Their Eyes Were Opened

April 28^th, 2019         “Their Eyes Were Opened”      Rev. Heather Jepsen

Luke 24:13-35

         Where do you go to get away?  Do you head out of town and down the road to Kansas City to get the experience of more people in a bigger place?  Do you stick around here and head to Heroes or over to Knob Noster?  Or do you simply escape at home in front of the TV or out at your shop?  In our reading this morning, two followers of Jesus are seeking to get away, and their route of escape is down the road to Emmaus.

         The events recorded take place on Easter eve.  These two have been followers of Jesus; they have seen his miracles and know his teachings and like the others they have witnessed his trial and crucifixion.  They have heard the stories of angels and empty tombs but their hearts are still stuck in a place of unbelief.  Their hearts are still stuck in a place of “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”  We can see that they have all the tools to understand what has happened around them, but for some reason they can’t quite see things clearly.

         One reason that they may not be able to see clearly is how upset they are.  All they really want to do is to get out of Jerusalem.  They want to get away from all the reminders of Jesus’ pain and suffering and all the reminders of their own shattered dreams.  And so, they hit the road and head out of town the seven miles to Emmaus, a little place in the middle of nowhere that the disciples had no real reason to go to, other than to get away.  Emmaus was their place of escape.

         On the road they meet an intriguing stranger.  He begins to journey with them and they tell him about all the big happenings in Jerusalem, even about empty tombs and angels.  The stranger then berates them for their foolishness, how could they not understand?  Why are their eyes still closed?  The mysterious man then leads them through the history of Israel, the scriptures and the prophets, showing them how all these things have come to pass; and not only that but also how all these occurrences are part of the divine plan of God.

         Well, the little group finally arrives at Emmaus.  The hour is late and so the disciples invite the stranger to lodge with them and share a meal.  And at the moment of giving thanks and breaking bread, only then, their eyes finally open in recognition of who their mysterious traveler really is.  And of course, as soon as they realize it is Jesus they have been with he disappears.  “We should have known,” they say to themselves, “weren’t our hearts burning within us?”

         It might be easy to think of these men as fools.  Didn’t they have all the tools of understanding right before them?  Why did they not believe when they heard about the empty tomb?  If they were true followers of Jesus they surely had heard him teach about his own death and resurrection.  And moreover, when a mysterious man shows up who has an incredible knowledge of scripture and how it relates to Jesus, how do they still not have a clue? 

         It might be easy for us to berate these guys for their foolishness and slowness to believe much as Jesus did, but I want to point out a few things to you.  Take another look at the text.  It says in verse 16 that the men’s eyes were kept from recognizing Jesus.  Their eyes were closed to the Lord, not by themselves but by an outside force.  And again in verse 31 it says their eyes were opened.  Not, they opened their eyes, but their eyes were opened.  The language is passive; their eyes were opened for them by an outside force.  Their eyes were opened for them by God.

         You see the only way that our eyes are ever opened, the only way that we ever know God, is on God’s own terms.  Our God is a God of self-revelation, meaning that God shows Godself to us.  If our God is a God of self-revelation, it therefore follows that God cannot be revealed by others.  In other words, our actions cannot reveal God.  Don’t misunderstand me, our actions can and do reveal our faith and our understanding of the world around us, but our actions cannot reveal God to someone else.  That is part of our understanding of God’s sovereignty.  Only God can reveal Godself.

         In addition, we cannot come to know God apart from God.  There is no part of us, intellect or heart that can truly reach out to God on our own, or can make God be known to us.  This is part of Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity.  There is nothing good in us that can reach out to God.  The only way that we can reach out to God is the movement of God through us, or God inside of us.  Therefore the only way we can know God is in the ways God makes Godself known.

         As if this isn’t hard enough, God chooses when and where God will be made known and it is often in the places we least expect.  It is often in just the places where we go to get away from God, like the road to Emmaus.  It’s when we are not looking for God that God is so often revealed in our lives.

