They say that hindsight is always what? 20/20. And of course we say that, or we get accused of that, because it’s about wrong decisions we might have made, or if we had known all the information at the time we might have done something different. It’s one of those phrases that helps us remember that we gain wisdom because of bad decisions and we make bad decisions because we lack wisdom. And yet, what the phrase also reminds us, although used less often this way, is the way we only see things once we have looked back at them, the things we missed noticing along the way. Or it’s the way we change the story and reevaluate everything based on what something led to it. And so we have to understand that that is what the early disciples and the early church did. The gospels are not autobiographies of Jesus, and they were not written at the time, but are stories look backing through the cross, and more importantly through Easter. They look back to the things that had taken place, things they had missed all along, and saw it in a new light, the things that they didn’t realize, the things they had overlooked and didn’t understand and but do now, because of Easter. It reveals how God had been involved, but they didn’t know. Their hindsight made all the difference in understanding and telling the story of Christ.
We see the same thing is true in the story from Luke. Cleopas, who seems to be associated with the disciples in some way, although we don’t know how, because he is never mentioned before, and never mentioned again, and another unnamed man are walking to Emmaus. We’re told that Emmaus is about 7 miles away from Jerusalem, although it actually says its 60 stadia away, but I’m sure none of you know how long a stadia is, and I had to look it up; it’s 600 roman feet, although I have no idea how long a roman foot is. But that’s what our best manuscripts say, but other manuscripts read 160 stadia, which is about 19.5 miles. Now, since they walk both there and back in one day, most scholars are in agreement that the 7 miles is probably the better number, but they are still guessing, because we don’t actually know where Emmaus is, as there was no town of that name in 1st century Palestine. So, we have two ordinary men, going to an ordinary town, of which we know nothing about. My interpretation is that this vagueness for details is so that it is much easier to put ourselves into the story. We could be the unnamed traveler, and the unknown town we are going to could be our own home.
The men encounter Jesus, although they don’t know yet that it is in fact Jesus, and when Jesus asks them what they are talking about, they stop and they stand still. And then Cleopas begins to talk, and he sort of reminds me of those people whom all of us know who the less they know about something, the more likely they are to be the one who wants to talk as if they know everything. And that’s what it appears is happening here, because we have much more conversation about what Cleopas says, then we have about what Jesus says. In addition, Cleopas’ statements clearly show that he doesn’t understand who the Messiah was. Although he says that Jesus was a prophet mighty in deed and word, his understanding of the Messiah was the traditional one held that he would be a political and military leader who would overthrow the Romans and return Israel back to its rightful place in the world. The cross and Easter do not figure into that image of the Messiah. And then, as happens only to rarely, those who talk as if they know everything, are corrected by someone who claims not to know much, but in fact knows a lot more than they seem to, and Jesus begins to explain all of scripture, we are told, beginning with Moses and interpreting everything to explain who the Messiah truly is. What this story tells us is that the Christological explanation of Jesus, that is that Jesus was the Christ, which is the Greek word for Messiah, begins not with the disciples after Easter but that it begins with Jesus himself.
And then, as they approach the town, and the men are going to stop, whether they live there or were just going to stay the night, Jesus makes it appear that he is going to keep going. But the men invite Jesus to stay with them. “They urge him strongly” is what the passage says, and he comes into their lodging, and they sit down to the meal, and then Jesus takes bread and he blesses it and breaks it and gives it to them. Now that pattern should be very familiar to us, because it is the same pattern we use for communion, which Jesus did on his last night in instituting communion, and it is also the same pattern that he used in the feeding of the multitudes. And in that breaking of the bread, Jesus is revealed and is no longer just a stranger but is revealed to be the resurrected Christ, and then he disappears from amongst them. And they respond, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road.” That is in hindsight they see that Jesus had been with them all along. Has that happened to you, that you could only see God’s presence after the fact? That it was only in looking back that we could see that God had been there all along, but we didn’t see it? After Jesus leaves the men hurry back to Jerusalem and tell the other disciples what they had seen and heard, and then Jesus appears amongst them and gives them the same greeting we talked about last week, “Peace be with you.”
