“The Road From Jerusalem”
Rev. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2009
Luke 24: 1-35
Earlier this week, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released a survey of the reasons people leave their religion. Despite the high profile disagreements over church policy in many denominations, including ours, and despite high profile scandals in some churches, the study found that 75% of the Catholics and Protestants who have left their religions to become unaffiliated in recent years did so because they drifted away from the church, rather than from some break over some issue or policy. The folks at the Pew Center would have loved to have interviewed the main subjects of our second lesson for today. Two men who began to drift away from the center of their religion on the very day that Jesus was raised from the dead.
Last Sunday, we read about Doubting Thomas. He followed his head and asked for empirical proof that Jesus was alive. Today, we read St. Luke’s account of two men who followed their hearts, and their hearts led them to leave Jerusalem on Easter of all days. What happened to them on their walk from Jerusalem can impact our walk as well. Continuing now in reading the 24th chapter of Luke’s Gospel.
How does the church carry the excitement of Easter Sunday into the months that follow?
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that on Easter, “God takes us out of time and makes us feel eternity.” But once you’ve had a glimpse of eternity, its difficult to go back to reality of the time in which we live. Especially when that reality includes economic anxiety, global conflict and spreading health concerns. We had a full house here on Easter Sunday, but we know that many of the folks who were here won’t be back for a long while.
And so the challenge of the church in the Season that follows Easter Sunday is to communicate the meaning of the Easter experience both in and out of the church. If we succeed, we sustain ourselves for the year. If we don’t find a way to harness the energy of Easter, then we too might start to drift.
In some ways we are like Cleopas and his unidentified colleague who walked the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter Sunday. Luke tells us that as they walked, they talked together about the incredible events that had occurred in Jerusalem that every morning. They were trying to make sense out of what had occurred.
Luke suggests that the two men were disappointed by the news they heard that Jesus had been put to death and they did not believe the rumors that he might have risen from the dead. They said, “We had hoped that (Jesus) was the one to redeem Israel.” Of course, Jesus had been raised from the dead to redeem Israel and people everywhere, but these two men had a particular expectation of how Jesus would redeem Israel and that did not include his being crucified first, despite Jesus’ predicting he would be killed. So when Jesus was lifted onto a cross in Jerusalem rather than to a throne they were disappointed, they discounted the news and left for Emmaus.
Biblical historians don’t know all that much about Emmaus, where it was exactly or what it was like, other than that it was seven miles from Jerusalem. But Emmaus has taken on metaphorical significant for theologians. Frederick Buechner writes that Emmaus represents for us wherever we go to escape pain and disappointment. We all have an Emmaus. Whether it’s a hike, a television show, a book, a trip, wherever we go to escape from our problems and pain. For the two men in our lesson, they couldn’t quite believe in their hearts that Jesus was raised and still present in the world and in their disappointment left.
How does the church communicate what it means that Jesus is still present in the world? God suffered and died, but did not stay dead. The good news of Easter, news that connects it to Pentecost, is that death is conquered and Jesus is present with us. That is why Jesus appears to Mary, to his disciples and to men like Cleopas before ascending to Heaven. That is why we have seven Sundays in Easter to celebrate the Easter story, so that we do not forget that Christ is alive.
Christ remains spiritually present with us. If Easter is only about a single day, without renewal, than over time we might drift away from our God and be disconnected with each other.
But we have a season of Easter, not just a day, but a seven week season. And throughout the year, every Sunday is a mini Easter. Look at your bulletin, it lists that this “is a Service for the Lord’s Day.” The weekly Christian Sabbath is the first day of the week because each Sunday celebrates the resurrection and the spiritual presence of Christ. During Lent we sing the hymn, “The Glory of These 40 Days,” but if you get out a calendar you will find 46 days in Lent because we do not count Sunday as Lenten days of repentance and fasting. Each Sunday is a day of feasting because it remembers the spiritual presence of Christ.
Many of you brought friends or family members here for Easter. Please let them know that the spirit of Christ is not just present at Bradley Hills one day a year. If we do our worship right, we communicate the presence of Christ to all who join us every time we gather on the Lord’s Day because every Sunday is a Resurrection Sunday.
One lesson from the Road to Emmaus story is that we don’t always see the core of a person the first time we encounter them. Over the past few weeks, the world has been overjoyed to discover the music sensation of Susan Boyle, the Scottish women who performed on British TV. When the judges and public first looked at Susan, they were very skeptical. She did not look the part of a music star. But as the Emmaus story indicates, appearances can be deceiving. In Susan Boyle, the world has come to recognize the voice of an angel in experiencing her song.
