And Still, Easter

Sermon

As Lindsey noted last week, Easter merits an entire liturgical season. Resurrection is a lot to handle, and so we get seven weeks to mull over the empty tomb, Jesus walking through walls, breaking bread, and eating fish. We get time to digest this feast of a story, and we need that.

Digesting the story of Jesus’ resurrection is exactly what the disciples are doing in this tale of the walk to Emmaus. Neither Cleopas nor the other guy—who for the sake of this sermon we’ll call Bud—neither Cleopas nor Bud had stood at the foot of the cross or had seen the empty tomb. All the news was second hand. But since so many of their friends had been witnesses to Jesus’ death and angels in a tomb, they decided to at least consider that this wild story of resurrection could be true.

So they go for a walk. It makes sense, right? When weird, unsettling, tragic, and extraordinary things are happening all at once, and your head is swirling and your heart is pirouetting and your hands are too fidgety to weave or fish, sometimes the best thing to do is to grab your best friend and go for a walk. And maybe you choose a long walk, so that you can get in all the conversation you’ve been meaning to have.

Cleopas says to Bud, “What do you think is happening?” It’s the kind of question you’re willing to ask your best friend, your vulnerability showing, your uncertainty front and center. When Gregg and I were dating, we got to the point where the relationship seemed pretty serious, and one night I asked him, “Where do you think this relationship is headed?” To which he replied, “Where do you think it’s headed?”

I want to imagine that when Cleopas asked Bud what he thought was happening, Bud gave him a straightforward answer. Maybe he said, “I don’t know.” Maybe he said, “Jesus told us what would happen and now it is happening.” Maybe he said, “You know, there’s a tea shop in Emmaus that makes a great flatbread. Let’s go get some.”

So they head out to Emmaus, for some great flatbread, or because it’s a good long walk, or because Emmaus is, as Frederick Buechner put it, “… wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred.” (The Magnificent Defeat, p. 85)

Do you have a place like that, a place you go when the “world is too much with us, late and soon”?  A spa, maybe, or Cannon Beach, or that hidden bench in Washington Park that only you know about. It’s important that we have those places where we can nurse our wounds, grieve our griefs, tune out the din of the world and just be, for a little while, with our faces lifted up to the sky. Our bodies and souls need respite, and times of loss and hope and confusion require removing ourselves from the everyday and finding space.

The road to Emmaus was that kind of space for Cleopas and Bud. So off they go. And then Luke does this thing that all good storytellers do: he brings in The Mysterious Stranger. Think about it—how many novels or movies or TV shows contain that essential plot point of The Mysterious Stranger? It’s Strider in The Lord of the Rings, Sidney Poitier in Lilies of the Field, Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton. An unknown person enters the scene, and all those around him or her must decide if this person means good or means harm.

At least that’s how it is for us these days. We’re not very trusting of strangers, and if you don’t believe me, just go to the Next Door app to read story after story after story of people seeing strangers on their doorstep or in their driveway. Now on Next Door, most of those people seem to be intent on stealing packages, but that would not be the case in those early days of resurrection.

In the cultural norms of Jewish peasant society in ancient Palestine, the rules about strangers were very clear. One did not call the authorities when a stranger showed up. One did not escort the stranger to the border of the town and tell them to be gone before sundown. When the stranger showed up, one was to show the stranger hospitality.

It goes back to the ancient stories of the people of Israel, when the father and mother of the faith, Abraham and Sarah, had made camp by a grove of oak trees and not one but three strangers showed up. Abraham and Sarah gave them water and fed them, and then the strangers blessed them. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews recalled that story, and admonished the readers of his letter, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

So Cleopas and Bud invite the stranger to walk with them, and now the three of them get to talking. I love Jesus in these post-Resurrection stories—he’s like Trickster Jesus, popping through walls, eating fish, acting like he doesn’t have a clue, which is what he does with the two disciples. “Hey, dudes,” he says, “whatcha talking about?”

It’s really rather brilliant of him. By asking the disciples what’s going on, he is able to know what they understand about the past three days, if they understand yet, if they believe or if they’re just repeating what they’ve heard without believing it. They tell him, and then he starts teaching them. He opens the Bible up for them, although they didn’t really have a Bible.

Because we know the end of this particular story—that Jesus reveals himself to them and then vanishes and then they say, “Were not our hearts burning while he opened the scripture to us?” —because of that, I wonder if their hearts were burning in the moment or if it was just something they realized in hindsight.

Do you know what I mean? It’s like when you’re in the middle of something pretty mundane and you get this sense, this intuition that there is more happening than meets the eye, that you’re in the midst of something holy so you need to pay close attention.

The late Trappist monk Thomas Merton had such an experience and wrote, “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness. …

“This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

“Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. … But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander)

Did Cleopas and Bud have such an experience as they made their way to Emmaus with the mysterious stranger? We may never know. But eventually they arrive at Emmaus, and Jesus, still the stranger, acts like he will keep walking. But the disciples tell the stranger there’s this tea shop that serves really great flatbread and why doesn’t he join them for dinner. After all, it’s been said that by showing hospitality to strangers one may entertain angels. Or saviors.

Jesus says yes. And so they go have dinner, at that tea shop with the flatbread or maybe at Bud’s house or maybe at Cleopas’ bachelor pad. And then the tables turn, as it were. Instead of being the stranger, the guest, Jesus becomes the host. He knows what to do with the bread. He blesses it, and breaks it, and gives it to those disciples, and the curtain rises, and the unseen is seen, and their eyes behold Jesus. And then, being the trickster that he is, Jesus vanishes. Now you see him, now you don’t.

I would think that bread never got eaten that night at that table in Emmaus. I imagine Cleopas and Bud didn’t know what to say when the maître d’ asked them what happened to their dinner companion. I’d bet that Bud’s wife was happy there was more bread for the family.

I must confess I long to have that experience—to be at table with Jesus. To have him pick up bread and bless it and then offer it to me—to me, of all people, neither the best nor the worst but in that wide middle. I long to hear him unpack the scriptures, say why it was that he came, why he had to die, and not just die, but be killed in such an ignominious way. I long to know that I am in his presence the way that Cleopas and Bud were. And then the point of the story hits home. Maybe Jesus is here, with me, and with you too, but like the disciples we don’t know that he is right here.

I suppose if there is one thing I’d like you to take home with you this afternoon, it is this: that we are always in the presence of Christ, whether we recognize it or not. And if there were a second thing I’d want you to take home, it’s that such an idea of Christ being present is comforting to you.

Sometimes we make this faith stuff much harder than it has to be. We chide ourselves for not stepping up each time there’s an opportunity to serve our neighbor. We think we’re spiritual weaklings if we don’t know how to pray. We think we’re not worthy of God’s love because we don’t feel God’s presence. So if and when you feel that way, remember Cleopas and Bud.

Remember that they turned to each other not to get the answers but to ask the questions together. Remember they simply acted hospitable and so encountered Christ. And remember when they realized that their hearts had been burning, that they had received a master class in faith, that they had broken bread with Jesus once again, they did not keep that to themselves, but shared the good news.

And so may our eyes be opened, and may we recognize him.