A Sermonette … A Trail of Tears – Luke 24:13-35           May 2017

Thanks to the gospel stories we are able to do more than imagine the agony the disciples endured after Jesus’ crucifixion. One such story occurred on The Road to Emmaus.

In this story, two disciples are walking back home from Jerusalem. Their hearts and minds overflow with what happened the preceding week. As they make their way home, they talk, attempting to make sense of it all. The entry into the city, the uproar of the crowds, the garments and branches scattered on the road in front of the donkey Jesus was riding. They remembered thinking that their dreams were coming true.

So much happened in that city in just a few days. The culmination was Jesus nailed to the cross, dead. With his last breath, their hope had died. They had seen his lifeless body on the cross; they knew it had been taken down and buried. All that was left for them to do was to brush aside the outlandish reports that he was alive again and trudge their weary way back to Emmaus.

So the story of the disciples on the Road to Emmaus begins with the appearance of a mysterious

stranger. He walks beside them, a fellow traveler, and invites himself into their conversation. They explain their ill temperament and are astounded that the stranger knows nothing about the events. After all, Jesus had been the talk of everyone in Jerusalem, the city; a short distance behind these wearied travelers to. The pair continue on, talking about how their hope had been in that man Jesus. Sadness clouded their vision, so they did not recognize the face of the one who walked beside them.

There's plenty of roads still left to travel, and so the stranger begins to question the travelers. “Did not the prophets say the Messiah would suffer and be killed before he entered into glory?” The travelers remember as the stranger explains the scrolls of old about the messiah and they listen with increasing interest.

Is the story familiar because it happens only once, on the road to Emmaus on a spring day shortly after the original Easter? Or does it happen repeatedly, in the course of our lives?

Our destination may not be Emmaus, but often enough we walk our own trail of tears. We were not in Jerusalem to see Jesus crucified, but things happen in the course of our lives; things that shatter our faith, break our hope, violate our love. We walk home again, retreating like a defeated army. We don't want a home so much as a place to hide, where we lick our wounds, turn our backs on life, and nurse our cynicism.

Yes, each of us walks this trail of tears from time to time. Sometimes we walk together, driven by our pain, but achieving no resolution.

Then something cosmic happens. Jesus appears beside us. But like the disciples of old, we don't recognize him! He looks so ordinary. Just another traveler made weary by the road. Somehow he gets inside our conversation and hears what we have to say.

His response is not rejection. Nor is it sympathy, a patting of the hand. Jesus takes the situation and hoists it up to a new level.

There's more going on than meets the eye, he tells us. Our afflictions belong to a larger picture, some deeper mystery. Like the messiah's death, our afflictions do not have the last word but point beyond our suffering to an eternal hope.

Jesus seeks to present our story here and now as he presented his own on the original Emmaus road. He wants to reveal our affliction for what it is: not the final word, not meaningless pain, but rather the prelude to some bright glory, our own resurrection.

Our achievements and failures, our mistakes and injuries – none of these are the final report on who we are, and none is without significance. Instead, they are rags, scraps of material, which in our hands look poor, but taken up by God are accepted, and woven into a tapestry that glimmers with gold thread and a multitude of colors.

This God, Jesus tells us about, refuses to stop with the resurrection of Jesus. There is our resurrection to accomplish as well, not only after this world is done, but in all the little Easters along our span of life.

When you must walk your Emmaus road, believing him dead and your hope dead with him, dare to recognize him, a stranger walking beside you, a stranger who offers you broken bread, who lifts from you, your burden of hopelessness with his nail scarred hands.

And once you recognize him, and know that the fire of love inflames your heart, once the great cosmic comedy has made you laugh, then run, run through the dark sad night of this world, run like a fool for God, and let others know of your joy: that the Lord has risen and you are alive with Him!