Scripture: Luke 24:13-35
I have some comments today directly related to the scripture reading, which is a traditional one in the Sundays following Easter. You may have noticed that sometimes scripture is more in the background in my sermons, not always front and center, not always obviously what I am talking about. Most of the time I do eventually get around to talking about whatever the Bible reading is for the morning or at least relating what I’ve been saying to the reading, but I’m not always connecting every sentence or paragraph I say to something in the Bible.
I’m not apologizing for that, just acknowledging it, and I can assure you that the scripture is almost always there, even if it is in the background. It is not absent from what I am saying, even if I’m not quoting it or referring to it at every turn. I believe it is my obligation as a sermon-giver to be in dialogue with the Bible in what I say, not to accept it unquestioningly and submissively, or to use it as some kind of authority that tells us what to do and believe, nor on the other hand to ignore it and turn the sermon into just a platform for my own thoughts of the week, but to be in dialogue with the Bible. As I say, it may not always be crystal clear that that is what I am doing, but it in fact is what I am doing on most Sundays, having a dialogue, a conversation between me and some portion of the Bible, and this Sunday that may be more apparent than on some others. Anyway, let me now get to the passage of the day, the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
It’s still Sunday when this episode begins, the afternoon of the same day the tomb was found empty. Two of Jesus’ followers are walking along the road to Emmaus, which Bible notes will tell you is about 7 miles from Jerusalem. It doesn’t say why they are going to Emmaus, but my guess is, my way of reading the story is that they are not really going to Emmaus. They just happen to be on the road that leads to Emmaus, but they are going nowhere in particular…just needing to walk…and talk about what has happened and what they’re feeling and wondering what now or maybe not talking about much at all, just trivial things, the way people do sometimes when they don’t have words for what they’re really feeling.
Anyway, there they are walking along this road and they are joined by a third person who wants to know what they’re talking about…as they’re walking along, looking sad. One of them says, I read with impatience or exasperation in his voice, “So, you really have no idea why we’re looking sad? Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s been going on the last few days, how Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet mighty…” and so on. It’s the word stranger that stands out here, for me, right away.
One of these folks calls Jesus a stranger. Obviously they don’t recognize him. Of course those who know the story know it’s really Jesus. Even if you didn’t know the story, even if this was the very first time you read it and you hadn’t read it through to the end to know, you would probably have a hunch this is going to turn out to be Jesus. It’s just one of those things you can see coming. But for now, as far as the forlorn followers of Jesus are concerned, he’s a stranger.
In fact, he seems to have consistently appeared to people after the resurrection as a stranger. No one recognizes him right away. Not Mary, who carries on a conversation with him in the garden outside the tomb thinking he’s a gardener. Not Thomas, who refuses to believe it’s Jesus until he touches the wounds. Not the disciples when they were back home in Galilee trying to catch some fish and came in to find this stranger on the shore.
Jesus consistently appears to the disciples in these early encounters after the resurrection as a stranger. They consistently do not recognize him. And that gives me pause. Maybe there’s something more being said here than just illustrating the denseness of the disciples, which after all they are famous for already. In this story Cleopas asks, “Are you the only stranger who hasn’t heard…?” Why does he call Jesus a stranger? He doesn’t need to. He could have just said, “Are you the only person…? But he calls him a stranger. Maybe there’s something more here than just a momentary lack of recognition. Maybe it’s not just that for a brief moment the disciples were being stupid and therefore he seemed like a stranger, but that that’s the way we are meant to see him, all the time. Maybe it’s in his essence that we see him that way. These are the kinds of thoughts, at any rate, that the scripture led me in.
I’m not an expert in Biblical languages. It’s not just that I’m not an expert; I don’t know anything of Greek or Hebrew. I’ve confessed this before. It’s one of the reasons I chose the United Church of Christ as my denomination; they didn’t make me learn Greek or Hebrew. Well, I had a lot better reasons than that for joining the UCC but I must say that was a nice bonus that I didn’t have to learn Greek or Hebrew. But from what I read the word that is used in the Greek text that is translated here as “stranger” also means “alien”.
Which means that Jesus appears to the disciples here not only as one they don’t immediately recognize, a stranger in that sense, but maybe also as an alien, someone who is perceived as an outsider, as one who doesn’t belong. Since he has just recently been put to death as a criminal, we could say that he appears to them as an illegal alien. As has often been pointed out, Jesus hung out with outsiders, took up the cause of outsiders, spoke on their behalf, and in doing so and in making the choices he made became himself an outsider to what we might think of as the mainstream society of the day. That was his social location. That was where he was to be found: among the outcast and the dispossessed. I agree with that view of Jesus. That’s the way I read the gospels.
