Third Sunday of Easter (Fr. Roberts)

Every Sunday the priest does four things at this altar. He takes the bread. He blesses it. He breaks it. He gives it to the people. Took, blessed, broke, gave. Four actions, in that order, every time, in every Episcopal church in the world, and in every Catholic and Orthodox and Lutheran church. These four actions are at the center of what the Church does when the Church gathers. And we do not do them because we thought them up. We do them because Jesus did them. He did them at the feeding of the five thousand. He did them at the Last Supper. And he did them at a little house in a village called Emmaus, on the evening of the first Easter day, in the Gospel reading we just heard.

The story of the road to Emmaus is the story of how the Church learned to recognize the risen Lord. And the Church's answer is a very specific answer. The Church recognizes the risen Lord in two places. The Church recognizes him in the Scriptures, when they are read and opened. And the Church recognizes him at the table, when the bread is broken. Two places. The Scriptures and the table. Word and Sacrament. This is what we are going to think about this morning.

So let us walk with the two disciples down the road. Luke tells us that on Easter afternoon two disciples were walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, about seven miles away. We are not told very much about them. One of them is named Cleopas. The other one is not named. They had heard the news that morning. They had heard the report from the women that the tomb was empty. They had heard that some of the men had gone and confirmed that the tomb was empty. They had all the information, and yet they were walking away from Jerusalem. They were going home. They were sad, and they were disappointed. Luke tells us that they had hoped that Jesus was the one who would redeem Israel. Had hoped. Past tense. Their hope was in the past tense.

And as they walked, Jesus himself drew near and began to walk with them. But Luke tells us something important. Luke tells us that "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." The verb is a passive verb. Something is happening to their eyes. Somebody is holding their eyes back. And when we ask who is doing the holding, the answer is not Satan. The answer is God. God himself is keeping the disciples from recognizing Jesus. And he is doing this on purpose.

Why would God do that? Why would God keep the disciples from recognizing the risen Lord when the risen Lord is standing right next to them? The answer is that the Lord is about to teach them something important, and they cannot be taught it if they recognize him too soon. If they had known right away that this was Jesus, they would have fallen on their faces and the lesson would have been over. The lesson the Lord wants to teach them is the lesson of how he is going to be present with his Church from now on. And so he hides himself from them in order to teach it. The not-recognizing is part of the teaching.

What does he teach them? He teaches them that the Old Testament is about him. Luke tells us that "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures." Notice what that sentence says. Jesus does not say that a few verses here and there in the Old Testament are about him. He says that all the Scriptures are about him. Moses is about him. The prophets are about him. The Psalms are about him. He is hidden in the Old Testament. He has been there all along. And the problem is that the disciples have been reading the Old Testament for years without seeing him in it.

This is our problem too. We read the Bible. We read it in our homes. We hear it read in church. But we do not always see Christ in it. We read about Moses at the burning bush, and we think it is a story about Moses. We read about David and his psalms, and we think it is a story about David. We read Isaiah and we think it is a story about Isaiah. We do not always see that Christ is the one who was there with Moses at the bush. Christ is the one David is singing about. Christ is the servant of Isaiah. This is what Jesus teaches the disciples on the road. He opens the Scriptures to them and shows them that he has been hidden in them all along.

And here is what is remarkable. Their hearts burn while he is teaching them. They feel something. They feel a fire in their chests that they cannot quite name. But they still do not recognize him. Even as he is opening the Scriptures to them, even as their hearts are burning within them, they do not see that it is the Lord walking next to them. The Scripture-opening warms them. The Scripture-opening is doing its work. But the Scripture-opening by itself is not enough. Something else has to happen. And the something else is the table.

They reach the village. Jesus acts as though he is going to walk on further. This is important. He does not force himself on them. He waits to be invited. And the disciples urge him strongly to stay with them. They say, "Stay with us, for it is almost evening, and the day is now nearly over." The Church has remembered this prayer. In the Evening Prayer, Christians for centuries have prayed the prayer the disciples prayed at Emmaus. Stay with us, Lord, for the day is almost over. Stay with us. Come in. Do not go on further.

And the Lord stays. And now the guest becomes the host. The one who was walking next to them on the road sits down at their table and takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it and gives it to them. Took, blessed, broke, gave. The same four actions. And in that moment, at the table, the disciples' eyes are opened. The passive verb has flipped. Before, their eyes were held from recognizing him. Now their eyes are opened to recognize him. Something is being done to them. God is doing it. The God who kept them from recognizing him is now opening their eyes to recognize him. And in the moment they recognize him, he vanishes.

So now let us listen to Gregory the Great, who preached on this passage at the end of the sixth century. Gregory says that the disciples did not recognize the Lord while he was speaking to them, but they did recognize him while he was eating with them. The God whom they had not come to know in the opening of the Scriptures, they came to know in the breaking of the bread.

Gregory is telling us that the Scripture-opening on the road was real. It was doing its work. Their hearts burned because Christ was opening the Scriptures to them. But the recognition happens when the bread is broken. The Scripture prepares us to see Christ. The Sacrament is where we see him. We need both. The Word without the Sacrament leaves us with burning hearts but closed eyes. The Sacrament without the Word leaves us with a meal but no meaning. Christ gives us both because Christ is hidden in both. He is the treasure hidden in the Scriptures and he is the treasure hidden at the table. And when we come to both, he makes himself known to us.

And so we come back to where we started. Every Sunday the priest does four things at this altar. He takes the bread. He blesses it. He breaks it. He gives it to the people. We do these four actions because Jesus did them at Emmaus. And what happened at Emmaus is what happens here. The Lord opens the Scriptures to us, and our hearts burn. The Lord breaks the bread for us, and our eyes are opened. And the Lord who vanished from the sight of the disciples at Emmaus is the Lord who is present to us now, at this table, in the Scriptures and in the breaking of the bread.