In the name of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Amen.
If
you were here last Sunday, you know that I wasn’t. I was on vacation and
worshiped over at First Methodist, after all, the Wesley brothers were Anglican
priests. I’ve taken the Sunday after Easter off for several years in a row now,
and each Sunday after Easter the Gospel text is always the story of Jesus
appearing to disciples, minus Thomas, who doesn’t, at first, believe that the
Jesus is Risen. Since I haven’t preached on that text in several years, as I
sat in a pew over at First Methodist and listened to a fine sermon by their
pastor, I couldn’t help but have some ideas on how I would have approached that
text. When I got home, I wrote down the ideas that came to me and came up with
six different sermon themes based on that text.
And
that’s how these texts that we hear during the Easter season are – they are so
rich, so deep, so full of meaning. Today’s Gospel text, often referred to as
the “Road to Emmaus” story is certainly one of those texts with a multiplicity
of interpretations. This Resurrection appearance of Jesus is one of the most
well-known, and is a favorite of mine. It shows the Gospeller Luke’s masterful
story-telling ability, as it’s one of the most well-crafted stories in any of
the gospels.
What
makes it such a compelling story is that there are so many places for you to
plug into the story. For some, the conversation on the road between these two
disciples and Jesus is the most captivating part of it. For others, it might be
the turn from dejection to hope. Still others will focus in on the sacred meal
that Jesus shares with them. Instead of me telling you what to take away from
this story, I want to let the story grab you however it does. I’ll explicate a
few of the themes in this passage, but let this story capture your imagination.
Take the bulletin home today and reread this passage each day this week. Live
with the story and see what it has to say to you.
One
of the first ways in which this Emmaus story can connect to our modern lives is
through the sense of disappointment that these two disciples have. They were
walking and talking, and a stranger approaches them and says “What things are
you talking about?” They’re stunned by this question – what else would anyone
be talking about other than the brutal crucifixion which had taken place; how
when everyone gathered for the Passover celebration, there ended up being a
midnight arrest and trial which condemned a Galilean peasant to death for being
an enemy of the state. It would be as if on September 12, 2001 someone asked
“Anything new going on?” And then Jesus asks them a very poignant question:
“What things?”
Jesus,
of course, knew what they were talking about, but he doesn’t act on the
assumption. Rather, he has them name what these “things” are. Jesus invites us
to name our feelings, our thoughts, our interpretation of things. And so they
tell the story, as they saw it. And utter perhaps the most depressing sentence
in the entire Bible – “But we had hoped.” These “things” deflated their hope,
these “things” made them despair, these “things” caused them to question their
faith.
What
things do that to you? I’ll tell you that I very much want to believe in the
goodness of the human heart, but I’ve seen about all of the images of Syrian
refugees, and especially starving children, that I can handle. I want to be
proud of the society that I live in, but I’ve heard too many stories about a
nation that refuses to have a serious conversation about gun ownership after
children are slaughtered in an elementary school. I want to put my full trust
in God, but my fears of scarcity mean that sometimes I make sure that I have
enough in my savings account before I make sure that our local charities have
enough funding to do their important work in this community.
What
things of this world disappoint you? What things make you lose hope? What thigns
make you question your faith? Notice that these disciples are invited to name
these hope-killing things to Jesus, and then Jesus is able to work with them
through these fears and disappointments. God is waiting to have that
conversation with you. It’s quite alright, even appropriate, to tell God how
you are disappointed with God, how the world crushes your hopes, how you
struggle to believe. One way that you might read this passage is by seeing it
as an invitation to name those “things” to God in prayer.
Another
way that you might internalize this Scripture is by noticing the fact that a
relationship with Jesus comes through hospitality to the stranger. The two
disciples were nearing their home and were concerned about this fellow traveler
– it was almost nightfall, when the thieves would start to position themselves
along the road. It was only by inviting the stranger into their home to break
bread that they encountered the Risen Lord. And this is something that we
consistently read in the Gospels – that after the Resurrection, people do not
immediately recognize the Risen Jesus. For whatever reason, he appears
unrecognizable to them. But in each situation, only when the person enters into
a relationship with this stranger do they realize that it is actually Jesus in
their midst.
I’ll
never forget when I was in DC, I was walking downtown with a colleague and we
walked by a homeless person on the sidewalk. This was not at all and odd sight
to see downtown, whether its downtown Salisbury or downtown Washington. And my
friend stopped and said, “Hang on, I’m pretty sure that was just Jesus that we
passed.” And so he went back to smile and give him a few dollars. As Jesus
himself told us, how we treat the least of these – the sick, the homeless, the
hungry, and those in prison is how we treat Jesus. We find Jesus most often not
in the Board Room on the 60th floor, not in City Hall or Congress,
not even always at church. But consistently, Jesus can be found at Rowan
Helping Ministries, at Piedmont Correctional, at the unemployment office, at
the VA hospital.
