October 6, 2013 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Road to Emmaus

The First in the "Texts for Life" Series

Calum I. MacLeod
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 116:12–19
Luke 24:13–35

““They told . . . how he had been made known to them in the breaking of
the bread.” Luke 24:35 (NRSV)

Lord Jesus, stay with us,
for evening is at hand and the day is past;
be our companion in the way,
kindle our hearts and awaken hope,
that we may know you as you are revealed in scripture
and the breaking of bread.
Grant this for the sake of your love.

The Book of Common Prayer

Today, as Hardy reminded us, is World Communion Sunday. It is a day in the church year that we set aside to celebrate our unity in Jesus Christ with Christians throughout the world. It is a nice coincidence—or maybe not a coincidence—that it is also Mission Trip Sunday here at Fourth Church, the day when we lift up opportunities for members and friends of the congregation to engage in global mission programs with partners in many different parts of the world. As you walk through Coffee Hour today and see all the beautiful flags, it really, I think, speaks both to World Communion Sunday and Mission Trip Sunday.

I must say that some of the most profound and meaningful experiences I have had during my time at Fourth Church have been during mission trips as a participant and leader. Over the years I’ve been to Mexico and Guatemala, Ghana in West Africa, and then a number of times to Honduras in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. These are often powerful experiences because, in them, we live into a Reformed understanding of life that work and worship are not separate; that we glorify God in our daily living and working, and that worship is only one expression of that. So this is just another encouragement to you this morning that rather than just leaving out the front door of the church, come and join us in Anderson Hall and in the Commons of the Gratz Center for fellowship and for an opportunity to learn more and reflect on where God may be calling you.

Another note for this morning: the communion ware, the large flagon, the bread plate, and the cup that we will use during Communion are new to the congregation. It’s unusual for us not to use the original cup from one of our two predecessor congregations, North Church, but the communion ware, as noted in the bulletin, is a gift to the congregation from two of our regular attenders, Robert Starshak and Ross Draegert. They found them at an auction in New Hampshire. The pewter pieces come from a Presbyterian congregation in Edinburgh, Scotland, called the Associates Church, and the dates on them are 1742 and 1794. I invite you after the service, if you wish, to come up and see these beautiful artifacts. We will find a place to display them, probably in the Allison Library on the second floor of the Gratz Center. These are not only a beautiful gift and historical artifacts, but they act as a reminder to us that in receiving Communion we are united not only with the church throughout the world but with the church throughout the ages; that in the communion of bread and wine we are in communion with all the saints, the faithful of every time and place whom we invoke in our communion liturgy.

Today’s text is a very special text for me in my life and ministry. In it we are taken to the road that winds between Jerusalem and the village of Emmaus. The Emmaus road is a very special place to me because I have been there. I have never actually visited the Holy Land, but I’ll tell you how I’ve been on the road to Emmaus.

In the early ’90s I was discerning what my future would be, giving thought to the possibility that I might be experiencing a call to ordained ministry—much to my surprise and to most other people’s surprise as well, I have to say. Part of the process of discernment in the Church of Scotland was that you attended a national “Selection School,” as it was called. This was a three-day program during which people who felt that they may be sensing a call to ministry engaged with a panel of ministers and elders from the church and did a series of interviews, met with a psychologist, did a number of tests and papers. All that work was collated, and the panelists on that selection school would then decide which candidates were to be accepted as candidates for ministry and which ones were not. I decided that I would do this selection school process only once and if I was not accepted into ministry, then I would work out where else God was calling me.

During the time of the selection school, I was in one particular interview with an elder and minister of the Church of Scotland and they were asking me about what we might call a spiritual autobiography: I had to share some of the story of how I felt that God had been present in my life and what were some of the important events that marked those. As I talked, this wise minister asked me very directly, “Have you had a conversion experience? Has there been a time in your life when you have said yes to Jesus?”

Now I was caught completely unawares by this question, and the truth was that I had never had what we think of in the simplistic sense as an “experience” where once there was no faith and now there was faith. That was not something that I had experienced, so I hemmed and hawed a bit, and I said to him, “To be honest, I’ve never had a Damascus Road experience.” This wise old guy looked at me and he said, “The Damascus Road is not the only road in the Gospels.” He said, “There is also the Emmaus Road.” He told me the story and he said, “As I listen to you, Calum, it strikes me that your life has been one in which Christ has been present with you, walking the road with you, even though at times you may not have realized it.”

