Third Sunday of Easter - Year A
This Was the Way
Rev. James A. Wickersham

The two disciples were talking about everything that had happened. That is how the Gospel begins. Two of the Lord’s disciples are leaving Jerusalem, going back to where they came from, trying to make sense of it all.

And what are they talking about? Jesus, the one they hoped in, was crucified. And they say it plainly: we were hoping. You can hear the disappointment. You can hear the confusion. There is a sense that something went wrong. And if we are honest, we would have felt the same way. Many people do feel that way when they look at Holy Thursday and Good Friday. It can seem like something went wrong.

There is a lot of talk these days about strange things. UFOs, or what we are supposed to call UAPs. Sightings, things in the sky. Even the government speaks about it more openly now. People begin to wonder, are we being visited? Is there something out there?

But there is something much simpler that we almost never consider. What if it is not something from another world? What if it is us? What if, hundreds or thousands of years from now, human beings have figured out how to travel back? Not just to explore space, but to see history, to be present in the moments when everything changed? You could call it historical tourism.

If it were possible to go back, is there one moment you would choose? I think many of us would go to Jerusalem, not to watch the crucifixion, but to stop it, to run to the garden, to warn him, to pull him away before the soldiers arrive. Because if you love him, that is what you would want to do.

But in the Gospel today, the Lord says something very direct: was it not necessary? Necessary. Not unfortunate. Not a failure. Necessary. This is the way he saves us.

The disciples cannot accept that, so they are walking away. And the Lord walks with them, and they do not recognize him. Because you can be walking with the risen Lord and still not understand the cross. You can believe in him and still think there must be another way, a way to have life without suffering, a way to have the resurrection without the cross.

And so we begin to do the same thing. We begin to walk away. Maybe not physically, but in the way we resist what we would not have chosen: the tension in a marriage, the responsibility we did not choose, the suffering we would never have picked. We say, this should not be happening. And the Lord says, was it not necessary? But this is how he saves. He does not go around the cross. He goes through it.

And everything changes, not when they understand an idea, but when he takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. And then they see.

Because the cross is not just something that happened. It is made present here, at this altar. The same offering. The same gift. This is not a symbol. This is not a reminder. We are brought into the sacrifice of the cross and the reality of the resurrection here.

If it were possible to go back and stand at the cross, most people would say, I would be there. I would not miss it. But you are given that place at every Mass.

So when something else takes its place, when we decide not to be here, what are we choosing? We are not just choosing to skip something. We are choosing not to be there, not to be there when he gives himself, not to be there at the cross, not to be there when he is made known in the breaking of the bread.

We say we would have been there. The question is whether we are here now.

And once the disciples recognize him, everything changes. They return. They go back to Jerusalem, back to the place they were leaving. Because now they understand: nothing went wrong. This was the way.