In the Middle
Text: Luke 24:13-35
We are so familiar with this story that we feel free not to listen to it. Blah blah blah … Road to Emmaus … Scripture … Eucharistic meal … Resurrection … blah blah blah. We know the conclusion before we even start. This is the season of Easter, so it is bound to be about the appearance of the risen Christ. An event to which the Gospels devote much less ink than they do to the passion. The creed which we will recite later allots only a single line to it: On the third day he rose again, in accordance with the scriptures. This curt treatment cannot be because it is not central—for it is—but rather because it is so central that it is old hat. It goes without saying. So when we hear this story in Luke, we tend to leap to its conclusion without spending time in the middle.
Yet our own faith is rarely a leap of faith. It unfolds over time and circumstance in various degrees of acceleration and decline. There is rarely an instant creedal moment. Luke seems to get that. The Gospel reading is from Luke only today, when in the lectionary year A (where we are this year) we would normally hear from Matthew. But Matthew’s post-resurrection story is brief, like Mark’s, and to the doctrinal point. This one is slower-paced and deliberate. We need to take the time to ponder what Luke took the time to tell.
For Luke, and for all in his day, the organ of knowing and rational thought was the heart, not the brain. So the story in Luke is a story of the heart, one that at the beginning is closed or unseeing and becomes at the end open, wise, and fervent.
It goes through stages. But they are not necessarily progressive, one does not lead to the next, they are not a program, they are not steps along a journey. They are instead varied experiences of faith. Eight events or feelings that form and inform our faith. Perhaps therefore it is better to call them something else than stages. Let’s call them experiences of the faithful heart.
Experience one: disappointment. Leaving Jerusalem, the disciples talk together. They try to make sense of a bad turn of affairs. The were discussing it among themselves, it says, Luke using a word that implies seeking for an answer. It is unfathomable.
We had hoped, they say to the stranger who comes to join them, hoped for more from Jesus. That he might be the agent that would restore the nation to its greatness and to its obedience to and favor of God.
Experience two: blindness. They cannot see that the stranger is Jesus. They are made blind perhaps by their disappointment, which is a poisonous and stubborn emotion. They do not recognize him, it says, they do not know him—this is a heart problem more than an eye problem. Perhaps because a crucified redeemer is no redeemer at all. Or perhaps because they know how badly things usually work in the world and suspect that the things that have taken place, as it says, are going to be no different.
Like the travelers, we search for God in unmet hopes and regrets. We long to understand sorrow and tragedy, and our disappointment and dismay at the way things usually go shades our ability to see God in the world.
Experience three: Chastisement. Jesus admonishes the travelers. He calls them foolish and slow of heart. He says they have not applied their minds to the problem. That their hearts are sluggish.
It is helpful to be admonished by God, for many it is an essential step toward recovering a lost life. To bring us up short when we have sunk into hopelessness. And to remind us—as we seem to repeatedly need reminding—that God is both good and amazing and less constrained than we usually admit.
Experience four: Interpretation. Jesus interprets the events of these past few days for the two travelers. He acts here not as redeemer but as teacher, rabbi. He does not identify himself as the risen Jesus. He puts the crucifixion into scriptural context. To help them see the sense of it in terms of things they already know: the story of Israel and God’s promise to it.
Experience five: Urgency. The travelers invite Jesus to stay with them. But invite is too weak a word. They urged him strongly, the reading says. Forcibly, almost. They are adamant.
When our hearts begin to open, we can feel a compelling necessity to be closer to God. A kind of infatuation seeking to know God more, to understand better.
Experience six: Companionship. This is a story of people traveling together, trying to make sense of things together, learning from each other, dealing with adversity and joyful surprises together. And sharing a sacramental meal.
No one lives alone in faith. It is why we share the Lord’s Supper in assembly, not alone. Why we gather in churches, why we study scripture together, and pray for one another.
Experience seven: Recognition. In the breaking of the bread together, the travelers report, they recognize this man to be Jesus, executed and risen. Their eyes, once blind, now can see. Things seem different. Their thoughts of their hearts, once slow, now seem to be energetic, excited, fervent.
And experience eight: Community. With hearts on fire and full of knowledge, the travelers return to Jerusalem, to their community. They report what they have seen and felt. The church is born.
Jesus leaves them, letting the church become the body of Christ in the world. The church becomes the venue for understanding, interpretation, for invoking Christ in a shared meal.
Disappointment, uncertainty, admonition, confusion are part of our daily lives. So are companionship, understanding, and community. Faith is not something somehow perpendicular to our lives, developing through means that are either entirely intellectual or entirely miraculous. We ask both too little and too much of faith if we hope it to be made of materials and operate by methods different from ordinary human experience. Faith is not so thin as that. Faith is sturdier than that.
Our faith in Christ is a ongoing changing relationship of the heart. There is no simple recipe. It is based on all sorts of experiences. We, like the travelers on the road, do not leap in one step from disappointment to joy, from doubt to belief, from fear to trust. It is all the parts in the middle—all the blah blah blah—that over time, sometimes slowly and sometimes with fervor, nourish and fill our hearts.
Poet Wendall Berry once wrote that we should approach poetry more with patience than with effort. That is good advice for living faithfully lives.
