Third Sunday of
Easter
April 23rd, Year of Our + Lord 2023
Our Savior’s and Our
Redeemer Lutheran Churches
Hill City and Custer,
South Dakota
Hearts distraught and hope defeated, Bent beneath grief's crushing load?
Nameless mourners, we will join you, We who also mourn our dead;
We have stood by graves unyielding, Eaten death's bare, bitter bread.
Sometimes a hymn punches you right in the gut. One minute you’re celebrating the Resurrection, and then the words you’re singing put you back in the pew at the hardest funeral you’ve ever attended. The sudden, unprepared death of someone you depend on really knocks you on your heels. For me, it was my dad, who died of cardiac failure when I was 22. Maybe you haven’t suffered such a loss in your life. Many of you have. Bitter bread, indeed.
As with the Emmaus disciples, such gut-wrenching losses can make us question everything, to doubt all that we trusted, to wonder if there really is a God, or whether He is truly loving. The questions raised by the death of Jesus have these two Emmaus road disciples discussing and arguing, debating back and forth over the meaning of Jesus: who was He; why did He come; why did He die? As they mourn and ponder, they also go through the motions of life, much like we do after a tragedy. Numbly, maybe not sure why, they head to Emmaus because… that’s where they are going, for lack of anything better to do.
I do not know how, left on my own, I would face such tragedies. Given the terrible increase in deaths of despair in America, suicide, drug overdoses, and the like, I wonder if the decline of the Church in our country isn’t related. And yet, even with the Scripture in our hands, we by ourselves cannot arrive at the needed understanding. We need Jesus to come and open the Scriptures to us. We need His Spirit to guide our reading, our hearing, our understanding, to open our hearts. Otherwise we will lose our way, shuffling off to our Emmaus, numb, sad, without hope. But, thanks be to God, Jesus does join us on our way, in our grief, coming with His teaching, to lift up our hearts and open our eyes.
Who is this who joins our journey, Walking
with us stride by stride?
Unknown Stranger, can You fathom, Depths of grief for one who died?
Then the wonder! When we told you, How our dreams to dust have turned,
Then You opened wide the Scriptures, Till our hearts within us burned.
The Son of God has joined you and me on our journey. And He doesn’t just spiritually come alongside us on life’s road. He hasn’t only taught us wisdom and right and wrong through a book. No, Jesus has truly joined us, become one of us. He is our greater Brother, who stands in for us and fights for us. Our hymnwriter asks if the Unknown Stranger can fathom the depths of our grief; Christ Jesus has plumbed these depths, sinking to the bottom, not just grieving over death, but dying our death. Jesus died both our physical death, and also our spiritual death, that is the separation from God and the punishment for sin that justly follows the physical death of sinners.
Where is God when a loved one dies? Right there, in the midst of suffering. Right here, in the midst of His people, truly present with a unique power to comfort. For He has already taken all our sufferings onto Himself.
Who joins the Emmaus disciples on their way? It is the flesh and blood Son of God, Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen from the dead. And yet, in His eternal wisdom, He does not dazzle them with His presence. He hides Himself, blinds their eyes, prevents their recognition. The Scriptures must come first, before the heavenly vision. The full reason why this must be so is a mystery. But surely in part it relates to the need of those who would come after the Easter disciples, the generations of believers who would not be able to base their faith on a face to face meeting with the Risen Christ.
For the Emmaus disciples, as for all disciples of Christ, the Word is the first thing, glorious visions come later. Which is good for us, because our eyes are prone to illusion, easily fooled. But the Word of Christ is sure, and powerful. It cuts to the heart, killing and making alive again, creating faith which sees and believes and receives forgiveness, life and salvation, found in Christ crucified and resurrected.
And so Jesus prevents their eyes from recognizing Him, and instead opens the Scriptures, explaining how it always taught the necessity that the Christ would suffer, before entering into His glory. The central message of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is the suffering and death of the Savior in order to make the way back to God for sinners. This is the key to interpreting the Bible. This is the kernel of the Word of God that creates faith. It is also the hardest thing in the world for us sinners to believe, and keep believing.
Once, when I
served in Montana, I shared a meal, a breakfast, with an oil field worker, and
I was reminded just how hard it can be to believe that the Christ’s forgiveness
is the center of Christian message.
This man had hitched his way into town that morning, coming to Sidney, MT, to look for work in the oilfield. He was out of money, hungry, and needed to wait a few hours for Job Service to open up. I was leading a men’s breakfast Bible Study that happened to be, by the Spirit’s arrangement, about the 5th Chief Part of the Small Catechism, concerning Confession and Absolution and the Office of the Keys.
So, we set our guest up with a plate of food, and returned to our study, into which our guest very soon inserted himself. He jumped into the conversation when he heard the Catechism discuss repentance. Repentance, he agreed, is important. You have to really turn from your sin, he continued, you have to be serious, or it doesn’t mean anything. He launched into explaining how bad sinning is, complete with a personal confession of his own failures, and how the Spirit had intervened and healed and rescued him from his sinful life multiple times. But time and again he fell back into sin. So, he said, it all comes down to repenting for real, by which he meant really changing your life. Otherwise, he said, God will have nothing to do with you. As he expounded, he peppered his argument with Bible verses; this clearly was a man who had read the Scriptures and took them seriously.
