Our passage today begins at an ending.  The Passover is ending as these two disciples and all the others are heading away from Jerusalem.  Their world is supposed to be going back to normal.  After the huge gathering, which swells Jerusalem with thousands of faithful worshippers, everybody is supposed to be going back to their normal lives, homes, families, and jobs.  But this is no normal day.  It was not a normal Passover.  Normal has changed.  Days earlier Jesus was crucified and while he had according the gospel of John, by this time, appeared to the two Maries and to the twelve, that appearance does not show up in Luke.  They are just told he is alive, so the vast majority of Jesus’ followers were headed home with a bare rumor that he is risen.  As they physically, as well as, spiritually walked away from Jerusalem, they left behind the tragic memory of their crucified friend and perhaps even hope itself. 

          As the two disciples later declared to the mysterious stranger in verse 21, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”  The whole Jewish nation had been waiting and hoping for generations for a messiah to come and redeem Israel.  These disciples and so many other believed Jesus was this messiah.  They had lived into a sense of hope, gathered around, heard him speak, ate meals with him and everything else for so long that when Jesus was crucified that hope was crucified along with him.  And while that rumor was circulating that Jesus was risen, they had a hard time believing or at least were not doing anything about it. 

          The road they walked is a familiar road, even to many of us.  We know what it is like to hope and dream and to see those dreams hit a snag or fall apart, dreams of a better job, a better home, a better car, a better life for our kids then when grew up.  And as crushing as the loss of those dreams are it is even worse when the failure of those hopes and dream are connected to our faith lives. 

          That road is the road author and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor writes about in her book, Leaving Church.  Taylor was recently recognized as one of the top ten preachers in the United States.  She is number two on my list.  Excellent, excellent preacher.  But regardless of how capable a preacher she is, her hope (at least in the church and perhaps even in faith) was challenged as over years of church work little seemed to change and more and more conflicts arose.  She struggled with her faith.  She struggled with the church.  She struggled with the world.  After years of internal conflict she left.  Leaving Church does not end there, but that beginning path is one I believe would be familiar for many of us.  A moment of at least questioning, “where is God?”

          I said last week, that it is often in moments of great crisis and especially crises of faith that God enters most fully into this world to intervene.  As these disciples walked away from Jerusalem under the crushing weight of their broken hope, just such and intervention took place.  This stranger, who is the risen Christ, comes to them and asks them what they are discussing. Jesus entered into the midst of their broken world to restore their hope, but more importantly to bring to a new level of faith. Iit is from that conversation that Jesus is able start the healing that hope.  He is able to show them why everything that took place had to take place the way it did. And then finally in that moment of breaking of the bread he made himself known to them.  Their hope was restored and their faith was elevated.

          Often as I finish my sermon I will have my fiancée Kati read over my sermons to make sure that they at least make sense.  This week she got down with it and said, “why didn’t you write more about them not recognizing Jesus on the road.  That was the most interesting part for me.”  So I said, “why?” knowing that often times the things that I think are interesting are not what everybody else thinks is interesting.  And she said, “because I think that is the closest thing to our experience in the passage.”  I had focused on the recognition part because as a minister I would like us all to see Christ in the world.  What Kati pointed out was that often, actually the majority of the time, we do not recognize Jesus walking besides us.  But as our passage shows, even in those moments where we do not recognize God working in our world, God is working in our world: leading us, reaching us, empowering us, and like these disciples, setting our hearts on fire.

          But as important as that non-recognition is, Christ does miraculously make himself known. And those are wonderful moments too.  As a college student who was brand new to the faith, I was amazed by these moments of encounter with the divine.  I was amazed by moments where Kingdom of God and our world touched.  You know, those grace-filled moments where God is a lot closer than we normally think.  Where a prayer is answered.  Where a child smiles.  Where something you just read in the bible study has application for you that day.  I love that.  I love that feeling, but it is a feeling we too often miss me.  We miss God working actively in our lives.  We miss the Kingdom of God breaking into this world.  We used to think of heaven and the Kingdom of God being up there or out there some place.  If you read books now, more and more people are talking about the Kingdom of God running almost parallel or next to our world.  And there are moments where that world breaks into or is connected, however briefly, with our world.  So that we get moments, like these two disciples where they not only get to walk, talk, and eat with Jesus, but get to recognize him as well.

          John Calvin, who is our spiritual forefather in the Presbyterian Church, thought this was particularly true in the church when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  Calvin believed that as we came to this table we were not merely remembering Christ and his actions at the Last Supper, but that we were connecting with Christ.  That somehow as we ate this bread and drank from this cup, we were taken up by the power of the Holy Spirit to eat and drink with Christ in the Kingdom of God.  That this meal was one of those places where a new reality was breaking into this world. 

          It does not stop there though.  These moments just do not happen and then leave without a trace.  They build us up in faith. As verse 32 states, they set “our hearts burning.”  These moments with the divine, change us and transform us and grow us in faith.  That, however, momentary these encounters are they set our hearts burning.  The author Annie Dillaird, writes about a similar scene as she imagines heaven.  The seraphim, the highest order of angels, praise God constantly by singing “Holy, Holy, Holy God of power and might” as they approach the throne.  In so doing, they get so close to God and God’s radiance by the third ‘Holy’ that they burst into flames, melt away, and flow like a river away from God.  Only then, do they emerge like a phoenix and repeat the process.   I think that is a wonderful analogy to what is going on here.  These encounter make our hearts burn and as we approach God or recognize Christ, we get too close to God’s radiance and these moments disappear.  That empowers us though to seek out those moments again and again.

          What would our lives look like if our hearts burned, if our hearts were on fire for God?  I think we would take our lives and particularly our faith lives more seriously.  Instead of church being one of million things we do in the week, it might be the most important thing that we longed for during the week.  That the bible might be read more than just on Sunday or while preparing for study because it is there that we discover God’s plan for us..  That we might show kindness and grace to everybody instead of just our friends and neighbors because of God’s great kindness to us.  We might slow down and be quiet enough to hear God because God is just that close.  Or open our eyes wide to what God is doing around us.  And if we did all of that and grew so much in our faith because of that, then I think we would be surprised on how many of the roads of our lives we get a brief glimpse of Christ walking with us.