Prayer: Come Holy Spirit, come.  Take my lips and speak with them, take our minds and think with them, take our hearts and set them on fire with love for you.  In Christ’s name, we ask it.  Amen.

Picture with me if you will the two men we discover in tonight’s gospel lesson from Luke.  Picture them walking slowly, shuffling their feet, staring at the ground.  The world, which only three days earlier had seemed exciting, eventful, and full of possibility, is now quiet, hopeless, and dark.  Time seems to have stopped.  Their disappointment, their grief, is so overwhelming that it’s visible in their posture and on their faces.  They mutter back and forth to one another a comment here, a gesture there.  Most are simply sighs and moans that come from the depth of their souls—the place where their pain is most deeply felt.  Their anguish is so overwhelming that they are completely unaware of the world around them.  They are consumed by their grief. 

I wonder have you ever felt overwhelmed by sadness?  Have you ever been consumed by grief?  Have you ever been painfully separated from someone you love by distance, disagreement, divorce, or even death?  I know I have.  The world around you seems like a blur.  All you can think about is your loss; all you can feel is the pain inside.  It’s physical…it’s consuming…it’s overwhelming.

The two men are walking to the same place we all go when we are hurt, disillusioned, and lost.  They are going home to their friends and family, to the life they previously knew in order to try to put the shattered pieces of their lives back together.  The saying is “life goes on” and I agree, but, after a catastrophic loss, it is forever changed. 

It’s here, precisely here, intentionally here, in the midst of their sad and broken world, that the two grieving men are joined by a third party, an unnamed and unknown man.  Under normal circumstances, the stranger might have been recognized, but these weren’t normal circumstances.  These men are blinded by their grief and pain.  It’s as if they are standing at the bottom of a pitch black pit.  They probably never even bother to look up at the familiar face of their new companion.

The perceptive stranger instantly recognizes the two men’s great sorrow, and he asks them a question.  It would seem a relatively innocent one.  “What are you discussing with each other,” the stranger asks.  One of the men condescendingly responds, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things taken place there in these days?”  “What things?” the stranger asks.  “The things about Jesus of Nazareth.  How our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him,” snapped the man named Cleopas. 

So we now know the source of the two men’s profound pain.  The two men are grieving the pre-mature death of their friend and teacher, Jesus—a man innocent of the charges that led to his execution.  Perhaps some of us can empathize with these two men’s frustration and pain.  Not only did they lose a loved one, but Jesus’ death itself seems to be both unnecessary and unfair.

In the summer of 1997, a young woman named Jenny, who was in my youth group in Houston, jumped into the back of a jeep following a party in Galveston.  She was unaware of the fact that the young man behind the wheel had had too much to drink.  He ended up rolling the jeep over and it crushed Jenny.  Weeks latter, Jenny died in a hospital after a valiant fight for life—she was seventeen years old.  Jenny’s mistake was seemingly innocent.  The young man convinced her that he was okay to drive—all she did was believe him—she’s dead and he’s alive. 

Likewise, Jesus was an innocent man who taught an ethic of love and stood for truth…and for that he was killed.  The two men exclaim in anguish, “He was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and his people.”  How unfair…how unreasonable Jesus’ death must have seemed to these two men who loved him very much.
           
Right here, in the moment of their deepest and darkest despair, something mystical happens.  The tide begins to turn.  The stranger asks a second question, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into glory?”  What a strange question?  What could it mean?  Well, the stranger doesn’t leave the two men in the dark for long.  He immediately begins to answer his own question using the books of our Old Testament.  I’ll try to sum it up for us gathered here tonight as best I can. 

To begin with, pure love is always crucified in our world.  You see pure love shines a light on the sin and darkness that exists in the center of the human soul.  We would rather quench the light of pure love—extinguish it completely—than have our fears, bigotries, lusts, and selfish ambitions exposed.  Isn’t it true?  Let’s be honest with ourselves, we will go to great lengths, perhaps even, at times, suspect ones, to protect our comfort and hide our imperfections.  Historically, whenever individuals who speak for truth and love in our world stand up against the powers that be, they end up marginalized at best and often abused or even murdered.  So, Jesus, whose love light shined brighter than any other, was crucified to protect the status quo—to keep power structures as they were—to keep the messiness of human sin from being exposed. 

