He is risen indeed, Alleluiah!

Collect:	Almighty Father, in your great mercy, You gladdened the disciples with the sight of the risen Lord: give us such knowledge of his presence with us that we may be strengthened and sustained by his risen life and serve You continually in righteousness and truth; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, Who is alive and reigns with You in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. *Amen*.
Readings:	Zephaniah 3, 14 - 20 (omit if only two readings are used)
	Psalm 116, 1 – 3 &10 - 17
	Acts 2, 14a and 36 - 41
	Luke 24, 13 - 35

You may wonder why neither last week, nor this week, am I mentioning the reading from the Acts of the Apostles in the homily. The reason is that they deal with the events of Pentecost, and we shall be attending to that at Pentecost (often called Whitsun in Britain). In the new lectionary, Pentecost is rightly understood as part of the Easter Season, but I cannot concentrate on these readings without telling you all about Pentecost, and that would then make the Pentecost homily even more difficult to write than homilies usually are.

Fortunately, there is material for any number of homilies in the Gospel reading. We have swapped over this week from the Gospel of Saint John to that of Saint Luke. It is not really safe to put bits of different Gospels together, because they are separate works written by different people at different times in the fast-moving development of the Church in its frenetic early years. The Gospel is of course one, but the four Gospels have quite different emphases, to meet the changing needs of the Christians as the Church faced radically different situations. At the same time, it is essential for us to study the works of the four Evangelists, because they all have infinitely precious insights to offer us.

Last week, with believing Thomas, we looked at the gap between believing by personal revelation, and believing by being a member of the Church. Today, with the two disciples on the Emmaus road, we are led to look at the gap between knowing and feeling. Feelings are always real, and have to be dealt with, but they are by no means accurate. I well remember some members, not all of them young, of the Christian fellowship in one of my ships who had discovered the delights of the flesh with the ladies of the night in a certain South American Port. It can’t be against the will of God, they said, because it feels so good.

Before we begin today, let us just remind ourselves of the basics about Saint Luke. Luke, Saint Paul’s “beloved physician” was not himself a Jew like Saint Paul. He was a Greek, from Antioch, but joined Paul at Troy (or Troas), so may have been living and working there. He was writing in Greek, the universal language of the time, primarily for those who like him were Gentiles, and lived outside Judea. Because the narrative in Acts (Acts 16, 10) changes from the third person (he and they) to the first person (we) it can be assumed that Luke actually accompanied Paul personally, and would have been greatly influenced by Paul’s teaching. Most scholars agree that Luke wrote his Gospel soon after the destruction of the Temple at Jerusalem in 70 AD. At this time the Church was being persecuted, and the Romans had imposed direct rule on Judea, destroying the Jewish nation and Jewish society, enslaving, killing or condemning to hard labour the population of Judea and, incidentally, damaging greatly the Church in Jerusalem. The days of the twelve were ended; it was now up to Gentile Christians like Paul and Luke to carry the Gospel forward.

It is interesting that Luke only names one of the two disciples on the Emmaus road - Cleopas, a Greek name, which means “Son of a famous Father”. Cleopas does not appear anywhere else in the Bible, but perhaps Luke uses his name like that of Theophilus at the beginning of the Gospel, and of the Book of Acts. Theophilus is Greek for “God Lover”. Perhaps Luke was writing for an individual of that name, but more likely he is addressing you and me. The famous father of Cleopas could be Abraham – all Jews, and many others, claim Abraham as father. Or could it be God Himself? After all, Christians are children of our Heavenly Father.

Luke does tell us that Cleopas and his companion were not of the twelve, because when they get back to Jerusalem, these two find the eleven (Judas having gone to his fate) and their companions gathered together. Perhaps they were from Emmaus, and had come to stay in Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. Now, on the first day of the week, the festival over, they were going home.

Actually, their names don’t really matter, because they are you and me – they are the whole Church.

We too tread the Christian way with Jerusalem as our starting point.
We too fail again and again to recognise the presence of our Lord, even though, like those two disciples, we think we know Him well.
We too wrestle with the events of the Gospel story – what does it mean for us, and how do we put it all into effect in our daily lives?
We too know Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
We too find that knowing Jesus as our Lord and Saviour opens our eyes and our hearts to the words of the Bible, and to God’s work all around us.

Emmaus is seven miles from Jerusalem, perhaps three hours’ journey on foot. They had not set out too early, because they had clearly had time to learn of the extra-ordinary events of the empty tomb, and the story of the women. Perhaps, they set out after lunch, so as to arrive easily in daylight, but as they get near the village, it is almost the time of the evening meal, so absorbing has been their walk with the Lord on the road.

Some scholars have suggested that the seven miles represent the seven weeks that lie between Passover (Pesach) and Pentecost (Shavuoth), and, of course, seven is the perfect number, the number of God Himself. That actually fits, because the Passover was something that God did for the Children of Israel – He freed them from slavery in the Land of Egypt. Shavuoth (or Pentecost), on the other hand, was something that the Children of Israel did – they accepted the Law of God, the Torah. Between the two, the Children of Israel were wandering in the wilderness.

In Christian terms, at Easter, God gives us the resurrection, and at Pentecost we become the Church, as the Holy Spirit falls upon us to give us power from on high.

Of course, Shavuoth was not really a human initiative – it was God who gave the Law to the Children of Israel; all they had to do was follow it. And of course, the Church is not a human initiative either – It is God the Father through God the Son, Jesus, Who sends the Holy Spirit upon us; all we have to do is accept Him into our lives.

Mostly in our Christian lives, we know He is there, but we do not feel the presence of God. We should not expect to. All the great Christian writers have one thing in common – a sense of distance from God. Just occasionally, their vision is renewed by a sense of his presence, but it is just occasionally. In the homily last week, I urged caution on those who think they hear the voice of God. But of course, some people – and it is very rare – genuinely do hear the voice of God. So it is with the sense of the presence of God. We are unlikely to have that overwhelming sense of the presence of God, which Cleopas and his companion describe, more than a handful of times along our Christian journey. And those are the high points, which sustain and fuel us in our discipleship.

Last Sunday, June and I were privileged to stand on either side of Bishop David as he confirmed our candidates. The overwhelming, almost tangible, sense of the presence of God in that sacrament reduced your fairly level-headed Chaplain to the brink of tears, and I know it had a similar effect on the music group just a few feet away.

However, the reality is that those precious moments are few and far between, and do not occur to order. Most of the time, we have to keep working away to spread the Gospel and live out the Word of God in our lives as baptised and confirmed Christians, knowing that God is with us, but feeling it seldom. Let us follow Cleopas and his companion, living out a prayer of Saint John Chrysostom:

Teach us, God Lord, to serve you as You deserve: to fight and not heed the wounds, to labour and not to seek for rest, to toil, and to ask for no reward save that of knowing that we do your will. Amen.

Alleluiah, Christ is Risen!

He is risen indeed, Alleluiah! Amen.

Father Charles Howard: Anglican Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude

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