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Let us pray. Open us, eternal one, by the power of your Spirit and wisdom, so that today and all of your days and hours, we might, by grace, die and be raised to new life with Jesus. Your blessed one forever and ever. And we say together, Amen.

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When John F. Kennedy was president and I was nine or ten years old, my mother told me about the 1955 movie starring William Holden and Jennifer Jones. Love is a many splendored thing. She didn't tell me that at that age because she thought I would understand it, but she said, for all that was great about that movie and that song, they tell that William Holden said he thought that before the kissing scenes, Jennifer Jones ate garlic just so he would not enjoy it.

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Now, where my mother heard that, I'm not sure. I don't think she even read the grocery store tabloids. But if you look it up on the internet, as I have done recently, you'll see that the internet tells you exactly the same thing. But even if Mr.

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Holden would have preferred no garlic as they acted from the script, it's still true. Love is a many-splendored thing. And because that's true, we can also assert how grief is a multi-troubled thing.

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The scripture from Luke 24 which Janet has led us in reading and hearing begins with a clear illustration of grief being a multi-troubled thing. Two disciples of Jesus of Nazareth are caught up in grief. They are consumed with it and in it And they can't get out of their minds and their souls even how, under accusation from the religious authorities, Jesus was executed by the empire of Caesar.

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And to add to that trauma, word came to them earlier that day that Jesus' body was no longer in the tomb where he had been laid when a boulder had been rolled in front of a tomb. It was bad enough that he was dead and buried and now he is dead and no longer buried where he was. So you can just figure that eating garlic, had they known about that before a kissing scene, is oh so tame compared to the trauma of martyrdom and troublemakers stealing the martyr's body. Grief is a multi-troubled thing.

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Another unsettling aspect of the story is its described location, and perhaps you have more recent archaeological evidence on this than I do, but it is said that Emmaus was somewhere as a Jerusalem bedroom community or suburb, but archaeologists, at least up until fairly recently, have never been able to be at consensus on its location. It's as if the geographic site of Emmaus today is as elusive as the physical body of Jesus 2,000 years ago after his crucifixion and burial. Cleopas and his unnamed colleague, male or female, we don't know, they're on the road to somewhere thinking that they at least know where they are going multi-troubled in grief as they are.

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At which point the two encounter a third traveler who asks about their being so downcast. They tell him about their multi-troubled grief and he tells them that scripture seems to indicate an authentic, promised Savior, a real-deal Messiah from God who will actually suffer as a major player in the human drama, which is history. The two are not convinced, but they are intrigued by what the third one says.

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And as dusk approaches outside of a cafe, they plead with him to enter there and share a meal with them. He consents, and their multi-troubled grief soon experiences an astounding surprise. At table, when He took the bread in hand and broke it, the two simultaneously realized anew, perhaps as never before, God's love in Jesus was right there among them.

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Now, before finishing too speedily, let's rewind. How was their grief multi-troubled? I suspect in many of the same ways that yours and mine and others' grief have caused us to feel emptiness in the stomach and energy-lessness in the arms and legs and numb aching in the soul. Those are some of the symptoms.

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For a long time, those can be some of the symptoms. Back in 1992, folk and blues and outlaw pop singer John Prine sang a song not too many miles south of here at the Austin city limits, which he had recorded first just the year before. And he introduced the selection with a short explanation. I went to a party.

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Someone making conversation said, There was missing years when Jesus walked the earth. From that incident when He was 12 and stayed behind at the temple in Jerusalem until He started preaching and was baptized 16+ years later. That's what the person talking at the party said tells Mr. Prine, who then comments, Nobody knew where he was.

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One of the most influential and controversial figures in the history of humankind, and nobody knew where he was for 16 years. And then he starts to strum his guitar and sing, Jesus, the Missing Years. The lyrics tell of Jesus traveling around the Mediterranean world for those many years like United States 18, 19, and 20-year-olds who may travel the United States or even Europe, as some young adults have done during the last 100 years or so. Whether anyone traveled at a distance as a young adult or not, being you or me or others,

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The song's refrain comes close to each of us. Charlie bought some popcorn. Billy bought a car. Someone almost bought the farm, but they didn't go that far.

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Things shut down at midnight, at least around here they do, because we all reside down the block inside 23 Skidoo. Mr. Prine here uses a slang phrase from the first third of the 20th century, the 19-teens and 20s and 30s. 23 skidoo means a room or a shelter where you can leave fast when you need to leave fast, when you can get out while the getting is good.

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Cleopas and the unnamed friend are joined by an unnamed stranger who is more familiar with their personhood and multi-troubled grief than they imagined. Living at 23 Skidoo as they basically were, they are headed out of Jerusalem on their way to a place that's somewhere somewhere out there basically though it's anywhere another temporary 23 skidoo in the words of John And they have no idea where Jesus is until at the cafe the bread is broken and offered to them.

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In 1983, poet Mary Oliver wrote In Blackwater Woods and the concluding lines of that poem are these: Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in the world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal, to hold that against your bones, knowing that your own life depends on it, And when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

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I don't know about you, but I then ask, well, then what? Like Cleopas and the unnamed friend long ago, even in our multi-troubled grief, even in our multi-troubled anxiety, For instance, in a time when a sitting U.S. president shouts bellicose threats and ultimatums, even in such times, with so many in danger, we are transformed still this very day, friends, and beyond.

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Shaped by that light of love which, according to this story, changes somewhat. Yes, the light of love was known and embodied in Jesus, who, to the thinking of Cleopas and his friend, was actually lost again. How possible is that?

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And yet, through a mystery as unpredictable as a stranger joining them on their hike to somewhere, maybe to another 23 skidoo, That stranger knows Scripture, describes God's beloved's suffering, and breaks a loaf of bread to share with them. The light of love has truly and stunningly changed somewhat. Call it resurrection, if you choose.

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The light of love is mysteriously now shining also through Him, Jesus, and them. Through Cleopas and the unnamed, who just might be you and me and others, even everyone. Still flawed, often still wandering, still grieving, still anxious, still downcast. we also experience how God's love in this Jesus is able to find even us over and over to transform us with love anew for each person Jesus loves which is everyone and to guide us

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That's how and why we are found that we might be guided to all the places in God's Spirit that Jesus leads. From our twenty-three skidoo some places to God's every places. You and I may not can explain with logic and confidence exactly such a mysterious experience amid all that challenges and discourages and yet when the bread is broken aren't we reminded, aren't even we reminded how we are each known and claimed for serving wherever God's Spirit is leading us.

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Wherever. And if that's as true as Cleopas and friend experienced than in any given day, in any context or setting, however grievous, anxious, or maddening we experience the world to be, this Jesus finds us still and makes known to us again God's new life for us and for everyone.

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It's no wonder, is it, that they left that cafe overjoyed to report and to live according to the experience that changed them forever. How similar to Cleopas and friend might we just be All honor and praise be to God.