A Sermon on Luke 24: 13-35 by Audrey Kateena
A video recording of the whole liturgy, including this sermon, is available here.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
One Comment
Besides the story from John ( Woman at the well), this story from Luke (Emmaus road trip) is a favourite. Despite Audrey’s quite understandable description ( discombobulate) of the uncertainties in the story, I would balance it with an assumption that it was written to provide certainty. After all that is what Luke claims was his goal at the outset of the Gospel he wrote. Luke seems to have gone to a lot of trouble with his choice of words and the details of the story to talk about something quite unintelligible in scenes that are intelligible, albeit open ended. And this is the strength beyond the poetry of the text – what is clear is that they too were living on the edge of perception but somehow still arrived at a point where their lives were no longer the same – they became witnesses not just spectators or bystanders. They appear to be quite comfortable admitting their own shortcomings since they have been the recipients of repentance and remission ( Luke 24:47).
Now these two words roll off our tongues in quite slippery ways but in the context of Luke’s terminology they are full of irony and surprise and good sense. On the road to Emmaus, Cleophas and companion were called senseless, culpably un-thinking types and like meanings ( a-noetai). The word belongs to the same family as does “repentance- meta-noia. It is easy and comforting to think where one has come from after a successful overcoming of that past shortcoming. Nathan spoke to that experience in his sermon a week or so ago in quoting the works of James Alison – sin is something we recognise when we are leaving its grip on us. Similarly “remission” is “aphesis” which refers to horses being set free from the barrier to run their race. St Luke uses it in chapter 4:18 where “witness” is another key term to parallel the current reference in chapter 24. So we are witnesses of a freedom of mind to receive and act upon the truth, an act which will propel us forward to a life of freedom and joy – “burning hearts” and “disbelief through joy” are just some of the words St Luke uses to capture the change in positions that are articulated on the road to Emmaus, the upper room and in the immediate glow of the ascension – all quite unexpected reactions given the circumstances.
The Emmaus road story is one of pilgrimage from failure, through “partial getting it” until finally there is a “total transformation of experience” – you can hear it and not just read about it through Luke’s powerful writing technique – they seems to be saying: ” at last….I get it- it is all pretty discombobulating but I get it!” St. Luke’s words are expressed in Greek to mean a thoroughly experiential awareness of Jesus as a person who is immediate to their reality.
Jesus is described as a “hermeneutic” of the scriptures. Academics today love the word but originally it referenced a person who could untangle “foreign tongues” and was a messenger of the gods. Interesting since Luke’s Pentecost account in Chapter 2:2 describes tongues, as of fire, and foreign languages and inarticulate sounds ( praying in tongues maybe). He seems to put great store in the actions of a “hermeneutic” that modern academia fails to capture. Finally Emmaus does not stand alone. Firstly it is quite obvious part of a continuum with all the other texts that surround it in chapter 23 and the latter parts of chapter 24. But it also sits as the “other bookend” to Luke’s account of the Birth Narrative and the episode of Jesus in the temple as a boy passing into manhood. Firstly Emmaus is a “feeding story” both of Word and Food. Jesus “feeds” them on the Scriptures and in the “handing over” of the bread, broken with them. Scholars tell me that the reference in Luke’s birth narrative to stable, no room, swaddling clothes and manger is most likely a cross reference to Isaiah 1:3 rather than any portrayal of poverty : – “An ox knows its owner, And a donkey its master’s manger, But Israel does not know, My people do not understand.” The phrasing is repeated to the shepherds twice – quite a strong point to be made. So Luke is reminding us at Emmaus about the Isaiah prophecy he highlighted in the start of his Gospel- both are “recognition” stories. Secondly he has Jesus at 12 years old sitting in the Temple being told by Jewish witnesses what the Jewish Scriptures mean; and then Luke has him at Emmaus reversing the role, having matured into a witness himself! So hopefully the ‘discombobulation” is by now more like “elation” than just the “dis-combobling”? Thanks Audrey – your point that we see Jesus every time we act as “church” with one another is really central to the text and to our making sense of our role as witnesses to what would otherwise be an absent Jesus.