Hilton Head Island, SC – April 1, 2018
The Chapel Without Walls
Luke 24:13-27; Luke 24:28-35
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. – Luke 24:31 (RSV)
Today we come to the sixth in a series of six sermons, all of which are based on the Gospel of Luke. In each of the previous sermons, we looked at events which are found only in the Third Gospel. Today we see the same pattern yet again.
In this account of the resurrected Jesus, as in all three of the other Gospels, there are considerable ambiguities in what is reported. It is possible they were intentionally meant to be ambiguous. For example, in some of the stories, Jesus clearly seems to have been physically resurrected. In others, the resurrection seems to be entirely spiritual, and not physical.
The most puzzling factor, looking at all four Easter stories side by side, is that in a very few instances when the resurrected Jesus appeared to someone, he was instantly recognized. In most cases, however, people did not initially realize who he was. That is especially the case in Luke’s account of the first two men who, according to Luke at least, ultimately recognized that Jesus truly was raised from the dead.
The story of Jesus walking with two of his followers on the road to Emmaus is told in great detail. It begins by saying that the two were going from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a village which Luke tells us was seven miles away. While they were walking along, Jesus came and walked with them. “But,” says the account, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him” (24:16).
Why? Was it too dark? Was it too bright? Did God keep them from knowing it was Jesus? Did Jesus himself do that? Luke doesn’t tell us! He just says that their eyes were kept from recognizing him. Thus Jesus was a stranger to the two men, as far as they were concerned.
They told Jesus of the things that had happened in Jerusalem during the past week, how many people believed Jesus to be a great prophet and teacher. But he had been arrested and crucified, and their hopes had been completely dashed. Then they told how some women among his followers had gone to his tomb, and found it empty. The two did not know what to make of it all.
So Jesus told them, although they did not know he was Jesus, “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (24:25-26) (I doubt that is exactly what Jesus said to them, but that’s what Luke said he said.) Then, Luke says, Jesus began to explain from the Hebrew Bible how everything was leading up to “the day of resurrection,” without Jesus actually calling it that, and without saying that he was the Resurrected One himself.
It was starting to get dark, and the two followers invited Jesus to come in to have supper with them. When they sat down to eat, Jesus took some bread and said a blessing over it. Then he broke it and gave it to them. And in that moment, and in that distinctive, simple act, Luke says that “their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight” (24:31). They had seen him do that before, and now that they saw him do it again, they knew it was he.
My first pastorate was in the Presbyterian church of Bayfield, Wisconsin. Dean Johnson was the man who immediately preceded me as the minister there. He became the pastor of the Presbyterian-Congregational church of Ashland, Wisconsin, a town about twenty miles away. Often when I went to see a parishioner in the Ashland hospital, I would stop in to see Dean to chat. With Dean they were always long chats. Years later, after we moved to Hilton Head Island, he came here and became the Island Chaplain. Although we were poles apart theologically, we were friends until he died several years ago.
In the Ashland church office there was a framed painting. It consisted of many carefully brushed blobs of black paint, between which was a beige background, as I recall. When I first saw it, I asked the church secretary what it was, because it didn’t look particularly like anything to me. She said it was a picture of the head of Christ. I was astonished. All it looked like was black blobs on a beige background. Dean was always amazed that I couldn’t see it, but I couldn’t.
I came into that church office and looked at that painting many times before I finally “saw” Jesus. There he was in the midst of all those diffuse squiggles and swirls.
Was it that way for Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus? Was Jesus there all along, but their eyes were somehow kept from recognizing him?
In the first of the Gospels to be written, Mark, there were no sightings of Jesus on Easter at all, at least according to the traditional ending of that Gospel. Mark says that three women went to the tomb early on Easter morning, and they found it to be empty. Someone who is described only as “a young man” told them that Jesus had risen from the dead, and that they should go tell Peter and the other disciples that Jesus would go to Galilee, their home territory, and that he would see them there. In Matthew and Luke, the young man is identified as an angel, or as two angels. Mark says that the three women “went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had come upon them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid” (Mark 16:8). And that was the way Mark ended his Gospel. Nothing more was written. Maybe.
Scholars give two explanations for this enigmatic ending. All of the biblical books, in both the Hebrew and the Greek Bibles, the Old and the New Testament, were written on parchment scrolls. Some scholars say that Mark, Chapter 16, verse 8, was the way Mark intended to end his Gospel. Others postulate that the original ending of the scroll somehow got torn off. Because other first-century Christians realized that, the academics say, others later wrote what they thought was a proper ending for Mark, but only after the other three Gospels had been written. Then whoever wrote the other ending of Mark added several features from the earlier resurrection accounts.
In the additional ending of Mark, verses 9 through 11 of chapter 16, it says that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene. The Gospel of John also says that. But, says Mark, when Mary told the other disciples, “they would not believe it.” Verses 12 and 13 say that Jesus appeared to two others “as they were walking in the country.” And they went and told the others, but “they would not believe them.” This seems to be a one-verse variation of the two men on the road to Emmaus.
