This coming Sunday is third Sunday of the Easter season!
Yes, the third already.
The children have finished their two-week break, the shops have moved on to something new and perhaps selling the Easter eggs off cheaply, and some of my colleagues haven’t answered their emails because they are on holiday!
Three Sundays ago, we were up in the gardens thanking God for Easter – and also for holding back the rain, and then heading down to the Novar Halls for brekkies. Weeks have passed; the world has moved on at a fast pace.
Traditionally, we read about Thomas on the second Sunday, and one of the loveliest stories in the Bible on the third – the walk to Emmaus. The story has so much contained within it that should be a great comfort and joy: from Jesus’ journeying with the two strangers and explaining Scripture, as he does with us daily; to the recognition of Christ in the breaking of bread and the hearts of the strangers burning within them when he spoke to them on that dusty road.
Three weeks have passed and yet, the reading set for this Sunday, Luke 24 at verse 13 starts with the line, ‘On that same day…’
After all that had happened – the ups and downs of trying to follow their Master; the meal; the denials; the death on the cross and then the rolling of the stone – they left and couldn’t fathom what they had experienced and heard.
‘On that same day’… writes Luke.
The same day as the resurrection has taken place! You would have thought rising from the dead would have been enough for the first day – a full day, and then down time, at least for a little while.
Take a nap. Read a book.
Sit somewhere quietly and reflect what God has done – but no…
… on that SAME day.
Two strangers are walking along the road. Why? We don’t really know. Maybe they wanted to get as far away from Jerusalem, the place of pain. Maybe they wanted to talk about the moments that meant a lot to them, that had particular significance, a miracle that had stayed with them, a particular pictorial parable that brought a smile to their faces, or what it all meant – the three years of ministry with him.
And Jesus comes along beside them.
They were enraptured in spite of themselves, their grief forgotten, their despair set aside as they listened to him tell them what they already knew but had forgotten on that terrible day. He talked on and on, every book, every scroll, every story they thought they knew, but that now sounded new on that day. When they got to Emmaus, they didn’t want it to end, so they begged him to stay with them, to eat with them. They opened the door to their lives, and he walked in and sat down with them. Then, he took the bread and broke it.
‘That same day’ – and their eyes were opened.
Three weeks have passed, but we should be living as of ‘that same day’. We should be treating every day as the day of resurrection, ‘that same day’ burning in our hearts, how everything has changed, running to others to tell of our experience.
‘That same day’, hope was made.
‘That same day’, struggling followers were re-united and uplifted.
And, as I said at the beginning, since Jesus travels with us, talks with us, his presence enriching us, maybe we should take on board that first line…
‘On that same day’, an everyday for us!!
Your friend and minister,
George C Mackay