Hope—hope
is essential for our lives. Hope is the fabric about which our lives are woven.
For us to lose “hope,” that is the worst tragedy that can befall
us. A friend of mine recently told me about a young couple in his church. They had hoped to have a child. Yet it
seemed that time and time again, they had suffered one disappointment after another. They
got medical counseling and fertility treatments at a nationally known hospital. The appointments were expensive and not covered
by their insurance plan. But hope causes us to live for the future, and we put
all our resources toward the realization of that hope. You can guess what happened.
One day she excitedly called
her pastor on the phone. The pregnancy test was positive! Everyone in their church celebrated with them. The Presbyterian
Women threw them a baby shower. Everyone knew the love that she and her husband
had for their expected baby. The couple had painted the guest bedroom, bought new curtains, and a new crib. Then, one night,
she awoke to discover she was bleeding. In panic, she awoke her husband. They rushed to the hospital. She was examined
in the emergency room. Then came the hope-shattering news—there had been
a miscarriage—their hope for baby was gone. Their celebration turned to
wailing and her withdrawal from others. She told my friend, “We can’t
go through this again. We had so hoped.”
My friend sensing their deep pain did not know how to console her and her husband. Hopelessness
had cut a deep and painful gash in their lives.
Jesus’ disciples likewise
had lost “hope.” They were so hopeless that two of them had left
the others in Jerusalem. They had felt that they had to get out of there. They were
going home to Emmaus—back to work—back to some routine. Yet for them, Emmaus was more than a location on a map.
Frederick Buechner was right when he said that Emmaus is that place to where
we all go when we are feeling hopeless. Emmaus is the place where we all go when
we want to throw up our hands and cry out, “What difference does it really make anyway?” To go to Emmaus is for us to attempt to run away from life’s defeats.
These two travelers, Cleopas
and possibly his wife, had placed their hope in Jesus. They knew in their hearts that he was the promised Messiah. Yet, the terror of the previous week had shattered their hope. Jesus’
trial, crucifixion, death, and burial had been too much for them. There were
rumors about Jesus’ tomb being empty. Yet that empty tomb was not what
they had hoped for—they had hoped for a continuing relationship with a living Jesus.
It took them just two hours to walk that road to Emmaus. That is how long
they had to talk over the terrible events of that past week.
Barbara Brown Taylor reminds
us that Dr. Luke is the only gospel writer that told the story of what happened on that road to Emmaus. Yet, everyone has walked that road to Emmaus at one time or another.
She writes, “It is the road you walk when your …candidate has been
defeated; your loved one has died—the long road back to the empty house; the piles of unopened mail, to life as usual,
if life can ever be usual again... It is the road of deep disappointments, and
walking it is the living definition of sad.” (“Blessed Brokenness,”
Gospel Medicine, page 20.)
As they walked, they talked.
Along the way, a familiar stranger met up with them on that road to Emmaus. He
seemed to be going in the same direction, so they invited him to join them on their journey. He
looked familiar to them, but “something prevented them from recognizing him.” Something
would have to happen to them before they could recognize him.
The familiar stranger asked
them what they had been talking about in their journey. Cleopas asked, “Are you
the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in
these days?” “What things,” the stranger asked? Suddenly like the
floodgates of a massive dam yielding to the pent-up waters, these disciples’
emotions came gushing forth—their hopes, and the dashing of those hopes, and the resulting pain in their lives—word
after word, feeling after feeling, pain after pain—all of it all came uncontrollably gushing forth! Amidst all their talking, they seemed to sum it all up in their words, “But we had hoped that he
was the one to redeem Israel.”
The familiar stranger then
began to speak to them. His words stirred their hearts as they heard the scriptures
interpreted for their lives. He
told them how God had acted through Jesus, through the events of the past week. All
that had happened was according to God’s plan for their salvation. As the
familiar stranger spoke, that quenched flame of hope in their lives began to “glow” once again.
