Third Sunday in Easter 2023
As the Church moves more deeply into the Easter season, we are presented this year with the awesome story of the two disciples walking together to Emmaus, away from Jerusalem, away from the grave of the man they had followed for perhaps three years. They were discouraged, disappointed, and probably depressed. The stranger who joins them hears their story and fusses at their attitude. Hadn’t they known from the Law and Prophets and Psalms that the Messiah was destined to suffer, to be rejected by His own people? And when He stayed with them for the evening and blessed and broke the bread, they recognized Him. It was really Jesus. They got so un-depressed that they set a record for the Emmaus-Jerusalem run as they went back to share their story with the other disciples. They recognized Jesus in the breaking of bread.
Some folks ask what it means that Jesus claimed in Matthew’s Gospel that He would be with them until the end of time? Where, they wonder, can we see Him? The experience in Emmaus with Clopas and his friend was not a one-off. When Christians celebrate Eucharist, the giving thanks with bread they’ve baked and wine they’ve fermented, they should recognize His true presence among them. We celebrate Eucharist until the end of time, so Jesus is with us until the end of time. He is also with us in many other ways: in the poor, in the Word of God in Scripture, in the love of husband for wife and wife for husband, and when two or three of us just gather in prayer.
That story is so striking that sometimes we are tempted to gloss over the rest of the Scriptures proclaimed today. Bad idea. The Scriptures are a unity, and they all proclaim Jesus the Messiah, Jesus the Lord, the OT looking forward and the NT contemporaneous to His earthly presence and His Church continuing through all time.
So today we hear Peter’s proclamation of the Jesus story in his Pentecost sermon, some fifty days after Christ’s Passover and Resurrection. The people of Jerusalem and all of Palestine were there, along with Jews from all over the world. They had heard in the synagogue the story from Genesis of the Tower of Babel and the scattering of humankind, with all their languages just confusing human communication. They had heard moments before the opposite. Disciples of Jesus, ignorant hicks mostly from Galilee, were speaking the praises of God in the languages of everyone present. They wondered how it could be possible. It was like the world was coming back together, the reversal of the curse of the Tower. Peter put it all in the context of Jesus as Messiah and Lord. The Jerusalem crowd present understood. This Jesus had done only good through all His ministry–teaching, healing, even raising from death. And they had murdered Him at the hands of the Romans. Unjustly. But these followers of Jesus appealed to psalm 16 to remind them that David, centuries earlier, had said he would not be abandoned to the realm of the dead, Sheol or Hell. But David had died and they could point to his tomb. But Jesus, son of David, though buried for three days after death, had been raised up by God, and seen by hundreds of His followers. He was the one who had given the spirit that filled the disciples that day, and was bringing humankind back together. He said more, but thousands accepted the invitation to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins–not just the sin of murdering Christ, but of all their sins.
Saint Peter, in his first encyclical here, tells us what must follow our conversion. It’s a lot like St. Paul wrote in his many letters. “Conduct yourselves with fear through your exile.” That’s not the fear of a slave, but the fear of a son or daughter who knows a father’s love and does not want to disappoint him. We know ourselves, don’t we, and know what evil we are capable of? So we fear injuring our relationship with the God who created us, redeemed us, and sanctifies us. We fear being separated from God even for a moment. We want to live in confidence in this God of resurrection, and so we believe in God, hope to be united with God eternally, and love each other so we can accomplish those tasks.
In the meantime, we gather to celebrate Eucharist here, and proclaim with David and all Christians everywhere this Easter psalm: "Thou art my Lord; I have no good apart from thee." The Lord is our portion, and our cup which we share. Let us praise and thank Him today and always.
