This is pretty long for a blog post, but it is my manuscript of my sermon for May 11th, 2014. Enjoy!
Our
Story is Not Over
Luke
24:13-35
New
International Version (NIV)
13 Now that same day two of
them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from
Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything
that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things
with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
16 but they were kept from recognizing him.
17 He
asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”
They
stood still, their faces downcast. 18 One of them, named
Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who
does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
19 “What
things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,”
they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before
God and all the people. 20 The chief priests and our rulers
handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;
21 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem
Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took
place. 22 In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to
the tomb early this morning 23 but didn’t find his body. They
came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he
was alive. 24 Then some of our companions went to the tomb and
found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
25 He said to them, “How
foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have
spoken! 26 Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and
then enter his glory?” 27 And beginning with Moses and all the
Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures
concerning himself.
28 As they approached the
village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were
going farther. 29 But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us,
for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to
stay with them.
30 When he was at the table
with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it
to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him,
and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other,
“Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on
the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
33 They got up and returned
at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with
them, assembled together 34 and saying, “It is true! The Lord
has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35 Then the two told
what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them
when he broke the bread.
September
11th, 2001 was a day that I looked forward to greatly.
Back then, new music CD's were released on Tuesdays and my favorite
band of the time, POD, had a new CD releasing that day. I was in
college at Malone at the time and my morning ritual was to allow my
alarm to go off for about an hour. In fact, I think my alarm turning
off woke me up more than it did coming on. I rolled out of bed and,
like every school day, I turned on my TV to watch the news as I
gathered my stuff for the day. Except that day was not like every
other day.
I
turned on my TV just after the first plane flew into the World Trade
Center. I remember thinking that it was a terrible and crazy tragedy.
How does a plane crash into a building like that anyway? I called my
mom as she did the administrative work for my dad's business, so it
effectively called them both, to see if they heard the news. Sure
enough they did and I recall my mom and I talking about how crazy it
was that a plane crashed into the World Trade Center. We hung up and
I went about getting my stuff together when a new announcement came
across. Another plane struck the World Trade Center.
I
remember staring in disbelief at my TV. How could two planes crash
into the same building? That doesn't even make sense! What are the
odds? What are the odds? What are... Wait. I think the newscaster
suggested it could have been an attack. A what? I dialed my mom again
and asked if she just heard that another plane hit. I don't remember
exactly what we said but I remember her saying it was scary. Was it
scary? It was a terrible tragedy. Or was it more?
I
don't really recall what I was thinking as I got ready to leave but I
distinctly remember hearing the announcement that one of the towers
collapsed as I drove to the end of my street. The magnitude and
confusion were just beginning to be evident.
When
I got to school no one was yet sure if we were having classes the
rest of the day. All over campus people were glued to the TVs as they
relentlessly played footage of the crashes over and over again. At
some point more crashes and explosions had happened but I do not
really recall them. People were crying. People were in shock. America
was attacked and untold thousands were dead. We don't have attacks in
America. Not outside of history books. Not outside of some people
here and there that caused a lot of destruction and pain, but not
like this. This was different. Something else died that day. Our idea
of safety, of shelter, of bad stuff always happening somewhere else.
Maybe it was a naïve belief but it was real. America was attacked.
We believed we were safe. It's American soil. It's safe soil. It was
safe soil.
Another
normal event continued that day. See, many of you may not know this,
but college kids are champion sleepers. If there wasn't a morning
class to be up for you could be sure there were students all over
campus earning their REM degree. If you don't understand that joke,
sleep on it and get back to me tomorrow. Students were waking for the
first time that day for classes not knowing anything that had
happened. They saw people crowded around TVs. People that should be
at class. They saw people walking in blank-faced dazes. People
crying. “What is going on?” They would ask. The people's at the
TV heads would spin 180 degrees, the dazed people would snap to
consciousness, the sobs stopped on a dime and everyone stared in
disbelief. “Have you not heard the things that have happened? What
rock did you just crawl out from?” There was something easier about
talking about what happened without saying the actual events and when
these late risers were asking what happened you were expected to
relay what actually happened. But how? Planes were hijacked, crashed
into buildings, we were attacked. We were attacked. America was
attacked. That probably was the best way to sum it up, but instead we
tried to stumble through recounting the events. Maybe it was easier
to try to break it into pieces. How do you describe a series of
events, that when added together, their sum is greater than their
parts? Thousands of people died and it was horrible, but it was even
more terrible than just that. A collective belief died, and in a
terrible way. This is where we join the disciples on their journey to
Emmaus.
Jesus
was just crucified three days ago near Jerusalem and two disciples
had left to go to Emmaus. We don't really know why, but it isn't hard
to imagine they might be returning home to pick up the pieces of
their lives and try to get back to a normal life. If there is such a
thing as normal for them anymore. As they walked they discussed all
the things that happened in the previous days. Jesus' triumphal
entry. Jesus' betrayal. Jesus' trial and his death by crucifixion.
As
they talked about these things, Jesus came up beside the disciples
but they did not recognize him. And Stranger-Jesus asked them what
they were discussing. And much like the students I described earlier,
the disciples stopped dead in their tracks. Looking sad and probably
frustrated and confused. “Haven't you heard? Were you the only one
in Jerusalem that missed what happened? How could you miss all the
things that have happened?”
