Introduction
Two weeks after Easter – and we’re still trying to explain what happened! We’re just like the first disciples as recorded in this morning’s story from Luke: wondering, questioning, wandering, worrying, fearing, studying, experiencing, eating and sharing.
· Biblical scholars are clear: every generation of disciples have to wrestle with the resurrection of Jesus. “It always eludes human perception and yet is also no human fabrication.” (Charles Cousar)
· It is mysterious and real – nourishing and paradoxical – challenging and comforting all at the same time.
And so today we get some of the story from Luke – we’ve already heard from Mark and John during the past two weeks – now we have yet another take on the story of Jesus as beautiful loser and why the foolishness of his Cross means wisdom and hope for you and me. So let me share some thoughts with you about the Scripture and why they might matter for us in something I call: confusion, clarity, beautiful losers and open eyes.
Insights
As you might have gathered, I sense there are four parts to this story – and its consequences for us as a faith community – that roughly correspond to the words confusion, clarity, beautiful losers and open eyes. In fact, I think there is a rhythm at work not only in this story but in the way God reveals grace to us in the Cross:
· At first we’re confused – bewildered, afraid and in the dark; then, in a hundred different ways, some clarity is revealed or experienced. One writer likes to say that at first we encounter the truth of God in the darkness and then it is explained.
· And often this explanation is both an experience with the Crucified and Risen Christ – a beautiful loser if there ever was one – and call to change direction: the Cross opens our eyes and impels us to repent – or change direction – or turn around and move closer to God.
· Are you with me? Is that rhythm clear? Confusion – then clarity; an experience with the beauty of Christ’s cross before our eyes are opened?
Let me go deeper: our story today is intimately related to another right before it in Luke’s gospel that some of us know as the breaking of bread on the Emmaus Road story. Remember it? Let me summarize the Emmaus Road story because it suggests the same unfolding as our text today.
· Two people are going home in the Emmaus Road story – the disciple Cleopas and someone who isn’t given a name – maybe it is his wife but we don’t know. They are leaving Jerusalem after the crucifixion on Friday but before Christ has been revealed on Easter.
· So they are grieving – heart-broken disciples – who know nothing of the beauty of the Cross only its shame: for them Jesus has become a rejected and discarded loser.
· What happens next? They meet a stranger who asks what is going on? Why are they sad? Why are they leaving the Passover festivities of the great Temple?
Now here’s something in the Bible that I find fascinating: the text tells us these two disciples have eyes that have been kept from recognizing the stranger as Jesus – resurrected and raised from the Cross. Did you hear that? Their eyes have been kept from recognizing Jesus – so what do they start to do but essentially scold him and rebuke him for not knowing all that has taken place.
· Do you get a sense of the confusion? Here the disciples – who have betrayed and deserted the Master – are scolding him.
· Further it would appear from the Biblical text that both God and their broken emotions in their grief kept them from recognizing the blessing in their midst: they couldn’t see the risen Christ.
So let’s talk about that for just a moment: could it be that the Bible is telling us that sometimes our own expectations “of Jesus blind us to the real presence of God in Christ?” (Stoffregen) Are you with me on this? Am I being clear?
God may use our inadequate or narrow understandings to blind us so that God can then give us a new vision of the Lord at work in the world. Think of Saul before he was baptized and became St. Paul: he was very devout, a totally committed believer in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, yes? And what did is religious devotion lead him towards? Murder and violence in the name of the Lord, right? Clearly, his expectations about Jesus kept him from seeing the truth about the Lord – and if that is true for Paul it is likely true for me and you. (Stoffregen paraphrase)
I can’t tell you how many times I hear about hatred born of so-called religious commitment:
· Pro-life advocates murdering their opponents in the name of the Lord
· Political jihad rather than true submission
· Persecution of our GLBTQ sisters and brothers by those who taught us to love our neighbors… as ourselves
· Other examples…?
It would appear that today’s story suggests that sometimes even our deepest understandings are really more about confusion than clarity – and the consequences of this darkness can be dangerous and ugly. That’s one of the reasons why we just ran a study/discussion in PLAY-FULLNESS: slowing down to listen and wait – exploring more than the obvious – embracing the wisdom of our opponents and all the rest is one of the time-tested, God-given paths to peace-making. But it means not taking ourselves too seriously…
So, in the rhythm of the story, Jesus – the stranger and hidden Lord – let’s them rebuke him for a while – he gives them space for their confusion and grief – but then offers clarity: he explains to them all that has taken place in the Cross as a part of Israel’s story of redemption and freedom. How does the Bible put it: beginning with Moses and the prophets, he explains to them all that had to take place.
· He explains to them that God’s commitment to Israel is ALL about freedom: it starts with the Exodus – freedom from slavery – and continues with the creation of the nation of Israel – freedom to live as free and gracious people.
· And even when Israel gave in to idolatry, fear, greed and pride, God didn’t quit – the Lord sent the prophets to wake them up to the call of freedom and grace – and kept doing that over and over and over again.
· And Jesus goes one step farther by saying that the Cross that looked like the mark of a loser was actually beautiful – it too was part of God’s liberation and freedom and grace.
