This Easter, we heard Matthew’s version of the resurrection
story, but John’s is perhaps the best loved . . . remember? Mary Magdalene finds the empty tomb, and
brings Peter and the beloved disciple, but when they leave, she
stays behind . . . and suddenly there’s Jesus, but at first she doesn’t know him, she thinks he’s the gardener or something . . . and last
week’s story takes place in the home where the disciples had gathered in fear,
and they believed in him, they recognized
him as the risen Lord only after they'd touched and seen his crucifixion wounds, still visible in his resurrected body
. . . and now, we come to the familiar story from Luke, perhaps the most beloved
post-resurrection story of all . . . two disciples are walking from Jerusalem
to Emmaus, and Jesus joins them along the way . . . he seems like them, just
another weary traveler – and like those other disciples in the upper room, they
don't recognize him right off the bat, it isn't until later, when he shows them
hospitality at their destination, that they know he is the savior.
And so, these three resurrection stories – Mary in the garden,
the disciples behind closed doors, the travelers on the Emmaus road – these
three stories are in one sense about recognition
or – more precisely – misrecognition of their Lord and savior . . . and
of course it's eminently applicable today . . . when he was a young pastor, before
he became the pre-eminent theologian of the last century, Karl Barth knew this
as a seminal problem in Christianity today – we misrecognize the risen Christ, we see him as something he is not
. . . Barth thought about it in terms of God's "otherness," saying
that God is "wholly other than" the God of our religion.
We can see that theme in these stories . . . just why did Mary,
who knew Jesus as well as anyone, just why did she not recognize him? Why didn't the disciples in the locked room –
it's clear that they don't recognize him until after they've seen the wounds?
Here on the Emmaus road, Luke gives us the biggest clue . . . he says
"their eyes were kept from
recognizing him." Note the passive
construction of the verb – "were kept." The disciples were prevented from recognizing
him, as in by something or someone . .
. the question is, by whom? or by what? Well, this being
the Bible and all, we immediately jump to the conclusion "well, it was God of course, who did the
preventing" . . . and that may have been what Luke intended to imply, but
I wonder . . . why would God do such
a thing? Just for laughs? So God could say to Gabriel "Did you see
the look on their faces when they found out it was Jesus?" Could be . . . I rather think God does have a sense of humor—after all,
God did make me a
pastor—but, I don't know, it seems to be a rather trivial thing, a rather childish thing for the Creator and
master of the Universe to do . . . Maybe it was Jesus himself . . . maybe he
shaved off his beard or averted his face or something . . . but again,
why? What earthly – or heavenly – reason
would he have to do such a thing?
Maybe our passage can give us a clue . . . he joins them on the
road, and they're discussing everything that's happened – and Luke uses three
different phrases for discussing, a total of four times, so he really means it,
they really are deep in
conversation – and Jesus asks "what are you discussing" and they come
to a standstill, there on the dusty road, it was like they couldn't walk and
confront the thing at the same time, and they're looking all downcast and
Cleopas says "are you the only stranger who doesn't know the things that
have taken place in Jerusalem
these days?" And Jesus says
"What things?" – and note that he doesn't deny knowing about them, the Greek can mean just as
easily which things – but they
take it to mean that he doesn't know what went on, and this of course doesn't
help with the recognition problem – surely
Jesus would know what had been done
to him . . .
So they tell the whole sad story in a nutshell – Jesus was a
prophet mighty in deed and word . . . the chief priests and leaders handed him over to be crucified . . .
and here we thought he'd come to redeem Israel, but he up and got himself
killed instead . . . and to make matters
even more confusing some women
came to the tomb early this morning, when the dew was still on the roses, and
they didn't see his body there, and they told us there were some angels who
said he was alive. And when
some of us went to the tomb, they found it just as they said, but they didn't
see the Savior, and so there. You'd
be talking about it too.
And I can just picture Jesus standing there, with an
incredulous look on his face, How foolish you all are, how slow of heart to
believe . . . here you've had the prophetic works right in front of you, and
you still don't know what's
going on . . . "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these
things and then enter into his glory?"
Note the interchange here – they had told him about Jesus, a prophet mighty in deed and word, who they
thought had come to redeem Israel,
but he'd been crucified instead
. . . and Jesus counters this vision with reality . . . the Messiah – the one
who would redeem Israel – would
have to suffer before entering
into his glory. So it's the same old same
old, the same old story we've heard before . . . the disciples thought him mighty in word and deed, that he was
going to lead a revolutionary charge to redeem Israel . . . when in actuality,
he displayed weakness, he
allowed himself to be humiliated on a cross.
The Messiah they knew
was one they'd constructed in their minds, built by their hopes of an Israelite
nation restored to the glory of the house of David . . . the Messiah they knew was mighty in deed and
word, but the resurrected Messiah,
the one standing right in front of them on the Emmaus road, was a Messiah who'd
suffered and died an ignominious death, who'd suffocated, nailed to a tree . .
. was it any wonder they didn't
recognized him?