But my point today is not exactly that. What I’m thinking is not just that Jesus was a friend of outcasts and sinners, took up their cause and identified himself with them. What I’m thinking—and this may be somewhat the same thing, but not entirely the same thing—what I’m thinking is that Christ is an alien spiritual presence in the lives of believers, much more so than believers often act like he is.
For some people, for way too many people in my book, being a Christian is treated as being roughly equivalent to being a good person. I don’t know how many people would actually say this, but quite often Christians have acted like the duties of being a good Christian are roughly equivalent to being a good citizen, as though we are called as Christians to be good, upright, responsible, productive members of society. But Christ wasn’t a good citizen of his society. He wasn’t even particularly upright, responsible, or productive in any of the usual senses of those words. And the sermon on the mount did not tell us to be sure to vote for the candidate of your choice, to be active in the PTO, to be a good soccer mom or dad, to get that God and Country award on the way to becoming an Eagle Scout, to give to charity, or to join a church.
All of those things may be good things to do, but that is not the point. It was not the point of the Sermon on the Mount. It was not the point of Jesus’ ministry. It was not the point of his spirit or his calling. And he did not ask people only to take up the cause of outsiders, to be social progressives or social crusaders, though there is some of that in him. He asked people, at a minimum, to be open to becoming outsiders themselves. “Do not be conformed,” he said. Well, he didn’t say it in those words. Paul used those words in one of his letters, but much of what Jesus said and who Jesus was led in that direction.
In the story of the encounter on the road to Emmaus, Christ appears to these two mourners as an alien presence, not just because they temporarily don’t recognize him but because it is in his nature always to be an outsider, to be a not completely familiar, not completely comfortable figure even for those who claim to be his followers. It is always possible that he will call us to do something unsettling to others or to ourselves, something uncomfortable, something out of our comfort zone.
In this regard, I don’t have any specifics to talk about this morning. I don’t have a list of things we could or should be doing as unconformed Christians. I don’t know exactly what it means to look on Christ as a kind of alien presence or for us to be responsive to the idea of accepting outsider status for ourselves. I don’t know exactly what all that means. If I did, or pretended to, it would be outside of the spirit of how the scripture is speaking to me. I have too often heard people say something like how God is full of surprises and then go on to list what those surprises are, indicating that other people may be surprised but the speaker already knows all about them. In like manner, if I were to say to you, as I am trying to do, that Christ comes to us as a kind of alien presence, a holy presence and because of that an alien presence, and if I then went on to tell you in detail what that should mean to us, it feels like I would be saying that Christ is not an alien presence to me, even though he is to everyone else, because I know exactly what he’s up to. If you know what I mean…
In any case, for today, I just want to acknowledge that Christ may not be a comfortable presence for any of us. He may challenge assumptions and preconceptions, not just other people’s, whose assumptions need to be challenged, but even our own, and he may call us to ways of life that are not only not conformed but that are not safe, that are not mainstream, that are not the comfortable ways we may have of not being conformed. I don’t mean to be complicated about this, and maybe I am. Maybe I need to quit this train of thought, hoping I’ve communicated a little of what I’ve been wanting to say.
I do have just one other thought based on the scripture. It’s of a different nature—about communion. I’ll try to be brief. The scripture that I guess is used most often in communion ceremonies is the one that relates the story of the Last Supper, when Jesus shared a Passover meal with the disciples and in the course of that said the words which are now referred to as the words of institution, and so we now say, for instance…”Our Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘take and eat; this is my body that is broken for you, do this in remembrance of me.” And so for many Christians communion has become a look backward, a memory of the Last Supper, a remembrance of Christ’s sacrifice in which is body was broken and his blood poured out.
Today’s scripture suggests a different way to look at communion. For the grieving disciples on the road to Emmaus, they may have been on the road to Emmaus but they themselves, as I read the story, were not headed particularly to Emmaus. They were headed nowhere in particular, had nowhere to go. The future was a blank. What Jesus did in my understanding of it as he made himself known to them in the breaking of bread, was to open up the future for the disciples. He let them know that their journey with him had not ended.
This communion, this bread breaking with the disciples, was not backward looking, going back over in your mind the events of the last few days, remembering Christ’s sacrifice. It was about restoring a future, about taking up a journey again, a journey toward that coming future when, as we would sing today, when all will sit at the welcome table, when the new community Christ lived and died for would continue to come into being. For me, that is what our communion is about. Not so much about a remembrance or a memorial or a sacrifice. It is about taking up the journey again, knowing Christ is our companion on that journey—though not always a comfortable companion. And as for that journey and as for Christ coming to us as a stranger, I couldn’t help but recall the words of Albert Schweitzer that maybe are familiar to some of you and that I will close with today.
“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side; He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: ‘Follow thou me!’ and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.” Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 6, 2008