Then
they told what had happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the
breaking of the bread
The
Disciples on the Road to Emmaus are astounded when the man to whom they are
talking does not know what has been going on: ‘Are you the only visitor to
Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?’
He asks them so that they may tell him. They ‘hoped that he was the
one to redeem Israel’, they have been told of the Empty Tomb, but do not
yet believe. They need Jesus to explain the Scriptures to them in order to show
them that what happened had been foretold in the Law and the Prophets.
In this evening’s first lesson from the
Prophet Isaiah we have the greatest of the prophesies of Our Lord’s Passion and
Death. It is read on Good Friday because it shows us how what happened was
clearly foretold. In Acts 8, when the apostle Philip meets the Ethiopian
eunuch, he is reading this passage. When he is asked if he understands what he
is reading he replies ‘How can I, unless someone guides me?’ Philip
shows him how verses 7 & 8 of Isaiah 53 point to Jesus, the Lamb of God,
who takes away the sins of the world,
The
Ethiopian needs Philip, the disciples need Jesus, and we need the Church to
show us how scripture is to be read: it’s meaning is not necessarily plain and
while anyone could read Scripture in any way in which they chose, the
Church has never said that all interpretations are ok, or that any one is as
good as another. Instead, the proper interpretation of Scripture is rightly the
teaching office of the Church, through the Apostolic Tradition: to unfold the
mystery of Christ, to proclaim Him, and to save souls.
The
Church reads the Old Testament christologically, because it points to Christ,
it finds its fulfillment and its fullest and truest meaning in him, who is the
Way and the Truth. As Our Lord says, ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ
should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ In other words
through Our Lord’s suffering, and death, and resurrection we behold God’s glory,
the glory of the divine life of love, poured out on the world to heal it and to
save it. We see both what God is and how he loves us, to the extent of giving
his only Son to die for us, to heal the wound of sin, to restore our humanity,
and so that we may share eternal life with him.
As
a foretaste of this heavenly joy he takes bread and blesses it and gives it to
them. Christ, who as both priest and victim offered himself upon the altar of
the Cross, as a willing, spotless pure and sinless victim, now feeds his people
with himself so that they may share his risen life – so that they may be given
a foretaste of the heavenly glory and the divine life of love. That is why we day
by day and week by week we too come to be fed by him, so that we too may share,
having first heard the Scriptures explained to us.
We
see here in this evening’s second lesson how and why the Church looks and feels
like it does, why it understands Scripture in the way that it does, how errors
may come about, and how the Church guards against these by deciding what is
authentic in terms of Scripture and Tradition. Almost two thousand years after these
events took place there is something fresh and current about what we have heard
read to us this evening, it doesn’t feel odd, or strange, or backward or outdated,
but simply part of how the Church is. It is good that after two thousand years the
message has not changed; it shows us that it is authentic: that it is of God, and
not of the world.
So
let us be like the disciples at Emmaus with warmed hearts, fed by our Lord with
word and sacrament, sharing his Easter Joy and his victory over sin and the world
and sharing his peace and joy with the world, so that it may believe and give
praise to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed
as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion, and power, now
and forever.
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