A friend of mine tells this story about when she was a little girl, she was really bright, super promising, so much so in fact that they started her out early in school she was one of those kids just on the cusp, past the cutoff of a grade. They decided she was ready to go early though and she did really well at first, in fact she did pretty well for the first couple years but as time went on she really started having a hard time. She was keeping up, but barely. She did great with listening comprehension and problem solving she was appropriately social, all of those kinds of things that they put on report cards. She seemed very bright still, but she was doing quite poorly at reading and writing and subsequently she didn’t test very well, math wasn’t going great either. They tried giving her extra study time, her parent’s watched over her homework and came up with punishments and incentives but she just couldn’t do it. She was really frustrated and so were her parents and teachers.
Then someone new came on the scene, listened to the whole story and asked a simple question, has she had her eyes checked?
No...she hadn’t...
They took her to the doctor, they got her glasses and all of a sudden for the first time in her life she realized she couldn’t see. She really couldn’t see well at all! She couldn’t keep letters on the page and separated from one another without glasses. She couldn’t see plus or minus signs. She couldn’t sort all of that out fast enough to finish a test on time. And that had all happened so early on in her life that she didn’t even know what she was missing. She didn’t know she couldn’t see until she could for the first time.
Once she could see she did much better. Unfortunately they figured it out pretty close to the end of a school year. The school didn’t want to make the call about whether she moved forward but recommended that she not, and left the final decision to her and her parents. They knew that she would have a very hard time catching up if she moved ahead.
So the decision was made that she would stay behind while all of her friends moved on. That she wouldn’t lose any time that way really, beings she started early, and that would afford her much better opportunities in the long run. Even though she understood this choice, it broke her heart. She remembers sitting on her mother’s lap crying, just crying for hours. Lamenting her loss, getting it all out. That was what it took for her to be ready to stand back up, hold her head up, go back to school and start over.
Looking back on this story, being able to succeed in school was important and being able to see clearly was important but the real lasting effect of this whole experience, was that a little girl who felt like she had failed and who felt like the world had failed her and people whom she loved had failed her, experienced what it was to be comforted, protected and reassured in the midst of that.
She came to understand and trust that no matter what, her mother would always reach out to her with care, comfort and compassion and create a safe place so that she could stand up, move forward and not only live, but flourish.
In the gospel lesson for the day the disciples can’t see Jesus, in fact they are so blind to Jesus that they don’t even know that there is anything to see. Despite his having told them before that the events of Easter would happen, that he would rise again that he would overcome death, when they start hearing rumors that that happened, the two disciples that he meets on the road can’t believe that it is true.
In fact when they tell the story of the women going to the tomb, the story that we read on Easter and take our Easter story from, they tell it like a lament. Like it is bad news. They can’t see it at all. It seems that they are so turned around that they are even leaving, heading away from where the rest of the community is gathered.
But the traveler with them knows better, so he interprets all the things about Jesus in Scripture to them, helps them to see the story clearly again. But even once they see the story they’re still unsure of the point. It isn’t until the eating of a meal, the breaking of the bread, a reliving of some of Jesus’ most nurturing and compassionate acts, acts of feeding, toward them that they see him. The scripture says then their eyes were opened, they understood why the traveler had seemed so important, why just listening to him had made their hearts flutter and burn. And this changed everything.
Apparently they never even got to Emmaus. They turned and went back to Jerusalem, proclaiming the good news and when they got there not only did they share the news they had but the Jerusalem people had had an experience that was just as revealing. So the Emmaus disciples got to hear Good News back!
Now obviously seeing Jesus was very important in this passage, it was what led to the belief of the disciples and the sharing of the story. But we would be missing a major point if we stayed just with the clearing of their eyesight and didn’t mention the promise that they received.
When the were at their lowest, bearing the guilt for Jesus’ death and the loss of his body, feeling like they had believed in vain like they had started something wonderful but got lost and at the end set themselves behind in faith and life.
Feeling like they had failed and the world had failed them and God had even failed them, at that moment Jesus appeared and walked with them.
It wasn’t obvious right away that it was him but he stayed with them long enough to remind them of the truth, of God’s love, of their mission. He stayed with them and made their hearts feel strong again, he gave them a sign in the breaking of the bread that they would always be able to find him in community and in communion. And then he stood them up and moved them forward, on their way, back out onto the road with open eyes.
The promise of Easter is that Christ is Risen once and forever and will always be made known in our lives, will always walk with us, will always be in the reading of scripture, and will always be in the breaking of the bread and in our community here.
Like a loving parent God will always care patiently for us, stand us back up on our feet and lead back out on the way. This is great good news. Thanks be to God. Amen
