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The Road to Emmaus There is a certain country which is very real, - but you wont find it in any atlas! You can search the globe but you wont actually come upon it as a land mass. Nevertheless, it IS very real. And sooner or later, I think, each one of us will enter that country. It is called the “land of broken dreams”, and the stamp on our passport bears the word “disappointment”. I have a rhetorical question! Is there anyone here who has never had a disappointment? I don’t think so! We have all had our special hopes for the future – and then, somehow, those hopes got dashed to pieces, and we now live with those disappointments. Welcome to the land of broken dreams! Perhaps at some point we made the wrong decision or the wrong choice, and we now know that because of that decision, what we had hoped for, will no longer happen. Perhaps some tragedy has befallen us which we had no control over , some accident caused by our own or others inattention or inexperience, some bad moral choice, family dysfunction, financial disaster, sickness, the death of a spouse or family member – each of those and many more, can shatter our dreams and hopes for the future. As a result, the future for us might now seem to have lost its golden appeal, and we now worry about what the future holds? I wonder if I am speaking to anyone here today who has entered this land of broken dreams? Just know that you are not alone! We all have our broken dreams – you are in good company! 2000 years ago, two people other ordinary people also had broken dreams. One of them was named Cleopas (and incidentally his wife – though we don’t know her name) is mentioned in St. John’s gospel as one of the women who had been at the foot of the cross) – Cleopas and another companion (maybe his wife) were dragging their feet as they trudged from Jerusalem to Emmaus. It was the first Easter Day – but they didn’t realize that! No one had told them! They were enveloped - I think – in despondency, and totally bewildered. You see, they had had a dream that Jesus was to be the emerging King of Israel, the Saviour of the nation! Every honest Jew longed for that day when a new King would come, sent by God Himself. Cleopas and his companion would have been with Jesus before, many times, and they had good evidence that Jesus could be that man. But now, their hopes had been dashed – and you and I know that feeling too. Jesus had been arrested, and hurriedly tried, sentenced and crucified, and his body had been sealed in a tomb. It’s as though when the stone was rolled over the mouth of that tomb, that their hopes were buried too. Not only were their hopes dashed, but they were now in an even greater state of perplexity, because they had heard at first hand, just that morning, that the tomb was now empty, and that Jesus had appeared alive to his disciples and others. Try and imagine, for a moment , that you are Cleopas, or perhaps that you are his wife,( whom it might have been with him) and you are both now on your way to Emmaus. Let’s just dwell on some of what the scripture says for a moment. Firstly – they walk together bearing the heaviness of their broken dreams. They didn’t try to push them aside or deny them. They walked them with them. Broken dreams need to be acknowledged and sometimes carried for a while. The weight of disappointment needs to be felt, and the pain experienced. Don’t try and push aside your broken dreams prematurely. Sometimes we just need to see them, and accept them, for what they are, and acknowledge the reality that things are now different. Secondly – we note that as they talked and discussed - Jesus himself drew near and walked along with them. He didn’t appear to say anything at first. He just walked with them. He heard their concerns, and shared in their sorrows. Whatever broken dreams you carry today –know that Jesus walks with you! And then, after a time, when its appropriate, Jesus asks them to share what they were talking about. And they tell him. “We had hoped that he would be the one who was going to set Israel free!” They articulate what they had hoped for. Sometimes we need to do that too! And sometimes we will realize that many of our dreams are quite self-centred. But as they talked, Jesus was gathering together the pieces of their broken dreams – he wasn’t discarding them. Then thirdly Jesus begins to inform and instruct them not only about what had happened, but that those very things – the betrayal and the crucifixion – the very things which were the pieces of their broken dreams - were a definite part of God’s plan. Even our disappointments can be used by God! I think one of the hardest lessons in life for me to learn, is that broken dreams can be the very doorway through which we walk into something greater in our lives,- though at the time that may be the last thing I can see in them. We have all heard the saying that when one door closes, God opens another. He does! Fourthly - as Cleopas and his companion sat down with this stranger, and he broke the bread, they came to recognize him as none other than the Risen Jesus. Their broken dreams were transformed. What they thought had been a major disaster,- the crucifixion - God had turned around, and through the Resurrection, Jesus had become the means of new hope and new life. There’s a lot more that could be said around this, but where do we go from here? I think that when our dreams are shattered we can choose to respond in one of two ways. We can respond a) – according to our circumstances, our feelings, - our sight. , or b) we can respond according to the way of faith, and as the scriptures guide us. There are two scriptures that I find helpful in this - firstly, St. Paul says “In EVERYTHING give thanks” ( 1.thess 5: 18) Not FOR everything, but IN everything give thanks. God will use what you are going through to bring something greater out of it. The second passage of scripture to use “by faith” is where St. Paul says “Rejoice in the Lord, always, and again I say rejoice.”(Phil. 4: 4). We may hot feel like rejoicing in our circumstances, but we can rejoice in the Lord’s resurrection and that He is for us. The way of faith knows that because Jesus has been raised, the door is now open to new possibilities which, at this point in time, only God knows. So the very best thing we can do is to put ourselves into His hands, and trust Him. He will make a way, when there seems to be no way. –end. |