I wonder how many of us gathered this morning here at Fourth Church, although we may never have been to the Holy Land, have been, will be, on the Emmaus Road. It’s quite a beautiful story. Cleopas, this hitherto unknown follower of Jesus (this is the first time he’s mentioned in the Gospel), is walking with his companion, another early follower of Jesus. They’re sad, dejected, down, trudging along slowly. Then they’re joined by this stranger, who seems a rather peculiar character. And when they, in a sense, challenge him, he responds with this exegesis of the scriptures, of the words of law and prophet. Even though they do not recognize that this is the risen Christ, they are compelled and held by him and are moved to offer him hospitality, to invite this stranger in to stay, to eat, to do that most holy of things: to break bread together. It is in that action, the breaking of the bread, that Eucharistic moment, that moment so like what we will do together here in this worship service this morning, when the disciples recognize him. Take bread, give thanks, break it, and share it with each other. In that we recognize that this is indeed the risen Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ.

The contemporary poet Denise Levertov has a poem in which she reflects on a painting of the Emmaus scene in the house, the one by the great artist Velázquez. In that painting Velázquez focuses not on Jesus and Cleopas and his companion; they are off kind of in the distance. Velázquez focuses on the servant girl, and Levertov’s poem is called “The Servant Girl at Emmaus”:

She listens, listens, holding
her breath. Surely that voice
is his—the one
who had looked at her, once, across the crowd,
as no one ever had looked?
. . .

Surely those hands were his,
taking the platter of bread from hers just now?
Hands he’d laid on the dying and made them well?

. . .

Those who had brought this stranger home to their table
don’t recognize yet with whom they sit.
But she in the kitchen, absently touching the wine jug she’s to take in,
a young Black servant intently listening

swings round and sees
the light around him
and is sure.

As I read the story of the Road to Emmaus and remember back to that interview and the minister sharing the story with me and reflecting on my life as being one on the Road to Emmaus, I find myself more and more sure of the presence of Christ. Not in a simplistic way or one which means there is no reality to be dealt with or hurt to be had in this life, but rather sure of the knowledge that, in this, Christ is present and walking the journey with us and that in the breaking of the bread, we encounter the reality of that presence here among us, between us, beside us.

New Testament scholar Sarah Henley writes this in a commentary on the story of the Road to Emmaus: “In feeding others at the right time and in receiving the bread broken for us in thanksgiving we are given Jesus.” And then she says, “Stop talking, stop everything, and pay attention as you reach out to receive what is blessed. A glimpse of the Lord may propel you with new confidence, new hope, even a new way of remembering.”

A new way of remembering. “This do in remembrance of me” is the order that Jesus gives that brings us to the sacrament. William Placher, the great Presbyterian theologian, wrote this about the Lord’s Supper: “Jesus’ supper offers hope for the future, however only because it is connected to specific memories of the past.” “Do this in remembrance of me,” he says in the Gospel. But I want us to think about what Sarah Henley said about a new way of remembering, so that when we remember at this table we’re not only thinking back to the story of Jesus’ ministry and life and death and resurrection and trying to remember that. But rather that we engage in an act in which remembering is the opposite of dismembering, that we are bringing back together not just memories but our unity with other Christians. We are re-membering, are bringing back into unity the body of Christ, and in doing that we are called—we are called to go out and live as the body of Christ. That’s one of the mysteries about what we do when we celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: that we are both given that which represents the body and blood of Christ and we are called to be that body in the world.

It is, of course, at the end of the story of the Road to Emmaus when Jesus takes the bread and breaks it that Cleopas and his companion finally recognize Jesus. In a beautiful book called This Sunrise of Wonder, the former dean of Westminster Abbey Michael Mayne speaks about the centrality of the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, the Lord’s Supper, in a testimony of his own life. He says, “These four actions of offering [taking the bread], thanking, breaking, and sharing together show the pattern of what self-giving love means,” and, he says, “are the only definition of God that we need to know.”

Let us pray:

Lord Jesus, stay with us.
Be our companion on the way.
Kindle our hearts and awaken hope
that we may know you as you are revealed
in scripture and the breaking of bread.
Grant this for the sake of your love.
Amen.

Sermon © Fourth Presbyterian Church