Sermon - 3d Sunday of Easter (4/26/2020)
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
Cleopas and his unnamed friend experience something no one has ever experienced before: a dead person talking about the experience. (We know about near-death experiences, but Jesus was really dead. In Jesus God has not only embraced everything that you and I have experienced as part of the human condition, but Jesus has experienced the part of being human that you and I have not yet experienced, and that’s death. And now here is a living and talking person who has actually been through death.)
The silence of the dead, for the Romans, was the whole point of crucifixion. We have no king but Caesar; and we will make sure of it by killing anyone who might be otherwise. You can’t be the king because now you’re dead. You can’t speak of an alternative to the kingdom of this world because you’re dead. And dead men don’t talk.
But God has other ideas. And now, thanks be to God, a dead person is among us, living, breathing, speaking.
Cleopas says to him: Are you the only person who doesn’t get what has just happened? In fact, he’s speaking to the one person who does understand what has just happened. And so Cleopas tells the dead person what it’s like to lose hope. Cleopas tells a person who has been murdered what it’s like to be confused. Cleopas tells a person who’s been betrayed and abandoned what it’s like to be disappointed.
And how does the dead person respond? If it were me, I might want to share how hopeless and confused and disappointed I was when everything was lost. If it were someone else – well, I don’t want to mention any names, but I can hear it now: “You know, I was treated very unfairly by the Sanhedrin, very unfairly. It was a witch hunt. Probably nobody ever was treated so unfairly. Kooky Caiphas said the people loved Barabbas more than me, but that was fake news.” And you know, if Jesus had said those things, they woud all have been true. He had legitimate grievances.
But that’s not what Jesus says. He does not complain that he suffered unjustly, although he did. Instead, he tells how God’s whole history of dealing with God’s people points to everything that he has experienced. He tells how God has always been trying to show us that the way that leads to life that can’t die is to have faith in God and live into who God made us to be, and not to worry about the consequences – not to do it for the reward, not to worry about the negative reactions others might have, but just to do and to be, with faith and trust in the boundless love and life of God. And that it was all leading up to the moment when God would come among us and do exactly that, to empower a people to embody the life that can only be lived when we are ready to let go of it and let God do what only God can do: bring existence and life and goodness out of nothingness and death.
By now it was evening, and Cleopas and his friend welcome the stranger into their home. They sit down together to share a meal, and the stranger does something very familiar – takes bread, says the blessing, breaks it, and shares it. And suddenly, in a moment, they understand. In that moment of giving hospitality to a dead man, they discover he is alive, he is present, he is teaching them about God’s life and grace, he is feeding them with the gift of his death. And then – just as quickly – he vanishes, leaving them to live the kingdom for themselves, to practice this life, to share the good news, knowing that he is alive and somehow still with them.
This is why, when it is safe and responsible for us to gather together in person, we still tell the story, break the bread and share the cup, knowing that when we do this Jesus is alive and speaking to us and somehow still with us in our life together. But Emmaus is not just about communion. Whenever we listen to the words of the one who suffered and yet forgives, whenever we grant hospitality to the stranger, whenever we make real and tangible our sharing with others – even if it’s just with our family where we’re quarantined, even if it’s online, even if it’s by giving a nice tip to the delivery person – whenever we are attentive to the suffering Christ present in the least of these, somehow he is there, he is the one who is really feeding us.
Many preachers and musicians and artists have tried to capture that moment of recognition, when we suddenly understand how deep and wide and boundless is God’s love and presence and grace for us. I recently learned about a contemporary vision of the Emmaus scene painted by the Filipino artist Emmanuel Garibay. Click here to see the image. He depicts the breaking of the bread, the sharing of simple things together in the simplest of places, the combination of surprise and joy and astonishment in the faces of those who suddenly recognize Christ present. As at Emmaus, it may not be immediately obvious who the stranger really is. But the hands give it away, don’t they?
To me, this painting expresses the mystery of Emmaus, the mystery of faith: The one you do not expect, the one who is fragile and wounded and broken, the one who speaks words of grace and peace, the one invited into the home and to the table, becomes the host of a communion that is found nowhere else. A communion grounded in one who has died and so can never die again, yet who lives. Who shows us, in an instant of recognition, that God’s grace and mercy can transform anything, anyone, any time, that God is always making everything new.
Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, in this time of sadness and anxiety, as we share our pain and our confusion and our disappointments with one another, interrupt our conversations, speak to us a word of grace, of peace, of insight into God’s loving plans for us and for all creation. Come, stay with us, take over our tables, break our bread, feed us with life undending. Tell us stories of the unstoppable power of God’s love, astonish us with your grace, change our sadness and fear into joy and hope, heal our brokenness, fill our hearts with faith in the God who lives forever, send us with joy to share the news that you are alive and transforming us and all creation into the image of the living God. Amen.