Date
Sunday, April 08, 2018
Sermon Audio
Full Service Audio
It just so happened that last Sunday was both Easter Sunday and April Fools’ Day. On Friday night I received an e-mail from someone who said, “Andrew, I hope you realize that services will be cancelled on Easter Sunday because there is a terrible flood in your basement, and it would be dangerous to gather in the church.”
I responded by saying, “Well, thank you for that, but I feel you are confused. It is at the Baptist Church where there was a flood, not the United Church.”
To which he responded, “I know what I am talking about” and signed it “Noah”!
When you really think about it rationally it is our text this morning also seems a little foolish. It is as if we are given some stories beyond our conception of reality, but are pretty distant from our experience.
It was almost like hearing about the 1938 radio show, The War of the Worlds, written by H. G. Wells, and told over the air in such a powerful and prophetic way, that people listening actually thought they were in the midst of a Martian invasion. They went out into the streets thinking something Apocalyptic was occurring. Even though Orson Welles and the radio station people had given disclaimers saying this was fiction, there was such power to Orson Welles’ voice, such conviction in the telling of the story that people were terrified and believed it to be true. Sometimes people are easily duped into believing what they hear on the radio must be truth. It seemed like an April Fools’ joke when they realized it was fiction.
I think, for the men who were on the Emmaus road in the story from our passage this morning, the appearance of Jesus after the Resurrection to two disciples, they must have felt as if this was an April Fools’ joke, that they had been sold a bill of goods, and there was no truth to any of it. Luke gives us an account of these faithful followers of Jesus, who on the evening of Easter day were walking to the town of Emmaus. We are given some detail, which is unusual in Luke, that it occurred some seven miles from Jerusalem, although that is not exactly accurate, but close. As they were walking away from Jerusalem into Emmaus, we are told they were sad; their hearts were broken after the events of the betrayal of Jesus, his trial, the Crucifixion, and the burial. They were also ruminating about what some women had experienced when they went to the tomb, proclaiming Christ was risen, but they weren’t quick to believe that. The disciples, Cleopas’ wife Mary, who was probably at the tomb, told him this story, according the Gospel of John, but for them it was fanciful. Like many husbands, he didn’t listen to his wife properly, and thought, “This can’t have happened.” In fact, they seemed to think nothing was really true, except what they had seen on Good Friday, and they were downcast.
Then, suddenly, a stranger walks alongside them. We are given no account in Luke as to why they did not recognize Jesus. There has been speculation that the sun was in their eyes; they were downcast and looking down on the ground; and many other reasons, but hardly any of them had any staying power. They just didn’t recognize him. That is all we know. When he talks to them, he asks them, “Why are you so sad?” They give their account, what is known historically as The Kerygma, the general story of the Good News: “Jesus of Nazareth had been crucified, and we thought he was going to be the redeemer of Israel! Don’t you know the events that have taken place?” Surely anyone who has been near Jerusalem would have heard about Jesus of Nazareth. To this stranger they told the story of what they had expected Jesus to be, but that he wasn’t as far as they were concerned. They even made mention of the empty tomb, but they were still downcast. Even though the stranger had come up to them, interrupted their lives, they were still not sure where they stood.
I think on many different levels those disciples, after Easter, were feeling emotionally distraught. You can imagine why. They had put their hope and their trust in Jesus of Nazareth. They had followed him. They expected great things from him. This was supposed to be a moment when they were on high, and all they have is the women talking about an empty tomb. It seemed ridiculous! Implausible! And, they were very sad. What they didn’t realize, because of their sadness and emotional state was that in fact Jesus of Nazareth, the Risen Christ, was actually right there with them. Like many of the disciples, when Jesus appeared after the Resurrection, he appeared in the most ordinary of ways. They expected that if the Messiah were to come, there would be great fanfare; trumpets, joy and exultation. They certainly did not expect him to come alongside them walking on the road to Emmaus.
One of the writers who captured this better than anybody is American writer, Frederick Buechner, who I love. This is what he writes:
Have you noticed that every time Jesus appeared to people he appeared in the most inglorious fashion, rather than with trumpets and the sound of cymbals and the power to make the earth shake, he appeared to people in the Resurrection stories as a gardener with women at a tomb, or with fisher people catching fish, or to people when they were having a meal, or just walking beside them on the road. Christ did not make a spectacular appearance, but a subtle, hidden appearance, one that nevertheless revealed himself to them in the most delicate and gentle of ways. Jesus came to these disciples when they were most distraught emotionally, and he simply said, ‘Why are you so sad?’ He identified with them in their loss. He knew and understood their sense of bereavement. He wanted to bring them the comfort of his presence, and he did so in the most gentle of ways. Christ still does that.
It is true! That is precisely what caught them out. They were expecting one thing, and found another. What we often think when we are emotionally distraught is that we will have something of a “Wow!” to lift us rather than a presence that stands by us. We pray for that for the families in Humboldt today.
They were also intellectually distressed. This wasn’t computing and working out very well. After all, it appeared that after Easter nothing had changed. The Romans were still in power; the empire still stood; Israel was still occupied. In fact, the religious leaders still despised the followers of Jesus. Nothing had changed! Most scholars agree that there was probably still a death warrant out on Jesus’. After all, he had been executed for a crime, and they were his co-conspirators and followers. The disciples were probably in danger as they walked to Emmaus from Jerusalem; they had to get out of town. All their reasoning, all their thinking had come to naught; nothing was working out the way they thought it would. Then Jesus comes up to them, interrupts them in their moment of sadness and intellectual distress, and says, “How slow of heart you are to believe all that the prophets have said about me.”
