Third Sunday of Easter, 2023
The Lord is faithful to His promises, but are we faithful to our trust in them?
In our Gospel today, we see the familiar scene of the encounter on the Road to Emmaus. These dejected disciples meet with a man they think to be a stranger. He asks them what they are discussing, and their response demonstrates the depths to which their hope has fallen. “Are you the only person in this city who doesn’t know what happened?” “Are you living under a rock?” We can almost hear their frustration and disappointment.
Yet, as they will discover, and as we already know, the man to whom they spoke was the only man in Jerusalem who really did know what had happened.
The trouble here is that these men on the road, and the others who were still in Jerusalem, had lost hope in the faithfulness of God. In a way who could blame them? To watch as the man that you hoped and believed was the savior of the world was crucified to death and buried securely in a tomb would certainly dampen the human spirit.
Yet, does it have to? Wasn’t this all part of the plan that Jesus Himself revealed? He made it clear that the Son of Man would have to die, but would be raised again! Now, we know the end, we know that it comes true, so it is easy to look on at these doubters and scold them.
But do we actually believe that the Lord is faithful to what He promises us? Do we have hope that our prayers will be answered, or do we go through the motions, saying much, but believing nothing? There are certainly times of great discouragement in life, and we do suffer real pain, real disappointment. The struggle of this world is often a struggle against discouragement, one which could cause us to lose hope and fall in to despair.
Perhaps, rather than loss or pain, it is insecurity and self-consciousness which cuts away at our trust in His promises. After all, how many of us still cling desperately to the idea that we must make ourselves valuable through our contributions and activity, that we have to work, succeed, climb, and win in order to be lovable or good? This unsustainable and inhuman pressure we heap on ourselves, or that the world around us feeds to us, is a poison which kills hope.
And without hope, we allow the spirit of this world to break us down, to convince us of many lies, both about ourselves and God. We become convinced that the Lord does not hear our prayers, that He does not care about our suffering, and that He does not keep His promises.
We, like these disciples on the road, quite literally meet Jesus in our experience every single day, and yet we cannot recognize Him. We, like them, so often wonder if He really loves us, perhaps if He is even real, and certainly if He hears when we cry.
Yet, it is those darkest moments that He is with us the most profoundly. God is not afraid of our questions, our doubts, our failures, our insecurities, our anger. When we suffer, Jesus suffers with us. When we feel alone, Jesus shows us His own loneliness on the Cross.
Jesus Christ is the promise of God, and He is not dead! He is not gone away! Jesus Christ is fully present in every single moment of our lives. He is there with us when we are disappointed, broken down, hurt, hated, angry, and feeling hopeless. He is there, of course, in the happy times as well. He is with us in every suffering, in every joy. He is our hope!
Most deeply and fully, Jesus Christ becomes present to us on the Altar. His real presence is made real in the Eucharist, and in this we literally receive God’s promise in our bodies. This is the Bread, which, when broken, is the lens through which we see Him for Who He is. Just like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, this Bread is for us a clarifying and catalyzing medicine, which opens our eyes, frees our minds, and spurs us on toward hope.
We consume Jesus Christ, and there is no greater hope than that which is found in this: That the Son of God was made Man, suffered and died for our sins, and was raised up again in Glory to be with us forever until the end of the age.
This is the reality we consume in the Eucharist, the very reality of hope itself; and the fulfillment of His promises to us.
Preached on Sunday, April 23rd, 2023 at St. Augustine’s, Peru and St. Alexander’s, Morrisonville
