Jack McKinney
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
April 6, 2008 — Third Sunday of Easter
Text: Luke 24:13-35
After Everything Is Lost
Tomorrow I will turn 43, a birthday utterly lacking in distinction except for one inescapable fact. It forces me to acknowledge I am 25 years removed from high school. Of course I don’t need an anniversary to remind me how long it has been since I matriculated at good ole Pecos High. Having one child in high school, and another almost there, provides daily evidence that my own teenage years are a distant memory.
And without meaning to, I fall into the middle-aged parent routine with my kids. The other day I was watching a ballgame with Stephen on television and suddenly, without knowing why, I said: “You know, when I was a kid there was only one game on TV a week. It came on Saturday afternoon and you watched it even if you weren’t a fan of one of those teams.” As the words came out of my mouth I felt my bones start to fossilize in my body and my skin turn paper thin. I realized I sounded a thousand years old.
But my kids are pretty considerate when I start talking like this. They act mildly curious, if not amused, and will ask me questions about those ancient times known as the seventies. The look on their faces, though, tells me a hard truth. I am describing things that they have absolutely no connection to and that have very little relevance to their own lives.
Which is the perspective most of us bring to this morning’s scripture reading. We are mildly curious about this story of two travelers on the road to Emmaus in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion, but we know, even if we will not confess, that this tale has little to do with our lives. After all, why should we care about this mysterious post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to two people we know nothing about who are headed to a place that archaeologists have never found?
Because, in a weird way, this is a story about us. If you have ever lost something you love, this is your story. If you have ever had a dream shattered, this is your story. If you have ever known the cruel truth that the world is filled with injustice, and that good people are taken from us far too soon, this is your story. These two disciples on the way to Emmaus have not only seen their friend and spiritual leader crucified, they have experienced the sudden end to their hope of a new way of life.
Which is what many were feeling forty years ago this week when Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis. The riots and burnings that ensued in Raleigh and other cities demonstrated the profound pain that swept across the country the night of April 4, 1968. A people who had been enslaved and segregated and murdered had found hope in this Baptist preacher named King. And now he was dead and the feeling that night was that his dream of a just and equal society died with him.
The reality is that few people turned to violence the night Dr. King was murdered. Most people were too paralyzed with grief to do something like that. And what do you do when you are numb with shock because life as you knew it, as you hoped it, is suddenly ripped away from you? Well, you head to Emmaus.
According to Frederick Buechner we all travel the road to Emmaus with these two lost souls at some point in life. Buechner asks:
Do you understand what I mean when I say that there is not one of us who has not gone to Emmaus with them? Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that people have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish people for selfish ends. Emmaus is where we go, where these two went, to try to forget about Jesus and the great failure of his life.…
But there are some things that even in Emmaus we cannot escape. We can escape our troubles, at least for awhile. We can escape the job we did not get or the friend we hurt. We can even escape for awhile the awful suspicion that life makes no sense and the religion of Jesus is just a lot of wishful thinking. But the one thing we cannot escape is life itself: the fact that I am here on this earth, a living human being with blood in my veins and breath in my lungs. And we cannot escape getting hungry, and we cannot escape eating. We cannot escape walking or driving down a dusty road to get from one place to another. And my point is this, that it is at such times as these that life is going to ask us questions that we cannot escape for long: questions about where the road we are traveling is finally going to take us; about whether food is enough to keep us alive, truly alive; about who we are and who the stranger is behind us. (Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, The Seabury Press, 1966, pp. 85-87.)
Jesus shows up in this story like he shows up in our lives—hidden, cloaked in the ordinary. He plays dumb, like he doesn’t know a thing about what happened in Jerusalem, and then after trying that he starts teaching these two grief-stricken followers. But they don’t get it or get him, just like we don’t most of the time, and so they just keep walking toward Emmaus.
And when they arrive there at dark, they do the most important thing you can do when you feel like life is empty and void. They remember their manners. They invite the stranger to join them for a meal. Such an act of hospitality seems simple enough, but when you are headed to Emmaus to get away from the world the hardest thing to do is make room for other people and their needs. But they do it, and Jesus breaks bread with them, and in the breaking of the bread they catch a glimpse of him before he disappears.
If you think this is a story about how everything turns out okay in life, even when it seems to be falling apart, you are wrong. The cruelty and pain of the cross are not wiped away in Emmaus. A serious African American candidate for President doesn’t redeem what happened to Dr. King on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. Finding someone new to love doesn’t mean the scars of your lost loved are removed. Life doesn’t work like that.
As best as I can figure, from this story and my own life, what we can count on in Emmaus are glimpses of truth, of hope, not miracles that fix the past. But these glimpses, as fleeting as they may be, are so important. After everything is lost in our lives, and we hit the road to that place where we escape our pain, the only thing that matters is having our eyes opened again. If only for an instant. But if we can see, just for a second, that life isn’t just about Golgotha, or Memphis, or Guantanamo, then in that revelation we will have found God—the One who subtly, mysteriously reveals the light even in our worst darkness.
Thomas Merton put it like this:
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. God is manifested everywhere, in everything — in people and in things and in nature and in events ... The only thing is we don't see it.... I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere. (Different versions of this quote are found in a number of Merton’s speeches and writings.)
Yes, the gate of heaven is everywhere, even in Emmaus after all has been lost. And if you are given the gift of sight there, then go back home and try to live from that revelation.