But, sadly, his understanding of Christianity was incomplete and faulty. He spoke of the many times the Spirit had rescued him at a very low point, and how now God expected him to live out the commandments. Yet, for all his compelling experience and knowledge of Bible verses, one Big Thing was missing from this man’s exposition of the faith. A Big Someone was missing. In all of his lengthy talk about God and his own understanding of salvation, he never mentioned Jesus Christ, or His Cross and Resurrection. After listening for some time, interjecting a few questions here and there, I finally asked our guest where Jesus fit in his understanding of God. “Oh yeah,” he said, “we’re saved by grace and Jesus and all that, but now we have to be worried about walking the walk, or it doesn’t mean anything.”
Ouch. Talk about missing the main point. I tried to tell him that, while he was right, his sin was a huge problem, the solution would never be him overcoming his own sin. Because in this life, he never would. Sin, I tried to tell him, is actually a much bigger problem than he understands, because there is no descendent of Adam and Eve who can overcome their sinful nature. But there is good news, because the central message of the Bible is Christ dying and rising to win forgiveness for all our sins, all sins, of all people.
It’s not that walking the walk isn’t important. The problem is we don’t walk well enough to please God. So Jesus, in order to present us to His Father for eternity, joins us sinners on the way, every day, coming to us to open our eyes again to the Good News of His Cross, forgiving, restoring, and renewing us, day by day.
Our guest listened to what I said, without much response at all. I don’t know if my attempt to preach the Gospel to him had any effect. I don’t know how my attempts to speak words of forgiveness to him were received. He ate the rest of his breakfast in silence, and left a few minutes later. I pray that Jesus opened this man’s eyes to see the Good News, that despite our utter sinfulness, God the Father has sent Jesus to wash away all our sins, even the ones that we fall back into, after coming to faith.
The Christian life, walking the walk, is very important, but it can only follow faith in forgiveness. It is receiving and knowing the love and mercy of God for us that empowers us to love and begin to truly walk in His Way. Walking the walk is important, but salvation is by grace alone, through faith in Christ crucified, not by our works, for they always fall short. Salvation is always a free gift, from God, to you.
I don’t know how the Word worked, or better said, is still working on our breakfast guest. I pray that we meet again in glory. There are so many people we speak of Christ with, but we don’t get to know whether the Seed took root. But we are blessed to know what the Word did for the Emmaus disciples.
Who are You? Our hearts are opened, In
the breaking of the bread -
Christ the victim, now the victor, Living, risen from the dead!
Great companion on our journey, Still surprise us with Your grace!
Make each day a new Emmaus, On our hearts Your image trace!
When you find a teacher who knows his stuff, even more when you find someone who understands your problem and offers the solution, then you do not tire of listening. You actually dread the end of class. So it was as this traveling Bible class reached Emmaus, the two disciples begged the Stranger to join them at table. As our Divine Service moves from Word to Sacrament, so also their experience with Jesus began with the exposition of Scripture to reveal Christ, then turned to Christ hosting a very special meal. Jesus, even though He is the guest, takes on the role of head of household. He takes the bread and blesses it and breaks it and gives it to them. As Jesus did this, the eyes of the two disciples were opened, and they knew that the Stranger was their Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, just as He said He would.
Who are we who travel
with you, On our way through life to death?
Women, men the young, the aging, Wakened by the Spirit's breath!
At the font You claim and name us, Born of water and the Word;
At the table still You feed us, Host us as our risen Lord!
Who are you? Look up. Look outside yourself. Don’t look inside and contemplate your inner being. That won’t look so good, not for long. No, look to the Cross, and the Empty Tomb. Look to your Baptism, where you died and rose with Jesus, where you were given the gift of the Holy Spirit. Look to the Word and the Supper. Who do these things say you are? Through these things, these Means of Grace, that is to say, these God-chosen channels of forgiveness and mercy, the Lord declares that you, and all who believe, are the people of God, forgiven, restored, beloved, and alive in Christ.
Whenever we look inward to contemplate our very imperfect selves, or whenever the cares and struggles and failures of this world and our lives dominate our field of view, hope fades. Whenever we become consumed with the work and the opportunity and the uncertainty of earthly life, we become more and more likely to lose hope, to think we are just mortal creatures, bound for dust and grave, and no more.
So learn to know your true self, by looking up, looking outside yourself. Listen to the Stranger on the Emmaus road, revealing Himself and His salvation in ever chapter and verse of Scripture. Because Jesus has suffered for you, the suffering you deserve for your sins has been taken away. Because Christ has died, your death is not a final separation from God. Because the Lord has risen from the dead, you too will rise, to take your seat at His table forever. Trust in His promise. Know Him in the breaking of the Bread. Christ is Risen! (He is Risen Indeed, Alleluia) As our hymnwriter concludes:
Alleluia! Alleluia!, Is the Easter hymn
we sing!
Take our life, our joy our worship, As the gift of love we bring.
You have formed us all one people, Called from ev'ry land and race.
Make the Church Your servant body, Sent to share Your healing grace!
Amen, come Lord
Jesus, Amen.
Hymn “Who Are You Who Walk in Sorrow” by Herman G. Stuempfle, Jr. b. 1923
Copyright 2000
National Assoc of Pastoral Musicians
Used by permission, CCLI License
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