April 23, 2023
Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023 – Acts 2:14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35
When my 40th birthday was approaching, it seemed like a big deal to me. And, if it was a big deal to me, obviously it was going to be a big deal to all of my friends. Visiting one family group in the parish, not this parish, they said something offhandedly that I mistakenly took to mean that they were planning a big surprise party for my 40th birthday. A couple of nights later, I was at the household of another bunch of friends. And these friends didn’t really associate with the other friends. It’s not that they actively disliked each other, it’s just that they had nothing in common. And these people asked me to do something with them on the very day that I thought my other group of friends was planning a big surprise party. So, I told them, “We can’t do it that day because so-and-so is going to have a surprise party for my birthday.” Well, one group called the other group and, of course, there was no surprise party being planned. But now they were stuck because their friend expected a big party. And so, two groups of people who didn’t mesh well had to work together to plan a party for someone they had no intention of giving a party for. Misunderstandings.
When I was a little boy, I loved one of the characters on the Howdy Doody Show, Clarabelle the Clown. I was crazy about Clarabelle the Clown. Well, it happened that there was a big advertisement in the newspapers one day that the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus was coming to town. Ha! I didn’t really care that much about the circus, but the Special Guest Star was going to be Clarabelle the Clown. And so, I begged and pleaded and haunted my parents until they got tickets to the circus. And I didn’t care about the lion tamers or the trapeze artists or the high wire act. All I wanted to see was Clarabelle the Clown. So, we get there and, as you might guess, there was a long, long line of kids just like me who wanted to shake the hand of Clarabelle the Clown. So, we all got on line and waited and waited and waited and waited, like an hour, an hour and fifteen minutes. Finally, I got up. It was my turn to shake the hand of Clarabelle the Clown. I got near him, and Clarabelle the Clown smelled funny, with the kind of stuff that comes in amber bottles. I didn’t know what the smell was, I just knew it was a very unpleasant smell. Disappointments are also a part of life.
I asked you to listen to the way in which the two disciples on the road describe Jesus. It’s a key to the whole story. They said, “Jesus the Nazarene, a prophet mighty in deed and word among the people. We thought He was the one who was going to free Israel.” Huh. They’ve got it wrong on two counts.
Jesus is much more than a prophet. You see, the scriptures had promised that someday a great prophet, like Moses, would come back to the people. The last time there was a Jewish prophet was around five centuries before Jesus was born. The people hungered for a new prophet to come. Each time somebody came who was a good public speaker they would say, “Oh, maybe this is the one. Maybe this is the one.” So, these people say, “We thought Jesus was the guy Moses promised.” Not only that, but the Israelites had been conquered over and over and over again, and this time they were under the thumb of Rome. Had been for almost two centuries. And every now and then, there was an uprising to try and throw off the Roman authority. Each one of those uprisings ended in military disaster for the Israelite people. So, they were hoping, this time, Jesus was going to be the guy to raise the big army and defeat the Romans. And it didn’t happen. They’re understanding of Jesus was mistaken. And they were disappointed.
And I asked you to listen to when their hearts were burning within them and when they knew their hearts were burning within them. They said, “Weren’t our hearts burning within us when Jesus spoke to us on the way?” It’s interesting that they use the expression “on the way,” because that is the name given to the church for about the first 70 or 80 years of our life. We were “the way of Jesus.” And the first day of the week was the day in which all the people of “the way” got together in someone’s house to celebrate eucharist. So, St. Luke is telling us a story, not just about the resurrection, but about what it’s like to be a Catholic. So, they said their hearts were burning on the way as Jesus taught them, but they didn’t realize their hearts were burning until after Jesus took the bread, and blessed it, and broke it, and gave it. The gestures of Holy Communion. He took, he blessed, he broke, he gave. It was Holy Communion that allowed them to realize how important were the words that Jesus spoke to them on the road.
Of course, when Jesus interpreted the scriptures, the scriptures He had to work with were what we call now the Old Testament. But we have the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the teachings of the church. All of us have experienced both disappointment and being mistaken, having a misunderstanding. Especially in our faith lives. It doesn’t take long before something in the life of the church, in the life of our parish, in the life of our church family disappoints us. It doesn’t take long before we misunderstand or disagree with something that the church teaches. Or don’t understand something that we find in scripture.
Notice the pattern that St. Luke offers us today. As we go along on “the way” – on the way – we discuss and debate. The disciples didn’t appear to be grief stricken; they appeared to be confused and annoyed. Discussed and debated. And they were discussing and debating their misunderstandings and their disagreements until they got to the place where their meal was going to be. When they invited Jesus into their lives, He performed Eucharist for them. And, after He performed Eucharist for them, the things that they were taught began to make better sense to them.
It's two things at once. There’s a kind of dynamic between the words of scripture and the teachings of the church on one hand, and Eucharist on the other. We need them both, and they interact with each other. Neither one of them is perfect or complete or useful to us without the other.
That’s why it’s such a great crisis in our church that we do not have enough priestly vocations. That we have fewer and fewer priests to perform the eucharistic act. It’s a great crisis in Catholicism. And something over which we need to pray very often. That’s also why it’s such a great tragedy, that Catholics in such large numbers are choosing not to celebrate Eucharist with other Catholics anymore. Both of those problems are beyond our solving, but we need to pray about them both. We need to bring our misunderstandings, and our disappointments with the church to Eucharist. And, receiving Eucharist, we have to take what God gives us and let it open our minds to a larger understanding of what it means to be a Catholic.