Peace be with you.
Friends, we come to this Third Sunday of Easter,
and our Gospel is what N.T. Wright calls
the masterpiece within the masterpiece.
He means the whole twenty-fourth chapter of Luke
is a masterpiece,
but within that, we find this account
of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
And it’s a masterpiece for all kinds of reasons,
but I think basically because it’s a summation
of the spiritual life.
I mean, you can read all the dynamics of the
spiritual life off of this story.
Look how it starts:
“On that first day of the week,
two disciples of Jesus were walking to a village
seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus.”
Everything in Luke moves toward Jerusalem.
That’s where the action is.
That’s where the cross and Resurrection take place.
That’s where the coming of the Spirit is.
Everything moves toward Jerusalem.
Jesus sets his face toward Jerusalem.
So these two disciples are walking the wrong way.
That’s the point we’re meant to see.
And again, everybody, we’re meant to
identify with them.
They stand for all of us disciples of Jesus
who nevertheless keep getting it wrong.
We keep walking away from where we should be going.
Here’s the good news though:
even though they’re walking the wrong way,
Jesus comes and walks with them,
though they don’t recognize him.
Several things here, but it’s that
primacy of grace, which I talk about all the time
because you could say it’s the master theme of the Bible.
It’s not as though we have to perform adequately
to get God to love us.
That’s just the wrong logic in the spiritual order.
Rather, even when we’re walking the wrong way,
Jesus comes and walks with us.
These great themes in Pope Francis come to mind here.
The pope keeps emphasizing accompaniment,
and that’s what this is.
They don’t have to perform to get him to accompany them.
Jesus simply comes, and he walks with them.
And then, with this kind of delicious irony,
Jesus himself says,
“Well, hey, what are you talking about as you go?”
What I love here is it’s a template,
I think, for anyone involved in the work of the Church.
What will never work very well?
If we simply start pontificating from on high,
we simply start wagging the finger morally at people.
That almost never works.
The first step
—which is in imitation of God,
it’s a step of grace—
is to move into somebody’s world.
Walk with them even when they’re walking
the wrong way.
Ask them what they’re talking about.
What’s on your mind?
I always remember Paul Tillich,
the Protestant theologian, who said,
“Most sermons are answers to questions that nobody’s asking.”
So Tillich recommended what he called
the method of correlation:
to correlate the questions of the time
with the answers of the Gospel.
Well, that’s a good instinct for any teacher,
preacher, pastoral minister.
What are you talking about? What’s on your mind?
Again, Pope Francis is really good,
I think, at emphasizing these motifs.
And now the irony continues because it’s Christ himself
asking the question.
Then we hear one of them named Cleopas said to him in reply,
“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know
of the things that have taken place?”
And then Jesus,
“Well, what things? What are you talking about?”
And then Cleopas and his friend begin to recount,
for the Lord himself, all the basic details
of the life and ministry of Jesus.
“He was a prophet mighty in word and deed before
God and all the people, our chief priests and rulers
handed him over to a sentence of death
and crucified him.
We were hoping he would be the one to redeem Israel.
And now, it is the third day since these
things took place, and some women in our group say
he has risen from the dead.”
Now what’s extraordinary
is they get everything right, don’t they?
They’ve got the basic structure of the story,
as, I would suggest, practically anybody,
at least in the West today, would be able to do, right?
If you were to ask someone,
“Well, hey, tell me about this
Jesus of Nazareth, about Jesus Christ,”
they’d probably tell you this basic outline.
So why are they dejected?
Why are they walking the wrong way?
Why are they so sad?
Because though they have the data,
they don’t have the meaning.
Sometimes you can see all that’s there to be seen,
but you don’t get the pattern.
I think I’ve talked to you before about the cartoons
in the “New Yorker” magazine.
I get “The New Yorker.”
I like it largely for the cartoons,
and they’re very clever.
And 95 percent of the time I get the cartoon,
why it’s funny.
But sometimes I’ll look at a cartoon.
I’ll see everything in it,
all the characters, their expressions.
I’ll read the caption.
I’ve seen it all, but okay, I don’t get it.
Why is that funny?
And it might take some time before the light
goes on and you get it.
But see, getting it doesn’t involve seeing any more data.
It’s not like,
“Oh, I missed that character back in the corner.”
No.
What I come to see is the pattern
that links all of this together.
Now, come back to this story.
They’ve got all the details right,
all the data right, but they don’t have the pattern.
And at this point, it’s a turning point in the story.