In his book “Magnificent Defeat”, author Frederick Buechner points out that Emmaus is

“the place we go in order to escape – a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, “Let the whole damned thing go hang.  It makes no difference anyway.” . . . Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one.  Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday.  Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and the bravest and the loveliest die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.”

         Fredrick Buechner reminds us that the risen Lord meets us on our road to Emmaus, in the places where we retreat from life and the hard world around us.  The risen Lord meets us when we are busy running away.  And the rub is we aren’t likely to even recognize God there. 

         Now I imagine you are asking what all this amounts to.  “If I can’t move towards God unless God moves me, if I can’t see God unless God opens my eyes, and if I can’t find God unless I am running away, then what am I supposed to do?”  That’s a great question and my first answer would be to just keep swimming.  If you’ve seen the Dory and Nemo movies you know what I’m talking about.  When Dory the fish is lost and confused she just keeps swimming in the hope that she will find her way home.  So too, when we are confused in our lives of faith, I would encourage all of us to just keep reaching, just keep trying, just keep swimming with the same confidence of Dory, knowing that eventually God will meet us and show us the way home. 

         The other answer I would have to the question of “what we are supposed to do” in light of this revelation is to embrace more grace.  We need to be more accommodating and more forgiving of others and ourselves on this journey of life and faith.  We should be open to the experience of God in all the places of our lives, even the places where we run away.  And we should be forgiving of others and ourselves, in those times when God chooses not to make Godself known, in those times when God has not opened our eyes quite yet.  Faith is something that happens on God’s time, not on our time.  So we can’t make ourselves have faith and we can’t make anyone else have it either.  We can share our faith, we can tell our stories, we can live lives of love, but only God can move within and around us to make faith happen.  And in the meantime, we all could use a little more space and a little more grace. 

I know this can be a difficult concept if you have a loved one who has rejected religion and the church.  It can be hard when it feels like we are speaking different languages and we don’t understand why someone doesn’t see God in the world like we do.  This lesson on the road to Emmaus reminds us that God works in God’s own time.  These people had to wait for God to open their eyes; they had to wait for the moment of revelation.  So too, we may have to wait for some of our loved ones to understand why we like going to church.  And it is not something we should worry about.  Like the sermon I preached last Sunday, this is about trusting that God holds the future.

         The truth about this sermon is that I wrote the core of it over 10 years ago for my first church.  It is interesting for me to revisit these ideas later in my ministry.  In that community there was a lot of judgement of folks who didn’t go to church and so this sermon was written in light of that.  In this community though, I don’t feel like we judge the world that way.  Here we may have loved ones we wish understood our love of God more but we aren’t really what I think of as a “judgy” community. 

         Instead, here I think we need to give ourselves a little more space for those times when we don’t get it.  Those times when we want to believe and just can’t.  Those times when our head understands but our heart just can’t go there, like I talked about last week.  I think the story of the believers on the road to Emmaus can be a good one for us in the midst of our own doubt and the judgments we might put on ourselves.  Jesus was right there talking to those guys and they missed it!  How can we realistically expect ourselves to do any better?

         The more years I spend in ministry the more I have come to believe that faith is something that ebbs and flows.  I do believe that God alone is the source of revelation.  But our awareness of God is not the same throughout our lives.  There are days, months, years even when we are really feeling it.  God is with us and we know it without a doubt.  And then there are all the other times when we are just going through the motions, in the hopes that God will meet us along the way.  (“Just keep swimming”) I think living into those days is a deep act of faith.  Maybe even the truest act of faith.

         The Sunday after Easter is always a bit of a downer.  Never quite the high of “Jesus Christ has risen today”.  But the life of faith isn’t all about highs.  It’s about closed eyes and running away to Emmaus, it’s about misunderstanding and confusion, it’s about walking on the road even if we don’t know where were going, and it’s about going through the motions even if we can’t feel God anymore.  Life is beautiful and complicated and painfully and holy, wherever we find ourselves.  And no matter if we recognize our Lord or not, we can be confident that God is with us.  Thanks be to God for this marvelous trying journey of faith.  Amen.