3rd Sunday of Easter A

See Commentary on Luke 24:13-35


Homily 1 - 2005 

Why did Luke write his gospel? Not particularly to prove anything, not just for the sake of leaving some historical record, but to help his community, sixty years later, to understand their own experience as disciples and their relationship with Jesus. Luke’s concern was not so much: How did Cleopas and his friend recognise Jesus? but: How does my community recognise him ... now?

So what was Luke up to in this story of the disciples and Jesus on the way to Emmaus? No one seems to know where Emmaus is. Perhaps even Luke’s community would equally have no knowledge of it. So it was anywhere: here, where we are, or where we’re going. What does the story have for us?

Jesus was there with Cleopas and his friend, but they did not recognise him ... they did not realise that he was there with them. What opened them to recognise Jesus? As Luke tells the story, there are a number of relevant issues: they were able to own their own deep disappointment, their confusion, their uncertainty, their inability to believe: they listened to him speaking and reviewing their scriptures, that gave meaning to – put words around – their experience of Jesus, and to his death, and resurrection: they opened their hearts and their home in hospitality; they invited him in without knowing who he was; and the breakthrough came with the ritual of the breaking of the bread.

In his connected work, the Acts of Apostles, Luke emphasised the same elements when speaking of the early Christian community in Jerusalem (remember the reading from two Sundays ago). There he wrote: The disciples remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of the bread, and to the prayers.

He wrote this way because the experience of the disciples of Jesus, and of the early Christian community, was the potential experience of his own community. Might I say, it is the potential experience of this community, twenty centuries later.

Let us return to the Gospel story. What blocked the disciples from recognising Jesus? Their expectations: we hoped that he would be the one ... The same problem so often is ours: We can be surprised when we gather to celebrate Eucharist at our own lack of spontaneous interest, our sometimes uncharitable thoughts as we look around, how our minds wander. We would have expected to be more recollected, more focussed. Yet there is only one place and time where we find him: and that is in the here and now.

But to find him we need to be in touch with where we are at (as with the disciples walking to Emmaus): we need to own our hurts, our needs, our hopes and desires. We can only start from there. Anywhere else would be unreal – it would not be us, but some unreal “us” that we think should be or would be if... We can only start from where we are and try to stay there, and to be in touch with our real selves, knowing he is with us.  

So here we are now, gathered together, on the first day of the week. He is here – there is no point in looking anywhere else. We won’t see him in Emmaus, wherever that might be for us, if we can’t see him now. As was the case with the two disciples, we do our best to open our hearts to each other in welcome, we open our minds to his Word in the scriptures, and hope that they will give some sense to our lives; we open our hearts and minds to both him and to each other in our sharing together of his body broken for us and his blood poured out for us.  

And we know that he is with us. It’s an act of faith. Sometimes it’s an act of wonder.


Homily 2 - 2011

Osama bin Laden has been killed – a violent man has met a violent end. Was it a case of good overcoming evil? the righteous eventually triumphing over the axis of evil? Or was it simply the all-too-familiar working out of the power of the sin of the world? Where might God be in it all?

Let’s reflect on today’s Gospel. Cleopas and his friend had hoped that Jesus would be the one to set Israel free. In other words, they hoped he would be the Messiah, the Christ, the king-like figure that God has promised in the Scriptures through the prophets, and for whom Israel had longed for so long. To set Israel free … free from what? probably from Roman domination for a start; possibly from high-priestly corruption as well.

How did they expect him to do it? I don’t think they expected him to do it by armed revolt. There were others already suggesting that way, [and Barabbas may well have been one of them]. They were generally referred to as the Zealots. Well, if not by an armed revolution, then how? Probably they hoped that somehow God would work through Jesus, his Christ, and somehow evil-doers would be destroyed and faithful Israel would thereby be saved. In other words, they thought that, through Jesus as Messiah, as Christ, God would do the dirty work. God’s violence would break out against every evil-doer.

As a matter of fact, I think that a lot of present-day disciples, of present-day Christian people, still expect something like that – but now they tie it in to Jesus’ Second Coming in Glory. When you think of it, some Christians see hell in that light. “God is merciful – up to a point. God gives people plenty of rope, plenty of time, plenty of chances, but, eventually, if they don’t measure up, God will get violent – not just destroying them but torturing them for eternity. There’s a limit to God’s mercy – God is also just” – they say. But is torture, eternal torture, ever justice?

Let’s listen to what Jesus said in the Gospel:You foolish men! Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory? … ordained that the Christ should suffer … that the one sent by God, that the one sent to do the saving work of God, should suffer! 

