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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our risen Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. How is your faith doing today? Some of you might think that that’s an inappropriate question to be asking those who are gathered together on a Sunday morning to worship God. But the fact is, even among those who come every Sunday, there can be moments of weakness in our faith. There are times when we become so affected by the things of this world, things like illness, or relationship difficulties, or employment problems, or those things like war, famine, pestilence, and death, that we begin to wonder if God really meant it when He said, “Never will I leave you. Never will I forsake you.”
Some of you may know that those words were written in the book of Hebrews, the 19th book in the New Testament, saying, “But they actually have their origins in the Old Testament.” In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses was addressing the people of Israel. They were nearing the end of their desert wanderings, and Moses was nearing the end of his life. He knew that there would still be struggles and battles ahead for the people whom he had led to the brink of the land promised to Abraham. And he spoke these words: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Joshua was God’s next chosen leader. He was to lead the people of Israel into this land promised long before to Abraham. And right at the beginning of Joshua’s leadership of this chosen people, God addressed him. God said, “‘No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, I will be also with you. I will never leave you nor forsake you.'”
In 1 Kings, Solomon had just dedicated the new temple. He then blessed the people of Israel with these words, remembering God’s promise: “May the Lord our God be with us as He was with our fathers. May He never leave us nor forsake us.” And in Isaiah 42, we hear the pre-incarnate Christ say, “I will lead the blind by ways they have not known. Along unfamiliar paths I will guide them. I will turn the darkness into light, and I will make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do. I will not forsake them.”
God has made this promise to all those who follow Him in faith. But pastor, you may be thinking, you just said that sometimes our faith is weak. What about then? To answer that, we turn to the words that St. Paul wrote to Timothy in his second letter. He writes: “…here is a trustworthy saying, if we died with Him, we also will live with Him. If we endure, we will also reign with Him. If we disown him, he will also disown us. If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself.”
So I guess this brings us to the real heart of the question that I posed to you at the beginning of this message. How’s your faith doing today? How can we know? To start with, we really have to have an understanding of what faith is. How do you describe faith? Faith. It isn’t something that we can just run down to the store and find on the shelves. You can’t go out and purchase a can of faith. It’s not like an energy drink. You can’t just guzzle a lot of it and expect that your faith is going to go soaring. No. Faith isn’t a decision either. It’s not as though when you’re having a bad day or a bad week or even a bad month or a bad year in your life, you can sit down and through sheer willpower say, “that’s it, I’m just going to have more faith.”
That might work for a little while. But then you start to wonder, is my faith strong enough? Things still don’t seem to be working out. Come on, God, how much more do I have to pray or go to church? How much more do I have to give out of my wallet or give of myself before I can truly feel like I’ve given enough? So faith isn’t something that we decide we’re going to build up on our own. So what is it then? Well, we see a good example of faith in today’s Gospel text. It’s the famous story of those two disciples who are returning to their home after the death of Jesus.
Talk about two guys who are down in the dumps. Their lives have been on an emotional roller coaster during the past week. Remember, it had just been one week earlier that they had perhaps been part of that throng that had witnessed Jesus’ triumphant entry into the holy city. At the very least, they had heard about it. People had been cheering Jesus then. They had shouted, “‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!'”
They possibly also had witnessed Jesus’ angry reaction at the temple, where He had overturned the tables of the merchants and the money changers, saying to them, “It is written, My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” Perhaps they’d even been among that group gathered with the twelve in the upper room when Jesus had washed the feet of His followers. Maybe they had heard Jesus say those words when He took the bread and said, “‘This is My body given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.'” And again, “‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.'”
These would have been high and glorious moments in their lives. Then they had had faith. But just a few hours later, their entire world had been turned upside down. One of Jesus’ own disciples had betrayed Him and He had been arrested. They’d scattered, like all the rest. But it was impossible not to know what had happened next. The man they had followed had been put on trial before the priests, before Herod, and finally before the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate. The crowd, which had only days before cheered him and wanted him to be king, now jeered him and mocked him.
And in a final blow, they demanded that Pilate crucify him. His body had been nailed to a cross with two common thieves, and there he hung. He didn’t there show any of that miraculous power they had seen him use. He suffered, just as a man it seemed. He had died, and others had taken his body down and laid it in a tomb and buried it there. It had now been three days, and now they were headed home. To what they were heading, they really didn’t know. It felt as if their lives had ended there, along with Jesus as He hung on the cross.
Do you know that feeling? Have you experienced the seeming bottom of all that life has to offer? Maybe you’d been riding high, only to have your legs chopped out from under you. And a lot of times, this is of your own doing, isn’t it? You make a stupid move, and it puts you into a hole. It can actually be great in a way for a while. After all, pity parties can be fun. You can find all sorts of other people to blame. You can even get mad at God. Heck, you can sleep in for a couple of Sundays and show Him just how much He’ll miss you now that you aren’t here.
But soon reality crashes in and you realize that there’s really no one to blame except yourself. There are other times, of course, where it’s not directly your fault at all. Then you’re just an innocent bystander, living out your life, maybe even giving glory to God with that life. And like a punch in the gut, something happens that knocks the wind right out of you. It’s at times like that that we can relate to some of the words of the psalmists. It had been King David who first cried out to the Lord in the words of Psalm 22, “‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer. By night, and I am not silent.'”
