3rd Sunday of Easter A - Homily 4

Homily 4 - 2023

Today’s Gospel could be a helpful Gospel for our time. It was the second day after Jesus’ awful crucifixion. Two bewildered disciples of Jesus were walking away from Jerusalem where it had all happened. They were totally confused, totally shattered, leaving behind their former disciple-friends. They had lost all hope. I could not help but think of so many of our former regular church-attenders, some of them close family-members, who no longer join us for our regular celebrations of Eucharist.

I imagine many of them felt quite sad before making their decisions — perhaps not feeling so strongly about things as the two disciples felt on their way from Jerusalem, but some perhaps hurting, others disappointed or even shocked, some confused or betrayed.

A few hours later, the disciples were heading back to Jerusalem. This time, they couldn’t get there fast enough. They were excited, hopeful once more, needing to share.

Do you think that most of those who have dropped away will ever come back? Personally, I wonder. My bigger concern is to try to help people such as yourselves who, for whatever reasons, are still hanging in.

This is where today’s story might cast some light on how we can proceed.

Both disciples had seen Jesus as a “great prophet”. They had also seen him as the one “who would set Israel free” — the Messiah, the Christ. It was this sense of Jesus that had fired their own hope. As far as they were concerned, his humiliating crucifixion had put an end to all that: so much for “great prophet”… or long-awaited triumphant Messiah. Their expectations had been shattered.

Jesus’ response was to focus-in on their run-away expectations. Jesus had let the disciples know beforehand on a few occasions that he would be eventually crucified and humiliatingly killed. It was as though the disciples did not hear him; and they did not hear him because psychologically they did not want to hear him. Their expectations did not let them hear him. Today’s Gospel passage went on to have Jesus give them a brief and concentrated lesson on their own Jewish Scriptures, that spoke frequently enough and clearly enough of a Suffering Messiah. But those same Scriptures had also spoken in glowing terms of a glorious Messiah. Their minds could not hold those two possibilities together — they could handle only one. Unconsciously they held the one they preferred, and totally ignored the other.

A similar psychological dynamic determined their reaction to the women’s message of the empty tomb. With expectations destroyed, they could hear it only as bad news, more trouble: “of him they saw nothing”.

I wonder if those who no longer worship with us have experienced something similar. The Church has let them down, destroyed so many of their expectations: widespread clergy sexual abuse; episcopal defensiveness and even cover-up; run-away clericalism and the failure to adjust to the reality of women and their growing sense of dignity and competence. More than that! Where was God in all this? Why did God not prevent it?

Yet the Gospels make quite clear the human weakness and obtuseness of the disciples even in Jesus’ time. Jesus did not kick them out. He persisted in loving them and forgiving them, and even entrusting to them the future Church. The Epistles reveal quite clearly a very human Church.

The Church’s sinfulness hurts, even though we contribute to it ourselves. We shouldn’t be sinful — but we all are. Our challenge is not to walk away but to continue with the on-going task of conversion.

What led to the Emmaus disciples’ change of heart? Jesus engaged with them personally, and they opened themselves to change — a change of expectations, particularly, but change supported by their experience of “their hearts burning within them”. They got close to Jesus.

In these times of rampant agnosticism and continuing discouragement, it is time for us deliberately to take steps to engage personally with the Jesus who loves us… in such ways that we get to know him, even to become his friends. Can we help each other to learn, not just to recite prayers, but to pray as the unique person each one of us is?