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“You’re Invited” Jane Field
Luke 24:13-35
Ask congregation
to read along in Bibles, as story is so integral to sermon.
I. Introduction
A. It may surprise you that almost all of
the 24th chapter of Luke’s gospel—the last chapter of the gospel
that tells the story of what happened the first Easter-- is about the tension
between the themes of resurrection and disbelief (!?!)—the women
perplexed at the empty tomb on Easter morning, the story we just heard of the
two walking on the road Easter afternoon who do not recognize the risen Jesus, and
finally, the story of the frightened disciples in
B. It’s understandable, really. 2,000 years later, most of us still
have a hard time reconciling the good news of Easter with our own disbelief.
C. Certainly true for the 8th
graders in our confirmation program (and not just this year, but most every
year). Inevitably, one of the hardest
things these students struggle with is what they believe about Jesus—who he was
(and is), what his life meant, if all that the Bible says about him is
true. When they sit down to write their
faith statements after a year in the program, the most likely place they get
stuck is on the Jesus “stuff.” (And for
whatever reason, the miracle of walking on water causes more angst among them
than just about anything. “Jesus seems
like he was a really nice guy, who said some important stuff, but there’s no
way he really walked on water…..oh yeah, and I believe he is the Son of God.”) Huh?
D. Last year, this struggle was so evident
to some of the Elders who examined the students, that they brought their
concerns to me, and we engaged in a challenging dialogue about our confirmation
curriculum, the readiness of someone as young as 13 to articulate a meaningful
Christology, and what it means to vote “yes” to receive these newest members
into church membership if they don’t really demonstrate a complete
understanding of what it means to say they “trust in Jesus Christ as their Lord
and Savior and promise to be his faithful disciple.”
E. What many of us concluded through the
course of our conversation was that while we were focused on a group of 8th
graders in our church family, the tension, struggle, doubt and uncertainty about
just who Jesus was and is, could probably be found in a whole lot of the
grown-ups around here, as well.
F. It also became clear that the
Presbyterian confirmation curriculum committee (and you just KNOW they had a
committee—for God’s sake, they’re Presbyterians!), must have struggled with
these same issues. Unfortunately, the
way they chose to handle it was to leave it out of the curriculum altogether,
and just focus on the meaning and responsibilities of church membership,
basically assuming that kids would already have a solid Christ-centered faith
in place before they began the confirmation process. Yeah, right.
G. Enter Mac MacGregor. And Mac being Mac, the first thing he did was
to scare the crackerjacks out of last year’s confirmation class. I don’t think he meant to. Or maybe he did. But he sure got their attention. They walked out of their examination last
spring with white faces and wide eyes: “There was some really tall guy in there
with a deep voice who kept asking us about Jesus! And then he said he was going to buy us some
book, and after we read it, he was going to take us out to
H. Of course, the “some guy” was Mac. And the book was C.S. Lewis’ “Mere
Christianity.” And he made good on his
promise—not just to those boys, but to this year’s class, as well. He gave each of them a brand new copy of the
book to keep and read. And he came to
our class not once, but many times, to be my co-teacher, and to witness with
his presence, his questions, and the story of his own faith journey to this
group of 14 kids, including one whom he mentored. And David and I, with Mac’s input, re-vamped
our version of the confirmation curriculum to include 9 hours of class time on
the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. And yes, they read at least part of Lewis’
book, and Mac came to class to lead them in a discussion of why that book is so
important to him, and what it meant to them.
I.
I
did see a difference when it came time this year for the students to write
their faith statements—but the tension and the struggle, the doubts and the
questions about the “Jesus stuff” had not disappeared completely—and, of
course, you’ve probably noticed that at least a couple of the statements do
mention the dreaded “walking on water” miracle as a stumbling block to the
faith.
J. Some comforting news in all of this is
that this difficulty with the “the Jesus stuff” is not new—in fact, if you
believe the four gospels, it’s been around since the very first Easter
morning. In the stories they tell of the
40 days after Jesus’ death, we see that he must work to overcome his followers’
lack of belief after the resurrection.
Mary at the tomb mistakes the risen Lord for a gardener. (oopsy-doodle!) Peter, while out fishing, sees some guy
walking on the beach and fails to recognize him as Jesus. (My bad, Lord.) And Doubting Thomas just refuses to believe
until he touches Jesus’ wounds for himself.
(ewwww)
K. The story we heard this morning, of the
two who were walking on the road to Emmaus, is one more example of people on
that first Easter day who just didn’t get “the Jesus stuff.” Jesus himself joins up with them on the road
and walks seven miles with them, and still they don’t recognize him—at least
not at first. But eventually, their eyes
were opened, and they recognized him.
II.
In
fact, the story of the road to Emmaus can actually be a guide for those of us
struggling with the “Jesus stuff.” It
can help us know where and how to look in order to discern Jesus’ presence in
our lives. Because the things that
happened to the two friends walking down that road, what opened their eyes and
helped them see who Jesus was, can happen to us, too. You see, we don’t have to look for Jesus
floating around on some faraway throne in the clouds (or walking across the
surface of
A. The first thing that happened on the
Emmaus road—that can serve as a model for those of us not sure where to look
for the risen, living Christ in today’s world-- was a heart-to-heart-to-heart
conversation. When the story opens,
Cleopas and his travelling partner (probably his wife), are walking down the
road, deep in conversation with each other—the Greek word actually means
“communing” with one another, sharing with one heart. They are talking about what has happened to
Jesus—about their doubts, their fears, their questions, their grief. And in the midst of this talk, Jesus comes
close to them-literally and figuratively.
