Known in the Breaking of Bread

Our Gospel this morning really begins a verse and a half earlier. It reads, “Then they told (the disciples) what had happened to them on the Road (to Emmaus) and how Jesus had been known to them in the breaking of the bread.” It go on, as we heard today, “While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” The story of the disciples on the Emmaus Road is one of my favorite Resurrection stories. (It also, apparently, was one of the favorite stories of our founders, who put the two disciples and the risen Lord in the window over our altar.) On Easter morning two of Jesus followers, one of them named Cleopas, were on their way to the village of Emmaus, discussing the events of the passion and the whispered claims about the Resurrection, when they were joined by someone who asks what they are talking about. They tell the stranger of the events in Jerusalem and of their puzzlement at the claims. The stranger then proceeds to tell them what had happened, and how these events fit in with God' way with his people from the very beginning. They finally urge the stranger to stay with them at the inn where they are stopping, to tell them more. As they sit down to dinner he takes the bread in his hands and breaks it, and in an instant they perceive who this is ‑ that it is none other than their risen Lord. The Lord vanishes at once, and it all becomes clear. They ask, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That very hour they head back to Jerusalem, arriving to hear the confident declaration of the others, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!"(Peter) They shared with the other disciples what had happened to them on the road, and "how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread."

This story is typical of our human experience in that we too are usually slow in perceiving God's hand in our lives. We must often look back at what has happened before we can understand what part God played in it. One of the fascinating things about the modern Coventry Cathedral in England is the way in which the nave windows are set. The windows portray the stages of life, going from birth to death and resurrection as one approaches the altar. The windows are mounted at an angle, however, so that you can only see the windows which lay behind you as you proceed up the aisle. Like our view of the windows, we only begin to understand the truth about our life as we look back at it and can say, "Ah yes, now I know what it was all about!"

As they looked back at their Emmaus Road experience the disciples realized that they had perceived their Lord in two ways. First, they had perceived him as they gained new insight and understanding, as Jesus spoke and educated them. Education, of course, is more than memorizing information. It involves having things fall into place in our overall awareness of life. It may involve getting some new idea of how gravity works, or how a television set operates, or it may involve understanding how tragedy fits into our idea of the goodness of life, or finding out how we can forgive someone who has offended us, or how we can love someone who is different from us. The experience of the risen Lord, both for the disciples on the Emmaus Road and for us, may be evidenced in new knowledge, and also new understanding of the meaning and wholeness of life.

The second, and dramatic way in which the disciples perceived their Lord in their journey to Emmaus, was in Jesus’ picking up the bread on the table and breaking it. It was the familiar act which he had done many times before, a characteristic act of dividing and sharing which had taken on special meaning on the night of the betrayal, as they gathered in the upper room. It had meant two things for them. First, it meant that they were a community of fellowship and purpose. They had eaten from the same loaf; they had shared their lot; what happened to one was the loving concern of all of them. The loaf was broken and they each received a piece of it. At the inn on the road to Emmaus, the breaking of the bread may have had the special meaning that their cowardess and desertion did not put them outside the community they had all betrayed. Sinners and failures and cowards had a part in it. The second thing that the breaking of bread meant for them was that they were participating in the Lord’s broken life, and that broken life was identified with their broken lives, and all the ills that their flesh was heir to. The breaking of the bread meant both judgement and healing, and they perceived that God was at work in both. It is not strange that the disciples continued "in the breaking of bread" and that the Church has continued in it for two thousand years. We still do. Sometimes we do it and we perceive him with considerable feeling. Other times we do it and it seems very routine and our minds wander. But in this, as in all things, our abilities to perceive God in all God’s works varies, and many things get in the way: self preoccupation, fear of the unknown, the feeling that it is too good to be true.

We are, of course, all "post‑Resurrection" Christians, and we have the special advantage of knowing that behind all of life ‑ its tragedies as well as its joys ‑ God stands behind the creation, and still looks upon it and says "It is good." May our eyes continually be opened, that we may grow in our ability to perceive God in all that life brings to us, and especially this day that Christ may be known to us "in the breaking of the bread."