"Emmaus Road" - Luke 24: 13-35

  If I say the word “hospitality” what comes to your mind? Maybe its opening up your home to let a friend stay as they are traveling through the area. Or perhaps its cooking someone their favorite meal.

But I would venture to guess, that for most of us the word hospitality is at least marginally connected to a vision of providing for people we know or who we have some level of association with.

But not so in the ancient world - and even the not so distant past.

I get together with a group of people spread out across the United States to pray several times a week over the telephone. We are configured around the prayers of this person who is known as Saint Benedict, who in the 500s wrote a rule, or a book about how to live in community with other Christians. One of the things that he focused on was hospitality - in particular to the stranger - where those following the rule were encouraged to open up their home, which at that point would have been the monetary, to whoever showed up at the door.

When I hear that, I am taken back to being really young and learning the phrase “stranger danger”.

And yes, there was danger to opening up space for strangers. You never knew who would stop by. Yet, for Benedict, all were to be treated as if they were Christ.

The irony of today’s scripture passage is of course that people who knew and loved Jesus while he was living didn’t recognize the resurrected Christ walking amongst them. For Luke, this is one of the first accounts of Jesus encountering his disciples, with the next story being is appearance to some of those whom he was closest to. But these disciples, Cleopas and the unnamed disciples, should have recognized him. They had spent time with him. They may not have been one of the apostles, the twelve, but they were close enough to be called his follower or disciple. 

Yet as they are walking along the road, this seven mile stretch from Jerusalem to Emmaus, they were talking about everything that had taken place. Jesus’s arrest. His trial or rather trials. The people yelling “crucify him.” Seeing his body on the cross. His death. All of the sandiness and pain and heartache. And now the word is that his body is done. Who in the world would do something so cruel?

And in the midst of this discussion this seeming stranger comes up and walks right beside them. Now to most of us, that would seem odd in our Western context, but it doesn’t seem to phase the two walking along the road. They just keep talking, until the man beside them asks “What are you talking about?”

And they stop.

Dead in their tracks they stop and sorrow is written all over their faces. How could this man not know? How could he not have heard what happened less than seven miles away?

Cleopas reminds me a little bit of Peter at this moment when he blurts out, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

But Jesus, still being Jesus, answered in his most characteristic way - with a question - “What things?”

They told him what had taken place. He unraveled scripture for them about the words of the prophets of old about the Messiah, until they got to where they were headed. As Jesus seemed to be going on they called out to him to stay - moving him from a stranger they met along the road to their guest - inviting this one that they had just met into the home, to the table.

It was there, as he blessed and broke the bread their eyes were finally opened and they realized that this whole time they had been blind to the one right in front of them - Jesus.

In Biblical times, just like the times of Saint Benedict, hospitality was an important thing. People were to welcome in, even the stranger, with lavishness - the sharing of food, the place to rest, the act of the washing of feet.

We all so often talk about the act of loving the stranger, and here is Jesus himself coming in the form of the stranger, yet today, as I’m talking about hospitality, how many of us are finding our hearts beating just a bit faster. Surely, Pastor Michelle isn’t going to ask me to feed the hungry and welcome the stranger. Doesn’t she know how dangerous that is.

And my friends, I do know. We live in a day and time where we fear people who seem to be different than us and we fear the stranger. I too am confronted with the deep and difficult questions about what it means to be a person of hospitality, in a day and time when that word has lost so much of its meaning. How are we to share life with the people that even we are afraid of.

If I’m brutally honest, I probably would have tried to move to the other side of the road when Jesus showed up as a stranger. I certainly wouldn’t have engaged in a conversation or invited him into the house. 

And what would I have missed.

What would Cleopas and the unnamed disciple have missed?

For Jesus moved from stranger, to guest, to host of the table as he broke the bread that day. And all of the questions of the head that the disciples had, moved to understanding in the heart. They had heard the stories and the facts before, but now, now they had their own experience to go out and proclaim.

John Wesley believed that something powerful could take place in holy communion. Something that it is hard to describe, but which he called a means of grace - a way to come to know God not with the head, but with the heart. And that my friends still changes things today.

When we have this heart experience, we don’t just want to do things for people, but we want to get to know people. 

In November of 2020, the world celebrated the 40th anniversary of the death of a woman who changed my life. Dorothy Day is what I would call a modern saint, and she changed my understanding of hospitality, even though I never had the opportunity to meet her in person, but only though the pages of her writing. While she did great works in feeding the hungry and caring for the sick, more importantly, to her, they were people. They were not strangers she was serving, but could have been Christ. 

Do we live our lives in the same way? Do we live like Matthew 25 is a thing? Do we live like Jesus could be taking the blindness off of our eyes in order to see the people before us? Do we live in a way that proclaims the story of God to guest, stranger, and friend alike?

Love of the stranger is hard, friends. We aren’t going to get it right all the time. But that doesn’t mean that the invitation is not still there. How are we feeding the hungry and welcoming the stranger in a way that transforms the heart and life? Amen.