HOLY WEEK 1998 - LOVE SO AMAZING
Preacher: Father James Murray SSC
EASTER DAY - EVENSONG The Road to Emmaus
"Did not our hearts burn within us?".
We live in a climate which still experiences the four seasons. If their edges are smudged in our subtropical environment, nonetheless we know the touch of cold and the enervation of heat. We rejoice in the sharpness of golden autumns, and we are enlivened by the coming of spring.
The Church also offers us seasons of the spirit, which reflect every human mood, but, above all, having gone through the spiritual spring we call 'Lent', we come to the miracle of Easter, when the dead tree is green again and the impossible is achieved. Death, indiscriminate and ugly, is transformed by ultimate and abiding life. But I suppose we can become a bit blasé even about Easter. Like all seasons, it becomes familiar, perhaps even predictable. And even hearing the account of the walk to Emmaus, though it moves us, may not touch us as it should.
I have been lucky enough to go to Emmaus. I walked there one early evening, pretending to myself that I was Cleopas or his friend, unless it was his wife, of course, which is not all that unlikely My walk was in contemporary time. The Gulf War was just beginning, though we did not know the Jerusalem papers were heavily censored, and we were kept in the dark. A friend from Sydney rang many times, one who was under the shadow of death and who kept on saying, because the news back home was not censored, "James, I shall never see you again." So it was with such thoughts about someone who was dying that I walked to Emmaus. The road runs down to Tel Aviv. The traffic was heavy. Great clouds of unremitting diesel smoke nearly choked me, but, having set out I was determined to get to Emmaus.
And my heart burnt within me at the memory of the dear Jesus who had hurried up behind the two disciples on this very road, and, as the divine eavesdropper, had infiltrated their conversation.
Of course, when someone you love dies, you become mightily preoccupied, often with yourself; if only I had behaved differently, if only I had left some things unsaid, if only I had been more courageous or more loving. Ah yes, more loving, because it would have solved so much&emdash; and more forgiving too.
Of course, the stranger should have struck them as extraordinarily impertinent, for the dear Jesus seems to have taken over the conversation. But, as they looked forward to reaching home, looked forward to closing the door on the hateful memories of their beloved teacher strung up on the cross and bleeding and suffocating, they were so bemused they did not recognise who their new companion was.
I have been thinking about that a great deal lately, with the widespread debate going on about the resurrection and whether the empty tomb is a later fiction, or whether the appearances are the ultimate experience of resurrection, the Resurrection of the dear Jesus. It is this peculiarity of non-recognition which strikes me, and I first started to think about it walking eagerly, if stumblingly, towards Emmaus.
You see our faith is not something we have worked at. Faith is said to be a gift, and it is given to very unlikely people at times. It is true that some people do come to it by intellectual reasoning. Some people are even argued into it, but everyone who has faith has it in the end because it is a gift, and faith is the gift of recognition, isn't it? Like love. When you love someone you may have many reasons for loving them, but in the end you cannot explain it. Love is a gift, and how beautiful a gift!
Where I work, there is a lovely girl who got married recently. One day I told her how I had seen this old couple who lived in the street walking hand in hand as though they were young lovers. They had been married for sixty-two years, but they were still in love, they were still using the gift; and the sweet girl at work who was getting ready to be married modestly said, "And that's my ambition too."
So life is this pilgrimage we have set out to pursue. We are on it together and sometimes we walk in twos or threes, sometimes with a life's companion. We may even have to walk alone for a time, although the divine companion will come up behind us and be our comfort, and our hearts will burn within us.
Just think about your own spiritual experience, the seasons of the spirit you have gone through, not always exhilarating, sometimes exhausting, because of some pain in the heart, some wound or hurt, some word said which had more power than the person who said it, there is often a lot of forgiveness to be experienced on the pilgrimage.
The two disciples on their way home to Emmaus may well have been among those who forsook our dear Lord and fled. They were feeling remorseful the way we do when we say things we wished we could retrieve, or do not stand up for the dear Jesus the way we should.
Our little martyrdoms may even be harder than dying at the stake, or being stoned, or even being crucified.
But there he is, a mere footfall behind us, forgiving us, even forgiving us for not recognising him.
But why the lack of recognition? I know we could explain it by arguing that they did not realise his predictions about his resurrection were actually true and had come to pass before their very eyes.
But I think there is more to it than that. I think that in a contrary way we do not want resurrection, or we do not want it just yet. Resurrection is a terrible responsibility. It means living in a new dimension, especially because none of us actually believes that we are going to die.
I know that sounds absurd, but, if you think about it, death is something which startles us about other people, and I wonder how deep our belief about the resurrection affects the way we live. In a strangely mystical way, our pilgrimage is a continuous walk to Emmaus, but, if we have taken up with the divine companion, the dear Jesus himself, there is this extraordinary opening of the scriptures.
You see, our prayers are often ridiculous not just illogical but absurd, because, if we have not assimilated the mind of Jesus Christ into our very beings, we will always be asking for what would destroy us.
There was a lovely old lady who came once to the healing service, and sat in the healing chair, and, when asked what we were to pray for, said, "That I might win the $4 million dollar lottery." It was suggested this might not be a good thing. But she argued volubly that she would do so many good things with the money. I am afraid I argued back that the money might destroy her, and anyway, "Our Lady didn't know the numbers". She said she would report me to the diocesan authorities. But I thought I was on a safe bet there as it was in the diocese of Sydney. They wouldn't think Our Lady knew the numbers either!
What the walk to Emmaus teaches us is the wonderfully different mind of Christ. It is not that the two disciples lack faith or deny love, but even the most familiar scriptures have no true ring in them; they need a teacher and the teacher is the dear Jesus.
He "opens to them the scriptures". He even goes back to Moses. He parades the moral glory of the prophets&emdash; how opposite this walk to Emmaus is at this very moment in Israel when that moral glory has been obliterated by rubber-coated steel bullets felling the young and often the innocent&emdash; but the dear Jesus brings it all up to date and puts the heart of our own pilgrimage into divine focus "Ought not the Christ to have suffered, and so come into his glory?"
There is so much pain around us, there is so much pain within us, we are so often perplexed about ourselves, some of us are physically quite sick, and the list of those suffering never seems to diminish.
Yet our pilgrimage is to Emmaus. What are we looking for in that little town? We are looking for Jesus. We may have lost sight of him, lost hope in his resurrection, been enveloped in the clouds of our own self-importance or our desperate need for security.
Or we may even be under the shadow of death, or feel failures at work, or have no work, and we come here as to Emmaus and find the table spread. There is bread upon it and ordinary wine.
It is the end of the day. We have come home and shut the door, but the unknown and unrecognised and unannounced Jesus is also at the table. He is waiting at the table. That is what he has said, "I am among you as one who waits at the table".
And we sit down tired this night from the pilgrimage, though happy in a strange sort of way, for did not our hearts burn within us when we first met the dear Jesus, but did not really recognise who he is, and did not really understand what he can do. And he takes the bread, and he blesses the bread, and he breaks the bread, and he disappears. Where has the dear Jesus gone to? He who is resurrection and he who is life?
Oh he has taken the ultimate risk of faith and the perfect abandonment of love. He has disappeared into his Church; but he wishes and he longs and he prays and he intercedes that we will always constrain him to stay with us, to be at home with us, to be the resurrection in us.
Did not our hearts burn within us when he met us upon the road?