At
this point in time the disciples still didn't name what had happened.
They were hoping to talk around it, most likely. But Stranger-Jesus
pressed them further. “What things?”
So they began to recount the events, and they named
many events but today we will talk about these specific events they
named. The passage reads, “About
Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in
word and deed before God and all the people. 20 The chief
priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and
they crucified him; 21 but we had hoped that he was the one who
was going to redeem Israel.”
Redeem
Israel. Israel had been in captivity for hundreds of years. Hundreds.
And they longed for freedom. Freedom to be self-determining, freedom
to worship God more openly, freedom from being ruled by empires that
practiced all kinds of sin and idolatry. They believed that a savior
would come and restore Israel to the glory days of King David. They
longed for a day that the Lord would conquer their enemies and there
would be no doubt to the other nations that Israel's God was the God
of all other Gods. They waited for God to fulfill his promises about
Israel in the way they understood them. And they waited. And waited.
For centuries and centuries. And many people of Israel had placed
their hope in other so-called messiahs before Jesus, only to have
them and all of their followers die. Often by crucifixion. Ancient
historical records often were exaggerated to bolster Rome's glory but
there are records of mass crucifixions around the time of Jesus, some
numbering into the thousands. At the center of these usually was
someone with the title messiah.
But
Jesus, he was different. He preached with unique authority, he cast
demons out of people, he healed the blind and made paralyzed people
walk, and he even raised the dead. Jesus was different. Jesus was
going to liberate Israel. Jesus was the hope they had been waiting
for. Jesus was the real savior.
But
then the unthinkable happened. The Jewish leaders, part of the very
people Jesus was to liberate, conspired with the Romans to kill
Jesus. The Romans were the ones Jesus was to defeat. But the Jews
conspired and had the Romans crucify Jesus. Just like all the other
so-called messiahs. Defeated by the Romans and betrayed by the Jewish
leaders.
Not
only was the disciples' friend and teacher horribly killed, in the
most humiliating manner the Roman Empire used, but the disciples also
lost their hope that day. Their faith had been crushed. They had
fallen for another false messiah like the many Jews before them. The
hope that the disciples would be be the ones to finally see the
promises of God fulfilled was shattered.
The
disciples attempted to communicate this deeply personal and communal
loss to the stranger-Jesus with them on the road. And then, probably
to the great surprise and shock of the disciples, the stranger-Jesus
rebuked them.
“How
foolish you are and how slow to believe all that the prophets have
taught! Didn't you know all these things had to happen for the
messiah to enter his glory, to fulfill his mission?”
Imagine their confusion at hearing this question. They had thought
the messiah the prophets talked about would be a conquering King like
the great King David and that the messiah would lead the victory
against Israel's earthly occupiers.
So
Stranger-Jesus used the rest of the trip for teaching and explaining
how the prophets talked about the pain and trials the messiah had to
go through and what it meant.
When
they finally arrived at Emmaus, the stranger-Jesus walked on as if he
were departing. The story tells us that the disciples urged him to
stay with them for the night and share dinner. Such an invitation was
a great honor. In the Middle-Eastern culture sharing a meal is seen
as an intimate expression of friendship, trust, and peace. I have
heard it called “covenant building”. The polite response to such
an invitation was to turn it down a couple of times. It seems that
maybe the Stanger-Jesus did this as the story tells us that the
disciples “Strongly Urged” him to stay, meaning they asked him
until he accepted their invitation.
So the
Stranger-Jesus accepts the disciples' offer to be their guest. But
while they are at the table, maybe before the meal, maybe during,
maybe after we don't really know, Stranger-Jesus reversed the roles.
Stranger-Jesus picked up the bread and blessed it, typically saying
blessings was the role of the host, and gave it to the disciples.
When he did this, the disciples recognized Jesus for the first time,
and Jesus vanished before their eyes.
The
disciples were over-joyed! “Did we not feel a burning in our hearts
when he was teaching us from the scriptures” Jesus was not dead.
Their hope was not dead. Their story was not over! They were so
over-joyed that they left their dinner table and traveled at night
the 7 or so miles back to Jerusalem to find the other disciples and
share the good news.
Perhaps
we can learn from this that when we share in the scriptures and
fellowship together, and perhaps more importantly when we show
hospitality to strangers, we may just catch glimpses of Jesus as
well.
We are
currently in the season of Eastertide. It is the time between Easter
and Pentecost when we celebrate and remember Jesus making appearances
to the disciples after his resurrection. The disciples were not sure
what the rest of the story of their salvation would look like, but
they knew one thing, hope was not dead, their story was not over, and
they were just beginning to understand their story was far bigger
than they thought. And we can remember that no matter how much life
gets us down when we suffer tragedy, when we are in bad health, when
we see long-held beliefs crushed before our eyes, when we suffer
tragic events that show us we intentionally or accidentally placed
our trust and hope in the wrong place, Jesus is not dead, he is
resurrected. He is alive, and when we place our faith in him we
become resurrection people. We may lose our hope, but Jesus can
resurrect it. We may even lose our lives, but Jesus will resurrect
those, too. My story is not over, and your story is not over, and our
stories are bigger than we can ever imagine when Jesus is at the
center. This is the good news, that our cross-killed Savior is alive
and our stories continues today! Amen.
