"On the Road to Emmaus" based on Luke 24:13-35 April 30, 2017

That same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.

He asked them, “What are you discussing together so as you walk along?”

They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

 “What things?” he asked.

“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.  In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”

 They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”  Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.

Many years ago, just after being ordained, I had attended a workshop on church development by a rather well-known church expert – and it seemed to me both the workshop and the opening service were quite academic. I decided to plan a workshop of my own, and ask a friend, Dr. Reginald Bibby, to be the main presenter. It was 1997, and he was enjoying great success from a book he had just published called ‘There’s Got to Be More’. I remember the evening following a rehearsal for the service – we stopped at a local Tim Horton’s for a donut and coffee, and sat in the car in the dark sharing food and reflection. As we broke one of the donuts in half – something happened – there was a moment of knowing, of recognition, of somehow knowing this person even though we had only met once before.

For me it was a moment of ‘remembering’ – of ‘recognition’. Of knowing. Recognition is a two-part word – ‘re’ and ‘cognition’ – the  ‘knowing again’. Remember is also a two-part word – ‘re’ and ‘member’ – to become again part of a whole, to rejoin.

Two people are walking disconsolately down a road, their footsteps slow and dragging, their voices quiet, tearful, shocked, disbelieving. One of them is named Cleopas, and some readings of the story have the other as his wife. Maybe they’re a bit older, their children grown and gone; they have lived under Roman oppression and the oppression of their own religious rulers for so long they were surprised by Jesus’ message of love, inclusivity, and resistance. It called them to faith without violence, a new way of being in a confusing world. And when he was executed, the whole bottom fell out of their world.

And a stranger joins them and asks what they are discussing so intently. And they are shocked that he doesn’t appear to know, as if somehow, this is something everyone should know! Yet, as they open themselves to him and tell their story, he then talks about their scriptures – and somehow they are connected. They ask him to stay for the night, as the roads are dangerous for single travellers alone and on foot. At table he blesses bread and breaks it, and suddenly – they know! Their eyes are opened, they can see!

Is this just a tale? Luke is clear from the beginning of his Gospel that he is writing down oral stories, that he himself did not experience any of these things – he is just reporting as faithfully as possible. Is it real? A metaphor? Does it really matter????? What’s really important in this story?

It says they were on the road to a village called Emmaus – about seven miles from Jerusalem. Except there really is no record of that. Oh, there are several villages called Emmaus – but all too far away to be the Emmaus of the story.

So either this particular place has disappeared, or the story really is metaphoric rather than literal.  I’m leaning to the metaphoric, to the meaning of what Emmaus and also Jerusalem really are in our lives. 

Jerusalem is the holy city where on what we call Palm Sunday, Jesus and the followers come to celebrate the new life through the Way of Jesus. They are members of something bigger than themselves, and they come with some belief of the realm of God coming into being through the message and through their living of the message. Jerusalem, the Holy City, is also the place of our Good Friday, where Jesus dies on the eve of the Sabbath. Jerusalem is the crux where the best and worst of the world can be seen.

The road to Emmaus – maybe what they see now as a road to nowhere, is a place disillusionment, of a more limited view of what the realm is about and what their role is really. Emmaus coulbe any small place down a country road anywhere. We assume, for story purpose, that Emmaus is their home town, and they’re going back to see if there is something they can pick up again. They will not forget Jesus and what they learned, they will still try to put into practice the love and care for others that he demonstrated. But somehow, in their own familiar little town, the message of new life and hope on earth seems not quite so relevant.

Rev. Brian Donst, at Fifty United Church in Winona, Ontario, says this: “Fortunately for them….. they are touched, they are changed inside and in what they understand, before they make it all the way home – all the way back from the holy city of Jerusalem to the unknown and soon-to-disappear village of Emmaus.”

They are met by a stranger, who is able to touch them in such a way that they share the deep and intense sense of loss, disillusionment, personal pain. Instead of hiding their loss, they break it open and lay it out for this stranger to see. Then they listen as he takes what they share seriously enough to talk about the powerlessness of Jesus, what the realm of God seems to suffer time after time in the world.  And they listen.  What he says sounds true.  It warms their hearts to see they’re not alone in grief and suffering, but members of a much larger community than they realised.

And even in the midst of this reliving of pain and loss, they still remember the very basic rule of their spirituality and faith - hospitality to the stranger. No matter who the stranger may be. They sit down to eat, the stranger breaks the bread, and their eyes are opened to who the stranger is, and who they still are and continue to be. And then he is gone. And what do they do? They get up, and even though the roads are dangerous and it’s late at night,  they go right straight back to Jerusalem, with the incredible message “We know, we have seen, he lives – it wasn’t all in vain it wasn’t all useless after all.”