Now we have talked before that our understanding of love in English, is not the same understanding of love in Greek, depending on which word is being used, because there are actually four different words in Greek for love, but they all tend to be translated simply as love, even though they mean different things. In the passage from 1 Peter we heard, Peter says “Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart.” Of course that obedience to the truth, is in becoming a disciple of Christ, and of turning our lives over to God, which is how it begins, of us invoking the Father. But, once we have done that, once we have become obedient to the truth, he says, then we will have genuine mutual love. The word being translated as genuine, has a better meaning of “not feigned” or “non-hypocritical”, so this is more than just a surface act, but something that is part of who we are, and so we are to have genuine mutual love. And this love is the Greek word philia, or Philadelphia, which is brotherly love. Love one another as brothers, Peter is saying, and once you have done that, love one another deeply from the heart. And this love is agape love, which is an unconditional love for others, seen in our giving for others. As we’ve heard before, Thomas Aquinas said that agape love is “willing the good of others.” So sometimes translated as charity.
We can see that love being played out in the Emmaus story in the men urging Jesus to stay with them, and then offering him a meal. This is their loving deeply from the heart. They cannot let him just keeping walking on into the night, but instead offering him hospitality and in particular a meal. There is something that happens when we share a meal with someone else. That in the breaking of the bread, there is a change in relationship that happens. There is a bonding. And so it’s not a mistake then that one of our sacraments revolves around a meal, and it’s not an accident that the men encounter Christ in the breaking of the bread. This is them giving of themselves for someone else, an act of charity, and of course that is where we always find Christ. The verse immediately before the passage we heard from 1 Peter today says that we are to be holy because God is holy. We could just as easily change that to say we are to love because God is love. Or do love because God does love. Or give love because God gives love. Because what Jesus says is that we will be known as his disciples because of the love that we show, not just what we feel for others, but what we do for others.
And Peter says Christ did this as he was destined to from the foundation of the world. Again that is something that could only be seen in looking back through our 20/20 eyesight to what was always there, but which couldn’t be seen as it was happening. And because God loved the world that he sent Jesus to ransom us from the “futile ways” we inherited from our ancestors. That would be being set free from the ways of the world, in which love is not the universal. In which we are told, or even believe, that there are some people who we should not break bread with, or some who are not worthy to sit at the table, but that’s not God’s love. We are freed to be able to see God working and interacting with the world, that God is not some distant being not concerned, but that God is involved in things as mundane as meals. And when we don’t feel like God is there, it doesn’t mean that God isn’t there; sometimes it just takes distance and the eyes looking back to see and to know and maybe even say “weren’t our hearts burning all along?”
Last week our heart of the matter was peace, and knowing and feeling and living into the peace of Christ that is offered for us, and to breathe that peace in and then to breathe it out to the world. This week our heart of the matter is love. To know that God loves us and that there is nothing in all of creation that can separate us from that love. And then, once we have accepted that truth, as Peter says, it’s about having genuine mutual love for each other, and to love one another, to will good for one another deeply from the heart. That is the seed that has been planted in us, but like every seed, it must nurtured and watered in order to bring forth its fruit. It is that seed that makes in us a new creation and that is imperishable in us, for flowers and grass may wither and fade, but the word of God, the love of God is eternal and endures forever. That love is there for us to claim as our own, to invoke the Father and come to trust in God, to let that seed of love break forth and flower in our heart so that we may not only love others, but that we will live in that love every moment of every day so that people will indeed know that we are disciples of Christ because of the love that we show to the world, for love is the heart of the matter. I pray that it will be so my brothers and sisters. Amen.
Based on a series created by Dr. Marcia McFee, Worship Design Studio
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