And so, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he
interpreted to them all the things in the scriptures that were about him, all
the predictions, all the pointers, all the precursors to him that were in the Hebrew Scriptures, that body
of work we call the Old Testament . . . all the prophetic utterances – a man of
constant sorrow . . . my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me . . . all the
way back to the Torah, the books of Moses, he shows them how to interpret all
their scriptures in a new light . . . in light of himself, in what theologians would call a Christological light . . . how the
Messiah must suffer these
things, and enter into his glory. And
although they don't recognize him right there – that had to wait for one more
sign – they looked back on it and said to themselves "Were not our hearts
burning within us while he was opening the scriptures to us?" Jesus' explanation had the force of revelation, it re-ordered the way
they looked at scriptures, re-orientated their suppositions about the nature of
the one they had followed in life.
Have you ever had such an experience? Have you ever read something or seen
something or heard something that changed the way you looked at things, that
affected you so much that you didn't look at the world the same from that time
forward? I have . . . I once read a book
by a New Testament scholar that re-oriented me in the way I read the Gospels,
that seemed so right and so
explanatory that it changed the way I do exegesis, the way I interpret
scripture. It provided me with another
filter, another lens through which to view Gospel and the world, and I remain
changed by it to this day . . . and it was this kind of experience – only infinitely more radical, after all it was Jesus himself – that the
disciples had there on the Emmaus highway.
Jesus' teaching re-oriented their thinking, it related a new paradigm, a
new way of connecting to scripture – and the world – that forever changed the
way they operated. "Were not our
hearts burning within us?"
But – like last week in the upper room – it wasn't until Jesus showed them the nail-scars and the
sword-pierced side that they recognized him, it wasn't until he demonstrated the breaking of his body
and the spilling of his blood by serving them bread and wine that they got who
he was. Luke is very clear about it . .
. "he took bread, he blessed and broke it, and gave
it to them." Took, blessed, broke and gave,
the four movements of the Lord's Supper
. . . it had been only four days since the disciples had seen the same
thing before the crucifixion in the upper room . . . and for Luke's congregation, hearing the Gospel read
straight through fifty-odd years later, it had only been about five minutes since they heard the same
words during the Last Supper scene, and so nobody had to be told twice what
this represented . . . it was the Eucharistic scene all over again, the
movements that Jesus himself had instructed them to do in remembrance of him,
as a reminder of what the Messiah is really like, and from whence their
redemption really comes. Far from being
a mighty-in-deed leader of a glorious militant restoration of Israel, the
Messiah's body was taken and blessed, broken and given so that they might have
life.
And for the past 2000 years, Christians have faithfully
repeated what Jesus did on that Emmaus day . . . they interpret the scripture,
relating it all to our story of Jesus, who is God with us – they call that preaching – and then they
demonstrate, with concrete action
the Lord’s Supper, just who Jesus is, and what his redemption means . . .
Christians have been doing this for two millennia,
and yet . . . how come they still misrecognize Jesus when they see him in their
lives? How come they confuse the Jesus
of scripture – who came to bring good news to the poor and freedom to the oppressed
– with some god who justifies an unprecedented concentration of wealth,
of God’s good creation, intended for everyone, in the hands of so very few?
How come they misrecognize the Jesus of the upper room – nail scarred
hands and sword-pierced side – with a God who bestows on their country some
manifest-destiny, divinely-inspired right to use force to impose their way of life on those who don’t want
it? How can they confuse the Jesus of
the Gospel, of the cross, whose
body was taken, blessed, broken and given, with a violent, retributive god, a
god of power and might, who favors a tiny handful of the world’s people at the
expense of suffering billions?
If, as Karl Barth thought, Jesus Christ is "wholly
other" than the god of our religion, how then shall we know him? How shall we quit misrecognizing him, how shall we know him when we see him,
separate him from the false gods of our religious construction? Jesus himself
gave us the interpretive key – in Matthew he instructs us to see him in the
"least of these," in the very people excluded by our idolatrous,
false conception of god. Irony of
ironies . . . seeing him precisely where we refuse to look, exactly in those away
from whom we turn our eyes . . .
Ironic perhaps, but strangely fitting . . . on the Emmaus road,
the disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread, that four-fold
sacrament we celebrate once a month. In
that sacrament, we re-member (among other things) the self-giving act of
ultimate service that our Lord performed for us, scapegoat for our culture of
violence and sin. So it is only
appropriate that we see, that we remember Jesus every time we see one of our own
scapegoats . . . a mother with two jobs, working for minimum wage so that we
can have cheap designer clothes . . . a mainstreamed psychotic, wandering the
highways so society won’t have to pay for his hospitalization . . . a drug
addict, languishing in prison, so we won’t have to pay for his treatment . . .
a church worker, scapegoated, hung out to dry, so we don’t have to be involved
in the program.
Brothers and sisters, as we travel
down our own Emmaus roads, every time we see one of the least of these, try to
recognize Jesus there. Try to see the
risen Savior in her face, to feel the nail scars on her hands and observe her
sword-pierced side. If we try, if we
really make an effort to do what after all, Jesus commanded us to do, we might just be surprised that it really
works. Amen.
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