Third Sunday of Easter: Broken hearts, Broken bread, Burning hearts

Third Sunday of Easter
2020

Parish of Holy Cross—St. John the Baptist
Midtown Manhattan



Broken hearts, Broken bread, Burning hearts

So, are you hungry yet?  Me?  I am famished.

Emmaus.  Eucharist.  Easter.

Eastertide 2020 is among the strangest of experiences.  This season announces the good news of death’s defeat in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – yet we find ourselves spooked by a steady stream of morbid, heart-breaking images and accounts of lonely deaths in a time of isolation.  The season restores to our liturgical worship the robust, ecstatic Alleluia – yet the heavens stay mute, impenetrable, no voices joined in sung elation.  Summoned by our G-D to Eucharistic celebration of the paschal mystery’s revelation of a life beyond destruction, yet, bereft of the holy Assembly, we can only strain to hear that call in the depth of our hearts:

Listen graciously to the prayers of this family, whom you have summoned before you:
in your compassion, O merciful Father, 
gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world.¹

So, are you hungry yet?

The gospel passage proclaimed on this Third Sunday of Eastertide invites us to a journey, lures us onto a road stretching between Jerusalem and Emmaus, that our eyes might be opened, our hearts warmed, our faith renewed.  Dusk descends upon that road, a time of shadowy vision.  A stranger emerges from the shades of the eve.  Scriptures searched, bread broken and shared, sudden recognition, burning hearts – Emmaus.  Eucharist.  Easter.

The first day of the week.  A long day.  A confusing day.  An illuminating day.  In the pre-dawn murkiness, a distraught Mary Magdala arrives in the graveyard to discover a tomb without a seal, a crypt without corpse.  Fearing the ultimate assault on the body of Jesus – grave robbing – she runs from the tomb to tell the disciples of her discovery and suspicions.  In turn, Peter and John fall into a foot race, wildly running toward the tomb, incredulous and uncertain.

As the day draws near its close, Luke recounts two disciples making their way from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  On this, I have a hunch I’d like to share with you.  As they made their way along that road, they were running away as fast they could.  Fleeing the disaster that had exploded their hopes, they were running for their lives in dread that they might become targets next.  Crucifixions are like that.  The message implicit but by no means subtle:  Step out of line and you’ll be next.  Throughout human history, this is the ploy tyrannical power wields in order to cow subjected peoples into submission and compliance.  Hence, the spectacle of executions. The crueler the better.  The gorier the more valuable.

This running – by turns toward and away from the empty tomb – is not confined to the experience of these earliest disciples.  Rather, this is an experience that disciples of every time and place share.  For the two disciples on the road running away from Jerusalem, the passage was one of broken hearts and shattered faith.  Their deepest hopes had been smashed.  They now sought a form of asylum in Emmaus.   For Peter and John running toward the empty tomb, the foot-race was a broken-hearted sprint hoping-against-hope for a surprise.  

Broken hearts.

As disciples of Jesus, all of us have experienced broken hearts in the face of life’s mystery.  Surely, there is no believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ who cannot share in the heart-breaking, realistic words of the disciples on the road: “But we had hoped …”  Don’t those words ring true to your experience?  With all in our lives that is beautiful and awe-inspiring, who of us enjoys exemption from failures and disappointments, trauma and heartbreak?  “But we had hoped” – a dream never materialized, a promise proven false, a future foreclosed, even dead.  

What could be more tragic than a dead future?  An anecdote told of the great author, Ernest Hemmingway, suggests he once was challenged to write a short story in only six words.  His reply, scribbled on a soiled café napkin: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never used.”  Tragic.  The tragedy does not cease with what happened.  The tragedy extends to the gaping abyss of all that might have happened but now surely will not happen.²

To enter into the mystery of Easter, to be enveloped by the mystery of Eucharist, it is imperative to begin there – with a broken heart, running away from the empty tomb, running toward the empty tomb.  A lost job, an alienated daughter, a marriage betrayed, a dreaded diagnosis, a spouse ravaged by addictions, financial ruin, friendship estranged, death from viral infection – we each can add a deeply personal experience that pierces the heart.  This is where Easter breaks in.  Where Eucharist begins.

In the fading light of dusk, the Risen One approaches the fleeing disciples inquiring into their upset and haste.  They reply with news of the hideous events in Jerusalem that snuffed out the life of Jesus and swallowed whole their faith and hope.  

“But we had hoped he was the One …”  

Next, a conversation searching their treasured scriptures.  A new revelation with astonishing depth and breadth opened to them.  Far from vanquished, the crucified and risen One reigns.  His power?  Disclosure of the mechanism of violence underlying human history – the blood-thirsty search for victims upon which to build first a tomb, and then, a phantom foundation for human community.  At last revealed, this dynamic is dethroned by the Risen Victim now offering forgiveness, not reprisal.  He empowers those once complicit in his demise to live free of all death-dealing, to be agents of his mercy and forgiveness for all the world.

Finally, with the fall of night, the meal.  The breaking of bread.  Despite the deepening darkness, the disciples finally see.  They recognize him:  Jesus, risen from the dead.  Jesus, alive in the power of G-D.  The Risen One opening the way to life beyond destruction.   With this, their broken hearts melt into burning hearts.  Freed from their fear, they are sent to proclaim the good news to others.

The pattern of Emmaus is the pattern of Eucharistic celebration.  We begin with broken hearts.  Summoned by the G-D revealed in Jesus, gathered by his Spirit, we search the scriptures to hear again – here and now, in our time and place – the astounding story of G-D’s boundless, passionate love for us revealed in Jesus Christ.  We invoke his name and call upon his Spirit around the table of thanksgiving – the altar that puts an end to all sacrifice.  In broken bread and shared cup, we eat and drink as Jesus taught us – sharers in his very own life, flesh and blood.  In the sharing of this meal, fashioned into the Body of Christ for the world, we are sent with burning hearts into the heart of the world.  Go now, proclaiming the gospel with your lives.

So, are you hungry yet?  Me?  I am famished.

While for now, as we shelter in place and practice physical distancing, we must pause in tasting and seeing the goodness of the Lord, the invitation stands sturdy, the promise unbroken.

Anyone who eats this bread believes in a new world where bread is for all, poor as well as rich.
Anyone who drinks this cup shares a covenant with all the world’s broken-hearted.
So, let us eat and drink as Jesus taught us, and may this meal provoke in us a hunger that can never be satisfied until we taste the fullness of his kingdom.

So, are you hungry yet?  

Emmaus.  Eucharist.  Easter.

Broken hearts, broken bread, burning hearts.  He has been raised.

 

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 ¹Roman Missal, Eucharistic Prayer III.
 ²For both the anecdote and accompanying insights, I am indebted to the work of David Lose from the website, Dear Working Preacher.