I
truly have no idea why this is the way that it is. You’ll have to ask God about
it for yourself. But it is a simple fact of our faith that Jesus is present
with and found among the lost, the rejected, the poor, the outcast, the
vulnerable. So if you want to have a more vibrant faith, if you want to know
Jesus more in your life, if you want to see the Risen Jesus with your very own
eyes, you’ll need to start hanging out with the sort of people that Jesus hung
out with. This Emmaus story shows us that experiences of the Risen Lord come
after we show hospitality to the stranger in need.
You
might also see in this passage that it takes an experience for these disciples
to come to see the power of Resurrection in their lives. It’s a reminder that
you cannot argue people (or yourself) into faith, you can’t read your way to
believing, you can’t show others how to have faith, you can’t make yourself
believe. Instead, for faith to take root, it must be experienced. Jesus opened
Scripture to them, and they still didn’t get it fully. Early in the Gospel
according to John, Jesus invites those who wish to follow him to “Come and
see.” And that’s how faith works.
Faith
doesn’t come because you have the right thoughts, or because you go to the
right church, or because the priest says the right words or wears the right
vestments. No, faith comes when you, as an individual, have a personal
experience of the Risen Lord. The moment that it all “clicks” for these
disciples is when they shared a meal together. This is one of the reasons why
we, in The Episcopal Church, believe that it is important to have a Eucharistically
focused church. Other than the Roman Catholic church, there isn’t another place
in Salisbury where you’ll find Communion every week. And it’s because we have
come to experience and trust that when we break bread together, as Jesus did,
that Jesus shows up.
The
Eucharist is something that God does for us, which is what makes it so profound
and so important to partake of regularly. You all know that Holy Week is a busy
time in the church. In Holy Week, I took part in thirteen liturgies, 9 of which
had Communion. And I’ll tell you, by steeping myself in the Eucharist, I was so
much more attune to God’s grace and peace. When I go to Sewanee and partake in
daily services of Eucharist, it gives me a grounding that my soul longs for. The
Eucharist isn’t just “another style of worship,” it is the Biblical pattern for
encountering the Risen Lord. Pray to God for an experience of faith. And every
chance you get, break bread in the name of Jesus and encounter the love of God.
The
final aspect of this passage that I’ll make note of is the disciples’ statement
“were not our hearts burning within us.” Of course, there are many other ways
for you to engage with this passage that I haven’t covered, so this is the
final point of the sermon, not the last point to be made by this Emmaus story.
I wonder: what is burning
in your heart? The disciples, upon reflection, realized that the Spirit was
burning within them the whole time. But for some reason, they couldn’t
recognize or act on it. Each of you has some flame of the Spirit burning in
you. God is calling each of you to do something, to witness to the Resurrection
in some way. How has God been tugging at your sleeve? What things do you keep
seeing and maybe are starting to wonder if it’s more of a divine nudge than a coincidence?
I can’t answer that for you, but use this text as an invitation to explore the
burning that you feel in your heart. Trust that it’s God stirring within your
soul.
There’s
a wonderful depiction of this Emmaus meal in a painting by Rembrandt. In the
image, the Risen Christ sits at a table with three other people around him. One
is a disciple with his hands clasped in awe and wonder, as if to say “Welcome,
my Lord.” The other disciple has a look of shock and doubt on his face, perhaps
either regretting that he didn’t see it sooner or being stuck in unbelief of
what is in front of his very eyes. And there is also a young servant near the
table who is going about his work, completely oblivious as to what is
happening.
These
three characters represent the possible range of our responses to the
Resurrection. Like the servant, we can be completely ignorant of the
Resurrection and live our lives without giving a thought to it. We can be like
the shocked disciple that for reasons of skepticism, fear, or a need to
understand everything, can’t fully embrace the Resurrected life that is in his
midst. Or we can be like the disciple who is caught up in the glory, awe, and
wonder of the Resurrection.
Each
of us will have to decide which of these people we will be. Use this Emmaus
story this week as a meditation to go deeper in your faith. Read and reread
this story and see how God will speak to you through it. Fantasize with it and think about how you would have acted in this story. What aspects of this
Emmaus story will linger in your imagination? What parts of it will lead you to
awe and wonder? How will you experience the power of Jesus’ Resurrection this
week? May God be with you as you embark on your own Emmaus journey of
encountering the Risen Jesus this week. Amen.