They arrived at the village
where they lived. The familiar stranger appeared to be going further. However, these two travelers insisted that he stay with them for the night. They
prepared a meal for the three of them. Finally, all was prepared, and the three
tired travelers sat at the kitchen table for their meal. The familiar stranger
took the bread, he blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them. His actions seemed
all too familiar. The familiar stranger had broken the bread, just as Jesus had
had broken the bread those many suppers together. The familiar stranger had broken
the bread, just as Jesus had broken the bread when feeding the hungry on a hillside in Galilee. The familiar
stranger had broken the bread, just as Jesus had broken the bread only a few nights before in the Upper Room.
Suddenly the veil dropped
from before their eyes, and their spiritual blindness vanished. They recognized
that this familiar stranger was no stranger at all—rather he was Jesus. He
was not Jesus hanging from a Roman cross, his body broken, bruised, and bleeding. He was not Jesus lying dead in a cold tomb.
This was Jesus, alive and present with them at their kitchen table! Then, as soon as they recognized his presence with them, he
disappeared from their sight. They knew in their hearts that he had not gone
from them. Rather he was present with them in a new and wonderful way. He was present with them as their risen Lord. He had come to them in their time of need. He had come, and in his coming he had transformed an ordinary moment into a “sacred moment.”
Nighttime had fallen. The road back to Jerusalem was dangerous because of bandits. Even more so, Jerusalem was the very place from where they had been escaping.
Jerusalem
was the very place where their lives were most threatened. They had to make a
decision. They could remain safe in Emmaus, behind the walls of their home. Or,
they could return to Jerusalem and tell others about Christ meeting them on the road to Emmaus. Of course, they did choose to return
to Jerusalem. They had to return to Jerusalem, to tell everyone of having met the Risen Lord
in the guise of the familiar stranger.
Christ still comes into our
lives when we are in need. Frederick Buechner put it this way, “He comes to those who are broken...even when our hopes have been dashed, even when our confidence in the future
has been shaken, even when we find ourselves utterly broken and bereft, he comes still.”
The French movie, “Chocolate”
was showing on TV the other night. That movie tells of a wandering chocolate
maker and her daughter who moved to a small isolated French village in the 1950’s. Beneath
the veneer of that, sleepy-seeming village dwelled people that were in bondage to their fears. They had lost hope. They believed that their future could not
be any better than their present. Therefore, instead of grasping the freedom
of a future that might be—they were willing to surrender to the bondage of their fears. Many of the residents of this
isolated village were suspicious of the attractive, young mother who had moved in among them, and had opened a chocolate shop.
She is warm and welcoming. She further
had a certain freedom about her life—a freedom that made some of them uneasy. A
civic and church leader even encouraged her to “move-on” to another town. Yet she stayed.
Her “chocolate”
slowly became a catalyst in their lives. Her chocolate became the catalyst that
enabled an abused wife to find the courage to leave her husband. Her “chocolate”
became the catalyst for a mother to allow her young son to visit his grandmother. Her
“chocolate” became the catalyst for two adults to find a renewed romance in their marriage. Her “chocolate” became the catalyst for a young gipsy to find a home in that community. Her “chocolate” became the catalyst for the young village priest to find
his own voice in his Easter sermon, and to preach it with courage. Only as the
movie reaches its conclusion, do we recognize that this young mother has been the “Christ-figure”
in the story. As the “Christ-figure,”
she had enabled the people of that isolated village to experience a creative and renewing hope in their lives. In the last scene of the movie, her task done, the young mother and her daughter quietly move on to another
community where there is a need.
‘Twas
eventide. Along the dusty road
Two weary travelers passed with aching feet
And heavy
hearts, while each in saddened tones
The story of their Lord would oft repeat...
When lo!
Along the road to Emmaus
Their Lord, the risen Lord Christ Himself, drew near...
Their hearts
were touched; the Master’s thrilling words
Dispelled their fears and cleared their darkened sight...
They said,
with gladdened hearts, “It is our Lord,
Our risen Christ for whom we long have yearned;
We knew
Him not when walking by the way,
And yet our hearts within us sweetly burned.
O Christian!
Walking o’er Life’s rugged road,
Thou too, like His disciples, oft shall say,
“Did
not our hearts within us sweetly burn
When Jesus talked with us beside the way?”
(Original
Poems by Mrs. Olivia Bush, 1899, Louis A. Basinet Press;
reprinted and published 1991 Oxford Univ. Press)
And, the familiar stranger walks with us still.
