Homily for the Third Sunday of Easter (A)

Luke 24:13-35
He took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him.

The story of the road to Emmaus is a familiar one for many Christians, and it is a popular illustration of Jesus’ interaction with the disciples after his resurrection from the dead. This story is set on the evening of Easter Day when a couple of dejected disciples find themselves on the road leaving Jerusalem. To their minds Jesus is dead, dead, and gone, and the rumours about his body having disappeared from the grave prove too much to take. They are leaving; leaving everything behind, walking away from their hopes and their dreams.
In the opening scenes of the Lord of the Rings Gandalf rebukes Frodo for his lack of faith saying, ‘A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.’ Now, although Jesus is by no means a wizard, his unexpected visit to the disciples does remind me a lot of this phrase. At the lowest point in in the disciples’ lives, when it seems too late for faith to be revived, Jesus makes a timely appearance, and eventually breaks down the dejection and the sorrow that prevent the disciples from recognising him, transforming their disappointment in uncontainable joy.

Luke often tries to locate the stories of his gospel with some degree of accuracy. But in this case we are not told by the evangelist where the meeting between Jesus and the two disciples took place; all we know is that it was somewhere at a short distance from Jerusalem, on a dusty road which the sorrows and the disappointments the disciples bore made even more slow and difficult to walk. Yet, this Luke’s inaccuracy about a specific location proves to be for our benefit; so that we may be able to relate a spiritual meaning of the story to our lives.

We may not know where the village of Emmaus was but ‘the road that leads there is the road every Christian, every person, takes.’ (BXVI) At various points dejection towards the Christian life can take hold of us, or maybe serious doubts can make the practice of religion more taxing. It is in these moments that we must seek the presence of the Risen Lord Jesus in the twofold ways highlighted in our gospel.
First, we see that as Jesus walked along the road with the disciples he explained to them the Scriptures pointing out to them all those things that the Old Testament, and particularly the prophets, foretold about him. Likewise we ought to nurture our faith with regular study of God’s Word, through prayer, discipleship courses, and reading religious publications, so that our faith may become grounded, rooted, in the soil of the Scriptures.
Secondly (and more importantly, I should add), we see in our reading that the disciples only recognise the Lord for who he really is in the moment of self-giving, in the moment in which he breaks for them the bread of eternal life. ‘The eyes of those who receive this … are opened that they should recognise Christ; for the Lord’s flesh has in it great and ineffable power’ (Theophylus). We too must approach Holy Communion as often as we can in the same way; as the encounter with Jesus who gives himself to us so that we may recognise him as the Lord, living and present in our midst.

The story of the road to Emmaus is a familiar one for many Christians, but it is more than just the narration of something that happened after Jesus’ resurrection. It is a simple pattern we readily apply for living the Christian life in the best way, by reading and praying the Scriptures, and receiving the Eucharist. And if we follow this pattern, our faith too will be transformed in the uncontainable joy of knowing the Risen Lord.