josephholubsermons


 

May 3,2009
Easter 4
Luke 24:1`3-31 

Emmaus Places

"Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight."   - Luke 24:31

For a long time this story has intrigued me, and the more I have learned about it the more intriguing it has become.  One thing is that if you look up Emmaus in a Bible dictionary, nobody is sure just exactly where the place was let alone if it existed at all!   The other thing is the two mentioned disciples, Cleopas and another unnamed disciple.  So who was Cleopas?  He wasn’t one of the twelve; this is the only mention of him in the New Testament.  So there you have it, two mysterious disciples on a road headed for a unknown place.  But for me these ambiguities are an invitation for the reader to see this story as more-than-literal.  To me, these ambiguities strongly suggest the story is to be taken as prototypical and symbolic.   An unknown and unnamed disciple traveling to a unknown place.  I believe the ambiguity is intentional in the sense that we the reader are to plug in the details from our experience. 

Guess what?  I know where Emmaus is!  I know exactly where Emmaus is.  I am standing here this morning to tell you that I know all about Emmaus.  I can describe Emmaus in great detail.  I will let you in on the secret.   But it’s not really a secret for you already know.  Emmaus is where we go when we feel we have lost something sacred.   Emmaus is where we go when our dreams have turned to ashes; when things don’t work out in life like we’d hoped.  Emmaus is our destination when we have been hit with the rude realization that the world holds nothing sacred; that even the wisest, most courageous and loveliest die and decay; that even the most noble human ideas of love, freedom and justice can be perverted and twisted out of shape by selfish people for selfish reasons.  Emmaus is what we do to lick our wounds and find some kind of superficial solace, because we cannot help ourselves to do other.  

Emmaus is a bottle of cheap wine or a six-pack of beer.   Emmaus is smoking too many cigarettes or going on a shopping spree.  Emmaus is sitting home alone stewing in a pot of paralyzing self-pity.  Emmaus is going to a cocktail party for the sake of the cocktails.  Emmaus is meaningless sex, going to lousy movie, or living in a state of unfocused anger.  Emmaus is where we go when we lose whatever it is that is tenuously holding the fragments of our life together.  Emmaus is trying to insulate ourselves from life’s frigid winds.  I doubt that I have to tell you much more about Emmaus because you, like me, have been there.  Emmaus is where these two disciples were headed to try and forget about Jesus and the great disappointment of his life.  They had invested all their hopes in him.  They saw him as the fulfillment of their deepest longings.  They had great expectations for him, but now he was dead - as dead as anyone has ever been dead.  There was nothing left to do but get the heck out of town and go to Emmaus. 

The one common characteristic of the resurrection stories in the gospels that strikes me is how mundane and subdued they really are.  I know that if someone were to have put me in charge of writing the resurrection stories I would have put a lot more pizzazz and drama into them.  The resurrection stories are pretty anemic in contrast to the birth stories of Jesus in which choirs of angels filled the night sky with heavenly music, and a guiding star appeared leading foreign strangers bearing precious gifts. 

In contrast to his birth, the resurrection stories reveal Mary Magdalene heavy with grief mistaking the risen Jesus for the gardener; disciples hiding out in fear behind locked doors; Peter dragging both his empty nets and heavy guilt along the Galilean lakeshore; and today, two despaired disciples walking along a dusty road to nowhere, not recognizing Jesus at first, and then when they did, he vanished!  We could say that for each it was their Emmaus place; where they had gone to lick their wounds and to begin to try to put their lives back together again.   And, in every case that’s exactly, where they experience the presence of Christ – in their Emmaus places.  

Do you see what the message is?  Do you see the dynamics of resurrection?  If we can begin to see these stories more prototypically and more-than-literally they convey a powerful message.  Encountering the living Jesus is apt to happen in our Emmaus places, the places we go that lie in the inescapable shadow of despair and death.  He comes not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of an inspiring sermon, not in the throes of a religious daydream, but at suppertime or walking along a road to nowhere in particular; in our ordinary everyday moments and transforms those moments into something more; a spark of life where there was only the smell of death; a glimmer of hope where there was only despair.

In March of 1992 my dreams turned to ashes. I was a broken and defeated person.  I had crashed and burned in a personal burnout and found myself in the throes of depression.  At that point I didn’t understand the inner forces that were driving me to be the obsessive-compulsive person that I was.  Some weeks after I had resigned as senior pastor of a large, mid-west congregation, I had descended into a gravity well of depression.  I could not see or believe I had any kind future.  I felt alone, cut-off, was angry at myself and had retreated into my Emmaus place of isolation. 

One afternoon the doorbell rang and a woman from the congregation was standing there, someone I knew only a little, but held in high regard.  She was a person who had class, always seemed to have her act together, a great mom and active in the life of the congregation.  At first I was shocked to see her standing there, and I felt almost embarrassed and uncomfortable in her presence.  The contrast of her shining presence, at first, only reminded me that much more of my own state of brokenness. 

She asked to come in  She sat down and she began the conversation.  I couldn’t have imagined in a million years what she was to speak next.  She looked at me and asked, “Joe, I need to ask you a question.  You don’t have to answer, but I need to ask.  Did you grow up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional household?” 

It is impossible for me to put into words what went through my heart in those next moments.  Shocked and even more embarrassed that I must have been so transparent, I answered in a shaky voice, “Yes, how did you ever know?”  She sighed and said, “It takes one to know one. So did I I. I have been where you are right now.”  

We talked that day and she shared her story.  She became a powerful symbol of hope for me; someone who had been to the Emmaus place that I was in and had come through it more or less put back together in one whole piece – filled with life. 

As I have reflected on that specific event of my life over these 17 years since, I now see even more clearly, how her visit brought the presence of Christ into the heart of my Emmaus place. 

My friends, if you are looking for proof that Jesus is really alive, I suggest you look deep into life, not in search of the extraordinary, but deeply into the ordinary and everyday; into those moments, if only for a moment or two, we have seen his face and felt his touch; in a visit or call from a friend; a reassuring hug; in a word of timely grace; or in the breaking of a piece of bread; a sip of wine - and then he is gone!.   It is not much but it is enough… it is everything. 

The love of God has no limits, not even death. It’s a love that follows and pursues us into all of our Emmaus places, bringing life and hope and leading us far beyond into a new day of grace and life.