And Jesus said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?”
Well, the disciples in our reading were discussing the terrible, awful state of things since Jesus’ crucifixion. Even though Jesus had already appeared to the women at the tomb, the disciples were walking along the road, kicking at the dust and wringing their hands over the hopelessness of their situation. “We had hoped that Jesus was the One. We thought that he would send the Romans packing, that he would restore a King to Israel
Christ is risen, death has been defeated, sin counts no more …. and yet Jesus’ followers are trudging along, miserable and overwhelmed. “How could they be so blind?” we wonder from our 21st century perches. “Don’t they realize that everything has changed? Why don’t they recognize Jesus at first? Why do they still hang on to their old ideas about what the Messiah is supposed to do, about how God is supposed to react?”
But don’t we do the same thing? If Jesus were to come to us as we make our way on our faith journey and to ask us the same innocent-sounding question: “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” … What would we answer? Let’s see, we clergy would surely be fretting over the shrinking number of people in the pews on Sunday. Vestry members might recount the agenda for the Vestry meeting tomorrow: approval of last month’s minutes, reports on leadership group meetings, discussion of new air vents in the roof, some hand- wringing over pledges that haven’t been turned in yet. Away from church, out on the street, we might respond like Friday’s editorial in the Courier Journal, lamenting our “homes with underwater mortgages… cars that require a mortgage to fill with fuel …and an economic recovery that feels more like a lingering flu … ”[1] If Jesus stopped by at coffee hour, he might find us worrying about the lines for Mothers’ Day Brunch? Or lamenting how we almost had a Derby
The disciples’ conversation changes only when they recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Bread, of course, is a comfort food that must be broken or cut in order to be shared. If I tossed a loaf of bread to a couple of dogs, a huge fight would ensue, because they couldn’t all possess the whole loaf at once. The dog who got it first would growl and try to pull the whole thing away from the others, gobbling it as fast as he could so that the others wouldn’t get any. Contrast that image with that of a small child solemnly holding out her soggy piece of slobbered on bread so that we can have a taste. Jesus breaks the bread with the love and generosity of that small child. He takes it into his hands and blesses it before ripping it in pieces, like his body, and pressing it into their open hands.
My worst moment as a priest was the Good Friday that we ran out of bread. We Episcopalians do not bless bread on Good Friday, of course, the day that Jesus hangs on the Cross. If we are to serve communion, we can only use the bread and wine that have been blessed the day before, on Maundy Thursday. On this particular Good Friday, we had an unexpectedly large number of people attend the 6 p.m. service, and there wasn’t enough left-over bread to go around. I watched my parishioners line up at the Altar Rail, palms open, heads tilted up expectantly. I wanted to be able to answer their kneeling vulnerability with the usual strong and comforting words: “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.” The familiar words danced silently in the air between us, but there was no bread. At first, I frantically broke the tiny wafers into halves and then into fourths, but soon I could only pass by the cupped, empty hands—and shrug. It was horrible. I’m sure the parishioners understood what had happened, but it became clear to me at that moment that the bread of the Eucharist is something that should NEVER run out. It represents a love that never dies, a giving that never ceases, an abundance that never dries up. The problem is that we live in a world in which love does die, giving is not always generous, and scarcity is all too frequent. We expect things to run out, and our conversations reflect that expectation. We expect to get hurt. We expect to get passed over in line. Journeying to the table, we don’t dare expect too much from Jesus, either. “That’s OK, Jesus,” we say. “I don’t deserve your bread, anyway. That’s OK if you run out. I don’t really need it. I betrayed you, handed you over to die. It’s OK—you can pass me by.” But Jesus doesn’t seem to hear our protests; Jesus comes to us every time and breaks bread with us, again and again. In the broken and shared bread of the Eucharist, we recognize the depth of Christ’s love for us—love that accepts us as we are, love that feeds us no matter what we have done or left undone, love that never runs out.
There is something about seeing our own lives as a gift from God, isn’t there, that suddenly helps us to see the rest of the world that way, too? When we know that God has accepted us, flaws and all, the flaws of our neighbor seem less important. When we feel God’s eternal love pouring over us, then we are suddenly more able to take Peter’s advice to “love one another deeply from the heart.” In the movie, Babette’s Feast, a stranger arrives in a small Norwegian village where the day to day conversations are full of boring routine, malicious gossip, and small-town quarreling. After 14 years in the village, the stranger wins a lottery prize of 10,000 francs and, before she is to leave the village with her money, she invites all of the townspeople to a magnificent farewell feast, an incredibly rich and abundant feast unlike anything that the penny-pinching villagers have ever seen or tasted. As they eat, their conversation changes. Old enemies lick their fingers and forgive one another of ancient grudges; neighbors begin to speak the truth to one another; others confess love that they have hidden for a lifetime. And then it turns out that Babette, the mysterious stranger, will not be leaving after all, for she has spent all of her money on the conversation- changing, life-transforming feast for her neighbors.
It is in feasting together on God’s love from God’s hand, over and over again, that we learn who we really are. And that knowledge is what transforms us, slowly, from within. There is an invitation to communion that goes, “Come to the table of Christ, not because you are perfect, but because you are loved; not because you have arrived, but because God is with you on the journey.”[2] On that journey, then, in all of our conversations, may we “go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.”
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