Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York
It’s not enough to believe in the resurrection. At some
point we must move from the event of it to experiencing it. Resurrected life
can never be comprehended, contained, or controlled by human thought or
understanding. The resurrected life of Christ is revealed in and through the
created order, but it is not bound by it. It unites the visible and invisible,
matter and spirit, humanity and divinity. The degree to which we’ve allowed
ourselves to be bound by the created order is the degree to which we are unable
to see resurrected life in this world.
We bind ourselves through our fears, our sorrows and losses,
our random thoughts and distractions, our attachments and addictions to things,
people, and even beliefs. Sometimes it’s our unwillingness to trust God to grow
and change us. In binding ourselves to the created order we lose the ability to
live in the sacred. The resurrected life is not acquired but received. It
happens when we risk unbinding ourselves from our usual ways of seeing, living,
and relating. Christ longs to open our minds to understand all that has been
revealed about him. That’s what Jesus did for those two disciples in today’s
Gospel. When Christ opens our minds, we experience moments of awe and wonder
that leave us in sacred silence.
Within this Gospel story is a template that describes the
journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus and back to Jerusalem. If our life has ever
been broken and restored, or if we’ve ever been in that in between place, then
this is our story. It’s the journey Cleopas and his companion take and it’s a
journey each of us has taken, is taking, or will take. It’s not, a one-time
journey, but one we take repeatedly.
Jerusalem and Emmaus are archetypal realities within us which
get enacted in our lives. They’re portals into a greater self-awareness through
which we see a greater fullness of God, ourselves, each other, and the world.
Have you ever felt like you just had to get away or that
life had given you more than you could handle? Have you ever been deeply
disappointed by unmet expectations? Have you felt lost, as if your world had
been turned upside down? Have you ever asked: “Who am I now? What’s next? Where
do I go? What do I do?” Have you grieved the death of a love, a dream, an
identity, a future? If so, then you know what it’s like to be Cleopas and his
companion.
It’s Easter morning and the two disciples are leaving
Jerusalem, a place of pain, sorrow, and loss, a place of death, unmet
expectations, and disappointment. As they walk, they’re talking about all the
things that had happened: Jesus’ arrest, torture, crucifixion, and death. They’re
talking about a hope that didn’t materialize. They’re disappointed and sad.
They had hoped Jesus was the one, but now he’s dead. There’s a part of them
that’s been lost with Jesus. They had heard rumors that he was alive, but it
all sounded too unbelievable.
Emmaus is our escape from life, but it is also a hunger for
life. It wasn’t only brokenness that took them to Emmaus but a hunger for
wholeness, for restoration. Hunger isn’t only physical; it can also be spiritual
and emotional. We are all by nature hungry. We hunger for life, love,
wholeness, community, meaning, purpose. That hunger is the reason they urged
Jesus, “Stay with us.” He not only stayed, but he also fed their hunger. The
guest they invited to their table became their host.
“When [Jesus] was at the table with them, he took bread,
blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and
they recognized him.” They recognized him as the one they had left for dead in
Jerusalem. They recognized him as the one who had accompanied them on the road.
They recognized him as the one they had hoped he would be. Jesus wasn’t just
giving them bread; he was giving them back themselves. This was their resurrection,
their restoration. When Jesus broke the bread something in them broke open.
With that breaking open their lives were being put back together. It is so for
us as well.
Despite how it feels, our brokenness is not an ending. It’s
a breaking open to new life, to new seeing, community, welcome, hospitality,
and love. Jesus fed them, as he feeds us, not just with bread, but with
himself: with his body, his life, his love, his compassion, his forgiveness, his
strength, his hope.
As soon as they recognized him “he vanished from their
sight.” He was no longer before them because he was now the burning heart
within them, who had been there all along. Sometimes that burning is felt as loss,
sometimes as hunger, or being broken open, and other times as deep joy and
gratitude. And “that same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem”, to the
place from which they had to get away. Now it is not only the place of death
and sorrow, but also the place of life and resurrection.
We leave our Jerusalem to return to our Jerusalem: to face
our deaths, losses, and broken lives. In so doing we discover that life awaits
us too. We return to reclaim ourselves, to recover the lost pieces of
ourselves. Our Jerusalem hasn’t changed but we have. Of course, it’s never as
simple as it sounds. It’s one thing to name this pattern but another to live
it. It takes trust, time, and effort. It means trusting that somehow the pieces
of our lives will become a new life.
Where do you see this pattern in your life today?
What is your deepest hunger?
What in your life is being broken open?
What needs to be restored and put back together in you?
Jesus was in Jerusalem before Cleopas and his companion ever
left. He was with them on the road to Emmaus. He was in the breaking of the
bread. And he was already in Jerusalem when they returned. He never left them nor does he ever leave us
on our journey. +Amen