It is a  story of recognised faith and remembered community, even when we retreat to the smallness of Emmaus. It’s the story of our need for help to turn our journey around, a need for community, and for a way which has value.

For Cleopas – and maybe we are the other person – two things happen in this story. First, they recognise Jesus. In the extending of unconditional hospitality to a complete and utter stranger, they see the face of the one they loved so deeply. They know again who Jesus is. And they remember – they are re-membered to the community of those who work for the realm, who follow the Way of Jesus. They are re-connected to those who hold peace, love, kindness, mercy, humility as core values. And they realise that they aren’t alone, and there is still much to be done, and they are part of it.

My colleague Rev. Dr. Christina Berry, at First Presbyterian Church in Sterling,Illinois says this is one of the most elegant stories – and under 500 words. A tale of two people, on the road to nowhere, or so they believe; but they learn the way as they go.

The Way is a door we open by sharing who we are with others, regardless of their faith. It’s a recognition that comes in the breaking of bread – whether at a table for communion, or over a pot of stew with immigrant families, or coffee with whoever comes in on Thursday, morning, or sitting in a car breaking a donut in half and sharing. We encounter Jesus, and walk in his way, every single time barriers are broken down and we are able to recognise and remember.

It’s a way we make by walking together. It’s a way we make by not walking away from trouble and distress, but by walking right back into the struggle, back into the community which we thought was lost – this time knowing it is not lost, but is there for us to build.

“All along that way our eyes are opened,” says Christina “and when our eyes are opened we realize that our work has new meaning, that Jesus is present even in our pain, that our relationships can be transformed, that healing involves something more than a cure,

that God’s promises are certain, and God’s love never fails.”

This story reinforces in the most elegant way, that just as Cleopas and his companion realised they are “people of the way”, we are also ‘people of the way’ – following in the way Jesus taught, a way of unconditional love and compassion, and in that love and compassion a recognition and remembering of who we are called to be. That to be ‘people of the way’ means anywhere and everywhere – in the Holy City, or on a dusty road to a town that maybe isn’t real. It’s the Way, which takes us to the real heart of everything which is important.

May it be so.

Sources:

1.      Rev. Brian Donst, Fifty United Church, Winona, Ontario

2.      Rev. Christina Berry, First Presbyterian Church, Sterling, Illinois.

“It’s Dark in Here!!!” April 2, 2017 Mono Mills United Church based on Ezekiel37:1-14 and John 11:1-48

Ezekiel 37:1-14 

                     

God’s Spirit took hold of me, and set me down in a wide open plain covered with bones. There were bones everywhere, all dry and bleached by the desert sun.

He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I replied, “God, only you know.”
God said, “Prophesy to the bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to my words!’”
God said to the bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing life to you, you will come to life. I’ll put sinews and meat on your bones, cover everything with skin, and breathe life into you. You will come alive, you will know I am God!”
I prophesied as God commanded. As I spoke to the bones, there was a soft rustling and then a rattling sound! The bones came together, bone to bone; then sinews appeared, then muscles, then skin covering all; but the bodies did not breathe.
God said, “Prophesy to the breath, son of man. Say this:  ‘God says, “Come, you winds, from the four directions. Breathe life on these bodies. ”
So I prophesied. The wind and breath entered them, they came alive! They stood – a huge army of living beings.
God said to me, “Son of man, these bones are Israel. Listen to what they’re saying: ‘Nothing remains of our hope, nothing remains of us.’ So now, prophesy. Say to them, ‘God says: I will  bring you out alive from your burial tombs, and take you to the land of Israel. When open the tombs and restore you as my people, you’ll know I am God. I will breathe life into you again, you will live. I will do what I have said.’”

