Luke 24:13-35

So we come to my final sermon here. When I think back to our beginning here, I remember the sense of hope and positivity I felt about this church. I thought there was huge potential here. I really thought something could happen.

So to come to the end of my ministry here at a time when the church is seriously having to consider closure before too long is something I never would have anticipated thirteen years ago.

I have reflected on why we have got to this point, and I have my theories. Could we have anticipated before it happened that we would be financially vulnerable? Possibly. Have we been a divided congregation? Yes, at times. Have we on occasion chosen fear over faith? I think we might have done. And did COVID-19 accelerate our problems? Without question.

You may have your theories, too. But it’s all academic now. This is the situation we are in. So what to say?

I may have told you along the way the story of the late Ugandan evangelist, Bishop Festo Kivengere, whose ministry came to prominence during the evil and violent dictatorship of Idi Amin in that country. One day, he was told he could address a group of men before they were shot to death by firing squad in a football stadium before a huge crowd.

Kivengere said he didn’t know what on earth to say to men facing that fate. But then he heard the quiet voice of Jesus speaking to him:

“Tell them about me. I’ll make sense.”

So that’s what I’m attempting this morning. To tell you about Jesus, so that he will make sense to you at this time, and bring you hope in whatever you face when I have gone.

This story of the Emmaus Road is one that is special to Debbie and me, because the preacher at our wedding chose this lesson and preached on it. But I’m not aiming to reproduce that sermon. Instead, I want to take two simple truths about Jesus in the passage, because I believe they will hold you strong in faith, whatever you face.

Firstly, Jesus is present with us in our grief.

To some extent, the account of Cleopas and his companion walking along talking to the stranger about Jesus and not realising it’s Jesus is almost comical. It feels like a pantomime. Not so much, ‘He’s behind you!’ as ‘He’s beside you!’

But listen to them as they pour out their litany of dashed hopes about Jesus. All their dreams are gone. Jesus was going to change everything. They had pinned all their hopes on him. But now he had been executed. It had all gone.

Compare that to how many of us are feeling about this church now. W can remember so many happy times here. We have made great friends. There have been memorable special occasions. And most of all, the encounters we have had with the living God. The likely loss of these hits hard.

For me, I remember us visiting the church where we had got married and where the children were dedicated, a few weeks before it closed. I had been devastated when I heard it was going to shut.

But as Cleopas and his companion pour out their grief and sense of hopelessness, what is going on? Jesus is with them in their grief. I know they don’t realise it, and we read that ‘they were kept from recognising him’ (verse 16), which is a puzzle. Does their failure to believe in the resurrection stop them? Do dark forces prevent them? Or is the Holy Spirit closing their eyes until the moment of revelation to come in the house? We don’t know.

Many of us know the temptation to believe that Jesus has deserted us when we face troubles. But Jesus was with Cleopas and his friends, even though they didn’t realise at first, and he is with us, too. We may not recognise it. We may not understand why he has allowed a disaster to happen. But our lack of understanding is no reason to conclude that he has absented himself.

The fact is, disasters do happen to God’s people. Think of Israel being sent away from the Promised Land into exile in Babylon. They struggled at first with how they would sing the Lord’s song in a strange land (Psalm 137). But eventually, with the encouragement of people like Ezekiel and Jeremiah, they found a way to live faithfully in their new situation.

So too with us. Even if this church disappears, Jesus won’t. Ask him to show you where he is and what he is doing. Ask him for the privilege of knowing that he is listening to you in your grief.

After all, he endured the worst injustice of all, when he died on the Cross despite being sinless. Do you think he doesn’t understand the human condition at its most desolate? Of course he does.

And this is why we sang Matt Redman’s song ‘You Never Let Go’:

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death
Your perfect love is casting out fear
And even when I’m caught in the middle of the storms of this life
I won’t turn back
I know You are near

And I will fear no evil
For my God is with me
And if my God is with me
Whom then shall I fear?
Whom then shall I fear?

[Chorus:]
Oh no, You never let go
Through the calm and through the storm
Oh no, You never let go
In every high and every low
Oh no, You never let go
Lord, You never let go of me

Secondly, Jesus is still in the resurrection business.

Think how Cleopas and his companion are trapped inside their own beliefs. They are good Jews who believe that resurrection will come – but only at the end of time. So it doesn’t matter that Jesus has prophesied three times that he will suffer, die, and rise, and it doesn’t matter that some women in their group that morning had reported that he had been raised (verses 22-24).

What changes them is an encounter with he risen Jesus. They are not forgotten or forsaken. Hope is not lost, it is renewed. Jesus is alive!

In exile, Israel was depicted as like a valley of dry, dead bones by Ezekiel. But the Spirit of God brought them new life and eventually they returned to Jerusalem and the Promised Land. The dead bones were alive. Jesus is in the resurrection business.

And I believe that whatever happens here in the coming months and years, Jesus has not got out of the resurrection business.

I don’t have any specific word from the Lord about what that will look like, but I do know this: the resurrection body is different, and when Jesus raises up his work from the dead again here it will look different. The resurrection body of Jesus was on the one hand identifiable as him, but on the other hand had new and different powers. Think of how Jesus appeared inside locked rooms.

I believe there is a hint in the Emmaus Road story that resurrection life is different. When the three travellers get to Emmaus and Jesus is invited into the home of Cleopas, he shuns his rôle as their guest and behaves as the host when he takes the bread, blesses God for it, breaks it, and shares it.

Some people think this is a precursor of Holy Communion, where we also see the fourfold action taking the bread, blessing God for it, breaking it, and sharing it. But I think that’s reading too much into the text, because devout Jews offered these four practices with the bread whenever they are.

But if Jesus is the host and Cleopas and his companion encounter him (verse 31), and they realise that their hearts have been burning inside them Verse 32, surely a reference to the Holy Spirit), then what we have here is church in the home. Jesus raises up a new form of worship, and of course by the time he writes his Gospel forty or fifty hears later, the early Christian church is worshipping not in the Temple or in synagogues, but where? In the home.

This is another case of the resurrection body being different. And because of that, what I want to say to you is this: if this church dies, God is capable of raising up a new work. Just don’t be limited by your prior expectations. Don’t assume that we’ll still have church buildings, and we’ll have them where we’ve always had them, or even as to whether we should take such precautions.

Be ready, then, for the Holy Spirit to do something new and different here. Perhaps what we were offering had had its time, and God wants to do something new here in order to reach people in the name of Jesus. Think of Mr Spock in Star Trek, but not so much saying, “It’s life, Jim, but not as know it,” but “It’s church, Jim, but not as we know it.” Let old and dying ways go. Give them a decent burial.

And be prepared to walk with Jesus into something new and unfamiliar, but much simpler than Methodist rules make them, except for the fact that he is the host.

Let it be in the spirit of the way the prophets prepared Israel to come back from exile in Babylon to the Promised Land. In Isaiah 43, they are told to forget the former things, including even the Exodus from Egypt, because God was doing something new.

So too, because Jesus is still in the resurrection business, be prepared to put aside the old ways as he does something new in raising up a new work to replace the old.

Let’s go back to that Matt Redman song we sang. Here are some other words from it:

And I can see a light that is coming for the heart that holds on
A glorious light beyond all compare
And there will be an end to these troubles
But until that day comes
We’ll live to know You here on the earth

We may weep at the grave of this church. But make no mistake. Jesus will raise up a new work. Let’s make sure we walk with him.