Neill Morgan
Easter Sermon
Delivered at 8:30 a.m. Service
Sermon Dated April 8, 2007
But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.’ Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Guerilla Hospitality
It’s that time of year again, the time when publishers and movie-makers cash in on Easter. It’s not quite like Christmas, when plenty of money can be made just telling the traditional story, warming hearts and appealing to nostalgia.
No, Easter is a time for books and movies that claim to tell the real story of Easter, to march out the old legends of Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene, having a child, and living to a ripe old age. So, a few days into Lent, a movie director can call a press conference and tell the media that, against the judgment of actual archeologists, he has found the tomb of Jesus, Mary, and their son, Judah.
I read on the internet that even though there’s no DNA to match, they know it has to be Jesus because of the bracelet on his wrist. It reads: WWID.
Dang. There goes the Christian faith, sunk like the Titanic after 2000 years.
It is absurd, of course, to think that Christian faith can be created or deflated by archeology. Archeology is wonderful for deepening our understanding of the culture out of which our sacred texts emerged. Understanding? Sure. Knowledge? Of course. But faith? Not at all. Solid and authentic faith is neither created nor destroyed by archeological discoveries. Faith emerges from our relationships. It emerges from relationships with one another in the community of faith, the living body of Christ, and from our relationship with an ancient but living document of faith, the Bible, and our deepening relationship with God through the Holy Spirit as we live faithfully in response to the witness of the Bible and the community.
Faith emerges from the telling and hearing of each others’ stories. Two disciples, Cleopas and his un-named companion, perhaps his wife, maybe a friend, walk slowly, dejectedly, away from the cross, away from Jerusalem, away from the place where they had hoped all their faith would be fulfilled and redeemed.
When a stranger catches up with them, inquiring about their downcast demeanor, their slow trudge becomes a dead stop. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who has not heard?”
And they tell their story. I say their story because the story of Jesus, their friend, their master, their mentor, their teacher, has become their story because of their relationship with him. The story of his acts of healing, his powerful teaching, his betrayal, crucifixion, and his empty tomb, all that is now their story.
And when Jesus, whom they still do not recognize, reflects their story back to them through the lens of their sacred texts, what we call the Old Testament, their hearts catch fire, burn within them, because of the relationship that begins to emerge for them between their own experience with Jesus and the stories of their ancestors in the faith recounted in Scripture. It begins to make sense. It begins to make faith.
Perhaps you are here because you are here every Sunday, because your own story and the story of Jesus long ago intersected, and you had parents or grandparents or friends to reflect it back to you and it made sense, it made faith, and this community feeds your faith and gives you a place, an extended family, in which to work it out, to serve others, to seek understanding when the world is a confusing, broken, or hostile place.
Perhaps you are here out of loyalty to a family member, you’re not a joiner, not into the whole organized religion scene (though calling the Christian church organized may be a bit of an exaggeration). You may have tried the church, but it didn’t meet your needs.
Or, it may be that you are here because of memories. You remember a time when the stories and the relationships and the creed made sense, and, at least on Easter Sunday, you want to give a nod to nostalgia, give the words a chance to work on your heart again, take you back to a simpler time when faith was simply a matter of not yet having thought too deeply about the injustice and brokenness and unfairness of this world.
Here in the story of the Emmaus Road resurrection appearance, we all find ourselves.
Certainly, Cleopas and his companion had found in Jesus a reason to hope, a community, an extended family, a challenge to live in a way that gave them meaning. They were part of the community that clung to each other, helped each other in the face of a violent and hostile world.
But, they were walking away. They had given up on the whole Jesus community because it had failed. They had needs and expectations. Jesus was going to redeem Israel, and for them that meant a political victory over Rome, a vindication, a show of strength. Jesus had failed to meet their needs, failed to live up to their expectations.
All they had were their memories. They remembered their hope, they remembered their initial excitement and sense of comfort, the way they used to sing together and have picnics on the beach and listen to Jesus preach and watch the joy of the people he healed. But, now, he was dead. There would never be a preacher like Jesus again. There would never be such a skilled and compassionate healer again, there was just nobody else on the scene who could take his place. All that was left was to take their memories with them and perhaps return to Jerusalem for an occasional reunion with Peter, James, and John, and the old crowd.
Walking with a stranger, something odd happened. The stranger began to connect their memories, their family stories of faith, and their experience. So, when they reached their house and this stranger started to walk away into the darkness, what could they do? They remembered what Jesus had taught them in the parable of the good Samaritan about showing kindness to strangers in need. They remembered what Jesus had taught them about the prophets Elijah and Elisha whom God sent to outlaws and outcasts, how Jesus had broken bread with poor sinful people and a rich sinful tax collector named Zaccheus, so what could they do but invite this stranger to stay the night with them, at least to sit with them at their table for dinner?