John 11:1-48 The Message A man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. This was the same Mary who massaged the Lord’s feet with aromatic oils and then wiped them with her hair. It was her brother Lazarus who was sick. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Master, the one you love so very much is sick.” When Jesus got the message, he said, “This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God’s glory by glorifying God’s Son.” Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, but oddly, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days. After the two days, he said to his disciples, “Let’s go back to Judea.”  They said, “Rabbi, you can’t do that. The Jews are out to kill you, and you’re going back?” Jesus replied, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks in daylight doesn’t stumble because there’s plenty of light from the sun. Walking at night, he might very well stumble because he can’t see where he’s going.” He said these things, and then announced, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. I’m going to wake him up.” The disciples said, “Master, if he’s gone to sleep, he’ll get a good rest and wake up feeling fine.” Jesus was talking about death, while his disciples thought he was talking about taking a nap. Then Jesus became explicit: “Lazarus died. And I am glad for your sakes that I wasn’t there. You’re about to be given new grounds for believing. Now let’s go to him.” That’s when Thomas, the one called the Twin, said to his companions, “Come along. We might as well die with him.” When Jesus finally got there, he found Lazarus already four days dead. Bethany was near Jerusalem, only a couple of miles away, and many of the Jews were visiting Martha and Mary, sympathizing with them over their brother. Martha heard Jesus was coming and went out to meet him. Mary remained in the house. Martha said, “Master, if you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you.” Jesus said, “Your brother will be raised up.” Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.”  “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”  “Yes, Master. All along I have believed that you are the Messiah, the Son of God who comes into the world.”After saying this, she went to her sister Mary and whispered in her ear, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” The moment she heard that, she jumped up and ran out to him. Jesus had not yet entered the town but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When her sympathizing Jewish friends saw Mary run off, they followed her, thinking she was on her way to the tomb to weep there. Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, “Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. He said, “Where did you put him?” “Master, come and see,” they said. Now Jesus wept.  The Jews said, “Look how deeply he loved him.” Others among them said, “Well, if he loved him so much, why didn’t he do something to keep him from dying? After all, he opened the eyes of a blind man.”  Then Jesus, the anger again welling up within him, arrived at the tomb. It was a simple cave in the hillside with a slab of stone laid against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” The sister of the dead man, Martha, said, “Master, by this time there’s a stench. He’s been dead four days!” Jesus looked her in the eye. “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” Then, to the others, “Go ahead, take away the stone.” They removed the stone. Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and prayed, “Father, I’m grateful that you have listened to me. I know you always do listen, but on account of this crowd standing here I’ve spoken so that they might believe that you sent me.” Then he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face. Jesus told them, “Unwrap him and let him loose.” A couple of weeks ago, when we were talking about kinds of darkness, Ed noted that darkness in a cave is pretty well absolute. In English we have a phrase “dark as a tomb”. There are caves, and then there are caves. Norio and I walked through river caves in Puerto Rico, which were entered through a huge cave mouth where there was lots of light. But as we walked further in, and around corners, the light is gone. For safety reasons there are some lights along the path – a few – but the path sometimes is quite obscure, and if those lights went out, everyone would be in total absolute darkness – and there are places where it would be easy to walk off the edge and fall. It would be literally the darkness of a tomb. Barbara Brown Taylor talks about that cave experience – sitting underground in a cave with literally no light at all. No sense of direction, no sense of what ‘here’ is.  She asks “what makes darkness frightening to some people and not to others? What makes it frightening sometimes, and not other times? Does having a light make a real difference, or is it a security blanket? One thing I am sure of is that being in a cave with people who know what they are doing is the only way to go. Being in this cave alone is not something I want to think about.”

Ezekiel finds himself in the valley of the dry bones, and God says that the bones represent the people of Israel - dead to everything until the breath of God enters them. Without the breath of God they are dead. - as a people, the Israelites are dead until the breath of God inspires them - until they breathe in the breath of God.

I looked at several translations, which all used the word “graves”. Except in the time of Ezekiel, a grave was really a cave, with a stone rolled across the opening, to prevent wild animals from getting in. It wasn’t a six-foot deep hole in the ground, it was a hole in solid rock. So I decided to try paraphrasing a little – to see what happened. Here’s the very last paragraph of that whole text – and I think the change is significant.

“God said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the people Israel. Listen to what they are saying: They are saying ‘Nothing remains of our hope, nothing remains of us.’ So now, prophesy. Tell them, ‘God says: I will  bring you out alive from your burial tombs, and take you to the land of the people Israel. When I open the tombs and restore you as my people, you’ll know I am God. I will breathe life into you again, you will live. I will do what I have said.’”

Is this a literal story of the raising of thousands out in the middle of a plain? Or is it a story about the darkness and tombs of people’s own making? God says here is a people in such deep darkness it has become a tomb. They are a dead people, in a tomb of their own making, they have given up hope. God says “I will bring you out from your tombs, I will breathe life into you.

 In the Gospel reading, Jesus first speaks of Lazarus sleeping, and then dead, and he uses two completely different words, first he says Lazarus is sleeping, and then he says Lazarus is really dead. But what does it actually mean? Is Jesus is saying that Lazarus appears dead, but is really just sleeping; or is Jesus is saying Lazarus is dead to everything, until the Spirit comes and brings new life. Perhaps Lazarus is dead and bound, in a tomb of his own making???? Had Lazarus just given up hope and refused to engage in life again?

Then there’s the parallel between the story of the breath of God raising Lazarus to new life through Jesus, and Jesus being raised by the breath of God into new life.

