April 27, 2025 2nd Sunday of Easter Luke 24:13-35

 Whenever I read the story of the two followers of Jesus walking to Emmaus my mind wonders to why the guys didn’t recognize Jesus?  Could they actually not recognize who he is until suddenly their eyes were opened when Jesus breaks bread with them?  The text says that their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  That’s in the passive voice in Greek, which means that it is God who is keeping them from recognizing him.  All of that feels unfair.  I ask myself why is God playing games with them?  And wouldn’t their whole experience be better if they’d have recognized Jesus right from when the first met him, then spent hours knowing they were talking with him before he disappeared?  That’s what I’d want.  But this not recognizing Jesus until he is revealed and then he suddenly disappears is just frustrating!

All of those are fair frustrations to have with the text.  We’ll come back to that.  But in those frustrations we don’t want to miss the situation of these two men.

They had put their faith in Jesus.  They had believed in him.  They thought he was the one who would save the nation and bring about God’s long-promised kingdom.  He was, or was becoming, the center of their lives.  But then it all fell apart strikingly fast.  Jesus was celebrating the Passover just like everyone else, and then suddenly he was arrested, tried, sentenced, and executed; all in less than a day.  It so sudden and so fast they could hardly wrap their heads around it.  They’d put their faith in the wrong person.

Then the women report the stone of the tomb was rolled back, the tomb was empty, and two men in dazzling apparel appeared.  They said Jesus wasn’t there but was resurrected from the dead.  The story went from shocking to ridiculous.  The whole thing must have felt like a fiasco; with the women just desperate for a happy ending.

The two men on the road to Emmaus are like many people in our society today.  They don’t know what to believe in.  They don’t know who they are.  They don’t know what their purpose in life is.  They don’t where they are going.  Like the two men walking to Emmaus, they are just wandering along towards a temporary destination but with no real purpose.  Everything seems confusing and unsteady.  They tried to believe in something – they’d tried to believe in Jesus – but it had failed.  So now what?

I said a moment ago I thought this identity crisis is something many people in our society today are feeling.  That’s probably an understatement.  It’s actually dominant.  It’s like the whole society doesn’t know who they are, where they’re going in life, or where we’re going as a nation.  There’s no national identity and no national purpose.  And, despite that polls say that most people believe in God, and they have largely Christian morality structure and worldview, they do not have a functional fear of God.  By fear of God I do not mean paralyzed trembling at the fear of eternal damnation.  I mean a healthy respect that we are all dependent upon a Being who has created us but we have no means of controlling.  You find taught throughout the Hebrew scriptures that there is nothing we humans can offer to God that God can’t get better elsewhere.  And so we are forever dependent upon a Being for whom we can offer nothing, yet upon whom we absolutely depend.  That’s the kind of fear and respect I mean.  But instead, people in our nation seem to believe in a god who thinks just like them – has the same morality and the same views.  And, a god who is willing to allow excuses for their every moral slip.

So, with no real direction in life, and no fear of God, people are living life lost and trying to find meaning by consuming things.  We consume more food, more creature comforts, more entertainment, and endlessly more technology.  Instead of people having a sense of purpose based upon their labors and how their efforts contribute to their family, their neighborhood, and their nation, they try to find a sense of purpose by posturing for image in social media, through virtue signaling with their purchases and social beliefs, and through consuming things.

This Wednesday the Men’s Breakfast will be watching the video The Rise of the Pavement Princess.  It’s about men in society today struggling to have a place and a purpose, and so they buy a “pavement princess”, which is another way of saying a big macho looking offroad luxury pickup truck that never actually does any real work or leaves paved roads.  Those ridiculous shows of masculinity, that never actually do anything, can easily cost more than four years of college at a public university.  They are a symptom of something much deeper and much bigger.

It feels to me like most people in our society are just as lost in life as the two men walking to Emmaus that Easter evening.  They are consuming pointlessly and exhausting themselves accomplishing nothing and going nowhere.

