The Rev. Austin K. Rios
23rd April: Easter 3
A gardener to Mary outside the tomb on Easter Sunday, a wound-bearing figure that is unimpeded from entering locked rooms or fearful hearts, Christ has been the ultimate model of flexibility in his post resurrection encounters.
As two of his less familiar disciples make their way to the village of Emmaus—most likely despondent and despairing about the end of their hope that the world could be better and reconciled under Jesus’ messiahship—a stranger approaches them on the road.
We who are on this side of the story know the stranger is Jesus, but Cleopas and his companion don’t recognize him.
Jesus the Stranger wants to know what they’ve been talking about—he wants to be included in their conversation.
A sad Cleopas finally responds saying, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”
The stranger wants to know more, and then the disciples begin letting the stranger into the narrative that has shaped their recent days.
They speak of the great hope they had in Jesus, share their heartbreak that the story seems to have ended, and they even relay unconfirmed accounts of the empty tomb with the stranger.
But then the stranger begins to share a story with them.
It’s a story that is rooted in the expectations they had for a Messiah and the sacred scriptures that ordered their religious lives, but one that they wouldn’t have been able to tell themselves.
It’s such a good story, that maybe for a moment they dared to lay aside their grief and imagine that their lives might go on.
Hearts burning within them, filled by the conversation and companionship on the way, they finally come to their home in Emmaus.
When I imagine them—those three figures covered in dust from the road and bathed in the setting sun’s warm red light—it is usually at the moment when the stranger is about to go and the fellowship will be broken.
I can almost see in my mind’s eye, the moment of hesitation when Cleopas and the other disciple realize that if they do nothing, the stranger will be gone from them forever.
Part panic, part trepidation—having spent the last hours remembering the story that Jesus had awakened in them during his lifetime—they fell back on the training he had given them.
Perhaps they remembered Jesus’ peculiar words about the Son of Man being hungry, and thirsty, and a stranger and the blessed sheep providing food, water, and shelter[1].
Or maybe they just had compassion on a fellow human being whose company had made them glad, and they wanted the good times to keep rolling.
Regardless of their motives, the decision of the disciples on the road to Emmaus to open their home, table, and hearts to the stranger, reinforced a pattern that has become a holy standard for our Christian lives.
The Lord that we have hoped for, the one who is both crucified and risen, the Son of Man who judges the nations with equity and who created all there is—that Jesus Christ appears to us most frequently in unexpected form and fashion.
Most often, the Christ whose mystical body is composed of many individual members, is made known in our closest companions, our friends, and perhaps most powerfully in the stranger that our fearful and protective human nature might easily dismiss.
Those Emmaus bound disciples finally realize that Jesus is risen and is among them when they incarnate the ways of relating to others that he showed them—when they risk getting to know one another as they walk the same road, when they invite the stranger into their home, and when they allow the stranger’s gift to transform them.
For those disciples, part of the stranger’s gift was to remind them that the story in which they participated was not yet over, but was actually just beginning.
The stranger’s gift was revealed in word and deed—in broken bread shared that spoke of a broken body being resurrected and remembered.
I’m sure it was a thrilling experience—an experience that catapulted them into that fervent early church world of testifying to the life-altering reality of the resurrection.
Good for Cleopas and all our transformed forbears in the faith who had such amazing encounters with the risen Christ!
But what about us?
We who are wearied of a world that seems to dash our hopes and expectations at every turn—we who hear the testimony of scripture and these forbears and wonder if the resurrected Christ can reach us in a similar way.
My guess is that if you are here today on this third Sunday of Easter, you are a person who genuinely would love to have the living Christ revealed to you in an overt way.
Maybe you still have some hangups about whatever sins weigh upon you that you consider important in God’s eyes—OK understandable— but you are here because you WANT to follow Christ’s way of transformation that leads to a resurrected existence.
You come to this worship service and this table where bread is broken and shared, in the hopes that YOUR heart may burn within you once more, that YOU will recognize the risen Lord among us, and that YOU will be empowered to testify with joy and conviction about the reconciliation that Christ makes possible.
And when this path doesn’t produce the expected results—spiritual highs and soul surety about your life’s direction—you may wonder if you are doing something wrong or if this pattern of being leads to the heart of God for which you long.
For me, the Emmaus episode is one of the stories I return to when I am sad, disappointed, and unsure of where to go.
It reminds me to respond to my fears, concerns, and worries not by creating walls to keep others out from the hurts in my story, but to walk the road with them, and to allow God to use the shared experience to transform us together.
It reminds me that how I treat a stranger is how I treat Christ, and it encourages me to look for opportunities to break bread with those outside my inner circle.
This is one of the main reasons different members of St. Paul’s are opening their homes and tables to dinner guests during this Easter season—to allow God to transform us from strangers to friends who can support each other in expanding this community’s borders to welcome strangers even more meaningfully.
The Emmaus experience is what informs my thinking as Executive Director of our refugee center, especially regarding how important sharing meals, stories, and companionship are to allowing new lives to emerge from the pain and hardship of loss.
Christ’s identity as the stranger on the road to Emmaus reminds me that if I want to meet the risen Lord, the most important thing I can do is to be aware and present to whomever God has put me in contact.
I may not know what road you are walking today—whether the narrative of your life is currently tinged with grief and sadness or a more hopeful perspective.
Regardless of where you are on that spectrum, the Emmaus journey is a call to be attentive to the gift of strangers, to be unafraid to be real with others about the loss and hurt and hopes we have, and maybe even to lean into becoming the kind of stranger for others who is unafraid to share the road and testify to the story that has led us to life.
Responding to that call is the first step in the journey that leads to healing, reconciliation, and the resurrection life that has no end.
Cleopas and countless unnamed disciples did the same.
Now it is our turn—our time to seek and serve the risen Lord in one another and in the many strangers with whom we share the Way.