One of the alleged roads to Emmaus
A Sermon preached via Facebook Live
Easter III - April 26, 2020
On 20 August 1875, ten nuns left their monastery in Pau (France) to found a Carmel in Bethlehem. One of them, Marie of Jesus Crucified (Mariam Baouardy), was really the soul of the little group.
It was Mariam who, feeling led by the Lord, indicated the place of the future monastery, on top of the hill of David, which is in front of the hill of the Nativity.
The foundation stone was laid on 24 March 1876. While the monastery was being built, the community lived in a temporary house near the Basilica of the Nativity.
On Easter Monday, 1878,
Mariam saw a place in a vision and she was told, “This is the place where Jesus
blessed the bread in the house of the disciples at Emmaus.”
Two weeks later,
she left Bethlehem in the company of several nuns to prepare the foundation for
the Carmelite Monastery in Nazareth.
Arriving at Amwas, she
suddenly started to run, having recognized the place she had seen in the
vision; she stopped at some barely visible ruins and said to her companions
with emotion, “Here is the true place where our Lord ate with his disciples.”
When you drive up to the top of the hill, on your way to the chapel and monastery, there is, there, off to the right, a path leading into the woods, which is strongly suggested to be the very path on which Jesus walked unrecognized among the disciples after his resurrection.
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| Cleopas, Jesus and Me |
The face of the second apostle is cut out so a pilgrim can stand behind it and put their face there for a most memorable photo op. Just like Disneyland!
(Yes, when I was there, of course, I had my picture taken!).
The Carmelite Community at Emmaus is one of three locations thought to have been THE place where the Resurrected Jesus appeared to the disciples, walking with them and teaching them about scripture until their hearts were strangely warmed and then – in case anyone had any doubt about the full, bodily resurrection – ate dinner with them.
As I was checking out of the gift shop there, at THAT Emmaus, I asked the sweet, young nun behind the counter – who was taking payment in dollar, gelt, or Euro and spoke perfect English – what she thought. She smiled brightly and said, “"It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.'" (Mt 4:4)
I wanted to press her a bit more but figured I was hardly the first (and wouldn’t be the last) pilgrim to ask her that question. I decided that it was the greater part of valor to take her at her word; and the word I heard clearly was ‘faith’.
Isn’t that what this story about Emmaus, about the Risen Lord, is all about? Faith?
It’s not a story of historical or geographic accuracy. The name Emmaus was likely a Greek version of the Hebrew word 'hammah', or hot spring, and there may simply have been multiple sites sharing the name.
All we really know from Luke’s gospel is that the story took place 60 stadia from Jerusalem, a measure that translates well to the 11 kilometers (or 7 miles) that separate the city of Jerusalem from the hill of Kiriath Yearim and Abu Ghosh, thought to be another possible location of the ancient village of Emmaus.
It’s not a story about scientific facts. If a notable attorney like Clarence Darrow or Williams Jennings Bryan argued in court for the Resurrection, they would, no doubt, lose the case. And, well, they should. It makes absolutely no sense. There is no scientific data to support the claim.
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| An ancient tomb at Emmaus |
You can choose to believe it or not. You can hear it the way you choose to hear it – as a report of something that actually happened or as a metaphor that beckons us to seek a deeper meaning in the mystery that is life and mortality and eternal life.
It will take faith to believe it in such a way as to find its implications for our lives of faith in our day and time.
Today is the third Sunday of Easter and the seventh Sunday that we have been under lockdown and locked out of most of what has given our lives structure and, with it, a sense of security. That includes, of course, our church buildings.
What I’ve learned in these past seven weeks is something I’ve known since I was a young child of a Portuguese immigrant family.
This COVID-19 pandemic is teaching me once again that words cannot hold the fullness of our lives as human or spiritual beings.
Words fail.
Words fail to express our deepest beliefs. We find ourselves in this Eastertide of the Empty Churches very much like Cleopas and the other disciple, on a journey, a bit disoriented and made not a little anxious by a world that seems turned upside down by events out of our control.
We are hungry for information but also famished for the assurance of words of truth.
We long for the real presence of the Resurrected Lord but our eyes have been kept from recognizing him because we have lost a sense of the familiar in our liturgies and in our church buildings.
Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, we have been caught up in something that is too large, too complicated, too frightening for us to fully comprehend.
I wonder. I’m sure you do, too. I’m sure this thought has crossed your mind at least once if not several times. I wonder if, when this pandemic is over and we have a vaccine and it is safe to resume some semblance of life in these United States as we once knew it, when we are able to come back to our churches and pray in the old familiar way in our own pews, what life will be like.
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| St. Mary of Jesus Crucified |
Like the apostles, I hope that the first thing we do when we come to that realization is to invite Jesus to be a guest in our homes as well as our churches.
As Anglicans who are also Episcopalians, I hope we recapture and reclaim our identity as people of Word and Sacrament, reassured in our belief that Jesus appears to us in the breaking open of the scriptures as well as the breaking open of the bread.
I want to say that, as I've been watching services being live-streamed on Facebook - services of Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline, all led by faithful members of the laity - well, I've never been more proud of the members of The Episcopal Church who care about feeding each other on The Word during this time of the pandemic.
Most importantly, I hope we have learned that words may fail but the faith that endures is the one which has allowed itself to suffer and die and be born again in the glory of the Resurrection.
Amen.
Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
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