to Emmaus

Increase your understanding as we walk the way with you. Fill our hearts with love that we may serve others better and when evening comes stay with us and be known to us in deepening communion with you. Amen (Cecily Taylor, IN Let Justice Roll Down)

Can you see yourself as one of the two walking along the Emmaus Road? It has been a long journey to this point, days of hope and days of deep disappointment. They have heard that some of their friends saw him in his resurrection body. These two have not stayed in Jerusalem but are on their way to Emmaus, about a day’s walk.

Surely they are talking about how they hoped he would establish the kingdom, here and now. They are unsure what to do now that he is gone, dead by execution reserved for criminals by the state. He was innocent of their charges, and given the power he displayed in healing others, why he did not use it to defend himself is a mystery, too sad to contemplate. Surely that pondering question silenced their conversation as the stranger joined them on the road.

How often are we so preoccupied by our own experiences that we too fail to see Jesus?

Jesus the Christ present with them opened their minds to see what they had missed. Being present, opening the Scripture, they began to feel strangely warmed.

When do you feel strangely warmed?

I feel it when our children come forward at the offertory bringing cans and boxes of food to give to those who are hungry. I feel it when you respond to those in need, in this congregation, in this neighborhood, in the world. I feel it when someone answers the call to help with some activity, to share leadership in bringing about education, a service project, because every time one of us responds, we are on the Emmaus Road.

Church is more than meetings, or raising money for maintenance. Church is a living community aware of divine presence. Like the disciples, we may fear being wrong, fear being rejected if we offer something of ourselves, but the risen ONE comes into our places of fear and brings PEACE: his peace, the peace of HIS presence. We all have locked doors where we hide our past, our personal concerns, our loneliness and grief. We need to be released. We need a companion. He comes to us to walk with us the next mile, to open our hearts and minds and eyes to divine presence in more ways than we can name.

The object lesson from the resurrection appearances is commission! Every time they encountered the divine, they had an experience of new meaning, new opportunity, new life and future. 

In a fascinating book, From DNA to Dean, Arthur Peacocke tells us how his life and faith followed an evolving helical path. He explores how Christian belief and a scientific world view can be compatible – even complementary. He embraces the paradox of the Christian tradition as a simultaneous respect for what has been handed on to us and a critical revising, enriching and amplifying of it in the light of science under the guidance of the Holy Divine Presence.

Arthur Peacock was an academic scientist at the Universities of Birmingham and Oxford in the field of physical biochemistry: what today is called Molecular Biology and Genetics. He was ordained in 1971 as a priest-scientist while a Fellow of Saint Peter’s College, Oxford. Later he became Dean of Clare College, Cambridge. His book, Theology for a Scientific Age won the Templeton Prize. He started a Science and religion Forum in 1972 and the Society of Ordained Scientists.

I read From DNA to Dean on a flight to Japan in 1999 and felt strangely warmed because it so clearly articulated the compatibility of science and faith that I sought.

Luke’s gospel tells us at the beginning, in Jesus’ inaugural address, about the fulfillment of God’s plan of redemption for all of creation. Just when the disciples walking to Emmaus thought the story was over, God had something more to say. So far as our texts tell us, whatever happened inside the tomb is between Father and Son: we have no empirical evidence about the mechanism of resurrection. What we do have is the testimony of those who experienced the risen, new living Christ who shows up, right where he is needed, helping ordinary people understand, sending them to do the work of mission and ministry, not just in Jerusalem or its suburbs, but to all the nations.

Jesus comes in the presence of his friends. He brings change to their lives. Once they see and know and understand they are called to serve. They answer the call because they know a living empowering presence.

Today we baptize Wade and mark him as Christ’s own forever. It is good that our epistle is a reminder that we are all children of the Father. Truly what we will be has not yet been revealed.  I invite us all to come to the waters of baptism with open hearts and minds that we may renew our own commitment.

Risen Lord, break into our lives – help us to look again into the faces of those around us and to see you afresh.