Lectionary Readings (note, we are using a trial version of the lectionary in Eastertide that has an alternate first reading and Psalm)
In the name of the Risen Lord. Amen.
The two stories from our sacred Scripture that speak most deeply to me and that I cherish are Moses’ encounter with God in the burning bush in Exodus 3 and what we heard this morning from Luke 24 when Jesus meets two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Both stories involve fire – a burning bush and burning hearts. Maybe it was playing with campfires on father-and-son camping trips at the church I grew up in that sparked that interest? Who knows. The passage from Luke is such a rich story that is a revelation into God’s very essence and it is also a mirror that shows us something about what it is to follow this living and loving God.
The story unfolds on a walk, so this sermon will follow that pattern as a walk through the passage. As these two disciples, often assumed to be Cleopas, who is depicted on the far-right side of our reredos, and his wife, were walking home, they encountered a stranger on the road. As the hearers of this story, we know that this person is Jesus, but they did not. This is a common motif in Resurrection stories – Mary Magdelene mistook Jesus for a gardener and the disciples along the lakeshore in John 21 didn’t recognize him.
It makes me wonder about the places in my life where I don’t notice Jesus. What blinds us from seeing Jesus all around us? In the case of these two disciples, perhaps it was their grief. Sometimes grief can overwhelm our senses and consume our thoughts and we overlook how Jesus shows up in casseroles, flowers, and the kindness of friends.
Or maybe it was anger. I know that when I feel “duped” or like I missed something, I can be blinded by over-analysis and trying to figure out what went wrong. Perhaps they were so engrossed in conversation about how the guy who fed the 5,000, healed the sick, and even raised the dead was not, in fact, the Messiah they had been waiting for.
As the psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote about, our minds are meaning-making machines. Without even thinking about it, our brains try to make sense of the world around us. This is the premise of his book, “Thinking, Fast and Slow.” Understandably, they were used to the pattern of not running into people who were publicly executed as they walked home. So often our expectations are set too low to recognize the glory and grandeur of God all around us.
The word they use to describe Jesus is “stranger,” which is a word that means “foreigner” or someone who isn’t from “around here.” When someone, even Jesus, doesn’t fit into the mental model we have for them, it can be so easy to dismiss and overlook them. Though both our Baptismal Covenant and the Rule of St. Benedict instruct us in the importance of seeking Christ in everyone we meet.
They continue walking and Jesus asks what they’re discussing. They’re shocked this stranger doesn’t know, and Jesus asks them “What things?,” referring to his own death and burial. It’s an invitation to ask ourselves how we tell the story of faith. If someone asks you why you come to church, essentially asking “What things” is the Church about, how do you respond? How do you tell the story of faith – both the larger story about God, Creation, and Redemption, and also your personal story of how you have come to know Jesus? We’re not quite able to announce the hire of an Assistant Rector, but that’s coming very soon. I’m so excited about them joining us because they’re a fantastic person and a part of their job will be to help us grow in the areas of evangelism and engagement – words that are chock full of interpretations, but at the end of the day just means they’ll be helping us to immerse ourselves more fully this story of faith.
After the disciples recount their version of the story, they utter perhaps the most despairing line all of Scripture, “But we had hoped.” This is where Jesus was leading the conversation – to their dashed hopes, disappointments, and wounds. So much of the world these days is about projecting strength, minimizing loses, and declaring victory. Sadly, a lot of what is passed off as Christianity has fallen into this trap. But Jesus isn’t here to give out first place ribbons or trophies; he’s here to bind up our wounds and to reassure us that our mattering and belonging were never up to us to deserve. Our love, our dignity, our belonging is given as a gift from our gracious and loving Creator. What the world cannot give, the world cannot take away, thanks be to God.
As you think about how you tell the story of your faith and life, don’t worry about polishing up the rough edges or skipping the hard parts, for that is, most likely, where the power of God will be most visible.
There’s a podcast that I enjoy called “Biblical Time Machine” that interviews scholars about all sorts of archeological and anthropological studies of the Bible. At the end of each episode, the hosts remind the guests that they have a fully-functioning time machine and ask them where and when they want to go. If I were offered a trip, this next part of the story is where I’d choose. After Cleopas and Mary, there’s some evidence that was her name, tell their version of events, the still unrecognized Jesus shares with them his version of the past three days.
Luke simply records it as, “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory? Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” It was the Bible study of all Bible studies, and I would absolutely love to have been there for it. But even in Luke’s frustratingly short synopsis, we get the gist: it’s all about the Cross. As the tech industry might put it, “Suffering is a feature, not a bug.”