Reading again from Barbara Brown Taylor, “Jesus was born in a cave and rose from the dead in a cave. Like most Westerners, I always thought of the stable in Bethlehem as a wooden lean-to filled with straw, at least until I went to the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank.  There, I learned that caves made the best stables in Jesus’ day – no wind whistling through the boards, no predators sneaking up on you from behind. The traditional place of Jesus’ birth is not in the Church of the Nativity, but under it, in a small cave under the altar.

The cave in which he rose from the dead is long gone, covered over by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Today visitors stand in line to enter a mausoleum that looks nothing like a hole in the ground. This may be just as well, since no one knows what happened there. By all accounts a stone blocked the entrance to the cave so that there were no witnesses to the resurrection. Everyone who saw the risen Jesus saw him after. Whatever happened in that cave happened in the dark.”                                                                                   

                                                                                               

Both of the Scriptures today talk about being dead until the Spirit gives life; in Christian eschatology - that is, a theology of the end times - it is usually meant to mean the end of the of the physical world, and a complete change of everything. Jesus, in traditional theology, was seen as an event rather than a person - he stood at a kind of crux in the continuum  - pointing back towards God in creation, and forwards to the future realm of God when the hope and promises are fulfilled and the realm truly comes into being.

One of my favourite theologians, is a German named Jurgen Moltmann, who has written extensively about the church, and the power of the spirit. In 1993, he said this:

    “The renewal of the church finally depends on what happens at the grass-roots level. And renewal at this level awaits, it seems to me, on the conscious reclaiming of the gifts of the Spirit on the part of the laity. These gifts, which in the New Testament are always identified as signs of the coming Kingdom of God, are given to the whole people of God for ministry, for diakonia.”   

David Jacobson, in the magazine Lectionary Homiletics, says “The Rushing Wind of the Holy One”.is not so much about quiet centring and endlessly wandering labyrinths, or about internal renewal of faith, as it as a propelling out of our closed spaces - or is it like a flame that sets our tongues and our hearts and lives on fire with the good news of the Gospel for the world. The Spirit is not for our spiritual renewal, but for the sake of our neighbours who will not know the good news unless we get out of our safe church buildings, unless we stop trying to keep them ‘safe’ for ourselves.”

God asks Ezekiel - ‘can these bones live?’ - can the people of Israel live again, can they hope again? Bringing this into today, can the Church live, can the bones of the church be infused with the breath of the Spirit, and filled with hope for the future? Not a future which looks exactly like we do now, but a different future. Lazarus was very likely completely changed by his experience of going into the darkness of a tomb, only to be called out again into the same life as before. New life doesn’t mean filling positions on committees, or having all kinds of programs to attract people to the church or packing the pews on Sunday morning. To me it means being propelled to open our space  - to roll back the stone blocking off the cave, and let the light and breath of the Spirit enliven us, and take us wherever it will.

Think about the word ‘inspiration’ – it’s in the bulletin. Inspiration comes from ‘inspire’, which in fact means to “breath in”. To be inspired by the Spirit, is to breathe in the Spirit. We are here, gathered together on one place - celebrating our faith. What are the tombs which close us in? Will we allow the Spirit to breathe into us, to unbind us and set us free? 

In the book Dying We Live edited by Helmut Gollwitzer,  Czech/Austrian Resistance leader Hanns Georg von Heintschel-Heinegg died under the axe of the guillotine on December 6, 1944. Before he died, he had founded an order called the “Knights of the Holy Spirit”. Here is what he wrote in his farewell letter:

  “This is what I want to say: everything that is inessential in us must fall away like ashes in a

furnace, in order that the pure gold of our being, thus refined, may shine in the light of grace. The Lord holds you in his hand; know then, dear friend, that you belong to the Lord no matter whether you live or die, and who amongst us will not die, only to live more fully afterwards?”

Can these bones live? Can the assembled flesh and sinew that is us continue to breathe in the Spirit, and be renewed? What are our tombs? What is it that binds each of us, individually and collectively? How do we respond when Jesus stands at our tomb and calls us to come out? Is it a shock to take the cloth away from our eyes, and remove the strips of cloth which hold us?  Jesus says to the gathered people “Unbind him, and set him free!” May it be so.

Sources:

1.      Barbara Brown Taylor . Learning to Walk in the Dark, Harper Collins Publishers. 195 Broadway, New York NY 10007. 2014.

2.      Helmut Gollwitzer, Ed.  Dying We Live: The Final Messages and Records of the German Resistance, Wipf & Stock Reprint Edition 2009.

3.      Jurgen Moltmann. The Church in the Power of the Spirit, Augsburg Fortress, 2008 edition.