Third Sunday of Easter, cycle A

Luke 24:13-35

When you and I look at the crucifix, we see it as the symbol of our Catholic faith. Our protestant brothers and sisters don't like the body hanging from the cross, preferring to show an empty cross, preferring to emphasize the resurrection. But a cross means Christianity. It wasn't always like that. Our earliest Christian ancestors would probably say that the symbol of their faith was a shared meal.

I think most people enjoy an opportunity to eat with friends. Whether you are on the preparing end or the receiving end, there is something special about getting together over food with someone you haven't had contact with for a while. Eating together is also a good way to get to know someone. Around the supper table we feel less threatened, we are more likely to move to a more intimate level of conversation than we do in casual meetings. And when we eat with other people we usually hold back on controversial subjects knowing that there is nothing like a heated argument to spoil a good meal.

The shared meal is common to all cultures, from primitive tribes to sophisticated civilizations. And in Jesus' time it wasn't any different. In fact, as you read the gospels you can't help but notice how often Jesus was sharing a meal with someone, or in one case, at least, inviting himself to supper. We even have little glimpses of the kinds of conversation that took place at these gatherings – his exchange with Martha in which he told her that Mary had chosen the better part; his exchange with Simon the Pharisee about the woman who washed his feet with her hair – and of course, his discourse at the Last Supper. In fact, and someone else figured this out, not me, if you read the gospels you will find more space taken up by Jesus eating a meal with someone than by miracles or healings or teaching. Check it out if you want to.

So it is no surprise that Jesus uses the occasion of a meal to reveal himself to Cleopas and an unnamed disciple. And you can almost feel the progression. They meet a stranger on the road; they gradually reveal to him the reason for their poor spirits. He in turn speaks to them of the prophets and how this all relates to what has happened in Jerusalem. But it isn't until they sit down around a table that the level of intimacy is at the point where they recognize who it is that has been walking with them; it is when they share the bread. Up till then, the stranger could have been anyone; but when he sits down at a meal, they just know it has to be Jesus. And it says their eyes were opened and he vanished from their sight.

One of the things that happens when you have a particularly enjoyable meal with someone is that you look forward to the next time you get together. When our children were small, we always looked forward to visiting their grandparents in Maryland. We could expect a feast, often featuring blue crab from the Chesapeake bay. Even today when we get together with our children and grandchildren over a meal, there is a bonding that takes place; and even though we are all related, we grow closer in that relationship. Shared meals have a way of uniting people. If you've ever been to one of the meals Saint Mary's puts on in the course of the year, you walk away feeling a bit closer to your fellow parishioners; you feel part of something bigger.

And isn't this what the Mass is all about? We miss the point sometimes. But it's interesting to me that Jesus left this as his memorial. And in the earliest days of Christianity, the shared meal was almost a sacrament. The people would gather in someone's home and bring along something for the common table. Saint Paul tells us how it wasn't supposed to be done – with the rich eating at their own table of the food they had brought, and the poor at another. The shared meal was supposed to be just that – an opportunity where everyone fed each other. And only after the meal did the Mass take place, when the leader took bread and pronounced the words of institution, and passed around the cup containing the precious blood.

So we are all on that road to Emmaus – you and I are the nameless companion of Cleopas. And when we come to Mass, we greet each other, we listen to the scriptures and an explanation of them, and then we proceed to the meal where we do what Christians have been doing from the beginning.

Luke, our gospel writer, uses some interesting language in his account of this event. The very last sentence we read says “Then the two recounted … how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.” But the Greek says “how he was being made known to them in the breaking of the bread”. A subtle difference but it has meaning to us. Because it is in this breaking of the bread that we know Jesus. And the more we participate, the more we look deeply into the Mass that we are attending, the more we can come to know Jesus.

And one more thing. Notice what the disciples did when Jesus vanished. They went out to announce the good news. They proclaimed that they had witnessed Jesus alive. Jesus reveals himself in the breaking of the bread not just for us, but for the whole world.

So now perhaps you can see why Jesus was so insistent that we remember him in a shared meal – because he wants to be with us, and he wants us to be one with each other, and sharing a meal is a universal way human beings deepen relationships, make peace and form bonds. And now perhaps you can see why the Church is so insistent that the bread truly becomes the body of Jesus and the wine becomes his blood and that our priest stands in for Jesus when he breaks the bread. For two thousand years Christians all over the world have participated in the one sacred meal that those two disciples ate at Emmaus and Jesus is constantly being made known to them and us in the breaking of the bread. So today try to see the Mass as the early Christians saw it – a time to nourish the body, the soul, our relationships with each other, and our relationship with God our Father.