Rev. Eugene N. Nelson, Jr.
The Community Church of Sebastopol
April 4, 2010 Easter Sunday – 11 AM Service
Luke 24:15-35
Author, poet, preacher, Frederick Buechner has this reflection on our text for today. He writes: “For at least some of the followers of Jesus, maybe the worst day was the third day, Sunday, which for the Jews was like our Monday, with everything around them returning so completely to normal that it was impossible to believe that either Jesus’ life or his death was going to make any difference to the world at all, when they were suddenly afraid that the whole business of his life had not really added up to much. He had made great promises and great claims, and a number of people had placed their greatest hopes in him. But now he was dead. Of course there were those rumors about the tomb being empty. But rumors are only rumors, and for at least two of the people who had followed him, there was nothing left to do that Sunday but to get out of town. And where did they go? They went to Emmaus. And where was Emmaus and why did they go there? It was no place in particular, really, and the only reason that they went there was that it was some seven miles distant from a situation that had become unbearable.”
“And,” he adds, “There is not one of us who has not gone to Emmaus with them. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas people have had – ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish people for their own selfish ends. Emmaus is where we go – where these two went – to try to forget about Jesus and the great failure of his life.” Now, how’s that for an upbeat beginning for Easter Sunday? Happy Easter everybody.
But Buechner’s right, isn’t he? Isn’t he right? It’s tempting to escape to Emmaus, to throw up our hands, to throw in the towel, to decide that none of it makes a darn bit of difference anyway. Death is natural. Loss is natural. Grief is natural. We know that even our best efforts can turn to dust. Like those two disciples on the road, we come to expect these things. We know how Charlie Brown feels when he says to Linus, “Let’s just say that life has me beaten. So I give up! I admit there is no way I can win.” Linus asks, “What is it you want, Charlie Brown?” Charlie Brown answers, “Well, how about two out of three?” Well, you don’t get two out of three. We know Emmaus. Or do we?
“Now that same day – Easter Sunday – two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all the things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other as you walk along?’” On the road to Emmaus, on the road to a place of broken dreams and shattered hopes, Jesus himself drew near. Well, what do you think, my fellow Emmaus Road travelers? Does this change anything? Jesus - remember him? Crucified, dead, buried – tomb, big stone, all of that? Failed hopes – failed dreams. Remember him? Jesus himself drew near.
Now let’s be honest. Death we can deal with; destruction, disappointment and decay we can deal with. We may not like them, but we’ve learned how to deal with them. We come to expect them. They don’t really surprise us. But this? Jesus himself drew near? This encounter on the Emmaus road takes all our familiar assumptions about life and just tosses them out the window. We have learned to accommodate death, to lower our hopes and expectations. Now what are we supposed to do. Because of Easter, something new has entered the picture and it just might be that nothing can ever be the same again. Could it be that we are now free to indulge in a little madness, free to dance and celebrate and dream? Could it be that the powers of evil and death no longer have any power over us? Jesus himself drew near.
New Testament scholar, Marcus Borg, writing on this text, asks, “How much of the content of this story could we have captured on video tape? Would we have been able to record the risen Christ joining them, walking with them, conversing with them, and finally vanishing from the room as they received bread from him? Is it that kind of story?” I’m not sure it is and, to tell you the truth on this Easter Sunday, I don’t really care. For the truth here will not be found in the facts, in the videotape record even if one existed. The truth – the wonderful, startling, world-changing truth – is this story’s claim that Christ journeys with us on all the roads we travel, whether we know it or not. Says Borg, “I do not see the Emmaus Road story as reporting a particular event on a particular day, visible to anyone who happened to be there, but rather as a story about how the risen Christ comes to his followers again and again and again.”
You see, Emmaus isn’t something that happened once upon a time. Emmaus happens – Emmaus keeps happening, as people, you and I, continue to experience and encounter Christ as a living reality, a figure of the present and not simply as some memory of the past. Back to Beuchner: “So they were joined by this Jesus whom they did not recognize and when they reached the village of Emmaus and because it was getting late, they persuaded him to stop and have supper with them. And it was only then, only as he took the bread and blessed it and broke it, that they knew who he was. And no sooner did they know who he was than he vanished from their sight. They could not make him stay, they could not nail him down. And that’s how it always is. We cannot nail him down, not even if the nails we use are real ones and the thing we nail him to is a cross. He comes suddenly, out of nowhere, and maybe we recognize him and maybe we do not, and our lives are never the same again either because we did not recognize him or because we did. And the place where he comes is very apt to be Emmaus, because he comes into life at its most real and inescapable - never from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.”
