April 6, 2008 Sermon - Being Known

Sermon Text - April 6, 2008

"Being Known"

Rev. David Kratz

Luke 24:13-35

One of the introductions to our Communion service in our book of worship goes something like this. According to the Gospel of Luke it was on Easter day when two disciples were walking along with Jesus. He took the bread and he blessed it and he broke it and he gave it to them and their eyes were opened and they recognized him in the breaking of bread. Come, let us like those first disciples, know Christ in the breaking of bread. Our scripture reading this morning is the story of those words are contained and then it goes something like this. Listen for God's Word to you.

“Now on that same day (Easter 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.”

It is not just a historical moment, it is this moment and we are invited in this simple meal to share it with those first disciples who recognized him in the breaking of bread. Because we to yearn to recognize the risen Christ among us. It's a wonderful story, it’s filled with irony and miracles it’s a lot talking going on, questioning, learning, some harsh words, some tender words, some inviting words. It's a story that has so many meanings packed within it that we tell it every year around Easter time and we say parts of it every time we take communion, and we live it every Sunday that we gather. However, it raises the question, how do those of us who have never seen Jesus, how do we know Jesus? That's what the story is really about, it begins with disciples who cannot recognize him. It is a story about how he appeared to them and how they did in the end recognize him. But it's not a particularly happy story. They didn't realize they were going to church that day. It was the first day of the week, as you may know our brothers and sisters in the Jewish faith celebrate their worship time on the Sabbath, which is the last day of the week from Friday dusk until Saturday dusk. But Christians ever since this particular day have gathered in places to worship God, in word and sacrament, because we yearn to recognize Christ among us.

Of course it didn't start off that they were going to church, they were discouraged, they were going away from Jerusalem, away from the temple, they were going away from a story that they hated to remember but couldn't help remembering. So when a stranger came by they were full of talking about who it was and in the end they actually tell the Gospel story, although they don't realize it. I mean, Jesus had said three times that he was then have to go to Jerusalem and be handed over and be crucified and a third day raise again, but they didn't get it. They only perhaps even remembered as a distant rumor maybe they were so lost in their own disappointment and discouragement that they didn't even think about it – because they hadn’t experienced anything beyond the tragedy of the day before. And what seemed to them this report of these women going to the tomb of Jesus and not find him there, these seem to them as it says in verse 11, and idle tale. Perhaps told by an idiot full of sound and fury but signifying, as Shakespeare would say, nothing. What they know for sure was tragedy. What they had a rumor of was hope. And certainly as they walked along they were sad story says. And perhaps in their own sadness, they were lost to what was around them.

Tony Robinson in his commentary about this story said it’s a story of irony. He said it's kind of incredulous, they were incredulous, and a little bit irritated when this stranger said, what things were going on, and they said to him, you must be the only person in Jerusalem that doesn't know what's going on and the irony is he was the only one who did. Robinson goes on to say how glad he is that some times he is surprised by what he doesn't know. The truth is that most of us think that we do know what's going on all the time and if we took it seriously we’d be very discouraged. I had a conversation with the one of you yesterday and he is discouraged about the war that never seems to get over and doesn't even get to be talked about hardly except of death count every now and then. Life is discouraging, that's for sure, and so Tony Robinson said that, “he’s glad to know. Strange how often I think I know for sure how things really are and insist that I am right about them. And it turns out that things are not what I thought at all strange and wonderful how often my thoughts are not God's thoughts. Strange, wonderful and astonishing that God is doing something redemptive with what appears to me to be a hopeless situation.” Of course, these disciples, like many of Jesus’ disciples since then, have told the story what they knew and they were telling more than they understood that for sure. They knew the facts, but they didn't know the message.

Jesus doesn't chastise them for not remembering what he predicted, he didn't say, “I hear your sadness. I share your pain.” It wasn't a therapeutic moment, he didn't say, “just buck up by an act of will. You can make the world better just by thinking new thoughts.” What he did, strangely enough, was to take them back even beyond himself to the scriptures – to this ancient book and he told him stories about himself that he found about Moses or the prophets. That is to say he tried to make present the scriptures that they knew almost by heart. But somehow hadn't applied or hadn't understood to what was going on in their lives. It seems like a strange activity due to people who are in grief and yet it's what we do every Sunday here isn’t it? We gather in this place to read these ancient words, not because we try to go back and live them again. We’re never got to be on that particular road to Emmaus or we’re never going to stand on Mount Sinai and get the 10 Commandments again. It’s not as though were trying to replay them and put ourselves back in another world. It is as if we hope to make those words present to us so that we can struggle with them and discover in the telling and in the listening and talking together. The presence of the one to whom those words point – the one eternal God created the world and us.

There's a lot of argument these days about the authority of Scripture as if somehow the power of God could be live within a few ink blots on a piece of paper or the vocal chords of a person preaching. As if those words themselves were somehow authoritative, but we all know that it's not that. Everyone that has tried to look at the translation of the Bible in Hebrew for instance has found them incomprehensible. Everyone that has ever preached a sermon knows how we fail every time we try to tell the truth. And yet we believe that it is in the struggle with the words and our lives, bringing our own disappointment and our own joys to it, that we discover not just ourselves, not just words, we discover the holy one. Of course they didn't, most of us don't, as the day goes along, they didn't know what they heard really until they had stopped the stranger. They knew that something powerful was happening, but they couldn’t put into words and so they asked the stranger to stay and it was only when they sat around the table, a simple table (a Sunday supper we might say) where the stranger took the bread and bless it and broke it and gave it to them. Was it something in his eyes, something in the movement of his hands? Was in the sound of his voice, or the color of his eyes? The story doesn't tell us and maybe it's not so important – it would keep us from thinking the meal was even more magical than we do. It is not so much in the details of the story, but in the act of giving that they realized that it wasn't just bread they were dealing with, it wasn't just carbohydrates and the fruit of the vine. They were dealing with the eternal mystery of God, who gives God's own life for us that we could have life in his name. Most of us don't need more carbohydrates or more alcohol. Most of us aren't particularly looking for another meal at this time of the day, what we yearn for in this setting, in these simple elements is not more food for our bodies, but more strength for our souls. But we yearn most for is not just answers to our questions, but someone to walk with upon life’s way so that we can make it through the hills and valleys, the births and deaths, in the difficult times, and the joyous times of our lives and somehow make sense of it or at least be known in it and know that there is someone walking with us.

The church has always come to places like this, made of brick and wood and glass, call it a sanctuary and we try to do it every Sunday at least. We do it because we’ve been doing it for a couple thousand years. It often seems like a ritual to us, a thing that we do just because it's the done thing. And sometimes we come and we read these ancient words about things that happen a Moses or Jesus or Paul or Miriam or Martha or Mary or someone, and we somehow try to your our lives in it. And we break bread and tell the story of Jesus’ defeat and yet the amazement that somehow in that defeat, we are forgiven and given life. We come here not to be therapized, not to get a new will for our lives, but to find our lives energized by the presence of the holy one in these ordinary days of our lives. So come, as Luke has it two disciples were walking along the road and a stranger came up to them and they invited him to stay. He took bread and he blessed it and he broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. May it be for us as well.