Let’s recognize that it is in the midst of their lostness that the resurrected Jesus comes.  That goes for the two men heading to Emmaus and for people today.  In both cases they cannot see Jesus in their midst.  They do not understand.  Perhaps it isn’t God blinding them so much as it is that in every input their senses receive they just interpret in a way that refuses to see God at work.

On the road to Emmaus Jesus explains from scripture all the things about himself.  The two men don’t understand.  We’re not told exactly why they can’t understand so we shouldn’t speculate too much.  If I put it into today’s situation I imagine a grandfather trying to talk to his granddaughter about the Bible and faith in Jesus.  The conversation is polite but doesn’t go anywhere.  The grandfather is anxious and finds his granddaughter isn’t interested at all.  The granddaughter tries to be tolerant but finds her grandfather’s faith talk to be quaint, irrational, and out-of-touch with her own “enlightened” world view.  And so the conversation goes nowhere.  The risen Lord is not made visible.

            What are we to do?  The world is lost but doesn’t believe it.  People don’t want to hear the truth that saves them.  Jesus is there but never seen.

            The risen Lord is revealed to the eyes of the two men in the breaking of the bread.  This is not exactly the same as holy communion, but we would be right to realize there are parallels.  In classical Greek drama the meal scene is the anagorisis – the recognition scene.  The anagorisis often involves the recognition of someone to whose identity one was previously blind.  Aristotle, whose works are the foundation for poetry, rhetoric, and literary theory – wrote that recognition is a change from ignorance to knowledge.  The recognition might bring about affection if it is between friends, or it may bring anger if it is among enemies.  Recognition may be based on visible signs, memory, or reasoning, but as Aristotle says, the best kind is, “that which arises from the actions alone.”  (Aristotle, Poetics 1452a-1455a)  If that is what Luke has in mind as he’s telling this story, then he’s crafted to anagorisis here to be from the actions alone.  The two men recognize Jesus when he breaks bread with them.

            It would be wrong to say that spreading the gospel is as simple.  No, there are a number of things at work here that we do well to pay attention to.

            First is that the risen Jesus meets the men where they are, even as they are heading aimlessly away without any real hope.  Second, Jesus stays with them.  He listens to their situation and understands it.  I think that’s where a lot of evangelism efforts fail.  People want to talk rather than to listen.  We need to listen.  We need to understand the lives of those we want to reach.  We need to realize the complexities of their lives.  Few people find themselves lost or not knowing their life’s purpose from only one thing.  Many factors are contributing to our current societal mess.  You don’t necessarily have to understand them all.  But you have to show that you understand at least some, and that you truly care.

            Jesus travels with them.  He listens to them.  Only after quite a while does he speak.  He explains things to them even as they don’t understand.  Jesus does berate them a bit for being foolish and slow of heart, but he immediately goes into an explanation.

            Then, only after all of that, does he break bread with them.  The turning point is his actions, but his actions come after all of that preliminary work.  I believe the same is true for our lives and our faith.

            That means that we too need to know who we are, what our purpose is, and where we’re going in life.  If we don’t know that we have a hard time showing someone else!  The answers to all of those vary for each of us, but all of them are based on Ephesians 2:10.  That says we are created by God for good works.  By good works I don’t mean being a bleeding heart giver to everything that comes along.  I mean working for the good of others.  Life’s purpose and value comes through work; and by no other means.  In other words, a life of comfort and luxury is a life that is pointless and going nowhere.

            With our purpose established, and with care-filled listening, we set the scene where the risen Christ can be seen in our actions.

            Certainly we ourselves want our own proof, or we want more proof than we get.  But that is part of the authenticity of faith.  Spreading faith is not one person who knows it all with absolute confidence telling it to another.  Spreading faith is the shared life of wonder; and questions and doubts about God.

So, it’s our:

1-purpose established,

2-care-filled listening,

3-meaningful shared actions,

4-and shared wonder

that genuinely spread the kingdom of God, and reveal Christ’s presence alive and among us.