All Saints’, Dorval
Easter III, Year A
April 26, 2020
Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
On Maundy Thursday, I reflected on the strange experience of celebrating Holy Week without the Eucharist. And on the third Sunday of Easter, we are once again reminded that some of our most beloved stories of this season of the year focus on our fellowship around God’s Table with Christ and with each other: fellowship that is denied to us in this season of social isolation.
Yet there is so much going on in this passage beyond the gathering around the blessed and broken bread. After Jesus vanishes and before they get up and go back to Jerusalem, Cleopas and his companion look at each other and ask, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
There are two essential concepts in that sentence: on the road and opening the scriptures. To take the second one first: in normal times, our worship is roughly balanced, with the first half being devoted to the Word and the second half to the Sacrament of the table. Now, however, for the time being, the Word has become central. With much of our everyday busy-ness cleared from our schedules, perhaps we have time to delve more deeply into the Bible and immerse ourselves in God’s Word. Or perhaps, with everyone home all the time and chaos prevailing, we turn to one beloved verse and repeat it as a mantra to remind us of God’s presence as we get through the days.
And that’s the essence of it, isn’t it? We’re just getting through the days. Waiting to see what comes next. Hoping for the best for as many people as possible. Doing what we can to express our love and caring for those in need. And having faith that God is with us on this strange journey.
In Luke, it is actually not at all surprising to find Jesus meeting people on the road. Jesus has been on the move throughout much of the gospel. His death and resurrection were the culmination of a journey from Galilee to Jerusalem, and later on, when the same writer describes the life of the early church in Acts (an excerpt from which we also read today), the newborn church will call itself “The Way”, not an institution, but a group of people together on the road, following the Saviour who goes on ahead of them.
We, too, are on a journey, suddenly uprooted, like Abraham, from the normal, and sent out to a destination where we never expected to go and that we may not recognize when we get there. And yet, paradoxically, we are on this journey by not going much of anywhere at all. When I got in the car on Thursday to drive to church to pick up the mask that Margaret Beattie had made me, my car wouldn’t start because it had been so long since I needed to take it anywhere. Our experience resonates strongly right now both with the disciples on the road, heading away from a familiar place that has changed beyond all recognition after a life-altering experience; and with their friends back in Jerusalem, staying in one place behind closed doors, afraid to go out lest a mysterious threat strike.
Some church thinkers have described this pandemic time as forcing us all to become monastics, enclosed in our cells and deriving spiritual wisdom from the practice of staying in one place. My friend Jayan, a seminarian, wrote this on Friday:
I have 2 frames for understanding this period of isolation: “sit in your cell & your cell will teach you all” à la Abba Moses on the one hand, and exilic wandering in the wilderness on the other. They’re sort of co-existing even though they feel in tension. … I’m realizing how enclosure is indeed an exile, even as it is an opportunity of rich spiritual growth and perhaps even deep consolation & communion. Journeying in the wilderness & staying in your cell overlap.
So, it makes sense as though we feel that we are simultaneously stuck in one place, and being flung out of all that is familiar. The disciples probably felt very much the same. And what happens to the disciples – both those on the road, and those behind closed doors? Jesus comes to them.
Of course, Jesus may not come to them in a form they immediately recognize – and he may not stay, at least not visibly and tangibly, as long as they hope he will. But he leaves them with three things: with a story, with each other, and with the blessed and broken bread. And of course, in a few weeks when he ascends to heaven, he will also leave them with the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In our worship, we gather around that same story. We remember that we have each other, even if mediated for the time being only through our phone lines and screens. And we wait, perhaps with more immediacy and poignancy this year, for Christ’s ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
And even if we cannot, for the time being, break bread together and share it around God’s table, perhaps, this week, as we make our ordinary meals and eat them at our ordinary tables, we can be mindful of the presence of God in our very ordinary moments. Cleopas and his companion, after all, did not invite Jesus to a solemn High Mass, or even a dinner party with the special tablecloths and the good china; they invited him to whatever they could scrounge after a two-and-a-half hour walk home to an empty house.
Perhaps we are pulling together dinner after an exhausting day of simultaneous child-wrangling and working, frustrated because the house is a mess and there was no rice or frozen broccoli at the grocery store. Perhaps we are eating three meals a day alone in a small apartment, with little to distinguish one day from another. We do not have to set a fancy table or cook anything special for Jesus to show up.
As we journey through this peculiar, scary time, Jesus is with us. As we stay in our homes like unexpected monastics, Jesus is with us. Offering a story, reminding us to turn to each other, promising the Holy Spirit. And inviting us to find him around, not just the one special table, but every table, where he may be known to us in the breaking of the bread.
Amen.
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