In verses 14 through 19 of this added ending to Mark, it tells that Jesus appeared to the disciples themselves, and told them to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” That is an echo of the very last verses of Matthew’s Gospel. But in Mark’s second ending, Jesus added a couple of statements that are found only in Mark, and nowhere else.
Easter is the event toward which all the Gospels point, but no two of them tell the story in exactly the same way. Should that surprise anyone? Each Gospel was written in its own particular time and place by its own particular author. No two Gospels writers perceived the Jesus story in precisely the same way. If they did, there would be only one Gospel, not four.
In the Gospel of John, it was only Mary Magdalene to whom Jesus appeared on Easter morning. That evening, however, John says that the disciples were in the room where the Last Supper had been held, and the doors were shut --- “for fear of the Jews” (20:19). (John doesn’t like “the Jews,” by which term he means Jesus’ Jewish enemies, and not really “the Jews.”) Without the doors having been opened, Jesus “came and stood among them.” This suggests he appeared in a spiritual form, because a physically resurrected Jesus presumably could not go through the shut door or through a solid wall to speak to them.
You may remember that in the Gospel of John, Thomas, doubting Thomas, was not with the other disciples when Jesus appeared before them. When they told Thomas what they had seen, he made that memorable statement of many other skeptically faithful or faithfully skeptical followers of Jesus, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe” John 20:25).
The resurrection of Jesus, or of anyone else, is so hard! It is so very difficult to try to get our minds around it or to get it into our minds! No one we know who died has ever come back to life! It doesn’t happen, does it? Does it?
“Spirit of God, descend upon my heart” is a hymn that in most hymnals is in the section on the Holy Spirit. One stanza says this: “I ask no dream, no prophet ecstasies/ No sudden rending of the veil of clay/ No angel visitant, no opening skies/ But take the dimness of my soul away.”
When Easter comes, for many people the dimness of the soul is so evident, and the opening skies are so absent! Was Jesus raised from the dead? Is He risen? “Christos aneste! Alethos aneste!” the Greeks proclaim on Easter; Christ is Risen! He is risen indeed! But is he? Is he?
It was not individually realized by everyone at the same time and in the same way. “And they did not believe it.” “And they did not believe them.” “Unless I see … I will not believe.”
How did Mary Magdalene realize it? Was it the voice? “Rabboni; Teacher!” she exclaimed, when she heard him speak her name. Cleopas and his friend said to one another after the risen Christ had vanished from their sight, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road?” “My Lord and my God!” said Thomas, when Jesus appeared to him and the other disciples eight days after Easter.
Easter didn’t happen to anyone back then until it was revealed to them that it had happened. Easter doesn’t happen for anyone until it is revealed to us that it has happened. Easter happens because of revelation, and only because of revelation. There is no resurrection if there is no revelation.
But what is revelation? How does it work? “Now you see it; now you don’t,” the magician says to his audience. Does revelation work in reverse: Now you don’t see it, and now you do?
Ultimately revelation comes from God, and it issues in faith. When it comes, you see what you never saw before. And having seen it, you are never blind to it again. “I once was lost, but now am found/ Was blind, but now I see.” Jesus was there all along, in each of those resurrection appearances, but until they saw him, until he was revealed to them, they didn’t see.
There is a little detail that is easily lost in reading Luke and then in reading John. I have been preaching Easter sermons for fifty years, and until now, by going back and forth between the Gospels, something very important finally dawned on me. In Luke, the three women told the disciples that Jesus had been raised from the dead. They did not see him, but it was revealed to them that he was raised. They told the disciples that the tomb was empty, but, says Luke, “these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” Thus in Luke, the first people who actually “saw” the risen Christ, even though they didn’t recognize him for some time, saw him when the day was “far spent” (Luke 24:29). It was evening. They were the men of Emmaus.
In John, it says, “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’ (Shalom Aleichem)” (John 20:19). It was evening. It was evening in both places, and the risen Christ was in both places, and the two places were seven miles apart. There was no freeway and no cars and no commuter trains. Jesus, the risen Christ, was in both places simultaneously! A physical being could not be in two places at once!
Revelation is like that! It doesn’t operate like the processing of normal information. It comes directly from God. All other information comes in a mundane fashion. Because revelation comes to us from beyond this world, we may miss revelation all the time. It is there, but we don’t see it, because we don’t expect to see it. I looked at those blobs in the painting so often and saw nothing. Eventually I never expected to see anything. Then one day, there he was. Was that a revelation? No. It was an epiphany, a manifestation. But revelations are like that. We think what cannot be true can NOT be true, but one day it is. God has gotten through to us, and life forever is changed.
There is no resurrection if there is no revelation. God must break through the resistance of a physical world to usher us into the reality of another kind of world, the world of revelation, the world of resurrection, the world of faith.
Easter is the ultimate event toward which all four of the Gospels are pointing us. They are leading us to the resurrection. It is the climax of Christianity. If we do not see it, God is waiting and wanting to reveal it to us. So the question is this: Do we wait on God for His revelation?