The logic of God is that glory comes through suffering, not despite it. The Crucifixion and Resurrection are not opposed, but integral to one another. The Cross without Resurrection is a story told thousands of times by Rome. Resurrection without the Cross is like a movie that really didn’t a sequel. If Jesus had just died of old age or an infected wound, somehow Resurrection would feel a bit out of place. But the glory of Easter works because it meets the depths of Good Friday.
What this means for us is that “both-and,” as complicated as it is, is where we find the truth. Two things can be true at the same time, and once we accept that, we find so much beauty and reconciliation in places we used to have conflict.
By the time Jesus has finishing telling them that he is the story of Scripture, they arrive at a fork in the road. One direction is Emmaus, their home, the other is the road that keeps going. But it’s nightfall and traveling alone at night leaves one vulnerable to predators of both the animal and human variety.
We don’t get to sing it very often because it doesn’t quite work in the morning, but one of the loveliest hymns in the Hymnal opens with “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.” This is what Cleopas and Mary say to this stranger, “Stay with us.” Anytime you feel the shadows closing in, that’s the prayer to have at the ready “Stay with me.”
Jesus comes into their home and then Jesus does what he always does – he becomes the host. It’s always, always, always about Grace. According to cultural norms, Jesus is the guest, but he takes on the role of host. Perhaps you grew up with a version of Christianity that told you that you have to accept Jesus into your heart. Well, Luke makes it clear that’s not how it works. We aren’t the hosts of our lives who decide whether or not Jesus gets in. No, Jesus is the Lord of all Creation – what remains up to us is whether or not we recognize, accept, and enjoy that Jesus already abides with us.
There is nothing to be done in order to get Jesus to be with us – losing 10 pounds, adding a zero to the end of your pledge, saying “yes” to serving on a church committee, showing up at a protest, apologizing to someone you wronged – as beneficial as those things might be, none of them are prerequisites for being welcomed into God’s love. That’s not to say that generosity, forgiveness, or service aren’t essential aspects of what it means to follow Jesus; it’s just that these things flow out of a relationship with Jesus, they aren’t a requirement that has to be met before Jesus will accept or bless us. If you want to tune out of the sermons for the next couple of decades, this is pretty much all I’m ever going to say – it’s all about Grace because Jesus is the host.
Then Jesus uses the pattern that describes his entire life, the Eucharist, and what our lives are for – take, bless, break, give. That pattern could be the topic of many sermons, so I won’t go into the depths of it now, but it’s a pattern you’ll notice in the prayers at Communion and works fairly well as a four-word description of the entire Gospel narrative: take, bless, break, give. And it is at this exact point of the giving that Cleopas and Mary recognize this stranger for who he is.
Jesus is recognized in the act of giving. This is why gratitude is such an important, perhaps the most important, of all spiritual practices. Gratitude is the antidote against selfishness, entitlement, and hopelessness. One lesson here is that paying attention to what God is giving to us is so vitally important to recognizing Jesus in our midst.
And a second lesson is the importance of giving so that others might see Jesus through our witness. In the book of Acts, St. Paul quotes Jesus as saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” and the Prayer of St. Francis, which is a prayer to get into our bones these days, has us to pray that “It is in giving that we receive.” So we would do well to consider how both as individuals and as a congregation, we give so that others might see Jesus.
One final aspect of this story – the burning hearts. As soon as Jesus was recognized, he vanished and they were left with the gift of hindsight. They realized that they knew it was Jesus on the road with them because their hearts were burning. I’ve shared a few lines of poetry before from Elizabeth Barret Browning, and it’s one of my guiding principles. She writes, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only they who seek take off their shoes, the rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
Their burning hearts are a reminder to us that coincidences are just an inadequate description for the working of God in our lives. Those nudges you feel from time to time to reach out to someone in need, to say a prayer for someone, to respond generously to an ask – these are not the result of indigestion or daydreams, they are the promptings of the Risen Jesus. Like Moses who saw a burning bush and said, “I must look at this great sight,” we will encounter the Risen Jesus when we attend to our burning hearts.
This Eastertide, I’ve been talking about Easter as a rebellion and this Emmaus story continues that theme. These disciples are brought into the rebellion against being blind to the work of God by assumptions and expectations, the rebellion against sad stories of dashed hopes, the rebellion against thinking we need to earn God’s love, the rebellion against a consumeristic version of faith that focuses more on accumulating than giving, and the rebellion against coldness of heart. Amen.
