RVCC Pastor's Sermon

Sermon - April 6, 2008

“Meditation and Communion”

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Luke 24:13-35

Some people say that every Sunday is Easter. Sure - once a year we acknowledge the big one, the Day of the Empty Tomb, with lilies, Cadbury crème eggs, and alleluias. But the other 51 Sundays are equally important – and are even sometimes called little Easters. They remind us that the resurrection really can – and must - impact our world and challenge us to reflect upon Jesus’ continuing presence in our lives.

That would explain why two weeks after the big Easter we are still telling appearance stories here in church. Perhaps the scholars who developed the lectionary – those assigned weekly Scriptural verses – were thinking that maybe, just maybe if they included one more appearance story, one more tale of Jesus being seen and experienced by his disciples, then we – you and I down through the ages - might trust that something similar could and does happen to us.

And so today we focus on a story that only the Gospel writer Luke tells about Cleopus and a friend hightailing it as far as they could get on an afternoon’s walk from Jerusalem – seven miles down the dusty road to Emmaus.

Why were they going to Emmaus? Simple - to get as far away as was humanly possible from the heartbreak of the Holy City. Surely they hoped that by leaving Jerusalem behind they could leave the painful memories behind as well. For them, the searing images and agonized cries of Jesus’ execution still haunted their dreams. For us it may be two week post-Easter, but for them it was Easter afternoon, and they did not believe the empty tomb tales any more than their companions did.

And so they escaped to Emmaus, to that place we go to forget. Unfortunately, doing so was easier said than done because they could not stop talking about what had occurred. It was impossible to tuck away their sad reality into a distant corner in their minds, especially now that Mary Magdalene was circulating that ludicrous story – her feeble attempt to put a positive spin on it all with tales of angels and missing bodies and even whispered speculation of resurrection.

That is why they were going to Emmaus – because nothing made sense any more. People like Mary were going crazy, and they felt themselves close to spinning out of control as well – but here they were talking about it anyway. Were they losing their minds?

“Are we losing our minds?” they asked the stranger who had joined them on the road. And why were they talking about this to a stranger in the first place? And when had he showed up anyway?

"Shalom! What's up, friends?"

What’s up? Doesn’t everybody know the latest?!

"Where have you been, friend?" they ask. "You must be the only one in the whole county who has not heard." But then again, Jerusalem is a big city – and bursting at the seams right now with Passover pilgrims. To Cleopus and his buddy, it might have been headline news, but to others it was just another Roman crucifixion, a side story buried on page 3 of the Jerusalem Gazette. (S. Hoezee)

Clearly this stranger was one of the clueless ones, and so they explained it all as best they could but mostly how the last nail had been driven into Israel’s coffin. They had hoped that Jesus of Nazareth would be the one to stop Roman oppression and make life bearable for the poor, the laboring, and the peasant class in general.

For a while it had seemed so right. They had actually believed all that blessed is the so-and-so rhetoric, all those stories about make love, not war, peace and flowers in your hair. Yes, they had hoped that Jesus would triumph, but since dead people can not achieve much, they had to deal with the depressing fact now that they had made a mistake.

But then, as Scot Hoezee described the incident, the stranger goes from listener to Scripture ace and launches “into a quite serious and thorough Bible study. And after that, the rest of the trek to Emmaus just flew by! With breathtaking sweep and exegetical precision, this anonymous fellow traveler re-tells Scripture's story. It is Israel's story, all right, but the stranger tells it in a quite new way. The last time they'd heard anyone talk about the Bible in such an invigorating a fashion was . . . well, never mind.

Before they knew it they were standing in front of the Motel Emmaus. With a slight wave and a nod the stranger says, "Nice talking with you" and keeps walking. Then Cleopas pipes up, "Sir! Look, the sun is setting which means the thieves along the highway will be coming out soon. It's not safe to travel alone—stay with us at least tonight."