That is because Jesus is a partner in every conversation where people
contemplate and discuss his significance, even when those conversations contain
disbelief, doubt, disappointment. So we
shouldn’t be afraid of giving voice to our doubts, our questions, our
disbelief—when we talk about them with each other, that is when Jesus
will draw near to us. Barbara Brown
Taylor, in her sermon “Blessed Brokenness,” notes that the Bible is clear on
this: Christ does not limit his post-Resurrection appearances to those with
full confidence in him. He comes to the
disappointed, the doubtful, the disconsolate.
He comes to those who do not know their Bibles, who do not recognize him
even when they are walking right beside him.
He comes to those who have given up and are headed back home. And notice what Jesus does (and doesn’t
do). He doesn’t launch at them (or at
us) with a tirade about how blind they are, or how they’ll be doomed to hell
unless they start believing in him and “get saved” ASAP. Instead, he listens carefully to them, really
listens, and lets them tell their story.
Here, in these heart-to-heart(-to-hearts), is a place where we will meet
and see Jesus—even if our eyes don’t recognize him in that moment, he is there.
1. Another important thing to notice about
these conversations, is that Cleopas and his wife are walking while they
are talking. This is important. Walking requires us to slow down—to, as Henry
David Thoreau puts it in his essay “Walking,” to “saunter” (origin of
word—Middle Ages, people who went about the countryside asking for charity to
fund a trip to the Holy Land (“a la Sainte Terre”) were eventually called
Sainte-Terrers, saunterers, Holy Landers).
Unfortunately, in today’s hectic world, few of us have the time to take
long, slow walks, to go sauntering. The
schedules of even our youngest children require rapid transport to get from
activity A to activity B. We are moving
so rapidly down life’s road that we fail to notice what is actually happening
within us and around us. But when we
slow down and walk and talk, really talk and really listen to each other as we
saunter along toward
B. The next thing that happens on the road
to Emmaus, is that Jesus teaches about the Bible. This is important, but it is not enough by
itself. Just words, just “head-knowing”
will never be enough to make the risen Lord real and present in our experience
right now. It wasn’t enough for Cleopas
and his wife either. Even after he had
explained all of the Scriptures to them, starting with Moses, they still did
not recognize him. As a Benedictine monk
named Father John put it, “It’s like trying to get to know a person by having a
friend tell you about them. You still
won’t really know them until you meet them in person.” However, the study of Scripture is essential
to our understanding the Jesus we do eventually meet. Remember that Cleopas and his wife, upon
recognizing Jesus later in the story, immediately remember how they felt when
he was teaching them about the Bible as they walked down the road. For us, too, Bible study can be a place where
our hearts are warmed and readied for encounters with the living Christ.
C. As their seven-mile walk draws to an end,
and Cleopas and his wife are nearing their house, they do something that makes
all the difference. They invite the
stranger who has been travelling with them to come inside to stay and to eat
with them. He had appeared as if he were
going to travel on down the road, but they “constrain” him—a rather strong word
in the Greek that suggests just how strongly they felt about wanting him to
stay, even though they haven’t yet recognized him for who he is. This is an act of ideal discipleship. Jesus has taught and shown his followers by
example that following in his Way consists of relentless, surprising acts of
hospitality toward strangers and outcasts.
The training pays off and they invite this stranger in. The same Messiah who was born in a stable
because there was no one who would take him in, is now compelled by these
would-be disciples to stay the night in their home. There is an echo of the Scriptural verse: “Do
not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some have
entertained angels without knowing it.” [Hebrews 13:1-2] As believers, we always need to be on the
lookout to see Jesus in the face of the stranger. A time in my life when this has always been
proven true is on the annual high school mission trip to
D. Once the Emmaus road travelers had
convinced the stranger to have dinner with them in their home, it would only be
a matter of moments before they finally recognized who had been present with
them all day long. They all sat down to
the dinner table, and in a surprising twist, their guest suddenly began to act
as if he were the host—he picked up the loaf of bread, blessed and broke
it. And it was then that their eyes were
opened, and they recognized him. Their
discernment of the risen Lord did not happen in the solitude of their
individual hearts, and nor does ours. It
happens in the mess and noise of table fellowship with strangers. It happens around this table, whenever we
break bread together in the Lord’s Supper.
Jesus is here, risen, present, alive, with us. And not just here, at our church family’s
dinner table, but out in the world at every table where every time we break
bread and drink from a cup and share this food with others, especially with
strangers, that is when we encounter Jesus in our world today, and our eyes are
opened and we recognize him. And they,
and we, realize that Jesus has been present long before we finally see.
III. Four simple, ordinary, everyday places
and activities, where even today, we can encounter the living, risen
Jesus. Heart-to-heart talks on long
walks; the study of our sacred texts; extending hospitality to strangers; and
sharing common meals. He is there. He is here.
What we learn from the Emmaus story is that we should expect Jesus to find us. The story challenges us
to see that it isn’t our unshakeable faith or deep spirituality that connects
us with the risen Christ, but our smallest gestures of friendship and
hospitality. The “Jesus stuff,” it turns
out, is simple, but it has far-reaching
implications. Never again will we walk
along the road believing we are alone.
Never again will we read scripture or break bread together without
remembering that the risen Christ is alive in our midst. This experience transforms us from doubters
into witnesses. When our eyes are opened
we not only recognize Jesus for who he is, but we recognize ourselves as
believers. And, just as he did on that
first Easter 2,000 years ago, Jesus vanishes as soon as we see Him. For though our plea to him is “Stay with us,”
his response is always “Follow me.”
In closing, I
would like to use a prayer loosely based on “A Collect For the Presence of
Christ” from The Book of Common Prayer.
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, stay
with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the
way, kindle our hearts and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are
revealed in our heart-to-heart conversations about you, in our study of
Scripture, in our expressions of hospitality to strangers, and in the breaking
of bread. Grant this for the sake of your
love. Amen.