Advent Lutheran Church

"On the Road with Jesus (Third Sunday of Easter)"

            Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus.  Amen.

            Two weeks ago this morning this place was filled with the roar of the Easter Proclamation, “Christ is Risen.  He is Risen Indeed!”; the room itself was packed with people; and the scent of the Easter lilies was heavy in the air.  Well, we are two weeks past that initial joyful event of Easter; the scent of the lilies isn’t quite as pungent; there are considerably fewer of us in this sanctuary; and the Easter Proclamation – it wasn’t quite as robust this morning.  We are two weeks back into our routines, two weeks down the road to life as we usually live it, two weeks down the road to ordinary.  Maybe we can relate to these two people on the road back to their own ordinary, the Road to Emmaus.

            Cleopas and another, unnamed, companion are walking away from Jerusalem three days after the Crucifixion of Jesus.  These two are not part of the original 12 disciples, Jesus’ inner circle of followers; they are part of a larger group of people, call them seekers, who hovered around the perimeter of the disciples, people who were curious about this man named Jesus, intrigued by his talk of the Kingdom of God, inspired by the idea that he just might be the one to lead Israel back to a position of prominence on the world stage. 

            But no more.  Jesus’ execution by the state had put an end to those dreams.  Cleopas and his friend had heard rumors of something called Resurrection, but, like you and I, they were not there and so didn’t know what to make of those rumors.  In fact, they didn’t know quite what to make of their entire experience of Jesus.  Was his entry into their lives truly a significant event that had some meaning that they hadn’t yet grasped, or was this just one of those experiences that really have no point at all?  Or what?  So goes the conversation on the road.

            At some point, Jesus himself joins them and continues the walk with them, but they don’t recognize that it is Jesus.  They look him over and quickly peg him simply as a stranger.  And isn’t that the way it is with us as well?  The holy enters into our lives and we don’t immediately see it for what it is, and it’s only in retrospect that it makes a kind of holy sense.  Jesus can show up in any number of places: while you’re at a Royals game, while you’re studying for finals, at dinner with your friends; he can show up in the midst of a personal crisis, or in your dreams; he can turn up anywhere, as he did with these two on the Road to Emmaus.

            Whenever the holy does come into our lives it’s always as a stranger, or a strange occurrence, something out of the ordinary.  We’re not big on strangers, or strange experiences; they threaten our sense of control, our sense of personal safety.  What do we tell our kids, from their earliest years?  “Watch out for strangers, don’t talk to strangers, be careful around strangers.”

When my son, Andy, was five years old we lived in California, and on one occasion we were at Macy’s in San Francisco.  It was the height of the Christmas season, and the store was packed with shoppers.  We were riding the escalator and were about half-way between floors when Andy turned to the woman on the step behind us, looked up at her and said, “Hi!  I can’t talk to you; you’re strange.”  I had a little explaining to do.

But what if the stranger – instead of being a source of caution and fear – what if the stranger was bringing us more life-giving hope than we ever dared imagine?  As I look at my life I see that I have been blessed with a number of wonderful experiences, and not one of those experiences happened because I planned it.  Not one.  They happened right out of the blue, strange, unscheduled, unexpected.  Just like it happened for these two on the road.

On the Road to Emmaus, it’s getting late.  Cleopas and his companion insist that the stranger stay with them so they can show him some hospitality, so they can play host to their guest.  But at dinner, as Jesus picks up the bread, the guest becomes the host.  He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them.  “Takes,” “blesses,” “breaks,” and “gives”; four simple but powerful words which, in fact, Jesus has acted out before in his ministry.  First, in his feeding of the 5,000 on that hillside one afternoon; then, when he instituted the Lord’s Supper with his friends; and now here on the Road to Emmaus – he takes, blesses, breaks, and gives.

In his wonderful book, The Life of the Beloved, Father Henri Nouwen observes that this is precisely what Jesus does with us.  He takes, blesses, breaks, and gives.  He does it with Cleopas and his companion, and he does it with us as well.

God chooses us very intentionally.  He takes us, but maybe a better word would be “chooses.”  Each one of us is chosen by God, equally valued, equally precious.  When we make choices, it’s different: we choose one thing and not another; we pick this and not that; some are first, some are last.  In the NFL draft that just concluded, Cam Newton was the top pick in the first round, a great honor.  But there was another man of distinction in that draft, a man named Cheta Ozougwu.  His distinction is that he was dead last – seventh round, 54^th pick.  You and I probably don’t know much about Cheta Ozougwu and we’re not liable to learn more, because the last draft pick carries with him the traditional title of “Mr. Irrelevant.” 