The man agrees, and after having washed the dust of the journey from their faces, hands, and feet, the three find a place to eat. Before they knew what's happening, the stranger reaches for the flat bread, lifting it up in a strikingly familiar way. He then gives thanks, breaks it just so, and hands it to Cleopas and his friend. They knew instantly who he was but just as they are ready to cry out, "Jesus!" he was gone.”

But in that instant, they knew, they just knew that he lived. How could it be otherwise? There, around a table with him, they had talked and wondered and found the stories of heaven on their lips…and as they spoke, they hungered for food and for truth. Their friend lifted the bread in the middle of a memory and, as he tore it, light spilled out and memory danced, and eyes were opened as recognition gasped.

In that moment, all heaven was sucked into the room and, where no words were possible, eyes met, hearts pounded, hands held, and Jesus was there again.” (Seasons of the Spirit)

Maybe it was seeing the scarred hands as he lifted the loaf to heaven. Maybe it was the way he held the bread. Maybe it was the blessing that he said.

Maybe, just maybe, they remembered the last time that he had shared a meal with him. Oh, it seemed so long ago – the loaf of bread, the cup of wine, and then the garden, the kiss – and all the horror that followed. That Passover meal seemed from a different lifetime. What had he said – “this is my body which will be broken for you…

Whenever you share bread like this again (they remembered that part), where two or three or more of you are gathered, I want you to fall into memories of God and memories of me, to share both bread and stories like they mean something, share them because you remember who I am, share them because you have a different understanding of who you are, share them because sometimes “Easter creeps up from behind, like the stranger on the road, and we find Jesus himself right in our midst.” This is the bread of resurrection. Share it so that all may know that Jesus has risen.

COMMUNION BREAD WAS DISTRIBUTED

Of course, Cleopus and his friend dropped everything after the bread incident and ran like the wind back to Jerusalem proclaiming, perhaps in faith but certainly in great high hope, proclaiming the same ludicrous tale that Mary Magdalene had told that very morning, the one they would not, could not, dream was even possible.

He lives – their footfall pounded out the joyous rhythm of it all. His resurrection is real. He is with us still – not in any way we can understand or even make sense of, but he lives.

And so he lives for us. Patricia de Jong notes that “to encounter Jesus on the road and see him in the breaking of the bread is to have the courage to live into the resurrected life…For Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, the Emmaus story is about moving from a hardened heart to a grateful heart, from a life without hope of resurrection to one which is based on that hope.

The brief encounter between Jesus and his friends on the road to Emmaus is a reminder to us that in any moment, in the midst of any experience, the resurrection may be lurking.”

To believe in the resurrection is to have the audacity to every so often take a cup of wine and raise it in a grand and glorious toast and proclaim that resurrection is, well, more – much more than any life after death business. “It is really a way of being in the world, a way of living in relation to everything that is in our lives - to believe in the resurrection is a way of receiving all of life, moment by moment by moment, as a gracious gift from a loving creator God.” (de Jong) Believing in resurrection is to trust that once long ago Jesus raised a cup, blessed it, and wanted so much for his followers to understand that more than anything else they needed to “trust God and trust in the will of God to renew life even in the most mundane, ordinary and difficult moments of our living.” (de Jong)

And so we come to our table to see once more the God who invests our stories with such promise. We come to find the Christ who gives us the voices we need to take on the world as his followers. We come to be gifted by the Holy Spirit with courage and strength to, as Jerry Goebel writes, become “the people called to BE a proclamation of God’s forgiveness and inclusion." We come to this table to raise high the goblet and celebrate the new covenant we have with God – and the new responsibility we have for one another - because of Christ’s death.

COMMUNION CUP WAS DISTRIBUTED.

Please join me in the Communion Blessing;

We go with Emmaus faces, full of surprise and wonder, for God is among us. May our eyes be opened, our hearts untied, our minds unlocked. And through our actions, may the world know that Jesus has risen and see the presence of God in every path of life. Amen.

Sermon - April 6, 2008

“Meditation and Communion”

By Rev. Nancy Foran Luke 24:13-35

By Rev. Nancy Foran
Luke 24:13-35