This is a minor copout because it isn't new! I wrote this sermon three years ago, as a second-year student, for the senior sending service at my seminary. (Thus ChicagoRev has heard it before.) I am preaching this weekend, and given what life looks like right now, it will be a variation of this message.


This story has been titled “Road to Emmaus” or “Walk to Emmaus” in many biblical translations. Which is peculiar, really, because the amazing thing isn’t what happened on the road, but what happened at the end of the road. That beautiful moment of sight that takes place in the little house in the little village west of Jerusalem. It's at Emmaus where the good stuff happens. But today I’d like to take a cue from the tradition, from the traditional title of the story, and focus on that road.

Why were those two disciples even on the road to Emmaus in the first place? The text doesn't tell us their intent. The text doesn’t say they lived in Emmaus, or whether they had an appointment, or even who they were going to see. No, we don’t know why, we just know when. They set out on the very day of resurrection... or was it the day Jesus’ dead and buried body was stolen by bandits... or was it the day the women told their idle tale—whatever you want to call that day. They didn’t know what to call it either. What on earth happened anyway?

The timing of this road trip is the only clue into why they were out there—and it may be the only clue we need. On that day, a day like no other, I certainly know why I would be out there walking as fast from Jerusalem as my feet could take me.

The grief is just too great.
The amazement is just too huge,
The confusion is so massive
that the four walls of the upper room cannot contain it all any more, the whole city of Jerusalem isn't wide enough to contain it. The pain and confusion of death and loss and now this idle tale, (what was that?), all these feelings just pumping through your veins until you just can’t sit there anymore?

Have you ever been down that road?
Have you ever taken that walk?
Have you ever been so amazed, or so sad, or just so deeply in it
that the intensity of it just propels you out the door?
Have you ever fled from the scene because it was just too much to handle? ……
Just so you can breathe again.
Just so you can very calmly sort this out, so you can make some sense of these things.

See, I think that’s what the disciples are doing on that road. And I think there are times in ministry and in life when we have to take that walk. We can’t dwell in that intensity all the time.

You get asked to do one more thing for someone, something worthwhile that’s within your abilities that you’d probably be good at, but something in you says No. Enough. The road provides a little moment of rest.

Somebody wants an answer from you, a decision, and you’re just about ready to snap-to when you hear yourself saying, “Let me sleep on it.” The road provides space.

The 15th person asks you how you are doing on a perfectly awful day and you just can’t get into it again so you simply say, “Fine.” The road provides some distance.

The road leading out of Jerusalem is there for a reason.

And so, the disciples head out on that road, just to get some rest and space and distance. And as they walk, maybe they just start to talk a little about what’s happened. Soon they’re not just talking, they’re discussing. In fact, in the Greek, they don’t just discuss. They debate. They dispute one another. The Greek word shows up just two chapters earlier when the disciples are arguing over who is the greatest disciple of all. And here it is again. Of course! See how quickly it happened? What started as a walk to clear their heads becomes a religious debate over these things that have happened.

“All right, let’s take inventory here of the facts...
What exactly do we know?...
What are the arguments pro and con?...
No, I think you’re wrong, I don’t think the women’s story can be trusted...
Anyway, just because the body’s gone doesn’t mean he’s risen. How ridiculous.”

I can’t help but picture those two disciples, bless their hearts,
in the wake of something totally inexplicable,
deciding to do their best to make it explicable, gosh darn it!
‘Cause that’s all it takes, right?
If they can just get all the facts straight,
if they can just form a cogent argument,
if they can just perform a little forensics on this mystery,
well, it won’t be so disturbingly messy.
It won’t be able to touch them.

And so, this quiet road beyond the walls of Jerusalem becomes a place of debate. It must get more and more heated and intense, because when Jesus shows up, he takes one look at the scene and knows exactly what’s going on. Jesus says quite literally, What are these words you are throwing against one another?

What are these words you are throwing against one another?
Jesus meets the two disciples on that road, and he calls them on it. His question utterly stops them in their tracks: and for a moment, they are sad.

But only for a moment. You can almost see them shrugging it off as they focus again on the things. It’s amazing to me how many times the word “things” appears. “What things?” asks Jesus. “The things that happened here, the things about Jesus of Nazareth, the things in the scripture.” It’s so easy to get busy about the things.
But for that moment! when they just stop…

For that moment, it’s not about putting some major miles between them
and the place where it all stopped making sense.
It’s not about lobbing words back and forth in an attempt
to dissect it and figure it out.
For that moment, it’s about profound grief.
It’s about letting their heart break open, or maybe just break.

What’s that moment about for some of us?
Here’s what I think.

It’s about finishing the first year of seminary, walking along the road, putting all that great stuff in your knapsack—critical thinking, theological integrity, hermeneutical suspicion—stuffing it so full that that you didn’t notice when your faith fell out of it.

It’s about being a middler, walking along with theology class whispering in
one ear and pastoral care in the other and wondering whether you’ll ever get to Emmaus.

It’s about being a senior, and knowing you have to say goodbye, and it’s so hard, and often it’s just easier to busy yourself with the words, and the things.

We receive a great gift at this seminary. A vocabulary and an aptitude for talking and discussing and debating and explaining things, and people in our congregations will be clamoring for us to do just that. They don’t want to stand still and be sad or perplexed or troubled, anymore than we do. I was sitting in on a church school class last week that’s studying the Revelation and the people were itching in their chairs for the pastor just to tell them what those crazy symbols mean, what those things mean.

Our faith is not about the things.

And you know what that pastor said when all these people were clamoring for an explanation of the symbols in the book of Revelation? That pastor said,
“I’ve given up trying to understand the revelation. Now I’m just trying to be addressed by it.”

For me my journey into seminary has been about faith seeking understanding, but the journey out of seminary is understanding seeking faith. I can espouse a fabulous, well-articulated doctrine of the resurrection; maybe you can too. But am I ready to be addressed by the resurrection? Are you?

I have to tell you that I do not want to be. That gaping empty tomb scares me, and so I think maybe if I just throw enough words into it I’ll be able to fill it up.

I can’t explain it, I can’t understand it, and I certainly can’t control it.
I don’t want to be addressed by the resurrected Christ,
and I’m dying to be addressed by him.

Maybe we will be today. The story bears witness to that. It’s only later, in the room, when everyone’s at table together and they’ve put away the debate and taken out the loaf, and when Jesus blesses the bread and performs this simple silent act–only then do the disciples realize they are being addressed by the living Christ. Not only that, but they see clearly in hindsight that they were addressed by him even on the road. On the road, the narrator says, Jesus explained the scriptures. But now, at the table, the two of them say, “No, he broke them open for us! Now we see.”

The scripture says that Jesus was known in the breaking of bread, and that’s what we commonly say in our communion liturgy, that’s not quite it here. Maybe that’s the way we want the story to go. But the text says Jesus blesses the bread, breaks it, and gives it to them and then their eyes are opened. Why do we want to skip right from the breaking to the seeing?

So we don’t have to receive it. We can just observe it.
So we can approach the breaking of the bread
with the same detachment with which we often approach our academic life.
So we don’t have to acknowledge that we will starve without it.

The temptation will always be there in ministry—to be about the things, to hurl words around in an attempt to keep things heady and safe and tidy. But we’ll never be able to fill that empty tomb with our well-constructed arguments. We’ll never set our own hearts on fire through the elegant theologies we construct. What we can do is sometimes, stand, be, cup our little hands and simply receive… receive what the giver of life has to offer each of us.

The poet Rumi said,

“You and I have spoken all these words,
but as for the way we have to go,
words are no preparation.
There is no getting ready,
other than grace.”