Sermon - The Rev. Dr. Elise Feyerherm, April 23rd, 2023

The story that is our gospel reading for today, sometimes called “The Road to Emmaus,” is one of the most evocative and stirring narratives in the entire New Testament. It plumbs the depths of human loss, the mystery of divine encounter, the gift of friendship, and the recovery of hope. It is a story about telling stories, and how doing so can save our lives. It is about the promise that Jesus will join us on the road, and how even when he vanishes from our sight, his presence still sustains us. This is a story that will nourish us for as long as we choose to give ourselves to it. If we are willing to break it open.

Stories can save our lives. As a child I found solace and power in stories, especially stories in which those who thought they were insignificant and powerless found the strength and courage to save someone they loved, or make a difference in the world. My favorite story of all time is A Wrinkle in Time, where a nerdy girl with glasses (which I was) and her little brother battle evil with the power of love. The story made me believe – and it still does – that no matter how much of a failure I think I am, I am still worth loving and able to love.

The power of narrative, of telling someone else what happened to us, drives this gospel reading today. As the two disciples are on their way to Emmaus, Luke tells us that they were “talking with each other about all these things that had happened.” We know the story; it is the improbable story of Jesus, who was arrested and tried, executed on a cross, and, the witnesses remind us, rose from the dead. So crazy, this story was, that it seemed to the disciples “an idle tale, and they did not believe it.”

But there is something compelling about this story, for the two disciples keep talking and discussing it. I think perhaps they have not yet made up their mind about what actually happened, which is a good thing. They are not given to immediately accepting conspiracy theories or alternative facts – they start with their own experience, and work through this new data, by sharing the story with each other, tossing it back and forth on their journey to see if it will land right side up.

Isn’t this what we do as a community? Not only as a community of faith, but as families, groups of friends, colleagues? When something perplexing and unnerving happens, we talk about it; we try to find a beginning, a middle, and if we’re lucky, an end which helps us to understand what it all means. During the worst parts of the pandemic, it was hard to find ways to share our stories with each other, but we did. We compared experiences, talked about the heaviness and the fear, even if we didn’t know yet what it meant or how long it would last. It eased the pain, a little, to share with another person how crazy this all was, to know that we were not alone. It still eases the pain, to put into words how inexplicable and heart-rending life can be, even if the person we are telling it to cannot fix the hurt.

A strange thing happens when we talk to each other about our lives. It happened all those years ago on the road to Emmaus, and it is still happening. When we tell each other about our lives, and when we listen to others, the miraculous happens – Jesus himself comes near and goes with us. He sneaks in undercover, so that we don’t realize it’s him, as in the story when the disciples’ eyes were “kept from recognizing him.” All we think we are doing is narrating our own lives, as messy and hard as they are. But Jesus sneaks in. 

Any time we trust each other enough to tell our stories to one another, any time we are able to share not only the joy but the failure and the apparent meaninglessness of it all, we make room for Jesus. And any time we listen with open hearts to one another, holding someone else’s story as the sacred narrative it is, it is Jesus who makes it possible.

I have seen this happen time and time again. Over the decades, I have listened to parishioners and seminarians share their stories with each other – sometimes they are stories that recount an entire life, and sometimes they cover only a week. But every time, Jesus shows up, with compassion and encouragement. And what I find really interesting is that, in the story of Emmaus, the first thing Jesus says is not about himself; it is to ask those walking the road, “What are you discussing with each other?” Before telling his story, Jesus asks for their stories. He starts with where they are, what they are struggling with, and only then does he interpret to them the great story of God in the scriptures.

Jesus invites them to put into their own words what has been going on in their world. When their first response is not terribly revealing, he asks a follow-up question. And he listens. What he hears from them is more than just a sequence of events; he hears a deeper longing: “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” He hears their disappointment and bewilderment. This too is part of the story. This is part of what is worth hearing, and thus worth telling.

Social media has schooled us to think that we must tell our stories in ways that are carefully curated, crafted to impress. Even stories of failure are supposed to impress with their level of tragedy, or a miraculous escape, or at the very least a dramatic video. I’m not talking about those kinds of curated stories, blasted out to a wide audience of family, friends, casual acquaintances, and even virtual strangers. I’m talking about simple, stumbling stories, shared with those who will cherish us and hold our experiences as sacred. I’m talking about unvarnished, unperfected, unfinished stories. These are the stories we need to tell each other, and listen to with compassion. These are the stories that leave room for Jesus to join us on the road. Our stories are where Jesus is alive, and God is at work bringing life out of death.

In our liturgy, those of us who are gathered here don’t get to tell our stories much, unless we’re the preacher or the speaker during stewardship pledge season. But the imperfect, unfinished story is in fact what we hear when we listen to scripture, whether it is from the Hebrew Scriptures or the New Testament. We tell our common story, a story in which the people of God over the millennia have journeyed, stumbled, fallen, and gotten up again. We hear our story in this common story. And we hear, each week something of an improbable resurrection, or at least the possibility. We find our hopelessness met with improbable and tantalizing hope.

And then we gather around the table, joined by this stranger who has been walking along beside us. We take bread, bless, and break it, and are given a share in heaven. It is then that we see him in this fourfold action; in a flash of insight we see that he has been with us all along. If it seems as if he vanishes suddenly, it is only because he is now within us, acting in us for the life of the world. We become his Body, taking up the gifts of God, giving thanks, and breaking those gifts up, not so that they are destroyed but so that they may give life to all we meet. And then, as the disciples on the road to Emmaus told what happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread, we tell the story all over again. And each time it is brand new. 

Let us pray: Lord of the gathering feast, you walk with us on the shadowed road: burn our hearts with scripture’s open flame; unveil our darkened eyes as bread is torn and shared and from the broken fragments bless a people for yourself; through Jesus Christ, the host of the world. Amen.

 (Steven Shakespeare, Prayers for an Inclusive Church. New York: Church Publishing, 2009, p. 22.)