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“Too Busy to Believe”
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Mark S. McDowell
Scripture: Luke 24: 13-35
So here we are two weeks after Easter, or more appropriately almost two thousand years
after that first Easter day. And yet the reading that we have from Luke this morning comes not
from some point in time that is at a distance to the resurrection. Indeed, the events that unfold
take place on that very first Easter day. Few people yet know that Christ has risen, and even
fewer still can believe it. When we look back at these events, we do so with the sort of comfort
and certainty that time and distance provide. For these two early travelers, however, and indeed
for all those longing to believe, the world around them was anything but comfortable or certain.
Let’s think for a moment about how the world must have looked to the followers of Jesus
on that fateful day so soon after “the chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned
to death and crucified him” (Lk 24: 20). Somehow I doubt that there was the same sort of
celebration and large gatherings that we typically associate with Easter Sunday. More likely,
those who remained were hiding out in small groups lest they attract the vengeful eyes of those
in power. They were not out in the market places and the temples proclaiming the Messiah; they
were so busy trying to make sense of things and trying to stay alive that they knew only that their
savior, their hoped for Messiah was dead. They were so busy dwelling upon this event that they
could hardly begin to recall what Jesus had told them about his resurrection. And it is at this
point that we join the two on the road to Emmaus.
Susan Andrews, in an article for the Christian Century, describes the scene wonderfully.
“When we meet the disciples on the road to Emmaus, it is evening, and the spectacular
glow of the day has begun to fade. Resurrection, at this point, is nothing more than a
rumor, a curiosity, an idle tale. And yet when the disciples meet a stranger on the road, it is
clear that the possibility of resurrection has intrigued them. They have been talking about
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