April 26th Sermon by The Reverend Loree Reed

Luke 24: 13–35
Lord, may we hear your voice in the words spoken in your name. Amen

In the past few weeks while we have sheltered at home, I’ve spent a lot of time in my garden –– pulling weeds, cutting dead branches, putting in new plants and fertilizing others. Trust me – my gardens haven’t had so much attention in years! And my reward in all this has been the unexpected discovery of a whole host of plants I thought I had lost last year –– to drought, to browsing deer, to my own lack of attention. Yet suddenly, this spring, here they were again – poking up through the soil, risen from the dead. Talk about grace! Talk about resurrection! To me, this was no everyday occurrence. This was a gift of God.
So for me this year, Easter didn’t come all at once on April 12. It’s been coming, revealing itself, in bits and pieces with each new green shoot, each new discovery, each little resurrection moment. But that seems to be the way God reveals himself to us. He seems to delight in showing himself to us, one hint after another, in ways we never expected. The prophet Isaiah says, “Surely Lord, you are a God who hides yourself.” And William Cowper, the 18th century poet and hymn writer wrote,

         God moves in a mysterious way,
         His wonders to perform.
         He plants his footsteps in the sea
         And rides upon the storm.
Maybe that’s why, this morning, I can sympathize with Cleopas and his companion, who don’t at first recognize the person who has fallen in step beside them on that road back to Emmaus. Just as I had seen the scattered remains of the hosta the deer had nibbled to the ground last summer, they knew what they had seen in Jerusalem. They had seen Jesus cruelly executed by Roman officials and buried in a tomb. It was a death so cruel, so savage, so seemingly final they never expected to see him again. And with his execution their fragile hope had died too.
For all their lives they had hoped and prayed to see God’s long–promised Messiah, the One God had promised to send. When he came, Messiah would redeem Israel from her enemies – just as King David had vanquished Israel’s enemies in his day. That’s what they believed. So when Jesus came, speaking as no one had ever spoken before, healing the sick and raising the dead, they had allowed themselves to hope that he was the One they had waited for –– for so many years. That’s why these two had followed him, signing on as disciples. They hadn’t wanted to miss a single miraculous moment.
But things hardly turned out as they’d hoped. And now, after his execution, they were headed back home to Emmaus with heavy hearts. You and I know how they felt. We have travelled that road ourselves. It’s the road you travel when something you wanted with all your heart is denied you. It’s the road you walk when you don’t get that promotion you’d counted on . . . or a friend betrays you . . . or when someone you loved and cared for suddenly dies. There on that road you try to pick up the pieces and make sense of something that doesn’t make sense at all.
The two disciples were so deep in conversation they scarcely noticed the stranger falling in step beside them as they walked. But they stopped still in their tracks when he asked them what they were talking about.
Cleopas was astounded. “Are you the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t know what happened there last week?” he asked.

“What happened?” the stranger asked.
So by way of explanation Cleopas offers a synopsis of all that had happened to break their hearts. “We had hoped. . . ” he begins. And then proceeds to rehearse the events of the week before – including the story of the women at the garden tomb that very morning, reporting that angels had told them that Jesus had risen. Risen from the dead!
At this point it’s the stranger’s turn to be incredulous –– that they know the events that transpired but seem to have missed their meaning. “O, how slow you are to believe,” he cries, “all the prophets have told you – that it was necessary for Messiah to suffer these things before he entered into glory!” And as they continue to walk, the stranger reminds them of all the Scriptures that foretold the path of the Suffering Servant in this world.
It’s a remedial class for slow learners, but by the time they reach Emmaus and home, they are beginning to get it. They’re beginning to understand. And they like this stranger with the profound knowledge of Scripture. They want to hear more from him. So they beg him to stay with them that evening, to break bread with them and tell them more.
It’s during that supper that the stranger does something so oddly familiar that they finally recognize him as their Risen Lord. He, of course, is the guest at their table. They are his hosts. And it is the host at a Jewish table who is supposed to break the bread, say the blessing and distribute that bread to the guests. Instead, Jesus takes the bread, breaks it open, and hands it to them. And suddenly, Luke says, their eyes are opened and they recognize him. But in that instant he disappears from their sight.
But, you know, it hardly mattered – for now the eyes of their hearts have been opened. And they realize that Jesus has been with them this past hour, just as he’d promised when he told them, “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.” And if he could do it that once, he could come back to them again.
News this good has to be shared! News this transforming creates new hope, new faith, new community! So they take off running – back to Jerusalem to share their wonderful news.
Now, I have to admit, when I first re–read this story this year and realized again it is a story of Communion, of meeting the Lord in the breaking of the bread, I felt sad. For this year, at this point, we still cannot gather together in our sanctuaries to take Communion together. This corona virus is still too virulent –– all around us –– to take that risk.
But then I remembered a story Victor Frankl told – a memory of his days in a Nazi concentration camp. It happened towards the end of the war, he said, when he was at the end of his rope. He had lost every possession he’d ever had. And now he felt he was losing hope – plus every value he’d ever known. But one day, he says, a foreman in the camp gave him a piece of bread.
I remember how a foreman secretly gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration . . . It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at the time. It was the human ‘something’ this man also gave to me – the word and the look which accompanied that bread.
And as I recalled that incident, something else dawned on me. Even sequestered, you and I break bread with others every day. We’re not in our sanctuaries, kneeling at the altar rail, about to receive the consecrated Body and Blood of Christ. More likely, we’re at our kitchen tables, at an ordinary lunch or dinner with those who live with us. But we’ve asked the Lord to bless our meal, maybe with a simple prayer like

    Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.
    And let these gifts to us be blessed.

So even at our kitchen tables, as we bless and share meals with others, don’t we then receive, in a loving look or a caring word, that ‘human something’ that can mean so much? By God’s grace and our Lord’s abiding presence, don’t we then give gifts to one another?
I wouldn’t go so far as to call it ‘Communion’. And yet I know there is no detail of our lives so small that Christ cannot be at the center of it.
Amen


 
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