The language used is powerful because the word in Greek for “heart” is kardia, and for Jews, the heart was the centre of reasoning. We always think of it as the mind, but the mind and the heart in Judaism are connected. The heart isn’t just an organ that pumps blood; the heart is the seat of reasoning and thought. It is more than simply a beating organ; it is connected to our reasoning. And so, they were slow of heart. In other words, they did not grasp the power and the reality. They had forgotten what Jesus had said before – that on the third day he would rise again – they had forgotten all his teachings about the Messiah; what the Messiah would do and be. They could not believe he would find glory in the midst of crucifixion, and so their minds were set on a model of Messiahship that was not Jesus’ model of Messiahship. They wanted everything instantaneously to change. In the midst of this, Jesus comes along and says, “How slow of heart you are.”
Does that not happen to us? Are the disciples not in a sense an icon of most people who are genuine believers, who at times really struggle intellectually with the reality of our faith and question whether dead men rise? Is it not unreasonable to believe the notion that one person could in fact be raised from the dead? It certainly often appears that way. Yet, here we have evidence. Here, we have those who felt exactly like we often feel on the road to Emmaus being confronted by the living Christ, and it completely changed them! How did it change them? They were down. Their Lord had died. They were probably the butt of jokes! Everything about Jesus had gone wrong. The women with their fanciful story of an empty tomb had no cache whatsoever. How then did Jesus engage them? He interrupted them, and he interrupted them with a purpose.
I was thinking back to the U.S. election, and Chris Matthews’ interview of Donald Trump. It was one of the most bizarre interviews that I have ever heard in political history. Donald Trump was continually interrupting Matthews, and Matthews was constantly interrupting Trump. Every time Trump said something outrageous, which he did often, Matthews said something equally outrageous. Finally, it came down to some religious matters, and Trump got very defensive about his views. Matthews kept pressing him and interrupting him when he was trying to explain them. Finally, Trump questioned the authenticity of the faith of Matthews as a Roman Catholic. No one got any sense of anything after this half an hour of back and forth. It was entertaining, but it wasn’t enlightening. It was bizarre! Sometimes, interruptions do not allow us to get to the truth of matters. Sometimes, I despair when interviewers in particular get carried away with their own thoughts, rather than listening to the responses of the person they are questioning – but that is a personal thing.
In this particular moment on the road to Emmaus, Jesus needed to interrupt them. He needed to make it abundantly clear who he was. How did he do this? Not only did he say, “You are slow of heart to believe”, but he continued to walk with them, and this is the key: He walked with them to the point of their own home. How does he reveal himself to them in this profoundly spiritual moment? He doesn’t do it with what I call “whiz-bang spirituality”. He doesn’t do it with fanfare. He doesn’t even do it with incredible power and gifts like they experienced later in the Upper Room at Pentecost. What does he do? He shows them what scripture says. He appeals to their minds and reason. Then he does the one thing through which they saw who he was: He broke the bread, blessed it, and they saw him. It wasn’t something spiritual, but physical; not of a ghost, but body; something that reminded them of the Upper Room; and affirmed the power of the Passover. In a simple act, Jesus came, broke bread and blessed it, and they recognized him. Now we know who he is! Clearly, Jesus must in the Resurrection body have been transformed in a way that we cannot explain, but there was something profoundly physical about all this. As Philip Yancey often comments, in every appearance of Jesus there is a semblance of his physical presence: to Thomas it was the nails in his hands; to the disciples it was the eating of fish; and to these men it was the breaking of bread. It was in the sacramental things, the ordinary things that signs of Christ’s presence emerged. They wanted something powerful and Apocalyptic, but what they got was the quiet presence of Jesus in their lives. They said, “Did not our hearts burn within us” as this took place. Were they not transformed by this?
I must say there are moments in my life, and I am sure you must feel the same way, where you just wish Jesus would arrive on the scene, push me out of the way of the pulpit, and say, “I am going to preach today, Andrew”. Now, that would be a sermon, wouldn’t it? Jesus would come up here and take care of everything. Wouldn’t it be nice if we were in a hospital room not knowing what to say to someone, Jesus suddenly appears and it is all sorted out? It would be great.
C. S. Lewis says that Jesus doesn’t work like that. He never did, and never will. Jesus comes to us incognito. Jesus comes, and his presence is among us when we least expect it. Jesus’ power is present because we are free now. We are free to believe. We have this gift of faith; this testimony and witness, and the power of his presence. It is not as if we need something dramatic, but rather it is in the simple things. Sometimes, gathered together as a community – “where two or more are gathered” like the two men on the Emmaus road, or the women who were at the tomb, or the disciples who were out fishing – it is there that Christ just comes into their midst and there is no doubt that he is there, a living presence. He comes into our lives when we least expect it, interrupts us and says, “Why are you so sad? Why are you so downhearted?” The disciples saw him and their hearts burned knowing he was there. May that same power of interruption be in your life too. Amen.