Road Stories and Bread Breaking

                                       Luke 24: 13-35

 

 

The midsection of Luke 24 marks the first of three resurrection appearances told to us by Luke. It is thought by many to be one of the great short stories in the Bible.

The great Passover weekend is over. Two friends are walking home together and comparing notes and swapping stories about the trip. They live in Emmaus, a town about seven miles outside Jerusalem. They’re talking about all that has happened. It certainly was like no other Passover they had ever attended. The way they are introduced to us, it seems that they must have been followers of Jesus.

Jesus himself draws near. He is, of course, resurrected.  He walks along the road with them. But they don’t recognize him. Luke says that their eyes were kept from it. Jesus says to them: “What are you talking about?” They stop dead in their tracks. They look at him as if he has just crawled out from under a rock.  Are you the only visitor in town to not know what happened this weekend? they ask.

Jesus says “What things?” So they tell him the story. The story of Jesus of Nazarath.  Jesus gets to hear the events…and their idea of him…through the words of some of his followers. According to them, Jesus was a prophet, a doer of mighty acts and deeds before God and the people. It was the religious leaders who delivered him to his death. Jesus’ followers hoped he was the Redeemer of Israel, but he was executed.

The travelers go on with their story. Some women went to the tomb this morning on the third day of his death. They didn’t find his body there, but they said they saw a vision of angels. They said he was alive. The travelers told Jesus that others had gone to the tomb to check it out and that they found it as the women had described, but they had not seen Jesus. It was quite a story those traveling disciples told Jesus about his life and death and the events surrounding the tomb.  But the story they told was punctuated with doubt and sadness.  In their eyes, their hope had turned out to be a false hope. Jesus, the hoped for Redeemer, had died and now his body was missing.

Then Jesus told them a story. He started with Moses and traced their history all the way through the Prophets.  As he did, he interpreted all that Scripture concerning himself and how his coming was prophesied. He called them foolish ones. He said that they were slow of heart to believe that what the prophets had predicted, had indeed come to pass. Their hearts were burning, but they still had no idea who he was.

A long story from the disciples and a longer story from Jesus made for a quick passage down those seven miles and before they knew it, they had drawn close to the village where they lived. It was near evening and they invited this man to come in and have supper with them. He agreed.

I love road trips and long walks. Lately, I’ve become fond of long bike rides. Honestly, I love it with company, but I like it by myself as well. First, I find myself communing with nature. Sooner or later, I find myself in conversation with Jesus. I guess you could call it prayer, but sometimes it seems more like conversation. There’s something about the privacy of  cycling or walking. It slows my pace to the point where I can see and hear more clearly. Many of my reflection times come in the car or on a bike or walking barefooted in the sand. The Irish claim to have “thin” places where God is easier to feel. For me, I think my thin places are places in the heart. They are tapped into by the quietness and slower pace of walking or cycling. Maybe that’s why Jesus himself liked to escape to mountaintops and gardens to pray.

 The road to Emmaus is the first recorded instance in Luke’s gospel where our resurrected Savior appeared. This story only appears in Luke’s gospel. We don’t know for sure where Emmaus was. I don’t think it much matters. It was seven miles down the road. Seven signifies perfect, as you know. Maybe Emmaus was a perfect distance for a conversation such as this. It was just enough time for Jesus to both hear and tell a road story.

And what a story it was.  It made such an impression on these travelers that they didn’t want it to end. They invited this interesting stranger to come in for supper and to stay the night. He acted as if he would go farther, but upon their urging, he went in to stay with them. The words of verse 30 are so close to the words spoken at the Last Supper that some have said that Jesus was again having communion. Luke says that “When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them.” It is the same activity with nearly the same words. But here Jesus is having a meal with friends. Here, Jesus again takes charge even though he is not the host. And he blesses and breaks the bread.

Here is Jesus, sitting down with us in our homes, at our supper tables, blessing us and the food and eating a meal with us. And our eyes are opened, as were the eyes of the two disciples there that evening.

I love the way Luke brings us the warmth of Jesus. He portrays Jesus as hosting and breaking bread with his friends, whether it is on a mountain with a crowd, in a room with a small group or in our homes, at our dinner tables with only us present. Jesus does it all and does it intimately as though it is just for us. And each time we invite Jesus in, he brings us revelation, from the Beatitudes to Holy Communion to the simple, but profound revelation that he is in our midst; that he is with us.

In Luke’s story, Jesus then vanished from the sight of the disciples, but not from the remembrance of their encounter. It was so profound that they immediately got up and made their way back to Jerusalem at night to tell of what had happened. What they found upon their return was that Jesus had appeared also to Simon! Notice the exclamation point in your Bible. Yes, Jesus had made a point to appear specifically to the man who had so vehemently denied him just days earlier. Simon Peter was reunited with Jesus the very day Jesus emerged from the tomb.

It was a busy day, that Sunday long ago. Jesus arose from the tomb, from death itself and started making rounds. Luke reports that the two from Emmaus told the eleven and those gathered in the Upper Room  “what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

Jesus is the Christ. Of that, there can be no doubt in the minds of believers. He is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega. He puts the bookends on that which we call time and history. But in between, he walks down the roads of our lives. He tells us all we need to know and tells us why we need to know it.  And then, if we just invite him in, he will not only be with us on those high holy days when we partake of communion, but also on those summer nights when we catch hot dogs at ball games and on those winter nights when we gather for supper at the kitchen table. Yes he is sovereign and sits at the right hand of God. But he also wears sandals just like us. Maybe that’s why we Christians like so much to get together to eat. Maybe it’s just as simple as the fact that when we break bread together, we are in fellowship, and during such times, our hearts are more open to the truths that he would have us see. Perhaps he comes into full vision when we look in the eyes of those we love while we eat and drink with them around a common table. Maybe that’s when the revelation comes most clearly. And we can forever find him in our stories…at our tables…and in our hearts.