what Luke taught me today

What feels like so long ago, when I arrived here in Australia to journey beside three Irish Sisters I learnt so fast that stories are important. Not only as its apart of the Irish culture, yet they carry history, experience, humour and pain. When they are told its like shaping another tone on life and history. Sometimes, they carry a memory of which one can’t let go. Often, they carry a moment, a person, an experience that still nourishes not only the story teller yet the listener too. Sr B told me one day that in sharing our stories we share ourselves and express not only our past but also our future hopes. 

I have noticed recently that is not only personal stories to share, there are grand ones, stories that have shaped the identity of the nation and of the Church. Perhaps the unique feature of these stories are the way faith and identity are so intertwined. 

With each of us there is a journey to be taken, a walk that is very difficult and unclear at times. Today reflection has taken me on this with the passage of the Road to Emmaus. It comes out of an experience when the story is broken and hope appearslost. I think it is a journey and a road that speaks to us all. 

The Road to Emmaus

The spiritual and emotional landscape of the story found in Luke, is one that we can easily recognise. There is a flight from the place of pain, of broken dreams and lost hope. We cannot mistake the levels of betrayal; it is not only that these two disciples feel that their own faith in Jesus has been betrayed; maybe too, there is also a sense in which they have colluded in abandoning him. 

How understandable that they should want to get as far away as possible from the scene; get back to normal, to what is familiar, whatever these things may now mean. But this, too, is part of the confusion; it is an illusion to think that they can return to the way things were. For them, there can be no normal anymore. Even if they spend the rest of their lives in silence, just getting on with the routine things of life, that very silence will be filled with the unspoken memory of their crucified Lord. How could they ever trust the scriptures again? How could they ever trust themselves again?

It is precisely on this journey that the stranger comes to walk with them. We know that it is part of Luke’s apologetics that he unfolds scripture to them. In other words, that the death of the Christ was actually part of God’s unfathomable plan, not the pragmatic casual act of some brutal imperial power. 

But we also know that in opening scripture to them, he is also retelling them the story that they had believe in. He is teaching them how to live again with faith; to believe and even risk their lives for the sake of the story. 

Luke is also teaching something very beautiful about the way the Risen Christ deals with us. He does not force himself upon us but with a simple, astonishing humility, he meets us ‘in via’ on our way not his way; where we are, not where we think we should be. 

In this meeting of the disciples with the Risen Lord whom they do not recognise we discover one of those Lucan masterstrokes. The Lord invites them first to tell their story, from their point of view. 

They give him the facts; they put before him their despair and broken dreams. They share with him their confusion and emptiness. 

Here we have their story, but the Risen Lord teaches from within they experience of loss and brokenness how to find the Gospel of Life. He needed to show them how, within this road, is another road, the road that the Risen Lord is now walking. 

It is not a road of denial. 

It does not lead to false enchantments but it is real road of suffering and confusion. 

It is the road that God has carved out of all our failures and mistakes; the road that he walks with us showing us that this road does not lead to emptiness but it is the road that leads us to Him. 

This ‘catechesis’ of the Risen Christ was the necessary preparation that allowed them finally to recognise Him; to understand that even when He disappeared from sight, they would always recognise Him in ‘the breaking of the bread.’ And their hearts were alive again. With these new hearts they return. 

My sense is that we are on that same road as those disciples. Though recent revelations and failure at so many levels of the Church’s leadership can make it difficult, I believe we can have confidence in the road that we are walking. There is the joy of the resurrection after suffering and death. There is joy in our faith. Jesus talks to you and to me as He talked to the disciples on the road. He calls us and sends us out again in His name.