Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
As I was reading commentaries in
preparation for today’s sermon, I came across a metaphor that I just couldn’t
pass up on Derby Weekend. N.T. Wright was describing the dispirited disciples
trudging along the road to Emmaus and wrote: “When Jesus was crucified, every
single disciple knew what it meant: we backed the wrong horse.”[1]
Did any of you back the wrong horse
this weekend? Mine came in last! Did you feel the tingling bubble of hope begin to rise inside you
as you placed your bet or drew out that name from the basket at the office
Derby pool? Do you remember the excitement yesterday as the horses lined up at
the gate, and there was a chance that this year, finally, you would be a winner? “Go, Vicar's in Trouble!” “Come on, Wildcat Red!” you
shouted with anticipation. And then, did you feel your heart dive down into
your feet as you watched another horse take the lead as they came around the
bend? Ah yes, there is such an overwhelming feeling of foolishness when hope
bursts, and you realize that you have wasted your hard-earned money on a dream
with dauntingly puny odds for success.
For Cleopas
and his companion, wandering away from Jerusalem three days after the
crucifixion, even the missing body and the testimony of the women is not enough
to convince them of resurrection. With downcast faces, they recount to the
stranger on the road their disappointment over the death of the one who was
finally going to redeem Israel and fulfill their hopes in the promises of God.
If we want to be honest with
ourselves, I imagine that this feeling of post-race regret is as much a part of
our own spiritual lives as it was a part of the heartache of the disciples
after the crucifixion: When I courageously stake my very life on the existence of
a loving God, despite all the signs around me to the contrary, when I place my hope
in God’s promises in Christ Jesus, could it be that I am backing the wrong
horse? When I testify to resurrection, to new life, in a world in which people
are clinging stubbornly to the old ways, could it be that I am backing the
wrong horse? And what about when my atheist friend bests me every time in that
argument about the existence of God? Or
when I walk faithfully in God’s ways and yet still watch my life fill with pain
and suffering? What about when my friends get to stay in bed on Sunday morning and
lounge at brunch with a fancy drink, yet I get up early, prod the grouchy kids
out of bed, sit on hard church pews, and then spend the afternoon pulling weeds
in the St. Thomas flower beds, am I perhaps backing the wrong horse?
Emmaus is
where we head when we’re convinced that our horse has lost the race. As Frederick
Buechner says, Emmaus is whatever place we go when life gets too much for us,
when we feel like saying, “Let the whole [darn] thing hang. It makes no
difference anyway.”[2] So when
I am on the way to Emmaus, how do I recognize God in the disappointing and
seemingly godless world around me?
According to
the ancient philosopher Aristotle, recognition is a change from ignorance to
knowledge that can be based on visible signs, on memory, or on reasoning. The
best path to recognition, though, he says, arises from actions.[3] In
the Emmaus story, the disciples finally recognize Jesus after four simple
actions: they know who he is when they see him at table taking bread, giving
thanks, breaking bread, and giving it to them. They watch his real
and concrete actions and remember that this is exactly what he did when he fed
the 5000 and when he offered them his body and blood at the Last Supper before
his death. When he feeds them in the familiar way, they can suddenly
acknowledge that their hearts actually did recognize him way back on the road,
as he talked with them and opened the Scriptures to them.
Of course, we too can see Jesus in the breaking of
the Eucharistic bread. Luke shares this story with us precisely so that we
Christians will experience the Risen Christ in our common meal together. At
every Eucharist, I stand in for Christ at the Table as I take, bless, break,
and give his Body anew, so that our eyes may be open to his presence in our
worship. But the importance of actions in recognizing God goes beyond the
four-fold actions involved at the Altar. I recently read a poem that a friend
wrote about the actions involved in the practice of “accompaniment,” in walking
alongside others out in the world, just as Christ walked alongside the
disciples on the way to Emmaus. My friend writes using verbs that make Christ
present in our Christian mission in the world. With our brothers and sisters,
we “trudge together up mountainsides
to preach peace and shout salvation … we stampede for justice …
we stand with others in the need of
prayer… we traverse thresholds by
dance or limp.”[4]
The Risen Christ appears to us in verbs, in the actions of our feet and hands, reminding
us of what Jesus taught us and helping us to recognize him walking with us in
the world. In the same way, another friend shared with me just this week that
when he is feeling God’s absence in his life, he goes downtown to the public
library. He tells everyone that he’s going to look for a book, but he really
goes for practice in feeling comfortable around the homeless men and women who
congregate in the library for shelter. And as he watches the librarians’ gentle words and simple deeds unfold toward those who seem indeed to have “lost the
race,” he feels the presence of the Holy Spirit fill his heart, and God is no
longer far away. Recognition requires actions, before memory or reason can kick
in.
Although no one knows exactly where the historical village of
Emmaus lies, the Medieval Crusaders thought that it was in the Arab town of Abu
Ghosh, some nine miles from Jerusalem. They built a church there to commemorate
the site—a church filled with marvelous frescos of Jesus and the disciples,
awash in the deep blue hues of Easter sky. At one point in the troubled history
of the region, the Crusader church became a mosque. Since all images of God are
forbidden in Islam, the face of each of the figures in the frescoes was removed
by the Muslim conquerors. I have been to the Crusader Church at Abu Ghosh, and
I have seen the faceless figures. They have quite an ethereal quality now:
blank faces that look as if a giant eraser rubbed over them in the night, expressionless for eternity. They haunt the ancient
walls of the church, a faceless Christ and his anonymous followers, not any
more recognizable to us than the risen Jesus was to his friends. We know them
only by what they are doing: breaking bread together, walking together,
healing, praying …In this Emmaus, it is not just Christ who is recognized by
what he does, but it is his followers, as well.
Next time you are feeling as if you might have backed the
wrong horse, gather in Christian community where you can see God taking,
blessing, breaking and giving, week after week without exception. Before you
know it, you will be one of the faceless saints holding hands around the Table—taken,
blessed, broken, and given for the life of the world. Before you know it, you
will recognize the face of the Risen One standing beside you, and you will say,
“Oh, of course, I met him in Scripture and in the words of his teaching, back
there on the road.”
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