“They asked each other, ‘were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road, and opened the scriptures to us?’ (Luke 24: 32).
Surely the story of the appearance of Jesus to the disciples on the road to Emmaus is one of the most evocative and moving stories in the Bible. Certainly it is to me. It strikes me as so real that as I listen I feel as if I am there. And what makes it practically jump off the page for me is that it is so much more than just the telling of something that happened all those years ago. It speaks to me afresh every time I hear it or read it and actually touches my life today.
I feel as if the risen Christ has been released from the tomb so that he can walk alongside me as I walk the dusty road of life. The risen Christ walks beside every Christian every day, although mostly we don’t recognise him or realise he is there. But there come those precious moments of recognition which change our lives.
What are our ordinary Christian lives actually like in practice? Perhaps yours are different, but for most people I think we tread life’s road believing we are heading roughly in the right direction. We know what Christian values and principles are and try our best to follow them. A lot of the time we don’t actually do very well, and sometimes we fail spectacularly. We try to pray and read the Bible and come to church and communion, and sometimes we feel enriched and our spiritual lives deepened, but by no means always. Generally, there are not many angels such as those whom some saw at the empty tomb. Not many voices from heaven or blinding revelations. Probably there are actually times when we find ourselves wondering whether it’s all true. And all the time, the resurrection is right there beside us on our path, and we don’t see it.
A modern version of this experience I’m trying to describe has been written in a different way, and has become famous as ‘Footsteps in the sand’. It will almost certainly be known to you, so I won’t re-tell it now, but if you don’t know it, I have placed some copies on the table at the back of Church for you to take.
But I would be surprised if, for most of us, there were not those occasional moments of recognition that make sense of all the rest. Again, it may not be an angel or a voice from heaven, but a moment of recognition when suddenly everything makes sense, falls into place, and we find ourselves saying ‘Yes – it’s really true! Now I know that everything Jesus taught us is true; that goodness, truth and beauty, light and resurrection really are the key to everything else.’ That moment of recognition may not last long, and can disappear as suddenly as it came, and we can’t quite get it back again. But, for that moment, we have seen the heavens open and the fog lifted and we know that – whatever may happen – nothing is ultimately in vain. And as the 14th century anchoress and mystic Lady Julian of Norwich wrote in her Revelations of Divine Love: ‘All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ (Her feast day, incidentally is actually today, and if you have never read her classic writings called ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ and available in paperback, may I most thoroughly recommend it).
Anthony Bloom, the late – and great - Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Archbishop for Europe wrote about his life changing conversion in these words: “While I was reading the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, before I reached the third chapter, I became aware of a presence. I saw nothing. I heard nothing. It was no hallucination. It was a simple certainty that the Lord was standing there and that I was in the presence of him whose life I had begun to read with such revulsion and ill-will. This was my basic and essential meeting with the Lord. Christ was the Risen Christ for me because, if the one who had died nearly two thousand years before was there alive, he was indeed the Risen Christ. I discovered then something absolutely essential to the Christian message – that the resurrection is the only event in the Gospel which belongs to history not only past but also present. Christ rose again, twenty centuries ago, but he is the risen Christ as long as history continues. History I had to believe - the resurrection I knew for a fact ...because it was a direct and personal experience.”
Bruce spoke last week of the importance of reading the Bible, and here’s a powerful illustration of one very important reason why. There come times as we read the scriptures when the Risen Christ stands there beside us, as he did beside those two disciples, and our hearts burn within us as he opens the scriptures to us. Should it be that you have never known the Risen Christ standing alongside you and opening the scriptures to you, then what an amazing reason to ponder the scriptures more often, more prayerfully, more expectantly.
I will tell you about my own essential meeting with the Risen Christ. It was in July 1959 and I was sitting in a Christian conference and the speaker was telling us how we could find a real, living faith. And at the end, he called us to prayer and invited us to follow in our hearts the type of simple prayer you will find in almost any booklet introducing the Christian faith. In the powerful silence before he started, I was totally aware of that presence – of the Risen Christ beside me, more vibrantly real than anything I had ever experienced in my life. And, as I followed the prayer, I knew that my life was changing for ever.
So if you have been told many times that it’s important to pray and make space in your life for quiet meditation, here’s a powerful incentive. The Risen Christ who stands alongside you has the opportunity to make himself known as he did to those two disciples, and turn their sorrow and bewilderment into a joy that would be eternal.
In the case of those disciples, the Risen Christ made himself known in the breaking of bread. Jesus has promised that, whenever two or three are gathered in his name, he is there in the midst. We meet here this morning in his name, and we believe he is indeed here among us, ready to accept our worship, answer our prayers, and reveal himself to us one of us – meeting us at our point of need, whatever that may be for each of us today.
So, we may be certain that, as we come to communion this morning, and receive the bread and the wine, the Risen Christ is there in our midst, ready and longing to bless, to guide, to re-order our lives, and lead us forward into the future with new hope and strength. Whether or not we are physically or mentally conscious of that living presence, he has promised that he is here. We can share with him in prayer our deepest needs, fears and longings. Perhaps as we leave church this morning we will find ourselves saying to each other: ‘Did not our hearts burn within us this morning as we sensed the presence of the living Lord?’
As Peter proclaimed on the day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came, ‘Be assured of this; God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.’ And all those who believed and turned to Christ in faith were filled with the Holy Spirit and recognised the Risen Christ, who came into their lives as Lord and Saviour.
So the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus can be as true and real for each of us today, as it was for them. The Risen Christ walks beside us. He reveals himself as he interprets the scriptures to us as we read. He meets us personally as we pray in quiet and in faith. And he makes himself known in the breaking of bread. Let us ask him to reveal himself to us personally today and meet us at the point of us our deepest need, and we will know in our own experience that Jesus is indeed risen from the dead, and dwells in the lives of all who turn to him in faith.
Discussion
1. Do you find the idea of the Risen Christ walking beside you helpful in your Christian life and experience? If you have personally experienced Jesus in some such way, can you share it with the group?
2. The sermon focuses on three ways in which we can experience the Risen Christ (a) reading the bible (b) prayer (c) Holy Communion. Which do you personally find most helpful and do you know why?
3. In what other ways and circumstances might we experience Him?
4. How can we best find the necessary space in our lives to be close to the Risen Christ? How will this vary at different stages of our lives?
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