The Gray Monk

Tewkesbury Abbey
Easter 2 Evensong
18 April 2004

+ In the name of God.
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
Amen

“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering, like one from whom men hide their faces; he was despised and we esteemed him not.”

So writes Isaiah, in a passage widely interpreted as describing the Messiah to come. Yet it is a passage that many Jews still do not see as giving a vision of the Messiah - if it is interpreted at all. It is also very likely this passage of Isaiah that our Lord read out in the Synagogue in Nazareth, the exposition of which resulted in his being ejected and threatened with stoning. Yet, who can blame the Jewish people for rejecting this suggestion that the long expected Messiah was not to be a new Solomon? What they wanted more than anything else was a release from the series of oppressive and alien regimes that had ruled them for the previous six hundred odd years, not some promise of future hope and an ethereal “paradise”. Does this strike any cord with what is tearing the Middle East apart in our generation? Does it say anything about ourselves and our hopes for our own vision of “paradise”?

I rather think it does, and perhaps no wonder; our eyes are usually all too firmly fixed on the material world around us, not necessarily in an avaricious way, but in terms of the realities that we face day in and day out. We have enough troubles of our own - who needs more? Especially, who needs more when it is much more pleasant to look forward to a Messianic figure who will take all those cares and worries and create a fair, just, and invincible kingdom for our comfort. That’s a much more enticing vision than the one of a “Suffering Servant Saviour” whose promise, far from being one of addressing our needs in this life, is come to address the needs of some rather vague, and let's face it - unprovable - future existence beyond the grave!

No, this is NOT the Messiah they were looking for, wanting, or prepared to accept. Is He the one we would look for? Or would we, too, have doubts - doubts that could cause us to call him a prophet rather than the Chosen One? Is this perhaps the problem with the party on the road to Emmaus? They had clearly heard that the tomb was empty, that Peter and others had seen this for themselves, and perhaps even that some of the women claimed to have seen the risen Christ. Yet they still refer to Him as “a Prophet”.

St Luke is generally held to have been the only Gospel writer to have never seen or met Christ in the flesh. Yet it is in his Gospel that we get the fullest picture of his life, death, and resurrection. This man is generally considered to have been a Greek who may or may not have converted to, or at least studied, the Jewish faith. It is through his painstaking gathering of eyewitness accounts that we encounter Christ - and in many ways, it is with Luke that we are most closely able to identify - precisely because we, too, come to the Gospel through this medium, rather than at first hand from Christ himself. It is through Luke that we have Mary’s story, and it is through Luke that we have this eyewitness account from Emmaus and all that it means for us. Some interpreters have also asked the important question - was Luke one of the party on the Emmaus road? This seems unlikely, although we are not told who was present, except in the naming of Cleopas, who appears nowhere else.

There are several aspects to this particular account that raise some important questions. And here it is also important to remember that Luke was a very organized researcher with an excellent command of Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, “an artist with words” as one commentator has described him. There are four very important things that he tells us in the lesson we have heard tonight.

First, he tells us that Jesus “overtook” the party on the Emmaus road, and that none of them recognized Him, even though they discussed the events in Jerusalem at some length with Him and must have been in some distress about what had been happening. As they walked, they talked, and Jesus seems to have embarked on a comprehensive review of scripture with them - yet they still do not recognize him, even when He explains that the whole of the Old Testament leads to this one point in time - and to one person: The Messiah.

Secondly, he tells us that Jesus appeared to be going further, but stopped to eat with Cleopas after being invited. It is clear from the text that the invitation was a key element of His staying; without it, He would have continued. We are not told specifically where they stopped to eat, but it is most likely that it was the home of at least some of the party. It being “towards evening”, it would have been prudent to stop and look for shelter, as to continue would have been to invite danger from robbers or wild beasts at that time. Thus, we are told that the party enters a house and prepares to share a meal.

The third thing we are told is that, contrary to custom, Christ takes and breaks the bread, an act normally performed at the opening thanksgiving in a Jewish household by the host, and definitely not by the guest! And it is by this act of thanksgiving that He is at last recognized! Yet clearly, from Luke’s text, the members of this party were not present at the supper on what we now call Maundy Thursday. So what did they see which finally penetrated their consciousnesses and told them that the story they had heard of Mary Magdalene having met and spoken to Jesus in the garden was true? Did they suddenly see the wounded wrists? Or was it something else? And what prevented them from recognizing Him before this?

Finally, and perhaps most startlingly, we are told that, as soon as they recognized Him - “he vanished of their sight!”

The Tynedale commentary says that his exposition of the scriptures had clearly moved them deeply, and they now rushed back to Jerusalem in the gathering darkness to tell the others gathered there, only to be confronted by the news that Peter, too, had met the Lord, that He was indeed alive and walking among them.

Were we to read a little further, verse 36 tells us:
“While they were still talking about this, Jesus Himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.””
Their reaction reflects my own in a similar situation. “Startled and frightened” hardly conveys it adequately!

Luke appears to be telling us here that the risen Christ is no longer constrained by physical rules, that He is, in effect, with us all, all of the time, yet we can only see Him when it is right that we should, or necessary for us to do so. The important message is that He is here with us even though we may not see Him or recognize Him among us.

This Sunday is called Low Sunday. The crucifixion, the empty tomb all point to an end. Now we are alone, as the angels told the women at the tomb:
“Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen!”
Yet, all they can see is a desecrated tomb. Moreover, the empty tomb of one they loved deeply. It is in the angels' words, though, that they begin to hope for the impossible - that He is indeed alive and will remain with them. Yet, there must have been nagging doubts, possibly even reinforced by the reaction of the remaining eleven disciples.

Impossible; unlikely; it’s a hoax!

But Peter, obviously curious, goes to check. And here Luke gives his readers a further point to ponder. Grave robbers or body snatchers would have taken the grave clothes with the body. They would not have taken the body without its wrappings, and had they done so, it would not have been to leave those neatly to one side. Again, Luke is telling us that the evidence given by the witnesses is that they saw things that cannot be explained in material terms, things which indicate that something strange and unusual had happened in this tomb.

Consider for a moment the resurrection of Lazarus, or of the widow’s son. In both cases, it is the physical body which rises from the tomb or the bier. In both cases it is an earthly body which can get sick, age, or even die again which is restored to the world. What Luke seems to be saying to us in His Gospel, is that Jesus was and is different. He not only rose from the tomb, but did so in a form that permits Him to move among us and be real to us now as much as He was to those who walked with Him and loved Him in the first century.

He is not some sort of ghost, He is the reality which lies beyond this material and limited existence. He is, as St John so eloquently puts it:
“The Word become flesh and dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the Glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
As He has explained so carefully to the group on the Emmaus Road, the fulfillment of the Old Testament requires that He embrace both the Glory and the anguish. Thus He is both the King of Glory and the Suffering Servant. In His death we see the fulfillment of the anguish and the pain, in His resurrection we find the glory and the hope for us all in a life to come so far beyond the constraints of this one that we must needs grope blindly toward it in faith and in trust of His promise to us.

Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed.
Alleluia.