And again, in Psalm 69, we hear this plea: “‘Rescue me from the mire. Do not let me sink. Deliver me from those who hate me from the deep waters. Do not let the floodwaters engulf me and the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me. Answer me, O Lord, out of the goodness of Your love. In Your great mercy, turn to me. Do not hide your face from your servant. Answer me quickly, for I am in trouble. Come near and rescue me. Redeem me because of my foes.'”
It’s in times like this that we, even as Christians, can begin to doubt our faith. We wonder about picking up our cross. We wonder if we really have it in us to fight the good fight or to run the race. And this has to be the feeling that those two disciples experienced as they walked along that lonely road to Emmaus. But then a stranger appeared alongside them. They really didn’t want to talk with it about anybody else. They were doing just fine, commiserating by themselves. And this guy, this guy seemed clueless. He had no idea what had been going on.
One of them finally said, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” So they tell him the story. It is a faithless story. It is a story filled with sorrow and regret. It is a story capped off with disbelief. They told this stranger about reports from the women who had gone to the tomb early in the morning, only to find it empty. They said that they had seen a vision of an angel who told them that Jesus was alive. Some of the disciples had even returned to the grave. It was empty, as the women had said, but there was no Jesus.
He was gone. He had left them. He had forsaken them. And suddenly out of the mouth of this stranger came these words: “How foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter into His glory?” And then the stranger did something that ought to inspire all of us. He took these two men into the Scriptures. He taught them. Or maybe He just gave them a timely refresher. He taught them all of those things that were written about the Christ from Moses and through all the prophets.
Today, we refer to that teaching as the golden thread, the thread that can be traced back even to the Garden of Eden, through Noah and Abraham, through Isaac and Jacob, through Rahab and Boaz and Ruth, through Jesse and David and Bathsheba, through Solomon and Hezekiah, and eventually to Joseph and to his wife Mary, who had given birth to Jesus, the one called the Christ. Do you remember what it was that was said of these two disciples when the stranger first encountered them? They were kept from recognizing him. At first, they must have thought that he was either incredibly naive or stupid. They were reluctant to share the story of Jesus with him. Their faith in Jesus had been shaken.
But it seems that the more this stranger talked, the more they listened. When they neared their village, the stranger acted as though he were about to go on. But by now, their attitude had changed. Our text says: “Some of you may recognize these words from the opening lines of the evening prayer service.” But I really sort of like the King James Version’s translation of this text just a little bit better. It says, “…but they constrained him.” They didn’t want to let go of this stranger. They wanted to keep him in their presence. And so, the stranger stayed.
“…they gathered around the table to partake of dinner. And the stranger took bread and gave thanks and broke it and began to give it to them. And then two miracles happened.” First, their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus. And then, just as suddenly as He had appeared, He was gone. He disappeared. But by then, everything had changed. These disciples didn’t fall back into their melancholy state. They didn’t go back to their faithless attitude. Instead, they looked at one another and said, “‘Were not our hearts burning within us as He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?'”
And then the end of this text is really just the beginning because they got up and they headed back to Jerusalem. They didn’t know anything else that had happened that day, but they knew that they had to tell the good news. They had to go back and let others know that Jesus was alive. They had seen Him. He had been in their presence. He had not left them. He had not forsaken them. He was arisen.
And what had Jesus done to cause this change? Was it merely in the breaking of the bread? You’ve probably heard this story before in Sunday school. And maybe you or one of the other inquisitive little kids asked this very question. How did they know it was Jesus? And you probably got a very inadequate answer. It was in how He broke the bread. Beloved in the Lord, they knew it was Jesus for the same reason that we know it is Jesus. Because faith has been given and faith has been restored.
Jesus had taken them through the Scriptures and showed them that the Lord is the God who keeps His promises. Through the hearing of the Word and through the work of the Holy Spirit, their trust in God had been restored. All that He had said that He would do had been accomplished through the birth, life, suffering and death of His beloved Son. And now, that very same Son of God had been raised from the dead. He was alive and he was present with them again.
And brothers and sisters, He is present still with us. He is present in the Word and in the sacraments. It is through these God-given things that faith is given. Faith is renewed, restored, and reinvigorated. It is through our firm belief in the promises of God shown to us in the Holy Scriptures that we can trust in God and all that He says that He will do. Because God keeps His promises. Regardless of where you are in your life. Whether your faith is soaring or whether it is weak. Trust in God. Know that He will never leave you and never forsake you.
Remember the words, the promises of our Lord as He spoke to His disciples as He was about to ascend back to heaven: “And surely I am with you always to the very end of the age.” So, how is your faith today? Do you trust in God not to leave you or forsake you? Do you believe in those promises He has made? Are you ready to follow the example of these disciples from the Emmaus Road? Ready to have your eyes and your ears opened anew?
And when they are open, are you ready to share the good news of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world and is now risen? Are you ready to speak of His presence among you? I strongly urge you then. No, like the King James translation, I constrain you. Open the Scriptures. See and hear the Word of the Lord there. Share it with everyone that you can. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
