GIVE US OUR MASS BACK!
A SERMON preached via email to the scattered people of ST.LUKE’S, QUEEN’S PARK FOR THE 3RD SUNDAY OF EASTER 2020. The text is LUKE chapter 24 verses 13-35
My indomitable wife Ellie is managing to carry on teaching her violin pupils on “Skype” or “Zoom” (whatever they are, he sniffed, like the senile judge what asked “who or what are the beatles?”)
For the moment, however, you’ll have to put up with the e-mailed word from me. I fear anything as sophisticated as streaming is beyond me for the time being.
Oh well. Here goes.
In the name of the +Father and of the +Son and of the +Holy Spirit.
You know, prayers, scripture reading and perhaps recorded music at home are wonderful but there is an enormous hole in the middle of our distant worship.
For me, and for anybody who holds a Sacramental kind of faith, what is conspicuously missing is RECOGNIZING HIM IN THE BREAKING OF THE BREAD.
In other words, if the Eucharist is absent, our worship lacks its essential centre.
So let’s have a close look at Luke’s story of the encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus and the meal that followed.
You have to remember that Luke was probably writing in about 80 or 90ad for the benefit of people who might well have been saying to themselves: Wow, just imagine. Only 50 years ago there were disciples like us who actually met the resurrected Christ in person. How lucky they were. Wish we’d been around!
Don’t be silly, says S.Luke to his first readers. You haven’t missed anything. Your experience is no different from that of Cleopas and his friend. And neither - I would add - is ours.
First of all, isn’t there something very familiar to all of us about being a Christian disciple but feeling a bit weary and dispirited?
You are pre-occupied with the pandemic and the suffering it is causing
Perhaps doubts are nagging away at your faith
·You sense the hostility to organised religion in the media and society
·You wonder how and in what form the church will survive the constraints of Covid 19 and that underlying hostility
You’re taking your permitted exercise – well, stretching it a bit - on a walk of about seven miles (Jerusalem to Emmaus or, let’s say Brighton to Pyecombe) – it’s hot and dusty.
Christ seems a very remote figure. Then suddenly, by the gift of His grace, God lets you feel His loving presence; your eyes are opened; your heart burns within you and you realise that in fact He was there all along by your side.
This moment of joy will not last long - such bliss is rationed, even to the saints - but it is enough to restore your hope.
Now let’s look at the detail of Luke’s story.
Why exactly didn’t Cleopas and his friend recognize their travelling companion?
I’ve heard some far-fetched explanations. The one that takes the biscuit is that Emmaus lies West of Jerusalem........Geddit? You see, they had the sun in their eyes so they were squinting not to be dazzled! I believe that is what is politely called the “reductionist” school of biblical criticism, the one that caters for those who are short on faith.
I think we do best just to accept Luke’s account at face value without trying to explain the experience. After all, we are talking about the mystical figure of the risen Jesus.
Even back in the Old Testament, the prophets foretold of what they called a Messianic banquet - the great feast at the end of time when the Messiah would gather us round Him and give us our fill of all good things. Is this not what the supper at Emmaus, and every Mass we celebrate, points to?
They finally sat down at table and “recognized Him in the breaking of the bread”, recognised the risen Jesus, already through the barrier of death, beyond space and time, so we are actually in the heavenly zone of a Messianic banquet.
Luke tries very hard to get his readers to understand the meal at Emmaus in this way.
What you have to do is to compare the language here with the words he used to describe what happened before the crucifixion at the last supper. The parallel is unmissable. Listen to this:
Last supper: having taken bread Emmaus: having taken the bread
Last supper: having given thanks Emmaus: He blessed it
Last Supper: He broke it Emmaus: and having broken it
Last supper: and gave it to them Emmaus: gave it out among them
It was in that fourfold action of taking, blessing, breaking and giving that they recognized Him.
But don’t forget what had led up to this when they were still on the road. I quote.
Starting with Moses and going through all the prophets, He explained to them the passages throughout the scriptures that were about Himself.
This isn’t by any chance beginning to ring a bell, is it? I’ll give you a clue.
The bread is blessed and broken. The company consumes it and Christ departs from their midst. But before all that (on the road), the scriptures are expounded. What you might call the..................yes, you’ve guessed it: the MINISTRY OF THE WORD followed by the MINISTRY OF THE SACRAMENT.
What Cleopas and his friend have been through on the road to Emmaus and at the table in Emmaus is a typical Sunday morning at S.Luke’s. They might as well have been at one of our Eucharists now as in Judaea 2000 years ago.
And that is precisely what Luke is driving at. The story is designed to show that nobody can know and understand the risen Christ until they prepare themselves by feeding on the written word of God and then encountering Him personally NOT face to face on an individual human level but under the form of the sacrament which He instituted for us.
There is no point in trying to recognize Him by squinting into the setting sun and looking to identify His facial features. You recognize Him in the breaking of the bread.
But you and I, and Cleopas and his mate, can’t just leave it there.
We have to go on and ask what does this BREAKING OF THE BREAD mean for us?
The key is in the double meaning of “break”. The body of Christ is broken BOTH in the sense of suffering AND in the sense of being shared out.
Suffering and sharing. Sharing and suffering. A connection which is most movingly brought home to us in these crucial days for the NHS, the care homes and the quarantined public.
If Christ’s body is broken in the bread of the Eucharist, then we who feed on it must be broken too, for we dare to call ourselves the body of Christ.
And it is to be prepared to suffer and share in His place that we offer ourselves in His service: you and me, Cleopas and his mate, and all other disciples who, I fervently pray, will one day soon be able once more to congregate in church every Sunday morning at the Parish Eucharist and walk our spiritual walk to Emmaus.
PLEASE MAY WE HAVE OUR MASS BACK BEFORE WE DIE OF SPIRITUAL HUNGER!