Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter

Trinity Church
May 8, 2011

Acts 2:14a,36-41
Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35


        Cleopas and his companion were walking home, back to what was familiar. So much of what had happened to them in the last three days was not familiar, was not the world they wanted to live in. They were taking a walk in which it was painful and hard to put one foot in front of the other. They were coming from Jerusalem on a Sunday afternoon heavy with the memory of all that had happened there. They had seen the crowd go wild as Jesus rode in on donkey. They had heard him hailed as king and messiah. They had felt their hope and the hope of their people well up in their hearts as this gentle teacher moved into the holy city as a hero.
    And then it had all fallen apart. He had been tried and brutally killed. And hope had died in their hearts. And so now they turn toward home, walking together, remembering and regretting, wondering how it had all gone so disastrously bad so terrifyingly fast.
    Their world is falling apart, and it always does when worlds fall apart, it appears that it can never be put back together again.
    But that is not God’s way – merely for worlds to crumble and nothing more.
    For Cleopas and his companion, the new world that is about to emerge for them is more wonderful than anything their old world had to offer. In their old world, dead is dead. In their new world, the awareness is beginning to dawn that love conquers all things – even death.
    The stories we hear in our Scriptures are paradigms – that is they reveal the great, overarching patterns at work in the universe. That is to say, the stories in our scriptures reveal what kind of God God is. And if that is true, then the story about Cleopas and his companion reveals God to us.
    How is that so, and how does it matter?
    What I have in mind, of course, is all the times our lives seem to be coming apart at the seams. Times of illness, times of death, times when careers or relationships go bad.
    If we take the story Cleopas and his companion as our paradigm, what do we learn?
    First we learn that they grieve and that they do it together. They were “talking with each other about all these things that had happened;” and when the encounter a stranger “They stood still looking sad.” [LK 14 ff] They are not pretending. They are not sugar-coating it. Though they can make no sense of what has happened, of what is happening, they do not deny it or say it isn’t so or that their pain isn’t real.  I am never as deeply concerned for the psychological health of someone who cries as I am for someone who is never, ever known to do so. Grief is real, and like all feelings it must be expressed not suppressed. Cleopas and his companion grieve. And they share their grief. We, none of us, is ever meant to bear our grief alone.
    But they do not shut down and give up. Though it may look like the end, they are still willing to engage a stranger whom it would have been just as easy to ignore or to shut out because their grief was too private, too personal. Nothing is too private or personal to share with those who genuinely are your companions. Nothing.
    And now take a careful look at what the stranger says to them, “Oh how foolish you are.” [LK 24.25]  Not exactly the gentlest thing he could have said to them. But it is the truth. Even though it is a harsh truth, they are willing to hear it.
    This is a story I’ve never told from the pulpit before. Some weeks after my mother died, my friend and mentor Sam Lloyd, asked me how I was doing. I told him the past weeks had been very rough. That the grief and the memories sometimes overwhelmed me. And then I began to recount in vivid detail how difficult her last hours had been for her and for me. I was telling the story with all the immediacy of feeling it had had when it was occuring. Sam gently placed a hand on my shoulder and said, “Scott, that is over. It is not happening now.” I was shocked back into the reality of the present – the only place we can really live. Some might think his words were harsh, but I can tell you they were exactly the dose of reality I needed to take stock of myself and my faith and begin to put parts of my life back together and get on with my life.
    Cleopas and his companion receive a similar jolt from the stranger – and they do not rebuke him or claim some kind of wounded pride or hurt feelings. They recognize the truth – and the truth can only bring healing. Not only do they embrace the hard truth – that they are being foolish, that there is so much they have misunderstood – they embrace the one who brings it to them. It is so much easier to shoot the messenger. It is so much easier to blame others for our situation.
    And then the good news breaks forth – Jesus, the world they thought has vanished, is right there before them. He is not dead, but alive. Their world is not over, it is just sustaining a new beginning. Love, grief, truth have brought them to this moment.
    Let’s apply this to our own situation. You have heard for over four years now that the church as we have know it – that means the WHOLE church and this parish church are changing. They will never be the way they were.
    Our first response needs to be to accept the reality of that and to grieve – honestly, deeply, truly grieve; but then be willing to hear hard truths – hard truths rooted in our Scriptures. Truths like, “the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Rev 21:5 (NRSV) Truths like, “And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’” Rev 21:5 (NRSV) And truths like “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, 3 for you have [already] died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Col 3:2-3 (NRSV) And truths not so hard to hear, like, “Jesus said, ‘. . . I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’” Matt 16:18 (NRSV)
    If we would come together and read and listen deeply to our Scriptures like Cleopas and his companion did, I am sure our way forward would become clearer and clearer. And we too would know Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
    Notice that phrase, “in the breaking of the bread.” Not in the bread, but in its breaking. The great paradigm of the universe is that all things, ALL things break and are transcended, but that the God we know in Jesus Christ is present and active throughout it all and can be counted on to be present forever.
    Think of that when you see that whole, unbroken piece of bread lifted up. Whole, unstained, undamaged and pure. That is not the world I live in. I don’t think it is the world you live in either. Watch as that bread is broken, broken into many pieces and then given to each of us who share in the broken-ness of this world.
    Look and hope with all your heart, soul and with all your mind – and I promise you, you will see Jesus. He will be known to you in the breaking of the bread. He will be known to you as the world around us breaks, as it must and always has.