Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The Road to Emmaus (1877). Robert Zünd [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
When I was a boy, one of my aunts and uncles had a painting hanging over their organ in their living room that depicted Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Later I learned that the painting’s artist was Robert Zünd, an important Swiss Protestant painter of the nineteenth century, who was known for a special closeness to nature and a highly-naturalistic, richly-detailed style of painting, which was combined with his religious faith, in the case of his 18-77 “The Road to Emmaus” (Wikipedia). My mother wondered why the figures in the painting were so small compared to the scenery, and I said it was because the artist was more interested in the scenery! The painting intrigued me as a boy, I think, because I did not remember learning about the account in Sunday School, and back then it was not appointed to be read in Church on any Sunday. Today’s Gospel Reading was St. Luke’s account of Jesus not only on the road (or “way”) to Emmaus but also in a house in Emmaus, where He made Himself known to at least two disciples in the breaking of the bread. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under the theme “Jesus on the Way and in the Bread”.
For today’s Gospel Reading, we go back to the events of Easter Day, even earlier than last week’s Gospel Reading about unbelieving-turned-believing Thomas. As we heard today, two disciples traveling the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus were joined by the resurrected Jesus on the way, where He rebuked them for not rightly understanding the Scriptures and rightly interpreted the Scriptures for them. But, their eyes were kept from recognizing Him until, after they strongly urged Him to stay (or “abide”) with them, He made Himself known to them in the breaking of the bread, which they then immediately told the eleven and those who were with them in Jerusalem.
Some of you may remember our Synod’s Ablaze!™ emphasis under an earlier president. Ablaze!™ advocates apparently misused today’s Gospel Reading in order to support the program, as if the disciples’ hearts burning within them while Jesus talked to them on the way was a good thing (as even the explanation of today’s bulletin cover seems to suggest). Rather, if, as is thought (K.L. Schmidt, TDNT 3:464-467), the use of the Greek verb for “burning” is influenced by its use in translating the Old Testament, then the hearts burning relates to causing figurative pain, such as that from human stupidity (see Psalms 39:3 and 73:21 and on them Keil-Delitzsch, pp.28-29 and 319-320). Indeed, on the way Jesus addressed the two disciples as those who were foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken. More than the English Standard Version read would suggest, the two had been discussing and disputing with each other about all the things that had happened, about Jesus’s crucifixion and His—at that time only reported—resurrection. Neither was able to answer the other’s questions (Lenski, 1181), and their hopes for the redemption of Israel seemed completely dashed.
You and I may also suffer from seemingly dashed hopes. You and I may find it difficult to reconcile what we experience with our faith, perhaps in part because we by nature are just as foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken (confer Pieper, III:212). You and I may let our whole beings—feeling and willing and understanding—lead us to doubt or otherwise not accept all that Holy Scripture says, whether specifically about Jesus or about anything else related to how we should or should not live our lives. We sin in these and countless other ways, for we are sinful by nature. Apart from faith in Jesus Christ, those sins and sinful nature merit us both death here in time and torment in hell for eternity. And, when we are cut to the heart and ask what we might do, we hear Peter’s answer in today’s First Reading of his Pentecost sermon (Acts 2:14a, 36-41): Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.
In fact, the hopes of the Emmaus disciples for the redemption of Israel were not completely dashed with Jesus’s delivery up to be condemned to death and crucifixion, but rather their hopes for the redemption of Israel were completely fulfilled with Jesus’s delivery up to be condemned to death and crucifixion. Not only Israel’s but also our redemption, from the futile ways inherited from our ancestors, came at the cost, as Peter put it in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Peter 1:17-25), which is echoed in the Small Catechism (II:4), not of perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. He was made manifest for our sake, who through Him are believers in God, Who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that our faith and hope are in God. As we, enabled by God, repent and believe in Him, God forgives our sin: our foolish sinful nature, our being slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken, whatever our sin might be. God forgives all our sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. And, for that forgiveness, we find Jesus’s body not in the tomb, where the women and other disciples sought Him, but we find Jesus’s body in the breaking of the bread.
Jesus’s disciples had seen Him take five loaves and two fish, bless them, break them, and give them to the disciples feeding a crowd of more than five-thousand people (Luke 9:16). Jesus’s disciples had seen Him take bread, give thanks, break it, and give it to them, saying “This is My Body, which is given for you” (Luke 22:19). Perhaps there should be no surprise that in Emmaus when Jesus having taken bread blessed it and having broken it gave it to them opening their eyes and they enabling them to recognize Him before He vanished from their sight, as if to teach them and us that we should not expect Jesus to continue to be present in the same way but in the breaking of the bread (Lenski, 1192). Truly, we, for whom the eating of forbidden fruit once brought sin and death, here in the Sacrament of the Altar eat bread that is Jesus’s Body and drink wine that is His blood and so receive forgiveness of sin and eternal life (see Beckwith, CLD III:181-184).
Today’s third Distribution Hymn (Lutheran Service Book 476) relates well how Jesus in the bread of the Sacrament of the Altar “makes each day a new Emmaus” for us who travel with Him “on our way through life to death”. In this life things are not as they seem. Where Christian hopes appear to be dashed, they in fact are not. We have been rescued from the peril of everlasting death and instead will receive perpetual gladness and eternal joys. We let Holy Scripture be the authoritative and definitive source of what we believe, and through Holy Scripture we know God and His work in His Son Jesus Christ, even as God through His Holy Scripture works in us to transform us with His new life. If we search Holy Scripture for someone else or something else, we miss the point. (See Beckwith, CLD III:181-184.)
Supper at Emmaus, 1601. Caravaggio [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Robert Zünd’s “The Road to Emmaus” tells part of the story, to be sure, even if he makes the scenery look more like Switzerland than someplace within a seven-mile radius of Jerusalem (confer Ahlquist). Jesus confronted the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, and their hearts burned within them, but, as they drew near to the village, they asked Him to abide with them, and He did, making Himself known in the breaking of the bread. The moment of that revelation, the other part of the story, as it were, was vividly painted by the sixteenth‑century Italian Roman Catholic painter known as Caravaggio in his “The Supper at Emmaus” (Wikipedia). We likewise encounter “Jesus on the Way and in the Bread”. Jesus confronts us with our sin, and He enables us to repent and receive His forgiveness through His Word and Sacraments. Through His Word and Sacraments He also abides with us, until we abide with Him in His heavenly presence for eternity.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +