Luke 24:13-35 "Footprints in the Sand"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         The first day was bad.  That was Friday, the day he was crucified.  The second day was worse.  That was Saturday.  The world was terribly dark and forbidding, and the flies were everywhere.  The smell of death was still pungent in the sultry air, as it always was after Governor Pilate flexed his Roman imperial power muscles and went on one of his not infrequent execution rampages.  Now it was Sunday, what we would call Easter.

         The followers of Jesus had congregated in Jerusalem, stunned by the death of the one they loved and consumed by their grief.  If Friday and Saturday were bad though, the very worst day was Sunday.  Sunday was the first day of the Jewish workweek, rather like our Monday when everything gets back to normal. 

         Life has a way of doing that, you know.  Of course, you know.  If you have ever experienced the death of a loved one, you have experienced the inevitable way life all around you resorts to the usual, but you are not anywhere near ready to follow suit.  But still, the laundry needs doing.  The bills have got to be paid. 

         And so it was for Cleopas and his friend.  Life was quickly regaining its old rhythm after the drama of Jesus’ death. 

Surely the two travellers we meet in this story today had awakened that morning, still haunted by their dead hopes and dreams. Jesus was supposed to have been the one to bring about a change in their economic and social circumstances. He was going to be the one to begin the long awaited revolt against Rome, the one who would revamp the oppressive political system and be the new ruler.  But something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. 

         Those were the facts – and, as they well knew, the facts are the facts.  Oh, they had heard the news from the women about the empty tomb.  They had listened to the crazy stories about the angels, and had even heard Peter’s declaration that the body had indeed gone missing. 

         They had tried ever so hard to picture the white linen grave clothes all folded up and stashed in a neat pile in the corner of the tomb – and they had failed miserably in their image making because, deep down inside, they knew that such was the stuff that dreams, not life, are made of. 

         So here it was, the third day. They could not continue in mourning forever, but still the burning questions were these: “Now what?  What do we do now?”

         Of course, they had no answers.  They only knew that they had to get on with their lives – not matter how irrelevant doing so seemed right now. They knew that all that was left for them to do was to go home, somehow to go back to their pre-Jesus lives, pick up where they had left off before they had taken up with this itinerant rabbi.  As Presbyterian pastor, Julie Jensen, writes, they could only go “back to the human condition.”

         And so they took to the road, the road to Emmaus, to a place that, as the Gospel writer of Luke tells us, was seven miles from Jerusalem.  And so we picture the two friends walking down a dusty roadway, bent on answering that proverbial question they had raised earlier:  “Now what?” 

         The Gospel writer tells us that they talked about everything that had already happened – and I guess really not at all about what would happen next.

         Remember when, they reminisced….Remember when he stopped in that ancient vineyard and told us that we were like those vines.  Yahweh/God was the trunk, he said, even as he challenged us to be nothing more than the branches.  How they were laden with clusters of huge purple grapes that day!  

Remember just standing there, the wind mussing our hair, marveling at how wonderful it was to be just a branch in God’s vineyard. 

         Remember when…Remember when he “sent us out two by two and told us not to take anything we didn’t need, and you were trying to hide an extra snack in your bag just in case?  Wow, was he not happy with you when he found out!”  (Jensen)

         Remember when….Remember when we got caught up in the mob scene outside the Praetorium, when we got scared and feared for our own lives, when we abandoned him, watched from a distance as he died.  Remember when the sky became so black.  Remember when he bled from his hands and feet and side.  Remember when his breathing became so labored that we wanted to somehow breath for him because no one should have to endure that agony of not being able to breathe but not yet being dead.  Remember when….

          And so, Cleopas and his friend re-lived the good and the bad times as they trudged along in the noonday heat – even though the good times only seemed to etch more clearly their deepest regrets and disappointments as they walked on the road to Emmaus.

         You know, the funny thing about Emmaus, the destination of Cleopas and his fellow traveller, is that we do not know where it is.  Many Biblical sites have an archeological basis – Nazareth, Bethlehem, Tiberius, and Jerusalem - but not Emmaus. 

