Sermon by Ricardo Avila

Sermon preached by The Reverend Paul Burrows,
On the Third Sunday in Easter 5th April 2008

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
‑But who is that on the other side of you?

T. S. Eliot The Waste Land

The story of the encounter with Jesus on the road to Emmaus is one that taps into some primal race memory and resonates so profoundly with us that we cannot help but take notice of it. That it is a Eucharistic event is undoubtedly true but that moves us at a deeper level is what I want to explore with you today. The mysterious stranger who walks with us as we reflect on the events of Holy Week and Easter is both an exciting and a disturbing figure. It is uncomfortable to have this figure with us.

This has been the subject of many paintings including a series of three by the Italian Caravaggio. The first is the well-known one in the British National Gallery in London and one of the others is still extant but the third has been lost. Lost also is a painting by the same artist of the journey itself. Why would a troubled young man who was fleeing the authorities because of his involvement in murder and a number of elicit relationships be so moved by this passage of scripture? The energy of the early painting and the deep despair of the later are just two of the very powerful emotions found here—the tale itself fills us with a sense of the longing for something beyond what we know and experience. It cries out to us of the metaphysical.

The story is not just one about the encounter with the risen Christ in the Eucharist but is about the journey—the journey we all undertake through life seeking to understand where we are going and where we have been, often walking with others but sometimes alone, but always looking for that mysterious presence that is just out of our range of vision. We catch it with our peripheral sight but when we try to look directly at it, it is not there. Much of religious thought is like that— reaching for something we know is there but being unable to grasp it. But why should we think we could grasp that which is so far beyond our understanding? That the Word walks beside us, that we catch this brief sideways vision of ineffable truth is wonderful, awesome, and terrifying. I am glad to have seen what I have seen but I am glad that this vision is obscure for, “no one can look on the face of God and live.”

"...who is that on the other side of you?"

It is the Word of the living God that I am commanded to speak to the entire world.