According to our text this morning, when the two men walked the road from Jerusalem they came upon the risen Jesus. The men did not recognize him and Jesus pretended not to know what had just occurred in Jerusalem so that he could reveal himself later. This has become a popular formula in Hollywood, where heroes like Aragon in Lord of the Rings, Peter Parker in Spiderman or Clark Kent in Superman feigning ignorance in the narratives only to reveal themselves later in dramatic form.
Jesus revealed his identity later that evening when the two men invited him to dinner. He took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. You recognize that pattern from Jesus’ feeding of the 5000, from the Last Supper and from our communion order. It was in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus.
On April 24, the San Antonio Spurs basketball team got crushed by the Dallas Mavericks. It was the lowest point total a Spurs team has ever had in the NBA playoffs. After the game in the locker-room, everyone expected Spurs coach Gregg Popovich to simply unload on the team in anger. Popovich entered the locker room and instead of berating the team, he offered to buy them dinner. The team was stunned. Popovich said what the Spurs needed to do was to recognize each other on the court and the best way to recognize each other was through the breaking of bread. Or as Popovich called it, “participating in one’s own resurrection.”
The resurrection of Jesus became real to Cleopas and his friend in the experience of sharing a simple meal in a way that the dramatic news they heard in Jerusalem did not. It’s a good example of how God tends to reveal Godself more often in subtle ways. Not in loud shouts but soft whispers. Not in mighty kings but in humble carpenters. Not by directly confronting us as much as revealing Godself over time through scripture, sacraments and the Holy Spirit, and sticking with us until we get it.
As we prepare to break bread this morning and to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, we will proclaim the saving death of the risen Christ. Each time we celebrate communion we commune with the spiritual presence of Christ. But not everyone connects with the holy in the same way. Not everyone comes to Bradley Hills for the same reasons. If we are going to grow as a church and fulfill our calling to serve this community, we need to find ways to keep our congregation and visitors engaged. We must find ways to help people connect with the presence of Christ in ways that they can relate to. For the men on the road to Emmaus, the news in Jerusalem didn’t do it for them. The testimony of the women in their group, people they knew personally, didn’t cut it. Even meeting Jesus personally didn’t convince them. But they recognized the presence of the divine in the experience of a meal.
According to Luke, when the two men on the road from Jerusalem realized that Jesus was alive they began to remember that their own “hearts had been burning” earlier that day on the road when the person they now recognized as Jesus was opening up the meaning of the scriptures to them. Luke reminds us that communing with God helps us remember our deeper selves. The two men recognized Jesus as he broke bread, but they also recognized something in themselves in that moment. A deeper understanding of grace that compelled them to return to Jerusalem. They followed their hearts back to face their old colleagues, their relationships, their loss of expectations, their fears, their disappointments – whatever it was they had run from on Easter. And they shared their own resurrection story of meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus and breaking bread with the Lord.
Maybe Easter came and went this year and you didn’t feel the power and joy of the resurrection. There might have been something too distracting or serious going on in your life. Or perhaps you were too busy planning for Easter Sunday to enjoy Easter Sunday. The example of the road to Emmaus shows that we don’t only have one chance to experience, celebrate and benefit from the resurrection. We are to experience it whenever we open God’s word, or commune with God through the Lord’s Supper or worship God prayerfully.
Ultimately, we either run away from our problems or face them. The Easter season is a time to face the loss of expectations, the disappointments and the challenges of relationships renewed by the powerful news that Jesus is alive.
I find it encouraging in my moments of doubt that these followers of Jesus near Emmaus needed some time in order for their hearts to internalize the meaning of the resurrection. Only then could they return to Jerusalem and share their story of experiencing the risen Christ. The presence of Christ helped them see that their place was within the community of faith.
We must be a church that finds ways to help those who come to this space experience the presence of Christ.
Each worship service this month has a moment in it in which we will highlight what it means to belong to the community of Christ.
We will have two celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, where Christ’s spiritual presence is central. We have two baptisms, when we celebrate new arrivals into God’s covenant community and remember our own baptism. We will celebrate confirmation and the professions of faith of a dozen young people as they join actively in our church membership. And this morning we welcome nine new friends as members into Bradley Hills. Friends who have responded to Christ’s calling for them to join the presence, the witness and the collective journey known as Bradley Hills.
Why do we try to communicate the excitement of Easter beyond one Sunday? Jesus himself expresses the thought the best in the town of Bethany near Jerusalem. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Both the resurrection that we celebrate at Easter and the life we lead each day join in Christ.
The resurrection of Jesus and the lives we lead as Christians are inextricably wed because our lives are changed by what happened on Easter. And so each time we celebrate the Lord’s Day we celebrate Easter.
When we live that, love that, lead with that and leave that impression on the lives of those we touch, we bring the joy of Easter with us. As a wise Scottish writer put it, “Belong to God and become a wonder to yourself.” And to the world as well.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