Concludes Buechner, “The sacred moments, the moments of miracle, are often the everyday moments, the moments which, if we do not look with more than our eyes or listen with more than our ears, reveal only…a stranger coming down the road behind us or a meal like any other meal. But if we look with our hearts, if we listen with all of our being and our imagination, if we live our lives not from vacation to vacation, from escape to escape, but from the miracle of one instant of our precious lives to the miracle of the next, what we may see is Jesus himself, what we may hear is the first faint sound of a voice somewhere deep within us saying that there is a purpose in this life, a purpose in our lives, whether we can understand it completely or not That is what the stories about Jesus’ coming back to life mean, because Jesus was the love of God, alive along us, and not all the cruelty and blindness of human beings could kill him.” Not dead, but present among us in new and challenging and unpredictable ways. You know, as the years go by and one Easter leads to another, I am increasingly convinced that, from the very first Easter, what has convinced people that Jesus has risen and is alive has not been the absence of a corpse – again the videotape evidence - but the experience of his living presence, swallowing the powers of death in laughing and alleluias and shouting and dancing. You just never know when Easter might suddenly break out, for God does not intend to leave us caught in webs of death and decay. Dare to believe that.
She worked hard in high school, made good grades. Even though she had come from a difficult home situation, she worked hard because she had high goals. But when it came time for her to go to college, and she applied to a number of schools, she received far too little financial aid to be able to go to any of those schools. She went to work in a rather modest, dull job. Friends, trying to be helpful said to her, “You just have to face the facts. It doesn’t look like college is in the picture for you. You must learn to adjust.” But she remembered Easter. Adjust? She took a deep breath, enrolled in some night classes at her community college, worked hard, made good grades, and eventually received the help she needed to go to the college she wanted to attend. Today she is a renowned teacher of young children. Just as Jesus could not be held by the tomb, she was not about to be held by the circumstances of her life. You just never know when it might be Easter.
She told her pastor that her father had died over the summer. His last week was a hard one because he had suffered a stroke and lost his power of speech. She said, “And you know how hard that would be for my daddy. He loved to talk. But his last few days he couldn’t speak. I will never forget, my sister and my brother and I were gathered in his hospital room on the last day of his life and we were feeling the pain of his struggle as he tried to communicate with us. Finally he motioned toward my brother as if to say, ‘Get me a glass of water.’ My brother went over to the sink, filled the glass and brought it to my father. But he wouldn’t drink it. He motioned as if to say to my brother, ‘You drink it.’ So my brother took a sip. Then my father made a motion, ‘Give it to your sister.’ He handed her the glass and she took a sip. And then my father motioned for her to pass it to me. Suddenly my brother said, ‘Oh my God. Dad’s serving us communion.’” Says the pastor who tells this story, “And Easter – the resurrection – became in that hospital room a most wonderful ordinary event.”
You just never know when it might be Easter, when the Emmaus Road experience becomes our experience, when we discover the unnatural truth that not even death can defeat the purposes of our extravagantly life-giving God.
And I know, I know how easy it is, like those two depressed, discouraged disciples, to convince ourselves there is really nothing new under the sun, that nothing is ever going to change, and thereby miss the savior who is right by our side. To make the startling claim that Jesus lives, that death could not hold him, does not mean that we need 3-D special effects. Maybe great miracles are out of our league. Maybe this is not the day we’re going to move great mountains. But a living Christ who can be revealed in the simple, every day act of breaking bread, can surely be revealed in us. Perhaps we cannot summon up a band of angels, but we can love, we can be kind, we can forgive. We may not be able miraculously to heal the sick, but we can visit and care for them. We can’t raise the dead, but we can comfort those who mourn. We cannot feed the whole world, but we can generously share our abundance. We can’t end injustice, but we can darn sure advocate for justice and peace right here. And as surely as Christ was made known on that lonely road and through the breaking of the bread, so in the simple goodness of our lives, given and broken for him, the living Christ will be made known again. For make no mistake about it, Emmaus happens. Emmaus always happens.