Thank God that God does not operate with the same criteria as the NFL draft.  In the mystery of God, no one is left out, no one is second; each one of us is his top draft pick.

So he takes us, and then he blesses us.  And he blesses all of who we are, blesses all of what we’ve experienced.  We operate differently.  We usually separate our experiences into the good ones that we want to keep and the bad ones we want to forget.  We’re pretty basic about this: We want to remember the promotion and pay raise we earned at work; the good grades and maybe even the scholarship we earned in school; the births of our children and grandchildren; the affection of our loved ones.

And we’d just as soon forget the times that we failed to live up to the expectations of others; the times we failed to follow through on our own good intentions; the times we suffered betrayal at the hands of a loved one.  We don’t deny that those things happened to us; it’s just that we’re not grateful for those experiences and we are grateful for the good ones.  But gratitude in the Bible embraces all of life, the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy, the tremendous and the tragic. 

That sentiment finds its fullest expression in the Cross of Christ – the instrument of death, and also the means to new life.  It was a cross that Jesus freely accepted on our behalf.  Our whole lives are what God blesses.  He leaves nothing out, redeems it all; because it all goes into making up who we are in this world.

So he takes us, he blesses us, and then, just as Jesus’ hands held broken bread, he holds the broken parts of your life as well.  “Life breaks everyone,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote, “and afterward some are stronger at the broken places.”  Hemingway was referring to the healing that we can bring to ourselves, and the healing that we can bring to each other.  But that kind of healing, that of human origin, is limited.  The end of Hemingway’s life, by his own hand, shows that that kind of healing simply isn’t enough.  It is only Christ who holds your broken heart, your broken dreams, your broken lives – he holds them all, and he redeems them all in his own broken body on the cross.

He takes us, he blesses us, he holds our brokenness, and then he gives us – gives us so that we might be life-giving to others.  Just as Christ in the hands of God was given for the sake of the world, so we in the hands of Christ are given also for the sake of the world.  

Louis Pasteur was a French chemist of the 1800s who became famous for a number of endeavors.  If you’ve ever drunk pasteurized milk, you’ve been affected by the life of Louis Pasteur.  He was one of the founders of microbiology, and he also investigated the causes and cures of diseases.  In fact, Pasteur developed a vaccine for rabies.  He was ready to start testing this new vaccine – on himself – when a neighborhood child, 9-year-old Joseph Meister, was badly mauled by a rabid dog.  The boy’s mother pleaded with Pasteur to test the vaccine on her son instead of on himself.  Pasteur agreed, and for the next 10 days Joseph received a series of vaccinations.  And he survived.

Years later, the aging Pasteur, who was a devout Christian, was contemplating the end of his own life, and he was asked what he wanted to have engraved on his tombstone.  How did he want to be remembered?  What – out of all the honors he had received, all of his accomplishments that had brought him fame – would sum up his life?  Pasteur thought long and hard about this, and finally decided that he wanted three words on his tombstone, and only three: “Joseph Meister Lived.”  This was clearly a man who realized that his life had been given for the sake of others.

We too are given to others.  Our lives are made holy by Christ and so take on a holy purpose.  That doesn’t mean that we’re supposed to pack our bags and go off to be missionaries to a tribe in the Amazon.  It does mean, though, that in the hands of Christ we live sacramental lives in whatever setting God places us, and our lives become means of grace for others.

Back at the Emmaus Road Inn, we see that after Jesus takes, blesses, breaks, and gives the bread, he vanishes from the sight of his dinner companions.  As long as he remained unrecognized, he was with them physically; but as soon as they recognized him, he vanished.  And he vanished because as soon as they realized who he was, they didn’t need to have him with them physically because they knew that he would be with them forever spiritually.

And so the stranger that is Christ comes into our lives in some strange, unexpected ways, and stays until we recognize him.  You blast into McDonald’s to get some breakfast, just a quick stop; and you pass a homeless guy sitting on the curb, smiling, with his hand out to you, and maybe you drop a dollar, maybe you don’t, but two hours later you realize that you’re still thinking about this smiling homeless guy.  What was that about?  He was sitting there with his hand out.  He wanted money, right?  He wasn’t really expecting that I would actually shake his hand, right?  And then you realize, “This guy’s going to be in my head for the rest of the day.”

The holy breaks into our lives in unexpected, unplanned ways, and stays until we start to connect the dots and interpret for ourselves what has happened.  My prayer for each of us is that we would recognize the Savior not just in the bread and wine of Holy Communion and the water of baptism, but that we would develop the heart to see him in the many and various ways that he comes to us in this life; and that we would allow our lives to be taken, blessed, broken, and given for the sake of the world.  Amen.