Welcome to a new sermon series,
“The After-Party”.
We know, from the book of Acts, that Jesus was on earth
forty days after he rose from the dead and before he went back up to
heaven. We don’t talk a whole lot about
those forty days. We might talk about
one or two of the events in isolation, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a
sermon series about it.
That seems like a mistake to me. I mean, think about this. Jesus has been resurrected. He has forty days to make one last impression
on the disciples, to give them one last set of final instructions before he’s
going back to heaven, not to come back until, well, the second coming.
It seems to me that Jesus would’ve seen those forty days
as pretty important. This is his last
shot with the disciples. This is his
last chance to get them going, spreading his message throughout the world. So it seems like Jesus would’ve done
everything he could to make sure the disciples understood what the message was
and how they were supposed to go about spreading it.
Now, in approaching this as a sermon series, we need to
point out that we don’t know exactly what Jesus did when in that forty day
period. We don’t have Jesus’ day planner
or anything. The four gospels give us some
information, but they are not totally consistent in telling us about it. That’s not to say they contradict each other,
because they don’t. It’s just that they
each give us different parts of the story.
As we
mentioned last week, Mark does not going into this forty day period at
all. The road to Emmaus, which we read
today and will talk about in a minute, only appears in Luke. The scenes with Thomas doubting Jesus’ resurrection
and with Jesus telling Peter “feed my sheep” are only in John. And of course, they are certainly some things
Jesus said and did that do not appear in any of the gospels. For example, the Apostle Paul, First
Corinthians Fifteen, references Jesus appearing to more than five hundred of the
brothers and sisters at the same time.
He just mentions it, as if he assumes everyone will know what he’s
referring to, but the actual event does not appear in the gospels and has been
lost to history.
Because of all
that, we do not have a complete history of what Jesus did in those forty days. What we know comes to us in fragments. We have a few stories, a few examples of what
Jesus did. We have the things the gospel
writers, inspired by God, decided we needed to know. And we’re going to look at some of those, not
necessarily in chronological order, but in an order that I hope will make some
sense as we do it.
In our Bible
reading today, it’s that first Easter Sunday.
In Luke’s version of the events, the women have gone to Jesus’ tomb, and
so has Peter, and they find out that it’s empty. At that point, Peter still does not know what
that means.
Then, in
Luke’s gospel, the scene shifts. There
are two people are walking from Jerusalem to a town called Emmaus, which we’re
told is seven miles away. One of them is
named Cleopas. We don’t know the name of
the other one. They’re talking about all
the stuff that’s happened, Jesus being arrested and dying and then the tomb
being empty.
And suddenly,
Jesus shows up. We don’t know if he
approached them from behind or if he just sort of magically appeared or what,
but there he was. They don’t recognize
him, of course. Jesus asks these two
guys what they’re talking about. And one
of them, Cleopas, says, “Where have you been?
Have you been hiding behind a rock or something?” And Jesus says, “Well, yeah, kind of, you
know.”
No, that’s not
quite how the conversation went. But you
know, Jesus had to have kind of been smiling to himself at this point, don’t
you think? I mean, here are Cleopas and
his friend explaining, to Jesus, what happened to Jesus. And of course, Jesus knows he’s going to
reveal who he is to them. I’d think he
has to be anticipating the looks on these guys’ faces when they find out
they’ve actually been talking to Jesus.
But Jesus lets
them tell him what happened. And then
Jesus explains what all this meant according to the scriptures. And then, after they’re stopped for the
night, Jesus takes bread, blesses it, and gives it to them. They recognize Jesus, and then Jesus
immediately disappears.
There are a
couple of things I want to talk about in regard to this story. For one thing, there’s the fact that at
first, these guys “were kept from recognizing” Jesus. We don’t know how that worked, if Jesus
somehow looked different or if there was some other way they could not recognizing
him. But whatever the reason was,
Cleopas and his friend could not recognize Jesus when he was standing right
there with them.
How does that
apply to us? Well, if Jesus was to walk
in here right now, would we recognize him?
We’d notice there was somebody new here, probably. I hope at least a few of us would go and talk
to him and make him feel welcome here.
But would we recognize him as Jesus Christ? Probably not.
How would we? I don’t think it’s
very likely that he’d look like the pictures of him we see. He probably would not look any different from
the rest of us, just as Jesus probably did not look any different from the
people he lived around. He would not act
particularly different, just as Jesus probably did not act any different. There’d be no way we’d know that was
Jesus. And then, suppose he started
asking us questions about what we were doing and what we were talking about,
the way he did with Cleopas and his friend.
Would we be able to answer him?
In talking to
Cleopas and his friend, Jesus started going through the Hebrew Bible with them,
explaining why things had to happen the way they did. They still did not know who he was. It was only after Jesus took some bread, gave
thanks, broke it, and gave it to them.
Then, they were able to recognize who Jesus was.
We don’t know
whether Cleopas and his friend were there with Jesus at the Last Supper. The famous painting shows Jesus with just the
twelve disciples, and so we tend to assume that, but we don’t know. After all, the painting shows them all
sitting on chairs around a long table, and we know that’s probably not what
happened. Luke and John do not specify
who was there. Matthew and Mark refer to
Jesus reclining at the table with the twelve, but they do not specifically say
that no one else was in the room.
I tend to
think Cleopas and his friend might have been there. We’re told that, after Jesus disappeared,
they immediately went back to Jerusalem and found the eleven. They must’ve known, then, where the disciples
would be, which means they must’ve known them pretty well. I think Cleopas and his friend might have
been there. They might even have eaten
with Jesus. If so, that would explain
why Jesus giving thanks, breaking bread, and giving it to them was the key to recognizing
him. It was the exact same thing they’d
seen him do on the night before he died.
And sharing in
Holy Communion is a key for us to recognize Jesus, too. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying taking
Communion is the golden ticket to heaven or anything like that. But one of the things we say as United
Methodists—and there are other denominations who believe it, too, of course—is
that sharing in Holy Communion is one of God’s means of grace. It’s one of the ways God’s grace comes into
our hearts and into our lives. And this
is one of the reasons we say that. When
we share in Holy Communion, we invite God to come into our hearts and into our
souls. And when that invitation is given
sincerely and honestly, God will always accept it. God will come into our hearts and into our
souls. And when that happens, we will
recognize Jesus for who he is, just like Cleopas and his friend did.
And when that
happens, our lives will be changed forever.
I think the lives of Cleopas and his friend were. Now, we don’t know that for sure. This is the only time Cleopas is ever
mentioned in the Bible, and again, we have no idea who his friend even
was. So, we don’t really know what may
have happened to them after the events described here.
But how could
they not have been changed? Here they
were, walking to Emmaus. They were
depressed. They had hoped Jesus would
restore Israel to its glory, and instead he’d been killed. They’d gotten this report from the women that
Jesus was still alive, but they could not find him. And now, all of a sudden, they knew. They knew. Jesus was alive. They had no doubt about it. Jesus was not dead. He had risen.
In a minute
here, we’re going to share in Holy Communion.
May we all sincerely and honestly invite God to come into our hearts and
into our souls. If we do, God will
accept the invitation. Then we can
recognize Jesus for who he is, too. And
our lives will be changed forever, just like the lives of Cleopas and his
friend were.
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