A Strange and Difficult Road

It’s a strange and difficult road, this one we’re walking.

We have left behind everything that we knew, the certainties of life as it was before.

We have left behind life as it was, our routines and habits that had grown with us and grown familiar.

Some of us have not left willingly. We are set adrift, wandering in a strange and new landscape.

We have no assurance of where we are going, of what we will find when we get there or even when we will arrive.

This is a strange and difficult road, with no certainties except perhaps, that the future will look quite different.

We have been treading these paths now for over a month – for some of us significantly longer – and the novelty of the new journey has, quite frankly, worn off. We are foot sore and weary and like small children in a car, wondering if we’re nearly there.

And some of us (perhaps all of us) are beginning to ask some other, deeper questions too. 

When we arrive at the end (wherever that is), what will remain of our past experience, and what has changed for ever? We have faced an unexpected tragedy in the life of our nation and, for too many, in our own personal lives too. Can we ever go back to the way it was? Should we even try to?

Some of us have adapted well to the new journey. Might there be part of me that doesn’t want this all to end? 

We live in uncertain times, with all the fears and anxieties that brings. We are facing questions of loss and loneliness and mortality. Questions of ‘being’ and identity and of purpose and faith.

We have been forced to look these in the face, but they are questions about the human condition that have been with us since the time of our ancestors, and certainly since the Emmaus Road.

Two friends of Jesus heading away from Jerusalem and everything they had known. Thrust unwillingly into a literal and metaphorical desert landscape where, following such a personal trauma, they couldn’t process either where they had been or where they were going. 

And they and we begin by talking together. By wondering out loud, retelling then re hearing the news and trying to make sense of it. The media are doing this on our behalf in the public arena. When will we be out of lockdown? How will we get there? What will happen? Will we return to normal? What about the jobs, the bereaved, the NHS, the economy? The relentless cycle of (as yet) unanswerable questions.

And so what of us? What of the church? Questions of loss and loneliness and mortality are, surely, our territory. What do we have to offer, and where is the hope in our message?

Like you and like Cleopas and his companion, I am working it out as I walk. We are all, I am in the habit of saying, making this up as we go along.

And so as we walk, we continue to talk and discuss and wonder. But surely we have more to offer than an alternative debating chamber?

This is, after all, the season of resurrection for the followers of the Way. And if the Emmaus Road has nothing else to offer us, then at the very least it shows us that words and arguments alone are never enough. They help us on our way, guide our thinking, and our thought processes.

But it is, in the end, the person of Christ who changed everything. Not a philosophical or religious idea or doctrine, but an encounter with the personal, living, bread eating and wine drinking person who transforms those two on that road. It is meeting him in the breaking of bread that makes all the difference, that sends them back at top speed with a new energy and new hope and a new message of resurrection reality to tell.

Come and join the discussion with us in our virtual pub on Mondays, and carry on the talking as we walk this strange and difficult road. But look out for the stranger on the road with you. The one who walks alongside us and meets us in the breaking of bread and pouring of wine is the one who, ultimately, gives meaning and hope and a future.

A sermon for Easter 3, inspired by Liturgy in a Dangerous Time
Photo: Mark Kensett/Amos Trust