However the good news of Jesus’ resurrection is that humanity does not have the last word in the unfolding story of human history—God does.  God entered time and space and in a proclamation of love that’s stronger than death raised Jesus to new life.  Essentially Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is God saying to us, “I don’t care how many times you people chose evil over good, hurting over loving, death over life…I chose life so that you and the whole world might live with me forever…This is my last, best gift for you…and I give it to you not because you deserve it or earned it but because I love you that much.”  In the darkest days of the fight to end apartheid in South Africa, Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote, “The Resurrection of our Lord and Savior declares for all to know that life will triumph over death, that light will triumph over darkness, that good will triumph over evil, that justice will triumph over injustice, that freedom will triumph over tyranny.”  The good bishop was right you know.  Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the source of our hope when the weight of our own mistakes is crushing us and the darkness of our pain and grief seems to overwhelm us.  I’m sure many of you are aware that the darkest hour of any night is the last hour before the sun rises to begin a new day.
 
As the two men listen to the stranger’s message, they are filled with a sense of warmth and hopefulness.  Their hearts begin to burn.  They have a moment of clarity.  Maybe God is working in the midst of their terrible loss to bring about something miraculous—something new.  Maybe Jesus’ death on the cross has a meaning that they could never have imagined.  Perhaps death doesn’t have the last word. 

The time, which had previously seemed to stand still, begins to pass by unnoticed.  The men reach their destination.  They arrive at there home a town, which is named Emmaus (however, I believe it could just as easily be Austin or anywhere else for that matter).  The two men stop as they reach their home, but the stranger continues on.  This leaves the two men at an interesting crossroad they can either, thank the stranger for his encouraging words and wish him a safe journey, or they can invite him in to stay.  They wisely chose the latter.  The two men turn to the stranger and say, “Stay with us, because it’s almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” 

The stranger accepts.  So the two men lead him to their home, and they begin to prepare dinner.  It’s then that the mystery of stranger’s identity is finally revealed.  The stranger takes a piece of bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them to eat.  Their eyes are opened, and they recognize him; it’s Jesus.  It’s their friend and teacher.  He’s not dead.  He’s risen, and he’s there with them.  Just then, as quickly as the two men recognize their Risen Lord, Jesus disappears.  You see the two men no longer need Jesus to stand along side them in the flesh because he is IN them by His Spirit!  They no longer need to live with the Good News because they have become bearers of the Good News.  The two men’s sorrow is turned into joy.  What was lost has been found.  What was dead is now alive.  They bolt from their home and run the long way back to Jerusalem to share the good news with the other disciples that Jesus their Risen Lord was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Like those two men on the road to Emmaus two thousand years ago, in just a moment, we will come forward to encounter our Risen Lord Jesus in the breaking of the bread.  When you eat the bread and drink the wine, be convicted that Christ is in you by His Spirit and that no experience of pain or loss and no mistake or poor choice can separate you from God’s love because Christ is in you forever.  When you partake of this Holy Communion, be assured that you are a bearer of Good News.  And, like the two men in our story today, leave this place in great joy to tell all those you encounter that there is hope and light to be discovered, even in a dark world, when we invite Jesus to be in us.  And it doesn’t take much to invite Jesus in maybe a word or a prayer or something uttered deep with in your heart.  Perhaps today is that day for you. 

Finally, please remember and never ever forget that Jesus joined the two men on the road at their darkest hour—and so it is with us. 

I spent part of Lent in 1997 in the Holy Lands. I remember being awakened in Jerusalem early in the morning before the sun had risen by the Islamic call to prayer coming from a minaret of a nearby Mosque.  As I tried to go back to sleep, I could hear the birds as they began to wake and sing in the dark in joyful expectation of the rising sun.  To my untrained eye, it seemed that the sky was still cloaked in night and would be for some time.  The birds were aware something that I was not.  They knew that despite the darkness that surrounded them, the sun was about to rise.  Likewise, the light of Jesus’ resurrection will rise to meet us in our moment of greatest darkness.  The darkest hour of any night, after all, is the last hour before the sun rises to begin a new day. 

And so on this new day, Easter 2006, may the Risen Lord be known to you, whether for the first time or for the thousandth, in the breaking of the bread.  Amen

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