Road to Emmaus
There are a number of ways of entering into Sunday's gospel story. The one I want to explore this week is that of 'every road being an Emmaus Road'.
It seems to me that there is a cultural thing going on at the moment by which we spend our lives waiting for 'the big one', for the revelation of some kind of mysterious truth, for the moment of radical transformation. And I don't deny that some people, some times, have some such moments.
Preachers often mention John Wesley's moment when "I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ." But many people, myself included, have never had such a heart warming moment; we have never encountered Christ in the way that Saul (or Paul) did on the Road to Damascus. Despite that, because of our teaching or our upbringing or the way the church / world is around us, we accept that we have been taught to think about the great revelation or nurtured to yearn for that special moment when God, in Christ, meets us in our humanity.
As I say, that is some people's experience and I am delighted for them to have had that experience. But this is not a zero-sum game whereby what one person doesn't experience is, in some way, a reflection of a lesser faith or a more shallow relationship with Jesus of Nazareth. What if we looked at this Sunday's gospel narrative as a way in to seeing every road as a road to Emmaus, every journey as pathway to the deeper faith, every shared meal as a moment of deepest communion?
If this is a novel concept for you, you might like to start to contemplate your journey to church on Sunday (or Wednesday!) as a road to Emmaus. After all, it will reach it fulfilment in the breaking of bread in the same way that it did two thousand years ago. And, along the way, we will have the scriptures opened to us as it was then. And, after we have encountered Christ in the broken bread and the spilt wine, we will leave changed forever: having participated in the bread and the wine, having seen and touched and tasted Christ incarnate, we can never be the same as we were before.
This is where the deficiency of every analogy emerges! For in Sunday's account the two people are so excited they turn round and head back in the direction they came from.
Today, for us, after our road to Emmaus encounter, we journey on with the Good News of the resurrected Christ in our hearts and on our lips:
Alleluia. Christ is risen.
He is risen indeed. Alleluia.
Dan Tyndall
20 April 2023
