"Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Let us pray: Follow God the preaching of your word with the blessing, power, and might of Holy Spirit; grant that in so far it is true, it may be under girded with your power; and in so far it is false, it may be quickly forgotten and does no harm; in the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, Amen.

Oscar Wilde, from the Poem THE DISCIPLE:

“When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.

And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, 'We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.'

'But was Narcissus beautiful?' said the pool.

'Who should know that better than you?' answered the Oreads. 'Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.'

And the pool answered, 'But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.”

There are times in life we experience a daily battle with self interest. Whether it is generated out of fear and doubt, or an exaggerated sense of one’s self; our narcissism is truly cunning.

Paul suggests to the Church at Corinth:

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. (1 Cor. 13.12)

Faith formulation is not a clear process, however; a process of becoming none the less, a journey if you will.

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

Like Pharaoh in the Moses narrative whose heart was hardened by God (please note here that the ancient Hebrew world view saw God as the genesis of both good and evil). These two followers of Jesus were prevented from seeing who Jesus is.

They were more than likely James the Just, the bother of Jesus, which says a lot that he is unable to recognize his own bother; and Cleopas, who followed James the Just, as the leader of the Jerusalem Church. Therefore, unknowingly, the first century leadership of the Church in Jerusalem was unable to recognize the Christ. Talk about a bad day – hello!

If life is a process of becoming then faith formulation is a journey. A wonderful voyage into the unknown realm of God’s Grace. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin S.J has described the experience, he says:

Above all, trust in the slow work of the Spirit
We are quite naturally impatient in
everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate
stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to
something unknown,
something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

So how is God revealed during our journey?

And Jesus said to them,

“What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”

At that point Jesus gives them a salvation history lesson. Then he said to them:

“Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures”

After all that they still do not recognize the Christ. In a Roman world they may have thought this was an ordinary encounter with a resurrected mortal now become a god. According to Dionysius there is a Hellenistic legend of Romulus meeting a peasant on the road. Mythic resurrection narratives were common place. What makes this story so different is that the seeds of the crucifixion were sown at the beginning of the ministry when Jesus recruited followers and leads them to the Sea of Galilee (also know as the Sea of Tiberius because during the reign of Tiberius, a palace was built on an island in the middle of the sea). In the way, just like a group of passive resistor’s protesting in front of the Whitehouse; were Jesus and the disciples doing miracles, healing many, and feeding hundreds, if not thousands of people, all around the Sea of Tiberius. In Luke 6 we hear Jesus preach:

“I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

So in the evangelist Luke’s narrative, Jesus is the pacifist who resists the tyranny of Rome and the despotism of Herod. The final charge against Jesus is sedition in opposition to Rome – breaking the Pax Romana. This Rome would not tolerate, and Jesus could not resist, working to make; “Thy Kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven” - a reality. And I would remind us as Ernest T. Campbell, former pastor of the Riverside Church in New York, use to say; “Jesus did not emerge from the Garden of Gethsemane whistling - Sweet Hour of Prayer.”

But that was Friday, this is Sunday!

“As they came near the village to which they were going, 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.”

Maybe it was something they intuitively experienced or the words of hospitality still fresh in their minds; “³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.” They welcome the stranger to dinner.

The mystery of the empty tomb is not solved by empirical observation. Here is where our intellect fails us, for we only truly see Christ in the breaking of the bread. And through this bread, the Church, shall the world know Christ.

Preaching in the early Church must have seemed as bread to the spiritually hungry masses. And the preaching of the Church would become universal, reaching beyond Jerusalem with a message for a hungry world. Who were these thousands yet to be feed with this spiritual bread? Luke continues the narrative in Acts:

“Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. …^{6 9}Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs.” (Acts 2. 9-11a)

By 70 AD, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans, including the Temple and the Jerusalem Church under the leadership of James the Just and Cleopas, the two who encounter the stranger on the road to Emmaus, on an Easter evening some 38 years before.

Now the narrative in Acts shifts from James and Cleopas - to Peter and Paul, and good thing for us. If Peter and Paul did not plant churches throughout Asia Minor and even Rome itself, we would not be sitting here this morning. The journey of becoming is a process even in which the Church is not able to resist the creative Holy Spirit. To the world the message of Jesus becomes spiritual nourishment with great power, and we pick up the story in Acts:

“Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” ³⁸Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit… They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers”

Becoming Christian and devoting yourself to the Church is no act of charity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminded the Church that there is no such thing as “cheap grace!” Discipleship is not a narcissistic peek into the looking glass. As disciples we recognize Christ in the faces of the marginalized, disempowered, and dispossessed people of the world.

I mentioned the Riverside Church in New York. It was the desire of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to become pastor of that great bastion of grace and social justice on the banks of the Hudson River, and because of his death 40 years ago, that dream was never realized. As a change agent he daily lived the risk of discipleship. On September 20, 1958, Dr. King was stabbed in the chest by a woman who is subsequently alleged to be mentally deranged. The stabbing occurs in Harlem while Dr. King is autographing his recently published book, just one subway stop from the Riverside Church. Each morning, Martin King would look into the mirror and see the scar of the stab wound which resembled a cross.

True discipleship is never a narcissist self indulgent look into the mirror or a pleasurable walk on an Easter evening. However, our peace comes in a community of faith which remembers Jesus in the breaking of bread. - Amen