What was ordained, what was inevitable, about it? Jesus was sent to love the world on God’s behalf, to save the world on God’s behalf. Jesus was, in a true sense, God at work in the world saving the world.

Saving it from what? from all the violent, destructive ways people relate to each other, from all the non-love, from all the self-interest, from all the national interest (which is the same thing). If non-love is the problem, then non-love won’t be the answer. If people’s mutual violence is the problem, then God’s violence won’t be the answer. Indeed, God’s answer was the direct opposite of violence. It was an act of total love. But total love in a violent world means suffering – that’s what’s inevitable, that’s what’s ordained about it.

Jesus said a deliberate OK to that. If that’s the way people are, that is the way they have to be shocked out of it. As the Passion reading on Good Friday put it:They will look on the one whom they have pierced. Has the looking worked? Did Jesus’ dying as the victim of the world’s violence work? Well, in fact, it’s a work in progress.

Remember last Sunday’s Gospel: as the Father sent me I now send you. Followers of Jesus follow the way of Jesus – loving in a violent world, and open to pay the price. In fact, empowered both to love and to pay the price. That’s what Jesus’ next line last week was about: Receive the Holy Spirit.  

Today’s Gospel tells us that Cleopas and his friend recognised Jesus at the breaking of the bread. In each Eucharist, the broken bread is the broken body of Christ. We know who broke that body and why that body was broken. In some ways, Eucharist can be scary… were it not that his love never ends and he will forgive without end. Indeed, he asks nothing of us that he does not lead us to want and to empower to do.


Homily 3 - 2014

While he was with them at table, he took the bread, and said the blessing. Then he broke it and handed it to them. Their eyes were opened and they recognised him. What opened those eyes? We identify the ritual by the prayer of blessing, during which we tell the story of the Last Supper. We call it Eucharist – which means the prayer of thanksgiving or of blessing. They identified the ritual as the breaking of the bread. They recognised him at the breaking of the bread.

After all that had gone on during their walk to Emmaus, how did the breaking of the bread jolt them into eventual recognition? I think that a clue to the answer was given earlier in today’s Gospel story. The two had said that their hope was that he would set Israel free, to which Jesus replied: Was it not ordained that the Christ should suffer and so enter into his glory? The Christ would indeed set Israel free, and he would enter into his glory; but to enter into his glory he had first to suffer. The bread that was his body had first to be broken.

Do this in remembrance of me. Do what? Take the bread, say the prayer, break the bread – and only then can we share it. The body had to be broken. The bread has to be broken. The Christ must suffer and so enter into his glory.

But why was it inevitable that he suffer? Why was it inevitable that he first be murdered by us – to set Israel free, and to set us free? Certainly not so that God would forgive our sins. God has no problem with forgiveness [just as there is no question of you forgiving the children you love if they do wrong]. God did not have to be changed for us to be set free.

Look at the TV news each night. That is the world needing to be set free: enemies fighting enemies; enemies killing enemies; enemies arguing with enemies; enemies ridiculing enemies, undermining enemies, bad-mouthing enemies. But that is not us… Isn’t it? Look around us this morning. We categorise everyone; we judge everyone – good/bad, better/worse, more holy/less holy, right/wrong, smart/stupid, conservative/progressive, with us/against us, one of us/not one of us. It was categorizing and judging like that that led people to kill Jesus – ordinary people, conscientious people, religiously-minded people.

I am an expert at character assassination. Isn’t that what gossip does? To get that good feeling of feeling superior, feeling holier, of belonging to and accepted by, trusted by and trusting in the in-group of the moment, I automatically join in putting down the one not present. Do we see what we are doing when we categorise people instinctively? Do we see where our categorising can lead?

They recognised him in the breaking of the bread. Does our every Eucharist alert us to what we are doing all the time? The Christ had to suffer. It was inevitable that the Christ suffer. Would we ever wake up to what we are doing? Would we ever want to change – if we had not first killed him, the totally innocent victim – who insists still on loving us and forgiving us? 

Might our putting him to death be the cosmic shock to jolt the world into recognising what it is doing all day every day? I think it is slowly working. Could it be that, in society as a whole, though we still carry on judging each other, more and more of us have not quite got our hearts in the destructiveness to which we are addicted? 

Might our Eucharist today, our breaking and sharing the bread that is his Body, alert us and empower us to respond to people first with love, and slowly learn to let the automatic categorising drop off the radar?


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?