God's On The Move - Luke 24:13-35
Friends, it’s good to be with you this morning, on this third Sunday of Easter. I hope you are all holding up well. I have been so moved by reports of your many kindnesses to one another and to the wider community, your strength, and your generosity. I have also been moved by everyone’s honesty, about the collective anxiety we are navigating. First and foremost, our parish prayers are with all those in our human family who are ill, with the dying, and with those we have lost. Our prayers are with people who are scared, who are grieving, who are unemployed or at risk, and with everyone on the front lines of this pandemic. My hope is that our time together can provide a much needed break from the headlines, and that we will find encouragement in our faith.
As you can imagine, I was delighted to be the assigned preacher for today, since the road to Emmaus is such a beloved story. It’s certainly a comforting one. On that first night of Easter, Luke tells us that two disciples were walking on the road when the risen Christ appeared to them in disguise. Their hearts burned within them as he interpreted the scriptures. And when they arrived at their destination, the hour was late, and they invited him to stay with them. And suddenly their eyes were opened, as he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. Preachers call this a softball, a message that’s impossible to miss with the bat of a sermon. In these days of worshipping in our homes, when we are unable to share Communion at church, how perfect to have a story about breaking bread at home and finding Jesus there. I’ll tell you what, that sermon was practically writing itself. That is, until I happened to mention the gist of it to Jesus in my prayers. He listened patiently while I described what I had in mind. He was kind, of course, but also clear and firm. “That’s sweet,” I heard him say, "but the risen Christ is not sweet or, for that matter, easily contained at the dinner table. Go and preach the risen Christ.” Ok, then. I guess this isn’t softball after all.
That’s just like him, really. Jesus was never one to pat people on the back and tell them they had done enough for the kingdom of God. There is always someone else who needs to hear the good news of God’s love. Time and again he told people to get to it, to go and forgive sins and show mercy. Remember that rich young man who asked Jesus what he had to do have eternal life? He had kept all the commandments. Jesus told him he wasn’t finished, that he had to do something else, to sell his possessions and follow him. I think, too, of Simon Peter, who answered Jesus’ identity quiz correctly, calling him the messiah. In that scene, getting the right answer was only the beginning. Jesus said, then take up your cross and follow me. That was his style. He led by example, and he was always on the move, healing and teaching and moving on to the next town, an itinerant preacher through and through. He told the disciples to go out, too, to go and proclaim the kingdom of God. After all, there is always someone else who needs to know about God’s grace.
The great preacher and Methodist bishop Will Willimon notes that Jesus was constantly on the go, as if on an endless road trip. And then, in the resurrection, he seems to be moving at an even faster pace. He shows up outside of the empty tomb in the garden. He tells an astonished Mary Magdalene not to hold onto him. He is suddenly in a locked room in Jerusalem, speaking peace to the fearful disciples. He’s on a village road to Emmaus. He’s in Jerusalem and then Galilee, on a mountain and on a beach. He’s on the move, and he is moving fast.
What do we make of this resurrected Jesus on the move? If Easter teaches us anything, it’s that the God we worship is a living God (Will Willimon). Not some old teaching or dusty idea, but a God who is alive. Maybe it’s human nature, but it would be easier for us to worship a God we could contain, predict, and control. A sermon about Christ at our dinner tables is an easier one to preach than the one about a God who is on the move. We would prefer to box God in, to think of God as predictable and fully known. But during his lifetime, Jesus consistently gave an answer we didn’t expect. And after his death, his risenness is beyond anything we’ve ever seen and in places we could not have predicted.
The evidence points to the reality that the God we worship is a living God. Which means that God must still be on the move. The cross is empty, the tomb is empty, and now strangely, even our churches are empty (Pulpit Fiction). We thought perhaps that we had God nicely contained here in beautiful buildings and our liturgies and in the breaking of the Communion bread. But even our most sacred rituals cannot contain a living God.
There is hope in this, especially In the middle of a pandemic. The biblical witness is that such uncertain times are precisely when Christ comes. Don’t forget that the disciples on the road to Emmaus had lost their hope. You can hear their sense of loss and grief in the gospel. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel,” they told the mysterious stranger. Nothing had gone according to plan, and their messiah had died. That is when the living Christ shows up.
Our Christian hope is fundamentally this: that the living God is moving now. A divine grace is arriving where we least expect to see it. Easter tells us that it is in God’s very nature to find us in our lostness, and to surprise us by God’s presence among us. The risen Christ was once made known to the disciples in the breaking of the bread. Surely that is not God’s only option for the means of grace. To think so would be yet another attempt to box in the Holy One who cannot be so contained. So be on the lookout, my friends, especially now. The risen Lord is surely on the move.