         Oh, Biblical scholars and archeologists have tried to place Emmaus into an historical and archeological context.  They have drawn circles out from Jerusalem, circles with a radius of seven miles in a vain attempt to pinpoint this location, which makes me wonder if it is more archetypal than it is archeological.  Oh, a few historic places are possibilities, but, in reality, we really do not know where Emmaus is. 

       Except that the road to Emmaus is where you go when a situation has become unbearable.  Presbyterian pastor Stan Gockel tells us that Emmaus is “the place where we go to escape from the cruelty of life and forget our pains, fears, and failures….. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred—that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas people have come up with— ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always been twisted out of shape by selfish (people) for selfish ends.  (Gockel concludes that) Emmaus is the place where we go when we feel like throwing up our hands and saying, “To hell with the whole dang thing.”

      

       We have all been on the road to Emmaus, you know – or, if we have not yet been on the road, someday we will be. 

       “When?” you may ask.  “When have I been on the road to Emmaus?”

       Well, you know you are on the road to Emmaus when you are like Cleopas and his fellow traveler who talked with the stranger they met on the road and admitted to him:  “We had hoped.”

       You are on the road to Emmaus when for you, like Cleopus and his friend, hope is a thing of the past. You are on the road to Emmaus when your hope is gone, when you can only embrace the bitter disappointment of the past tense.  “We had hoped…”

       We had hoped that he would be the one to set Israel free.  We had hoped that he was the Messiah.  We had hoped that the marriage could have been saved, that the child would have lived. We had hoped that he would not be sent to Afghanistan, that he could have come home safe and sound.

       The road to Emmaus is not a happy journey, and we hate to see people on that road.  Oh, how we long not to let others wallow in their grief.  We want to hear the future tense from Cleopas and his friend, from all those who suffer. 

After all, looking ahead to a bright tomorrow means that they are getting back in the swing of life’s rhythms in a timely way. 

       “You are dating again, right?”  “At least the little one did not suffer – and God loves the tiny angels.”  “He is serving his country – a good patriot.”  “People can do a lot with only one arm.”

       But the road to Emmaus is a dark road, and such platitudes will not bring the light.  When we walk the Emmaus road, we are admitting our deepest disappointments.  We are embracing the past tense. 

       But, you know, that is OK.  It is all right to walk for a time on the Emmaus road – though there is an important caveat. 

       And the caveat is this:  When you do find yourself on the road to Emmaus, you may be grieving, you may be deeply disappointed, and you may be living in the past tense of hopelessness.  But when you find yourself on the road to Emmaus, never believe that you are walking all alone. 

       If you do, you see, you are likely to miss the stranger – because, somewhere along the road to Emmaus, you will meet someone, as Cleopas and his friend did – someone in the guise of a parent or grandparent, a teacher, a church member, a friend.  You may not recognize the stranger, but he will definitely recognize you.

       And the stranger will not tell you to buck up and get over your grief and disappointment.  No – instead the stranger will listen to you as you tell your story.  The stranger will walk beside you, not in front or behind you.  The stranger may even carry you - lest you strike your foot upon a stone, as the Psalmist writes. 

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.

Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,

other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed

that during the low periods of my life,

when I was suffering from

anguish, sorrow or defeat,

I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,

"You promised me Lord,

that if I followed you,

you would walk with me always.

But I have noticed that during

the most trying periods of my life

there have only been one

set of footprints in the sand.

Why, when I needed you most,

you have not been there for me?"

The Lord replied,

"The times when you have

seen only one set of footprints,

is when I carried you."

      

       And when the day is done, invite the stranger in.  And he will take the bread you offer, and he will bless it, and he will break it – and you will recognize him – by his compassion, by his caring, by his accepting you for who you are, in spite of who you are.

      

       It is an unremarkable story really – about two unremarkable people, one of whom does not even have a name, two unremarkable people who find their lives transformed – at a simple evening meal, no less – because they did not walk alone and because took the stranger in. 

       The stranger, of course, is Jesus, and he does not hang around.  The Gospel writer says that he immediately vanished from their sight.  Poof!  He was gone.

       But that is the way it is with Jesus.  He does not stick around – not even for us - but instead he always leaves us signs – the Holy Spirit, bread broken and shared, a set of footprints in the sand, a listening stranger as we stumble our way to Emmaus.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.