Luke 24:13-35 (Inclusive Version) The Road to Emmaus

That same day, two of the disciples were making their way to a village called Emmaus – which was about seven miles from Jerusalem – discussing all that had happened as they went. 

While they were discussing these things, Jesus approached and began to walk along with them, though they were kept from recognizing Jesus, who asked them, “What are you two discussing as you go on your way?” 

They stopped and looked sad. One of them, Cleopas by name, asked him, ‘Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who doesn’t know the things that have happened there the past few days?”  Jesus said to them, “What things?”

They said, “About Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet powerful in word and deed in the eyes of God and all the people – how our chief priests and leaders delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. We were hoping that he was the One who would set Israel free. Besides all this, today – the third day since these things happened – some women of our group have brought us some astonishing news. They were at the tomb before dawn and didn’t find the body; they returned and informed us that they had seen a vision of angels, who declared that Jesus was alive. Some of us when to the tomb and found it to be just as the women said, but they didn’t find Jesus.”

Then Jesus said to them, “What little sense you have! How slow you are to believe all the prophets have announced! Didn’t the Messiah have to undergo all this to enter into glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted for them every passage of scripture which referred to the Messiah. By now they were near the village they were going to, and Jesus appeared to be going further. But they said eagerly, “Stay with us. It’s nearly evening – the day is practically over.” So the Saviour went in and stayed with them.

After sitting down with them to eat, Jesus took bread, said the blessing, then broke the bread and began to distribute it to them.” With that their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus, who immediately vanished from their sight. 

They said to one another, “Weren’t our hearts burning inside us as this one talked to us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?” They got up immediately and returned to Jerusalem, where they found the Eleven and the rest of the company assembled. They were greeted with, “Christ has risen! It’s true! Jesus has appeared to Simon!” Then the travelers recounted what had happened on the road, and how they had come to know Jesus in the breaking of the bread.

Reading (by Norman Shanks, from This is the Day: Readings and Meditations from the Iona Community)

The church’s vocation in each and every locality is to be a worshipping, healing, learning, serving community, faithfully living by the values of the kin-dom, modelling and embodying a counter-cultural vision, looking and reaching out beyond itself with a wider vision, to discover the light and love of God in engagement with the life of the world, standing up and speaking out against all that diminishes and disempowers… In so doing it will dream and explore; it will be open, flexible and ready to take risks; it will be generous, hospitable and ready to celebrate; it will not be a ghetto but keen to co-operate and engage; it will be a transforming community – influencing others for good, and being transformed itself in the process; it will be resilient and persistent, however hard the way, and it will be marked by joy and an eagerness to celebrate. 

Reader:  Hear what the Spirit is saying to the people. ALL: May our hearts be open to the Living Word.

REFLECTION – Building a New House

The Extra Room – by Ellen Anthony

Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there.  – 2 Kings 4:10, Revised Standard Version

I

A long time ago 

someone in Shunem 

built an extra room 

on the roof of her house 

for the holy one.

That’s what I want to do. 

I want to go up 

to the roof of my house 

where the sky starts 

and make this room in case the holy one 

needs a place to stay.

A table, a chair, 

a bed, and a candle.

I’ll work on it 

when I can, 

weekends maybe 

or before breakfast.

II

It’s coming along. 

I go up there, 

work with what I have. 

Some wood, some stone.

The chair and table 

aren’t hard to make, 

and I got a candle 

from a friend.

But the bed is still stone.

And I know that isn’t comfortable.

It’s grey 

and looks billowy from far off, 

like a feather comforter, 

but it’s stone.

I put my hands on it, 

on the face of the stone.

Questions come up 

all about work and what my life is for.

I answer what I can.

We’re both getting softer, I think, 

but not yet a bed.

III

One day the holy one 

stays overnight, asks 

What can I do for you?

Nothing, I say. I can’t 

think of anything I need.

You will have new life, 

says the holy one leaving.

Don’t lie to me.

Don’t lie to me 

is what I answer back.

I sit down right there 

in the kitchen thinking

What new life?

And why do I think it is a lie 

that I will have new life?

