In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Over thirty years ago, when I was the curate at All Saints Church, Ashmont, in Boston, it was my assignment to celebrate the 7:30 a.m. Easter Monday Mass in the beautiful Lady Chapel, smaller but like our chantry in atmosphere. One of the rewards for this Spartan assignment was that one of the handful of devout worshipers was an elderly lady who drove up from Milton just for that particular Mass. She drove the five miles up to Ashmont from her home for the Easter Monday Eucharist because it included the Gospel we just heard this morning, Saint Luke’s story of the resurrection appearance of Jesus to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.
Her name was Gladys Bolton. She was in her mid eighties. She was intelligent and scholarly; devout, an associate of the “Cowley Fathers,” the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge; and she possessed wit and humor. Gladys Bolton made me think of the great Dorothy Sayers; she was an example of a remarkable type of woman that flourished in the Anglo-Catholic world of the mid twentieth century. Gladys had a companion, a Swiss lady, Marguerite. One year Marguerite broke her leg just before Ash Wednesday. I brought both ladies the Sacrament at their Milton home. Greeting me at the door with a candle and bell as was wonderfully correct and proper, Gladys gestured to Marguerite with her head, smiled, winked, and said, “Well, Father, there’s my Lent sitting over on the couch.”
Well. On each Easter Monday morning, as Gladys, Marguerite and the four or five other faithful stood while I read the Gospel, Gladys’ face would become translucent, radiant, with a look of unspeakable serenity and joy. It was my privilege to witness this sight four times. I cannot think of this Gospel without Gladys Bolton’s witness.
It was Gladys who first showed me that today’s Gospel is itself shaped just like the Eucharist. The first part of Jesus’ conversation with the two disciples is a Liturgy of the Word. Jesus shows them how his death was not a mistake; it was a necessity. He takes them through Moses and the prophets to show them that it was necessary that the Christ should suffer the things they had just seen Jesus undergo in Jerusalem.
Prophecies such as Isaiah’s Suffering Servant, which we read in both the Palm Sunday and Good Friday liturgies, were no doubt part of that Bible Study on the road to Emmaus: “He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from men hide their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Is. 53:3-6)
“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” The Good News had warmed them. When he made as though he would go further, they begged him to stay with them: “Abide with us.” So he did. There followed the Liturgy of the Table. He took bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened; they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight.
They first realized that Jesus’ death fulfills the Scriptures, and that the Scriptures explain Jesus’ death. The realization made their hearts burn within them; it was oil on the embers of their nearly extinguished faith. Then, with the eye of faith, they were able to recognize him in the familiar role and actions, the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of the bread. He had done this for thousands with the loaves and fishes on the hillside, and also with bread and wine for his friends at their last supper. Now here he was again, coming to them, teaching them, warming their hearts, feeding them, from the other side of death.
Today we see two things. First we see how the first disciples came to understand the events of Holy Week and Easter. These events first killed, and then resurrected, the disciples, along with their Lord. But they had to see the necessity of his death, and to take their part in it, in order to have their share in his rising to life again.
The second thing we see is how the Church, the living Church handed down to us, was created, and continues to live, as we experience it this day and every Sunday. Those disciples all ran for their lives from the cross and scattered; now they were being gathered for the encounter with the risen Lord. This is the pattern of the Eucharist - first the Word, then the Sacrament. The Eucharist, as Jesus said when he first celebrated it at the last supper, shows forth the Lord’s death till he comes. As it shows forth his death, it reveals his resurrection, which in turn and in every generation of disciples, sheds light on the inexhaustible meaning of his sacrifice. The only difference between that first generation and us is the time and place. But Christ is risen, he has overcome the world (of time and space), and he is contemporaneous with us by the power of his resurrection and the Holy Spirit. He also uses the same Scriptures and Sacraments so that we can hear, and taste and see, how gracious he is.
Gladys Bolton died and entered the unveiled presence of the Lord decades ago. But what she taught me is more vivid than ever. The older I get, the more I realize how deep, how broad, how true, how supremely satisfactory, our Lord Jesus Christ is. In Jesus’ death and resurrection we have the heart of the mystery of life, of love, and of God. I pray that we all may know and grow ever more deeply into the joy and serenity that prompted that elegant eighty-five-year-old lady to drive so early on Easter Monday morning to walk with her fellow disciples on the road to Emmaus – to meet Jesus.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
