Easter 3 Year A

This morning we join two disciples as they travel on the Emmaus Road. We know that one of them is Cleopas because he is recorded as speaking. I wonder who you imagine the second disciple to be. Some writers suggest it was Simon Peter and others that it was Luke. But there is a strand of scholarly opinion that suggests it was the wife of Cleopas. I must admit that although I am constantly looking for the contribution of women in Scripture, I have always imagined this to be two men. So I was intrigued to discover that suggestion. For me, that reframes the story – I imagine the interaction between the two people to be more intimate, more mutually supportive than I had previously thought. Whoever it actually was, and of course we will never be sure, I’m imagining for this morning’s purposes that the travellers were a married couple.

Most of us know the story very well. It’s a story that we can imagine ourselves into. We all know what it’s like to walk along with a partner or close friend and to get into deep conversations as we go. There’s something about journeying together – whether that’s walking or driving or taking some other form of transport – that encourages easy dialogue.

We join these disciples at a point on their journey when they are pretty miserable and, I suspect, fuelling one another’s unhappiness. They are trying to make sense of what has happened. Going over, and over again, the events of the past few days. Trying to work out what they missed or misunderstood. The first thing to notice here is that they are holding onto the past. They’re not very interested in where they are or even where they are going. They are absorbed with their examination of what has been and gone. It was shocking; it was heart breaking, it makes no sense.

I’ve heard commentaries which suggest that they are caught into their grief. That they are absorbed by their pain. That they need time to process and to let go and that their conversation is the start of that journey. I’m not going to argue with that. But I am going to suggest that that’s not the whole story.

In bereavement work there is a model called the dual process approach. It describes the way that the deep work of grieving happens alongside the very ordinary work of maintaining day to day life.
Effectively, people move between their journey through bereavement and their pragmatic need to live day by day. The need to eat and sleep; to care for children or other relatives or pets; the need to get on top of administration. You get the picture. I tend to think about it like train tracks. People spend time on one track and then the other, but the two modes rarely interact.

What we might call the engagement track, as opposed to the grief track, is primarily about living in the moment. It’s about being present to what is in front of you and dealing with it. And when people are in the early stages of bereavement dealing with the here and now is as important as the experience of grieving. Dealing with the here and now helps us to engage in a more healthy way with the journey through bereavement. It gives us space to experience that whole range of emotions that anyone who’s been bereaved can name. It’s a healthier path through bereavement because it stops us from sinking into a place of overwhelming grief.

So back to our two disciples as they trudge along. They are so caught into their narrative of despair and despondency that they have no capacity to be present to the stranger who appears alongside them. It feels as though they barely notice him. I wonder whether they were a little exasperated with him for interrupting their grief fest. They even told him that the women had been to the tomb and had seen angels who said he was alive. I wonder whether they had really taken in that information, had heard what they had been told. Or were they were so keen to stay in their place of mutually supportive grief that they couldn’t engage with it?

It’s only much later that they reflect and say: were our hearts not burning within us when he was talking to us on the road? With the benefit of hindsight they realised that something important had happened but they were so determined to hold onto their sadness that they barely noticed in the moment.

How easy it is not to notice what’s in front of us in the moment. To be so caught into whatever we’re absorbed by; to hold onto, in particular, negative feelings; we almost fear letting go of those painful emotions. There’s a familiarity to them that can be comforting for that reason. And there can be a feeling of guilt if we veer away from the place of grief. People ask themselves, what right do I have to be happy again? They fear forgetting; they fear letting go.

But let’s remind ourselves of what our wandering couple said to one another at the point when they recognised the risen Christ. Were our hearts not burning? Were our hearts not filled? Filled, not with the raw pain of grief and despair but with the gift of love and hope and grace; filled with the promise of something new, a new way of seeing and believing.

That vignette resonates for me with the idea that this is a very close couple, a couple who are comfortable enough with one another to risk saying something that might sound weird. Daring to say to one another, our hearts were on fire. We were changed by our interaction with this person. We were touched in ways we can’t understand and can barely articulate.

They weren’t able to be present to him while they were on the road, but they had a moment of encounter, of absolute clarity when he broke the bread. Then they were able to be in the moment, to engage with the person in front of them. They had moved from their grief track to their engagement track – their grief was no longer front and centre, because they were fully engaged with the immediate situation.

The distractions we engage with on a routine basis may not be about grieving. We may find ourselves pre-occupied in all sorts of ways. We may be planning a big event; maybe we’re caught into global politics or the potential outcomes of the climate emergency. It’s easy to be consumed by anger or distress or anticipation. It’s not always easy to set that aside and let go, even momentarily.

But let go we must. Because that is the key to moving into a place of engagement, a place where we live and interact in the moment. A place where we are fully present to all that is happening in and around us. And that is the place where we encounter the risen Christ.
That is the place where our hearts may be set on fire; that is the place where we may be changed. That is the place of transformation and hope.

We will never be entirely free of the track that consumes much of our emotional and spiritual energy, but the more we are aware of the option to move over to the track that sets us free, the closer we will be to encountering God in the presence of our risen Lord.