Third Sunday of Easter April 30, 2006

Acts 3:13-15; 17-19 1 John 2:1-5a Luke 24: 35-48

What I just read to you from the Gospel according to Saint Luke is a follow-up yo what I consider among the most important passages of his Gospel, the story of the two disciples who travel to the village of Emmaus. What we just heard begins with their excited recounting of their experience on the journey.

What is it that they experienced? They had been sad and disappointed as they had left the others behind in Jerusalem on their walk to Emmaus. They were discussing between themselves their lives and, especially, what they had been through as followers of Jesus. As they are going along they are joined by someone they regard as a stranger. He asks them about their conversation and about their lives, hopes and disappointments that it reflected. When they talk about their greatest disappointment, the crucifixion of Jesus, and the surprising reports that were being made that his body was not found in the tomb, the stranger begins to explain these events in light of the Scriptures they knew. As they arrived in the village, they invited the stranger to join them for a meal. At the time, the stranger uses familiar words and gestures and thus Christ is revealed to them. When he leaves them, they immediately run back to tell the others - they repeat the journey which took all day. Their excitement appears to make the return trip brief. They have to tell the others their Good News.

This is an important passage of the Gospel of Luke because it clearly parallels our very own presence here today. In the account of Luke we hear the experience of the presence of the Lord as it was understood by the early Christian community. It is the same, or should be the same, as our experience when we come together here and now, in this place and time.

Like the disciples, we bring our own lives with us: our hopes, our disappointments, the reality of our own experiences. Like the disciples, we are ordinary followers of Jesus, not a select few, not the leaders. Each of us, in the ordinary reality of our lives, come to experience Christ with us. In what we do here, as did the disciples, we listen to the Scriptures, the Word of God, how God speaks to us in the words and experiences of believers. It parallels the manner in which Jesus discussed the Scriptures with these disciples.

We then share in a meal, in prayer and thanksgiving to God. It is not an ordinary meal. It is a meal in which Christ is present to us. We need to have our eyes opened, recognizing the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread, in what we share in the moments that we are here.

And like the disciples, we are to follow this experience by going forth from here eagerly, with renewed enthusiasm, telling all who might listen or observe, what we have experienced here and now. This is what the Gospel writer Like suggests to us in telling us the story of the two disciples and how they excitedly ran off to Jerusalem to tell the others how they had recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, the meal they shared.

What occurred when they returned? Christ’s presence with his followers at that moment was a confirmation of what they disciples declared. Christ is risen. Christ comes into their midst. Christ tells them: Peace be with you, do not be troubled, I am with you. In the words he speaks and in the food they share, he ratifies what has happened. He confirms his abiding and continuing presence with all of us now.

The time we spend here is but a few moments in the whole length a week. This fact itself recalls what seems to be a strange aspect of the post-resurrection appearances. They are brief, they are periodic, they are not continuous. But they are moments when the Lord in whom we profess faith is not distant and removed from us, but truly with us in the words we hear and the in the bread and wine that is his Body and Blood that we share. They are just a few moments in which he tells us to be at peace, do not be troubled, for he is with us in our lives. Everything that God has promised to us in “Moses and the Prophets” is fulfilled. Forgiveness of sins is possible. Lives, no matter how troubled, can be renewed.

You are witnesses, they are told. We are witnesses, we are told. God is in our midst, the Lord is with us for these few moments of this week. This is our loving God’s gift to us, gift to our world, here and now. We are to go forth from here, renewed and refreshed, true witnesses of God’s goodness to us all.