The Road to Emmaus

I have had the very good fortune to travel to the Holy Land seven times over the course of my adult life. The first time, I was a junior in college and a friend and I went there together. That was an extraordinary adventure, but we were poor students so it was more exploration than pilgrimage; we didn’t have a guide to help us interpret what we were seeing. But did sit and read Luke’s birth narrative in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which was very cool.

It took me more than twenty years to get back, when I had an opportunity during a sabbatical to study at St. George’s College in East Jerusalem, taking a course called “The Palestine of Jesus.” Since then I have co-led one interfaith pilgrimage with a Worcester rabbi: Christians and Jews explored our bonds of mutual affection in a place where religious difference is too often seen as a problem rather than an invitation.

The four other times that I’ve gone, I’ve traveled with a very able Palestinian Christian guide named Iyad Qumri. I went first with the brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge and the rest of those times with one of your former rectors, Jim Munroe. Unfortunately we have had a couple of cancellations in the past couple of years that have delayed our next diocesan pilgrimage, but we live in hope, and we continue to pray for the shalom/salaam of Jerusalem.

The question always arises from pilgrims when we are at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Mount of the Transfiguration or at the Shepherds’ Field “how can we know that the events we are remembering really happened here?” Are we really following in the footsteps of Jesus?

The truth is that we cannot know for sure. But we also haven’t just made up those places either. Pilgrims have been traveling there for many centuries and to be honest, Israel and Palestine are not big places. If you are looking out at the Sea of Galilee, which is really a lake, you cannot know for sure when you are in the church built on the Mount of the Beatitudes that you are literally standing where Jesus said, “blessed are the peacemakers.” But you can be pretty confident that you are within a few hundred yards, just based on the geography and topography of the place and that’s close enough for me. The guides like to hedge their bets by saying “holy places can move” which is a way of saying that even if it wasn’t right on this very spot that Jesus stood, for hundreds and hundreds of years now pilgrims have gone there to pray and the place has become holy ground with all of that prayer.

Are you with me, St. John’s? Let’s talk about Emmaus, which poses a different challenge than almost any other site in the holy land. In fact there are no less than eight different places that claim to be “Emmaus.” Literally, that road that leads from Jerusalem to Emmaus goes east, and south, and north, and west to “Emmaus.” Which one is the true Emmaus? I think all of them. I’ve been to at least three of them so far.

John Dominic Crossan’s book, The Power of Parable, offers a way to understand how this can be. Crossan says that today’s gospel reading is not history, but a parable. The goal is to interpret the parable, not to find the exact road to Emmaus.

 

They came near the village to which they were going, and he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (24:28-32)

Notice the four Eucharistic verbs hidden in that parable about the bread. Jesus takes it. Blesses it. Breaks it. Gives it. Notice that this parable is about how Christians worship: we have two parts to the liturgy: the ministry of Word and the ministry of the Table. We interpret Holy Scripture and sometimes our hearts even burn within us when a sermon or reading moves us at a deep level. But then we are invited to share a meal together, and everyone is welcome. Everyone, everyone, everyone is welcome. And in the breaking of the bread, our eyes are opened and we trust that the risen Christ is with us, as promised. Emmaus happens. Again and again and again.

Notice that the stranger is invited to stay, to share a meal. I’m reminded of that great line in Brian Wren’s Eucharistic hymn, “I Come With Joy.” The table is the place where strangers are welcomed, the place where strangers become friends. It’s where we are invited to behold not just how Christ is present in bread and wine but in those who eat the bread and wine to become Christ’s body in the world. That is what the Eucharist is for: to build up that Body, so that we can be sent out to share the good news with others. Sometimes even with words.

So Crossan goes on to say something very provocative. He says: “Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.” It’s a parable; not history. I agree, which means that I cannot tell you which of those eight places claiming to be Emmaus is the “real” one. What I can say is this: Emmaus happens. My monk friend, Brother Curtis Almquist, began a homily one time at one of the Emmauses by saying: this story is true, whether or not it happened. That’s perhaps a kinder and gentler monkish version of what Crossan is saying, perhaps easier to internalize than saying it never happened in the first place. But it is wise to remember that something can be true even if it didn’t happen. Stories and parables can change our lives as we discover and rediscover their meaning along the way.

