Friday, May 2, 2014

Easter 3 Sermon



We are going back a little bit, chronologically, to the evening of the Resurrection. Remember how we left those disciples heart broken and lost on Good Friday, too numb from events even to imagine what might be next .Well that is how we pick up these travelers in this story. They are walking the road to Emmaus, a town a few miles from Jerusalem and we can imagine them slumping along, their hearts in their shoes. Perhaps they have now drawn breath, perhaps they are beginning to think where next, but probably not, they are probably still letting the news soak in. Jesus is dead.
It is hard for us to imagine in these days of mass communication, how slowly news might spread. How, if these men had left early that day, they might simply have missed the news. There were no tweets, no Instagram pictures of the empty tomb, no blogger reflections upon the truth of the matter. So there was no way in which these men were expecting Jesus to show up. Even though Jesus had given clear clues that he would be back, the experience of the reality of the resurrection was moment to moment.
When Jesus meets these disciples they are at their lowest ebb, they are feeling vulnerable and broken but it is in the moment when Jesus breaks bread that they see him for who he is – in that moment of recollection of his own suffering – this is my body, he had told them – that they recognize him.
For us too, this breaking of bread is a moment of recognition, a moment of gathering, a moment of presence. I remember at my confirmation classes I was taught to make the sign of the cross before receiving communion – the priest taking the class said, if nothing else, it was a final act of  pulling yourself together before receiving the sacrament. Whilst I don’t want to analyse that too closely there is something in the wisdom of repeated words and action which we learn and which become markers in our life for the presence of Christ – markers which at times of difficulty and doubt, can carry us through with action and words – even when those actions and words do not resonate as they once did.
I wonder though what we think when we leave church on a Sunday. Perhaps – well that is that for another week – time to get back to real life, perhaps we wonder how we can better integrate Sunday morning and Monday morning – or perhaps we leave with our eyes open to our next encounter with Christ – the next moment of recognition.
Do we look at the people around us day by day and see Christ in them, do we recognize them as fellow travelers. Perhaps we find that relatively easy with people we get on with, people we agree with – but what about those who we cannot make sense if, those who stand out from the norm, those who we find a bit too different or even frightening – how do we see Christ in them – how do we come to a moment of recognition in the brokenness of lives which we would rather see as somewhat outside our realm of experience.
And then there are those situations where we recognize Christ – those moments where we are fully aware of God’s grace and hope. Those moments of kindness and revelation and wonder which at least make us sit up straight and sometimes take our breath away completely. But there is also that slower sort of revelation, those times when we look back and recollect, especially when we are remembering difficult points in our lives, then we recognize a quieter savior, sitting amongst the broken pieces of our lives with us.
I was talking to another group this week about Brene Brown. She has written a lot about vulnerability- in fact she is a researcher and vulnerability sort of sneaked up on her as a surprise result of her research into what she calls whole-hearted living. When she talks about her return to Church she talks about the mid-life crisis manual she read which told her she needed to go back to church, she went expecting an epidural which would swaddle her and numb the pain she was feeling as her research led her towards vulnerability as something important to hold onto, and live through, rather than as something to be avoided at all costs.
She found that the Church, and I would say God working in the Church, was not an anesthetic against life but a midwife working to birth life. That on all the messiness and pain and brokenness which she was feeling there was new life waiting to break forth. But only in the brokenness of vulnerability was this possible, and only in knowing that God sits in the mess with us is true vulnerability possible.
Is this one of the lessons which this story teaches us? The in the moment of brokenness we recognize Jesus – this certainly is something which the disciples experienced.
So what is this breaking of bread – is it simply a moment in Church or is it something which transcends this moment and informs the rest of our lives. In breaking bread we share and feed but we also remember the action of Christ in ultimate vulnerability on the cross. This moment of breaking holds the power of the resurrection but must also fill us with the compassion of Christ and give eyes which recognize Christ time and again in the world around us.
When we leave the altar, we thank God for this gift, when we leave Church we are sent into the world – not to wait for our next chance to get to Church but to go in love and peace to serve the world – to make sense of the moments of brokenness and to see Christ in them.
We do not get to give simplistic answers, we do not get to keep our hands clean and we often skin our knees because that is what brokenness calls for. Walking into those places we can often feel, as the disciples felt, lonely and abandoned, and yet we find Christ has been walking with us all along, explaining things, making sense and things become clear – if only for a moment.
Resurrection is an event but it is also an experience of every day living. We proclaim resurrection and resurrection comes through the suffering of the cross, comes at cost, comes with joy and needs proclaiming. But like Jesus we come alongside those who He has already loved and we do so looking expectantly for the moments of recognition.
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?"
Lord Jesus give us hearts which burn for you all week long, that through your cross, we may truly live in your resurrection.

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