At this moment, Jesus, who’s been listening
and walking with them in this non-judgmental way,
hearing their point of view, he says,
“Oh, how foolish you are!
How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!
Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these
things and enter into his glory?”
Now, notice something, please.
We talk about accompaniment. Terrific.
I’m all in favor of it.
We talk about walking with people,
listening to them, not being judgmental,
not wagging the finger.
Yes, yes, I agree with all that.
Primacy of grace. Yes.
But notice, Jesus does not just wander around
with these two fellas.
He doesn’t just walk any way they want to go.
At a decisive moment in the process,
he begins to teach them.
“Don’t you get it?
Don’t you see the pattern that the Christ had to
undergo suffering so as to enter into his glory?”
Now they see the pattern of a suffering love
that goes all the way down to express the divine mercy
and thereby comes to glory.
There’s the pattern.
And then with that in mind, here’s for everybody that
wants to get more deeply into the Scriptures:
“Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,
he interpreted to them what referred to him
in all the Scriptures.”
That’s beautiful.
And believe me, every one of us who’s
ever studied the Bible, we would love to have
been a fly on the wall at that moment,
when Jesus himself walks through
the entire Old Testament,
the law and the prophets, Moses and the prophets,
and lights up how everything in the Old Testament
speaks of him.
Because that’s where the pattern was revealed
for the first time.
So yes, accompaniment, yes, in this very
non-intrusive and inviting way.
But then, then, at a decisive moment,
he begins to teach out of the Bible,
revealing the pattern so they would understand
who he is.
Now, the story intensifies at this point.
“As they approached the village to which
they were going . . .”
So they’re getting close to Emmaus.
He gave the impression that he was just going
to be heading on, and
they were so enraptured by his teaching
that they say, “Stay with us.”
So he does.
And then famously, they sit down to eat.
And Jesus takes bread and he breaks it.
The characteristic Eucharistic gestures.
What’s the Eucharist? What is it?
It’s God’s love unto death.
“This is my body given for you.
This is the chalice of my blood that’s shed for you.”
The Eucharist means suffering so as to
enter his glory.
The Eucharist means the divine mercy fully expressed.
That’s why in that moment of the breaking of the bread,
their eyes were opened,
and they got it.
They saw him.
The teaching about the Old Testament,
the revelation of the pattern,
they were starting to see.
You bet they were starting to see.
Their hearts were burning within them.
Quite right.
But then it was in the Eucharistic moment
that the pattern was fully revealed to them
and they knew who they were dealing with.
They knew who he was.
Everybody walking the wrong way,
that’s all of us sinners.
But especially today, so many walking away
from the churches.
Jesus comes, and you know what,
he might come in your guise.
He might come because you walk with somebody.
Remember, we’re his eyes, and his ears,
and his hands, and his feet.
So Jesus —maybe it’s through you—
comes to walk with those who are walking
in the wrong direction.
Listens, of course.
“What are you talking about? What’s on your mind?”
But then he breaks open the Word,
and then he breaks the bread.
And in these great liturgical moves,
his identity is revealed.
That’s why
—my fellow Catholics, especially,
listening to me—
this is why we have to draw people back to the Mass.
I mean, what is this but the Mass, but the Mass?
There’s the liturgy of the Word followed
by the liturgy of the Eucharist.
And in both those moments, it’s Christ
who is addressing us.
Now, look how the story ends.
“They recognized him, but he vanished
from their sight.”
How come he vanished, by the way?
Von Balthasar says because he disappears
into the mission of the Church.
Beautiful, huh?
He disappears into their mission.
Listen:
“So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem.”
They started going the wrong way.
But the encounter with Christ through the Word and through
the Eucharist now sends them back in the right direction.
Despite the danger of the road,
despite the lateness of the hour,
despite their fear of what would happen
to them in Jerusalem,
they go back to the sacred city.
At the end of Mass, after we’ve experienced Christ
in the breaking open of the Word and
the breaking of the bread,
we hear those words:
“Go. Go, the mass has ended.
Go, proclaim the Gospel.
Glorify the Lord by your life.”
That’s the sending that takes place at the end
of this story.
How beautiful, by the way, back they go to the
eleven in Jerusalem.
They return to the Church.
They return to the Church, and there they find their
identity and their mission.
So can I urge everybody on this Third Sunday of Easter,
as we are privileged to read this beautiful story
— go back, open your Bibles, Luke chapter 24,
this masterpiece within the masterpiece.
Let this story wash over you,
because you’ll find on display all the
dynamics of the spiritual life.
And God bless you.