IV

Someone is waiting there 

in that room upstairs.

Someone is dying.

Someone is holding the river 

in their hands.

Someone is letting it go.

Someone is crying.

Someone is getting ready.

Someone wants to be 

softer than stone.

Who is waiting for me 

in the extra room?

V

I go up, 

open the door.

It’s pretty much done.

The room.

All I can do anyway.

I sit in the chair.

Plain square chair.

Look at the table.

Flat relaxed wood.

Strike a match 

to the wick of the candle, 

see the light 

pulling the walls into the glow, 

corners going blurry.

Holy chair?

Holy table? 

Holy candle, holy walls?

or just extra ones?

I sit in the extra chair 

watching the extra walls 

wondering if we’re holy.

Over there 

the stone is taking a long time 

becoming a bed.

So am I.

We wait here together.

VI

I wonder what the Shunammite 

went through.

Whether hospitality 

came easy to her 

and the furniture 

knew itself right off…

I wonder what my extra room 

is for. Who will come 

and whether it is holy 

the way it is, empty…

I wonder what my extra room is for. Who will come and whether it is holy the way it is, empty.

To me, the resurrection stories in the gospels are like that. Empty. The tomb, the women, Mary, the disciples – all empty. After the women and the disciples have searched the tomb and found it empty, Jesus appears in the garden, but so altered that Mary, who loves him dearly, mistakes him for the gardener. Only when he calls her by name does she know him. In today’s gospel story, the two disciples walk home to Emmaus, accompanied by that same risen Christ, yet they recognize him only when he breaks and blesses bread in their home. They are empty. All imagination, all hope drained out of them. Transformation is the last thing on their minds. The idea of holy presence is completely unimaginable. 

It’s so easy to miss the holy in one another. The unexpected times of transformation. The times when someone calls us by name, breaks bread with us and blesses it. There is so little time in our busy lives to look around, and when we do, it is more often than not merely to notice the vast divide and differences between us. Yet the holiness is there – in that emptiness, in that space between us.

For me, some of my most profound transformations have happened when I least expected them. Take yesterday, when out of the blue – or more correctly, out of the radio – came an interview with the rapper Chuck D about his new venture “Songs that Changed the World”. And out of the radio came the voice of 24-year-old Black jazz singer Billie Holiday, singing “Strange Fruit”, recorded back in 1938. If you have never heard a recording of that haunting song, I recommend giving it a listen. Written as the poem “Bitter Fruit,” by Jewish schoolteacher Abel Meeropol after viewing a photo of the lynching of two Black teenagers, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, Meeropol later set the poem to music and performed it with his wife at protest rallies, but it didn’t become well known until it was sung by already well-known jazz singer Holiday at New York City’s Café Society. The song was not always well received, and sometimes people left when she sang it, so Holiday began singing it at the end of her final set. Her original record company wouldn’t record it, and Holiday was hounded by the FBI after its release, finally being arrested and serving 18 months in jail for drug possession. The truth may set you free, but it is just as likely to get you locked up.

In 1964, young schoolteacher Jessie Oliver sent a letter to the General Council of the United Church, describing abuse she witnessed at the Alberni Indian Residential School, run by the United Church. An investigator sent out from Toronto by the church declined to hear what she had to say, and returned, apparently satisfied that any issues at the school were being well handled. In 1995, Arthur Plint, then 77 years old, was convicted and sentenced to 11 years in jail for abusing students at the school in the 1960s. The lawyers for the defense (The United Church) argued vigorously against vicarious liability against the church and several of the plaintiffs, students at AIRS in the 1960s, were re-traumatized during their cross-examinations at the proceedings in Nanaimo. Jessie Oliver went on to teach in public schools and form life-long friendships with indigenous people. 