Well there is some movement going on now – literally and figuratively – the disciples are moving from confusion to clarity when they come to a fork in the road: and how cool is that!?! Jesus is still hidden from them – still a stranger – who says he should be going off in another direction but they beg him to stay for dinner. And when they sit at table together – and break bread and fish – what happens?
· They recognize the Beautiful Loser in their midst and… their eyes were opened
· Didn’t our hearts burn with understanding as he explained the Scriptures to us they said – didn’t we begin to get it – to give up our confusion – in the presence of this mysterious Beautiful Loser?
Cut to OUR text for this morning – our story in Luke BEGINS where the Emmaus Road story ends – and these same disciples – who had been confused but now knew clarity and open eyes – hurried back to Jerusalem – 20 miles on foot – where they are told: "It's really happened! The Master has been raised up—Simon saw him!" Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke the bread. While they were saying all this, Jesus appeared to them and said, "Peace be with you."
And then the whole thing happens again: confusion before clarity – the appearance and recognition of Christ as the Beautiful Loser of the Cross – and then their eyes are opened.
· Confusion: when Jesus showed up and blessed them with peace how does the Bible describe the reaction of the disciples?
· They thought he was a ghost and were scared half to death! Even those two cats from the Emmaus Road – they were there, too – they thought he was a ghost and were scared half to death.
So Jesus tries to explain things again – he wants to offer them clarity – and what does he do? He asks them to look at his feet and his hands – see me as the Beautiful Loser – try to get your head around the Cross as God’s clarity for the world. Barbara Brown Taylor puts this beautifully in a sermon:
She recalls the ways the hands and feet of Jesus had been important in his ministry, healing people, breaking bread, traveling around with the good news. Now, wounded and bruised, those same hands and feet were offered as proof to the disciples that "he had gone through the danger of the Cross and not around it. Through the danger, and not around it: so much of our time and energy is spent finding a way around things, rather than living through them. We don't want to experience pain or danger, or even to come face to face with the suffering of other people or the suffering of the earth. What can we do about all of that? And yet… we bear hope for the world only because of the commission Jesus gave the disciples and the whole church long ago: you are my Body – the living Image, of the Risen Christ in the world today: "Not our pretty faces, not our sincere eyes but our hands and feet and what we have done with them and where we have gone with them" in the face of suffering and shame.
And still the disciples seem in the dark – they know more confusion than clarity – so the Beautiful Loser asks them for some fish: do you have anything to eat here? And he took what was left over – ate it – and once again their eyes were opened. Now let’s be clear about this:
· Both the bread of the Emmaus Road story and the fish of the upper room in Jerusalem tells us something about Christ’s bodily presence: he wasn’t a ghost – he was alive and present albeit very different, too.
· And this emphasis on being nourished – taking real food into a real and mysterious body – was to help believer know that our bodies are GOOD!
We are not just spirit beings – abstract and disembodied – waiting to slip from this realm into heaven: we are spirit, flesh and blood and ALL of this must be nourished.
· The body needs food – and shelter – and peace – and love: this is the call to justice and compassion.
· We also need spiritual nourishment – worship and awe and wonder – and forgiveness by grace
So Jesus eats something in the presence of his faith community – and after all the teaching and clarity – all the awareness and sensitivity to the confusion – when God’s Beautiful Loser breaks bread in community…. our eyes are opened. And that suggest two final insights:
· One – we really need one another to get all of this – we need encouragement and clarity, presence and compassion to grasp how to live as the Body of Christ in this broken world
· We just can’t do it all by ourselves: that’s one of the destructive lies that always trips up spiritual folk: we like to believe that we can do this all by ourselves – and sometimes church people make it very easy to want to affirm this lie
But if the wisdom and rhythm of these stories are true – and I have experienced them as authentic – then we have to confess that we cannot live into the upside down blessings of Christ and his Cross all by ourselves
· And two – like the first disciples – most of us aren’t going to get the clarity of the Cross right away. Notice that even after the Emmaus Road supper, Cleopas and his wife were still JUST as scared to death as the other disciples?
· What’s more, the disciples in Jerusalem, who had first proclaimed their joy and wonder at the Lord’s resurrection were just as frightened and confused as everybody else when Jesus showed up unannounced?
Conclusion
Discipleship, it would seem, “doesn’t have to be – and often is not – something that happens completely and all at once for us or for the disciples of long ago. Instead, for them and for us, it happens by fits and starts, in hours of doubt and moments of exhilaration, with days of numbness and mourning punctuated by small moments of holy presence and powerful certainty. (Cynthia Gano)
The rhythm of disciple-making, dear people of God, seems to be clear:
· There is confusion – and then some clarity. There is an experience or encounter with Jesus Christ – God’s beautiful loser – and then our eyes are opened.
· Your questions – your fears – your doubts are JUST as important and sacred as your insights. Do you know and trust that? It is true…
What’s more, God is already at work transforming your confusion into the bounty of clarity and grace... don’t worry – God isn’t finished with you yet – and THAT really has to be the good news for today.
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