We may read this story and say, “Oh, wouldn’t it have been wonderful to live in such a time when it was safe to invite a stranger into your house? Weren’t those the days?”
But, it wasn’t safe at all. In the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus told us the story of what happened to someone who traveled alone on the roads to and from Jerusalem. He was beat up, robbed, and left for dead.
The safe thing to do would have been not to have spoken with this stranger in the first place, for them to go their way and let this stranger go his. But now darkness was falling and they arrived at their home and the stranger had taken a place in their hearts. Instead of fearing him, they invite him in.
Just like that, they decide. It wasn’t part of any organized plan of hospitality. It wasn’t an evangelism program developed by an expert in church growth, or a campaign to evangelize the world in so many years.
It was just two people being faithful. It was two people who were part of a defeated revolution, two people out of a once proud band of hundreds, retreating from Jerusalem planning to fade back into the fabric of life and lie low and hope the Roman or religious authorities didn’t come looking for them. Like a guerilla army scattered in the hills with no weapons, they found themselves still acting like disciples of their fearless master.
Their memories of Jesus made it impossible for them to do the safe thing and let this stranger walk away into the darkness of the night. They remembered. They had internalized the ethic of hospitality even at the risk of their own safety. Not even the horror of the crucifixion could remove the deep freedom and truth they had found in refusing to live in fear of their neighbors.
If we live, we live unto the Lord. If we die, we die unto the Lord.
So, they invited him, no urged him, to stay with them rather than walk alone as darkness fell.
When he sat at the table with them, even though it was their home, it was the stranger who assumed the role of host. He took bread, blessed it, and broke it. And when he did that, their memories came flooding back: the night he was betrayed, that Passover celebration four days before when he had broken bread and said, “This is my body, broken for you,” and poured the wine saying, “This is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins,” it all came pouring over them like walking into the church after years of absence and the smell of the wood polish and the color of the light through the windows, and the face and voice of someone you had seen every week years ago in the same pew, and the tune of a hymn you once sang all the time, it all came flooding back and all was clear. There was Jesus, in front of them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him. But he was different.
When Jesus was crucified, the faith they once had in him no longer fit. The expectations that once felt so natural were shattered, and they had been left wandering in a wilderness of regret.
At the breaking of the bread, a new world opened in front of them.
My younger brother was an excellent golfer in Junior High School. At 14 years old, he was playing with the old men at the club and they always ended up buying his lunch. He couldn’t hit the ball as far as most of them, but he hit so straight that he didn’t need the distance. Then, suddenly one summer, he went from five feet tall to five feet ten inches tall, and all his new height was in his legs and arms. His swing was ruined by his growth spurt. He got new clubs, he practiced in front of the mirror, but he had lost it. He hooked, then he sliced, but he couldn’t hit a ball straight to save his life.
It took him a couple of years to grow into his new height and find a new swing. But once he found it, he found he had not only the straight shot he had as a 14 year-old, but he had another 100 yards or more in his drive.
Isn’t that like resurrection faith? That faith of our childhood, that hopeful enthusiasm of our adolescence can get creamed, knocked out of whack by an intense college education or streetwise schooling in that first real job, by the deeper understanding of our fragility and mortality that comes with the untimely loss of someone we love.
I lost my footing when I was 13 years old. It was only a year after I had been baptized and made my profession of faith when a friend called me from the hospital to tell me my girlfriend had died suddenly in an accident. Through my teenage years, I went through all the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression – but with the last stage, acceptance, came a cynicism that would not let me see the world as a friendly place ever again. Just as my younger brother had lost his swing in his growth spurt, I lost my footing, I could no longer stand on the ground that once held firm for me.
If the faith of our youth was held together by our refusing to think about all that would challenge it, then the faith of our adulthood can either cling to nostalgia or dig deeper, fearlessly, into the abyss, with only a memory of a shred of our former faith, the shred that assures us we are not alone, that we need not fear the wilderness we must pass through before we find our footing on the other side.
At the table in Emmaus, two former disciples became disciples again in an act of guerilla hospitality when bread was blessed and broken, their eyes were opened, and suddenly they were connected again. What could they do but get up, run through the darkness back to Jerusalem, and tell the others that nothing would ever be the same?
Thanks be to God. Amen.