In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”
In today’s Gospel reading we hear the much loved story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus to whom the Lord appears. The first thing to notice about this reading is the distance that they are from Jerusalem. The translation of the Bible that we use says that the two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, “about seven miles from Jerusalem.” Saint Bede, the venerable English monk of the 7th century, sees spiritual significance in this distance of seven miles from Jerusalem. St. Bede says:
“…a little over seven miles was the length of the journey which they were walking, who were certain about our Lord’s death and burial, but doubtful concerning his resurrection. For the resurrection which took place AFTER the seventh day of the week, no one doubts is implied in the number eight. The disciples therefore as they walk and converse about the Lord had completed the sixth mile of their [spiritual] journey, for they were grieving that he who had lived blamelessly had come at length even to death, which the Lord underwent on the sixth day. These disciples had also completed the seventh mile of their spiritual journey, because they believed that the Lord indeed rested in the grave. But they had not yet finished the eighth mile of their spiritual journey; because THE GLORY OF THE LORD’S TRIUMPHANT RESURRECTION THEY DID NOT BELIEVE PERFECTLY.”
“The glory of the Lord’s triumphant resurrection they did not believe perfectly.”
This failure to believe perfectly the glory of the Lord’s triumphant resurrection lies as a danger at the center of every Christian’s spiritual life. The disciples on the road to Emmaus knew that the Lord had suffered and died. And when the risen Jesus himself drew near and asked what they were talking about, “they stood still, looking sad.” They don’t recognize Jesus. And one of them, named Cleopas, says: “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” And Jesus, almost playfully, asks “What things?” And you can almost hear the confusion and foundering faith in Cleopas’s answer:
What do you mean ‘what things’?! “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see."
This is the same incredulity, the same imperfect faith, we encountered in Thomas in last week’s Gospel lesson. It’s the same imperfect faith we see in all the disciples we find hiding out at the time of the resurrection, despite the fact that the Lord had told them time and time again that “that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Matt. 16.21). And it is the same incredulity, the same imperfect faith we find in OURSELVES in those times when we suffer, or when we look into our own hearts and find ourselves irretrievably sinful, when we make up lies about who we are, or what we are, to accommodate our honest belief that the Lord’s passion and death really, in the end, has no power to CHANGE us. So we keep ourselves from living no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, and so we wall ourselves off from the Lord’s first gift for those who believe: the Holy Spirit, the Comforter.
Cleopas says “We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel.” There is in this incredulity about the resurrection, more than a hint of suspicion about the Lord’s messianic credentials – an intuition that the Christ, the Messiah, is not the sort of man who can die – let alone who can die the death of a condemned criminal; because the Messiah was, WE thought, was the one who was going to redeem US – and its hard to redeem people if you’re dead and buried.
But beyond this incredulity there is a simple, deadly pessimism, a willing conformity of our expectations to the mandates of [worldly possibilities] telluric modality. The dead just don’t come back to life. Yet this is a central – THE central – tenet of our faith: that THIS man, Jesus of Nazareth, died, and that on the third day after his death he surged out of the tomb, alive.
It is on account of their inability to believe the Lord’s glorious triumph THROUGH DEATH, in his resurrection, that Jesus upbraids these two disciples:
"O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things AND ENTER INTO HIS GLORY?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
The resurrection is the counterpoint to the Lord’s suffering and death. The resurrection has no power apart from its being a resurrection FROM THE DEAD. It is the plentitude of the promised spiritualization of human nature – and it is painfully difficult to believe. Yet even in Old Testament times, the prophet Joel had said: “And it shall come to pass afterward, that I WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT ON ALL FLESH; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.”
And here is the Lord, raised from the dead, enlivened in his very flesh by the Spirit of God; here is Jesus no longer subject to the natural law of sin’s consequences - of death and decay. Here is the Lord totally given to the government of the spiritual and supernatural (cf. Theophylact). And WE foolish disciples are slow to believe. Its easy enough for us to believe in the natural order of things – in the seemingly inexorable laws of disease, and violence, and corruption, and sinfulness, and death. And its easy to believe that we are beyond being made clean, being made holy, being made ALIVE. Its HARD to believe in the triumph of Jesus Christ over all of that. Yet here he is – if we are willing – triumphant, risen, glorified, ALIVE, opening our minds; here he is, making himself known to us in the breaking of bread.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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