Truth-telling is still a risky business. Just ask Alexei Navalny. For authentic change and transformation, truth telling requires truth-listening. Yet these troubling stories of truth-telling still point to the ultimate hope of the resurrection – the life-giving possibility that truth-listening, and of course, our actions, can offer us a glimpse of what transformation could look like. In 1964 the USA passed the Civil Rights Act, and in 1998, after much controversy and argument, the United Church apologized to Indigenous people for our part in the Residential Schools. Both required acceptance, grudging or no, of the transformative truth that we were not who we thought we were, and that we believe we can do better. Names like Colton Boushie, Chantel Moore, Tina Fontaine, Trayvon Martin and George Floyd are enough to remind us that we still have a long way to go in transforming words into lived reality, but we can prepare ourselves for collective truth-listening by being willing to witness and listen to one another’s everyday truths.

I have had many wonderful experiences in my years in the United Church, many of them within the walls of this sanctuary. One such experience occurred at the Friendship Gathering at United Church Tatamagouche Centre in Nova Scotia about a dozen or so years ago. The Friendship Gathering is an annual event co-sponsored by local First Nations, (Mi’kmaq and Maliseet) and the United Church. The first evening always begins with a talking circle. The year I was there, there were probably 50 people or more in the circle. With no time limit, each person spoke who they are, where they were from and how they came to be there. It was nearing 1:00 am when the circle came to an older man, about three people away from me. He looked hesitant, but determined to honour the truth-telling before him, he acknowledged that he had spent his working life in the RCMP. After giving his name, he spoke of how the words spoken around the circle had touched him. In a breaking voice, he named the many times over the years he had performed duties that broke up families and communities. He had taken children to residential schools, arrested parents, leaving children to be taken into care, thought of indigenous people as less-than, as drunks who couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of themselves or their families. He said how sorry he was for his actions over the years, and more, for all the things he had thought and believed for so long. How he wished he could go back in time with the knowledge he had learned that night. You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. And then, silently, one of the older indigenous men walked over to him and shook his hand. Another wrapped him in a huge embrace. A First Nations woman cried, said she had never imagined hearing those words of truth or apology from someone in authority. In the pain of that truth-telling the rest of us were reduced to silence. Empty, but with a new sense of space to take a breath.

In the end, it’s really up to us. If we can find the humility and hospitality within ourselves to entertain the outrageous possibility that life isn’t what we thought it was – that the holy isn’t who or what we thought it was – that we are not who or what we thought we were, we can discover that place, that space, already exists. 

Transformation doesn’t come from the outside in – it comes, sometimes slowly, sometimes suddenly, often unexpectedly, from the inside and works its way out – from that space, that gap, that empty room where we become hollow and ample at the same time. As usual, I wrote the title for this reflection before the reflection itself, and called it “Building a new house”. But really, it’s not so much about building a new house as it is about discovering, or re-discovering that house, that extra room already inside us – ready to welcome the holy one – the holy ones, and our whole and empty and holy selves too.  

The Extra Room …   

XI

I don’t know.

I usually don’t know.

I touch the stone bed, kneeling, 

and say I don’t know 

who is waiting or what will happen 

from day to day in this extra room.

What my new life is 

or when it will die on me.

But I have the extra room, 

and I just know that I believe in it.

I believe in the extra room, 

in making an extra room, 

in the possibility of the holy one’s coming,

in making new life, in its sometime dying, 

and in constantly watching what sleeps there 

as if I were ready for the sky 

to come in over and over again without edges.

This place, this extra room, 

is where I’m becoming 

hollow and ample at the same time.

XII

I won’t ask 

what your extra room is like.

Or what went on 

inside the Shunammite lady.

It’s not for me 

to know other people’s 

private stuff.

But I want you to know 

that when I say my extra room 

is for the holy one, 

it means you.

It means whoever 

needs an extra room that night.

I can’t guarantee 

there won’t be dead furniture 

in there from time to time.

Or that the bed will be comfortable.

But if you ever need 

an extra room to stay in, 

a place where seeing and hearing 

have no edges, 

I have this place inside me now, 

and you are welcome there. 

Ellen Anthony is a poet who works at Wellfleet Public Library on Cape Cod. Besides writing, she designs eggs and lamps. 

“The Extra Room” is from The Weavings Reader: Living with God in the World; John S. Mogabgab, Editor; 

Upper Room Books, Nashville; © 1993 by The Upper Room