a sermon on luke 24:13-35
I had only been in Mexico a handful of weeks on the day that I got hopelessly lost on the streets of Mexico City. I had moved there as a 27-year-old first call pastor, serving as a missionary on behalf of the ELCA. I remember feeling a comforting sense of growing confidence as I’d set out for the market that particular morning. My Spanish language skills were deepening, I knew the walk down Revolucion and past the Barranca del Muerto Metro station, which would bring me to the entrance door I wanted, and I’d been to this market enough times by now that a few of the puesteros – the vendors – recognized me and called out greetings as I walked past.
I snaked my way ever deeper into the labyrinth of the market, buying some tomatoes, some jalapenos, some eggs, and a few strawberries along the way. I was feeling SO confident by the end of my little excursion that I decided to leave the market through the back rather than the front entrance to which I was accustomed. Well, that back exit spit me out not onto a main road, but into the outdoor extension of the market. Vendors lined the narrow winding streets, selling pretty much everything you could imagine – pirated DVDs, single cigarettes out of open packs, secondhand clothing, plastic food storage containers, you name it. It only took me a few blocks before I realized I had no idea where I was anymore. So, I started to ask for directions.
Now, my Spanish had gotten way better than when I’d first landed in Mexico, but there were a number of things happening here that were decidedly not in the favor of this lost gringa. First, the street Spanish being spoken around me was peppered with all sorts of idioms and slang that I didn’t yet know how to use in my daily life. Second, lots of the street names in Mexico City come not from Spanish, but from the indigenous language of Nahuat’l, and let’s be real. My ear was not yet attuned to just catching words like “Nezahualcoytl” on the fly. So, I took a deep breath and resigned myself to the probability that I was going to be out here for awhile, and to the certainty that I was going to need to ask a new person for help approximately every block and a half.
I’d been at this game for probably 20 minutes when I came across an elderly woman, sitting on a blanket with small candies and gum spread out in front of her for sale. Her long, white hair was pulled back into a thin braid, and the thick callouses on her bare feet suggested to me that she probably didn’t own shoes. I must have looked as bewildered as I felt in that moment because she called to me from her blanket.
When I told her I was lost and gave her the general direction of where I was trying to go, she stood up carefully and, in a beautifully intimate gesture, took my face in her hands as she said to me, “Ay, mi vida, mi corazon, mi amor, yo te enseno el camino.” Ay, my life, my heart, my love, I’ll show you the way. And she did. This poor, elderly Mexican woman – whose name I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask for back then – showed me all the way home that day. But she also showed me so much more. In a moment when I was feeling particularly vulnerable, she showed me the face of Jesus.
It’s amazing, isn’t it…the simple but also life-changing things that can happen to us on the road as we’re making our way through this life? Cleopas and the other disciple had some first-hand experience with the exact same kind of thing back in the day, on that 7-mile road between Jerusalem and the village of Emmaus. Things had gotten pretty dangerous in Jerusalem, especially for the followers of Jesus. Jesus, the disciples’ beloved friend and leader, the one whom they had hoped would finally liberate their people, had just been publicly executed by the Roman government. Jesus was dead, and all of their hopes for a new kind of life…a new kind of world order, even…had died along with him.
Cleopas and his friend are re-hashing all of these things as they walk the road together until a stranger comes alongside them, asking what they’re talking about. The disciples are understandably surprised that this stranger seems so clueless. Like, this thing that’s just happened in Jerusalem is trending on every social media platform, and it’s the leading headline for every news outlet, but whatever. They decide to bring the stranger up to speed.
They tell him about Jesus, a prophet who was mighty in word and deed, who had been handed over to the authorities and condemned to death. They tell him about how, because of Jesus, the people had begun to feel hope for the first time in generations. And they tell him about the women in their group, who asserted that the tomb where Jesus’ body had been laid was empty, but how none of the men had actually seen Jesus. The stranger doesn’t even need to ask how Cleopas and his friend are feeling in the wake of all these things because it’s written all over their faces. They are sad. Anguished. Heartbroken. They are most certainly also burdened by the weight of carrying all these feelings, and anxious about the uncertain future that now lies before them. Whew. Can you relate?
Before long the stranger begins to speak, opening the scriptures to the disciples starting with Moses – the great liberator of God’s people who led them out of slavery in Egypt – and continuing with the prophets, who throughout the Old Testament were consistently speaking truth to power, calling out the wealthy and elite and the rulemakers of the day for the extravagance of their lifestyles…lifestyles which served to, as the prophet Isaiah puts it, grind the faces of the poor into the dust.
It’s no accident that the stranger chooses Moses and the prophets as he talks with the disciples. It’s like the stranger is saying, “If this Jesus was who you say he was – a prophet mighty in deed who came to usher in a whole new world – how could he have met any other fate than what all the prophets faced…to lose his life at the hands of those who felt threatened by him?” Because then just as now, there were those who felt threatened…by the expansiveness of Jesus’ welcoming arms…the stubborn insistence of his love for all who were hurting and excluded…the life-altering nature of the hope that his ministry gave to the people.
As the disciples listen to the stranger something starts to move within them. When evening draws near they insist that the stranger stay with them. And then they do what we, too, do as a church community every week, and what we’ll keep doing online while we’re apart. They gather around a table. They share a meal. And in the breaking of the bread the disciples recognize the truth – that this one in their midst has never actually been a stranger…
As soon as they recognize Jesus he vanishes from their sight, but something profound has happened. “Were not our hearts burning within us as he talked with us on that road?” the disciples reflect. And immediately, they know what they have to do. Nothing has changed in Jerusalem. It’s the same chaotic, scary, and uncertain place it was when they left. Their future is no less clear to them. But somehow, the disciples have been so radically changed by their encounter with the crucified and risen Christ that they get back on that road, returning to the place they’d just left, filled anew with hope, to re-engage in the work of helping God’s reign break forth in the world.
Church, it’s no secret that we are living in extraordinary times. Our circumstances are obviously different than those of the disciples, but the road we are walking is similarly difficult. The stay-at-home order in Illinois has just been extended through May 31. We have no idea what this continued pandemic and the gradual reopening of our public spaces will mean for us, for our families, for our livelihoods, or for the church. The road ahead of us is as bewildering as the winding back roads of that Mexico City market that swallowed me up all those years ago. And like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, grief and fear and confusion can keep our eyes from seeing any hope along the way…can keep us from recognizing the face of Jesus when he shows up.
But it doesn’t matter. Truly, friends, it doesn’t matter. Because here’s the thing. It was always Jesus. Even when the disciples’ ability to recognize him was clouded by the stuff of their own difficult lives, it was always Jesus. The presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our ability recognize him. Just like the presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our feelings. The presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on our ability to muster up some certain kind of positivity when things seem bleak, or some false sense of hope when we feel like we’re hanging by a thread. In fact the presence of Jesus doesn’t depend on us at ALL. The presence of Jesus just IS…sure, and certain, and true, today and always. No matter what.
These are difficult days, friends, but Hope marks the road. Embodied in Jesus, Hope accompanies every step we take as we journey through life. Even when we can’t recognize it or feel it Jesus is there, showing us the way when we feel most lost. And that seems just about right. Because at the end of the day, in the company of Jesus, aren’t we all just walking each other home?
Heidi Torgerson 