Did you know that the earliest followers of Jesus were not yet called Christians? That came later. Our earliest forebears in the faith were called “people of the way.” It’s code language. Remember in the gospels how the disciples make their way from Galilee in the north to Jerusalem, and life happens on the road, along the way. People are healed and strangers become friends, along the way. Disciples are formed on the way.

It’s still the same. We show up in Church to reflect and to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest holy scripture. Sometimes our hearts burn within us. And then we take the bread and bless it and break it and give it. And our eyes are opened whenever we pray: be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.

On the way to work or class, on the way to meet a friend for a cup of coffee. On the way will we meet strangers. How will we treat them? How will we speak with them? Will we allow xenophobia, “fear of the stranger,” to click in and cross the street to avoid engaging? Or do we allow ourselves to be surprised? How do we learn to open our hearts to others along the way in our busy lives so that Emmaus becomes our story? Real, and true. Even if it didn’t happen.

Please allow me to pivot here. So far pretty much everything I’ve said to you I could say at any congregation in our diocese and even beyond. Some would readily embrace the idea of parable over history and others might push back a bit. That’s fine. At it’s best, preaching is not a monologue – it invites conversation and questions and new insights.

If I were your rector, I could perhaps move from preaching to meddling here and get into the weeds of Northampton politics or congregational drama. But I’m not your pastor. I know Worcester, where I live, way better than I know Northampton so far. I’m a bit of a stranger here, at least right now. And I’m here for just a season, while Rev. Anna is taking renewal leave. What I can tell you is this, however: faith is a journey. And the journey itself is home. This metaphor of being people on the way, who have not yet arrived, is a very powerful one to me.

When I served as the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, from 1998-2013, I had two sabbaticals: the first at the five-year mark and the second after a decade there. I was just about due for a third one when I accepted Bishop Fisher’s invitation to join his staff in 2013, which I did, so I had to start the clock over. But I still got two sabbaticals over a fifteen-year ministry, which helped me in hindsight to see my work there not as one fifteen-year long tenure but as something more like three 5-year chapters. I want to encourage you to imagine Rev. Anna’s time away like that: one chapter has ended and this fall a new chapter will begin.

Life is lived “on the way.” Rev. Anna will keep walking in these three months she’s been granted to reflect and learn and grow. She was tired after all that has happened here in the past five years, but she was not (as far as I could tell) burned out. She was ready and knowing Anna, she will make the most of this time away. This parish has changed a lot since Anna arrived, and you’ve grown. A lot of strangers have become friends in a relatively short period of time. And physically, this nave is very different than it was before, intended to reflect the new reality of being church in this time and place.

Rev. Anna has been given an opportunity to reflect and ponder. But so have we, who remain here. We aren’t just “holding a place.” We haven’t hit “pause.” We will keep growing and learning and moving during these months as well. That’s just life. We will keep taking the bread and blessing it and breaking it and sharing it and our hearts may even burn and our eyes may be opened and we may know that Christ is truly present, in our very midst.

When Rev. Anna comes back she’ll be changed and you will be changed so there will be an opportunity, an invitation, to reintroduce yourselves. Not to “get back to normal.” Not to fall into old patterns and repeat chapter one, but to take the next steps that God is calling you to take as a faith community, and to explore new possibilities. So that after a rich history of two hundred years you can begin to ask what comes next, with God’s help?

The profile you all wrote that led to Anna being called as your rector isn’t who you are now. So Rev. Amy and I will be talking with vestry and with staff and occasionally I’ll interject from this pulpit the invitation to be reflecting and asking: what are we learning? How is God among us now? Where might the winding journey of faith take us next? You can count on this: Jesus will be made known along the way. May Rev. Anna’s heart burn in this time and may our hearts burn as well, and may the risen Christ be made known to us in the breaking of the bread.