Sunday, April 6, 2008
Readings:
Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Jesus on the road to Emmaus is a rich piece of art. We can often be looking at it and not see all its subtlety and texture. In the breaking of the bread, it’s Jesus. No, it’s a wafer.
Jesus doesn’t always show up as we’d expect.
Pastor Johnson concedes that he loves “that disappearing Jesus” … now you see Him … now you don’t!!
It begs the question, “Why did not the disciples recognize Him?”
One of the problems we have in not knowing Jesus is that He doesn’t expect perfection in us. He knows us intimately in our brokenness, at our best and at our worst, in the sacred and the secular.
Archaeologists can’t say, exactly, where the actual physical road to Emmaus lies. What Jesus’ disciples discover is that …
The road to Emmaus is NOT a place you find … it’s one you’re already in!
Fredrick Buechner, a favorite of Pastor Johnson’s, put it aptly:
“And where was Emmaus? And why dd they go there? It is no place in particular really, and the only reason that they went there was that it was some seven miles distant from a situation that had become unbearable. Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred”
Whenever it seems like there’s nothing else you can do, no more you can bear, when it seems you can’t bear the weight of it anymore, it’s time to hit the road to Emmaus.
We all have been there … where it’s all muck ‘n mire, the cold and frightened and twisted places in our lives.
We like to stick Jesus on Easter Sunday and leave Him there.
But, truth is, on Monday morning, before 7 a.m. there’s a little kid spillin' milk all over his sister and Jesus is there mopping it up. He’s there in The Everyday and we don’t recognize Him still. Buechner says we may be like the disciples in more ways than one. He surmises the disciples might not have recognized Jesus when he returned, in part, because they failed to recognize Him when He was alive in their presence. And that because they had not seen Him as He actually was, but, rather, as they had wanted him to be. Sound familiar?
God is too big to be contained in any one form. He looks like the young man, the angel, the gardner, the fisherman, the stranger, the alien. In the movie “Oh, God”, George Burns comments on humans not expecting him to look as He appeared to them.
“I figured a fishing cap and jeans would do. What were you expecting? I tried the sandal and robe gig. It worked back then, but it wasn’t right today.”
The ending of the movie is quite poignant when, as God is walking away across a field of grass, He simply disappears. The point of the Disappearing Jesus is that …
God reveals Himself by hiding!
He appears under contrary appearances. Jesus is everywhere, but you can’t hold onto Him in only one form. He’s bigger than that.
Pastor Johnson read Billy Collins poem Questions About Angels in which Collins pens:
If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of a regular mailman, & whistle up the driveway, reading the postcards.
Pastor Johnson shared a personal story of a weekend some time ago. Within the last 48 hours, he had gotten word that his Dad was very ill and his best friend was diagnosed with a fatal illness. It was the week of Vacation Bible School in his previous parish. The goings-on of the kids was just too much happiness to bear for him. He had retired to his office. He shut the door and with it, shut out the world. He was on the road to Emmaus. After reminiscing, crying and preparing his sermon, he heard a knock at the door. He ignored it – didn’t want to hear it. The knock came again, and again it persisted. He answered and in came a 15 year old, a Confirmation student he remembered well. She had come to help out with VBS. She was mute with a terribly misshapen head from a traumatic birth. But, he recalled, she never missed a single Confirmation class. She never once spoke. Pastor Johnson was surprised to see her. Drained of energy, he wondered why she was there. She said nothing for 5 minutes that was an hour if nothing longer. And then she hugged him – an enveloping bear hug – and it came out of nowhere. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Like the disciples on their road to Emmaus, he didn’t get it, Pastor Johnson confessed.
“But – to this day – 24 years later, my heart is still burning."
Such is life with The Disappearing Jesus on the Road to Emmaus.
Readings:
Acts 2:14a,36-41
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
Jesus on the road to Emmaus is a rich piece of art. We can often be looking at it and not see all its subtlety and texture. In the breaking of the bread, it’s Jesus. No, it’s a wafer.
Jesus doesn’t always show up as we’d expect.
Pastor Johnson concedes that he loves “that disappearing Jesus” … now you see Him … now you don’t!!
It begs the question, “Why did not the disciples recognize Him?”
One of the problems we have in not knowing Jesus is that He doesn’t expect perfection in us. He knows us intimately in our brokenness, at our best and at our worst, in the sacred and the secular.
Archaeologists can’t say, exactly, where the actual physical road to Emmaus lies. What Jesus’ disciples discover is that …
The road to Emmaus is NOT a place you find … it’s one you’re already in!
Fredrick Buechner, a favorite of Pastor Johnson’s, put it aptly:
“And where was Emmaus? And why dd they go there? It is no place in particular really, and the only reason that they went there was that it was some seven miles distant from a situation that had become unbearable. Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred”
Whenever it seems like there’s nothing else you can do, no more you can bear, when it seems you can’t bear the weight of it anymore, it’s time to hit the road to Emmaus.
We all have been there … where it’s all muck ‘n mire, the cold and frightened and twisted places in our lives.
We like to stick Jesus on Easter Sunday and leave Him there.
But, truth is, on Monday morning, before 7 a.m. there’s a little kid spillin' milk all over his sister and Jesus is there mopping it up. He’s there in The Everyday and we don’t recognize Him still. Buechner says we may be like the disciples in more ways than one. He surmises the disciples might not have recognized Jesus when he returned, in part, because they failed to recognize Him when He was alive in their presence. And that because they had not seen Him as He actually was, but, rather, as they had wanted him to be. Sound familiar?
God is too big to be contained in any one form. He looks like the young man, the angel, the gardner, the fisherman, the stranger, the alien. In the movie “Oh, God”, George Burns comments on humans not expecting him to look as He appeared to them.
“I figured a fishing cap and jeans would do. What were you expecting? I tried the sandal and robe gig. It worked back then, but it wasn’t right today.”
The ending of the movie is quite poignant when, as God is walking away across a field of grass, He simply disappears. The point of the Disappearing Jesus is that …
God reveals Himself by hiding!
He appears under contrary appearances. Jesus is everywhere, but you can’t hold onto Him in only one form. He’s bigger than that.
Pastor Johnson read Billy Collins poem Questions About Angels in which Collins pens:
If an angel delivered the mail, would he arrive in a blinding rush of wings or would he just assume the appearance of a regular mailman, & whistle up the driveway, reading the postcards.
Pastor Johnson shared a personal story of a weekend some time ago. Within the last 48 hours, he had gotten word that his Dad was very ill and his best friend was diagnosed with a fatal illness. It was the week of Vacation Bible School in his previous parish. The goings-on of the kids was just too much happiness to bear for him. He had retired to his office. He shut the door and with it, shut out the world. He was on the road to Emmaus. After reminiscing, crying and preparing his sermon, he heard a knock at the door. He ignored it – didn’t want to hear it. The knock came again, and again it persisted. He answered and in came a 15 year old, a Confirmation student he remembered well. She had come to help out with VBS. She was mute with a terribly misshapen head from a traumatic birth. But, he recalled, she never missed a single Confirmation class. She never once spoke. Pastor Johnson was surprised to see her. Drained of energy, he wondered why she was there. She said nothing for 5 minutes that was an hour if nothing longer. And then she hugged him – an enveloping bear hug – and it came out of nowhere. Now you see it, now you don’t.
Like the disciples on their road to Emmaus, he didn’t get it, Pastor Johnson confessed.
“But – to this day – 24 years later, my heart is still burning."
Such is life with The Disappearing Jesus on the Road to Emmaus.
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