Archives for 2013

Call the Midwife

May 5, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 and John 14: 23-29
preached on May 5, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

—Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 (NRSV)

Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; and the word that you hear is not mine, but is from the Father who sent me.

“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.

—John 14:23-29 (NRSV)

For better or worse, I’ve recently taken to “binging” on TV shows via Netflix as part of my weekly routine. It all started a year or so ago with Downton Abbey, an addiction I understand I share with some of you, and it has progressed through a lot of other interesting shows that are notable on both sides of the Atlantic. My most recent find just this past week is a British series called Call the Midwife, a period drama set in a poor neighborhood of East London in the 1950s. It follows a group of nuns and nurses who work for the health of the whole community while giving their closest attention to women of childbearing age in the midst of the baby boom even as new medical practices and procedures begin to take hold in the community. It is an intense series, not for the faint of heart or stomach, as it provides a quite realistic view of the always-difficult circumstances surrounding childbirth while also dealing with the depth of emotion that naturally comes anytime birth and death are involved.

The work of a midwife, so common for millennia and yet so uncommon in our society today, deals with these in-between times: the time between pregnancy and birth, those pivotal moments when the life of mother and child are at greatest risk, the critical minutes when we know that great joy may lie ahead and yet the path to get there is filled with fear and uncertainty. The greatest gift of the midwives on Call the Midwife is not their medical training or ability to work in difficult conditions but rather their gift of calm and comfort as the storm of childbirth swirls. One of the characters, a tall and stocky woman who seems about as comfortable in her own skin as a platypus dining in a fine restaurant and who has been burdened with the unfortunate nickname “Chummy” for most of her life, walks into a bedroom to assist at a birth and summons an amazing calmness and steadiness that is entirely unlike her presence at any other moment. She was clearly born for this work. Her gentle, kind, and simple words to the mothers embody the best work of a midwife—to provide a loving and healing presence even as anxiety swirls and the things that are ahead seem so uncertain.

Our reading this morning from the book of Revelation points us ahead to a different time and place—to a time and place that seems a lot like the romanticized life we imagine after a baby is born, but it skips over the real and present challenges that are involved in getting to that point. In this reading, the midwife has come and gone, a new life has been born, and there is nothing but sheer joy. In John’s vision recounted here, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, is real and whole and complete. There is no need of a temple, because God is present there. God’s own light does away with sun and moon and night, and there is no gate to keep anyone out. Glory and honor stream into this city to bring praise to God. This city is full of new life, for the river of the water of life flows through the middle of it, by the throne of God, to sustain all things forever. The tree of life grows beside the river, with new fruit each month and leaves to bring healing to the nations. All things in our world that harm and hurt will be replaced here with things that build up and give life.

This new Jerusalem looks to be a wonderful and fulfilling place to live and be filled with new life, life grounded in our experiences of the here and now and yet new and different and whole and complete. Yet as much as we may long for it, as much as we certainly hope for it, this holy city, this new way of life, is not yet here. The vision of a new thing may be clear, but the path to get to it is uncertain, filled with potential for pain and suffering. We can see that there is something new before us—we can see a vision of the new creation, a distant view of the city of God, maybe even an outline of a new and different life ahead—but we can’t quite see how to get there from here. The journey is inevitably marked by anxiety and fear because we do not know if we will make it or if the things that we hold most dear will survive to the new day. These are the moments to call a midwife, to look for someone who can speak to us clearly and honestly, someone to give us kind and confident words to show us the way through our uncertainty to new life, someone to help us see that there is something more ahead that might be different from where we have been, someone to guide us through the seemingly uncharted waters as we seek the new life that we know is ahead.

This kind of presence is exactly what Jesus promised us in our reading from the gospel of John this morning. Not only does he promise that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit… will teach [us] everything and remind [us] of all” that he has said to us, he assures us that peace is with us:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you… Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

This is just the thing we need to get through uncertain days, just the presence we need to navigate uncharted waters, just the kind of wisdom we need to see the new thing that is ahead, just the sort of thing that a midwife can bring.

My friends, we are at a critical moment in the life of our church—a moment where we need a promise of peace, a vision of something new, and a midwife to get us there. There are challenges swirling everywhere around us, ranging from the practicalities that we are spending a lot of money on a really small group of people to the bigger challenge that our community doesn’t seem to welcome what we are offering—if they even know about it and feel welcome here. Amidst all this, it is tough to imagine something new for us and our world—and even tougher to sort out how we might get there. It is in this moment that Jesus offers us peace, and it is in this moment that we must call a midwife to help us in that journey, to calm our nerves and ease our spirits, to guide us through to the new thing that is being born even now. Something new will happen here, and it is our opportunity to embrace the Spirit’s leading and journey into this new thing now or choose to wait until we have much less choice in and control of the new thing that is ahead.

John Lewis, a student leader in the Civil Rights Movement and now a congressman from Georgia, recently spoke about on his experiences along that way. In the Freedom Rides on buses from Washington, DC, into the deep South that began 52 years ago yesterday, Lewis was the first to be attacked. Alongside so many others, he faced incredible violence and responded with a real hope for peace and nonviolence. In a recent interview, he reflected on the journey and struggle that defined this journey toward justice and a new way of life:

I wanted to believe, and I did believe, that things would get better. But later I discovered, I guess, that you have to have this sense of faith that what you’re moving toward is already done. It’s already happened…

It’s the power to believe that you can see, that you visualize, that sense of community, that sense of family, that sense of one house…

And you live that you’re already there, that you’re already in that community, part of that sense of one family, one house. If you visualize it, if you can even have faith that it’s there, for you it is already there.

So as we wait and work and pray in these in-between times, as we make our way through these final Easter days and sort out what the resurrection means in the everyday, as we discern where God is calling us to move and go as a congregation, as we look for a vision of something new, may God guide us in all that we do, and may the midwife of the Holy Spirt move among us to help us through all our fear and uncertainty as we journey toward the new thing that is already done and join in offering our best to help make it real here and now and always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Structure of Spiritual Revolutions

April 28, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Acts 11:1-18 and Galatians 6:14-16
preached on April 28, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Back in college, my second semester freshman seminar required us to read and discuss a very interesting book: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn. While it isn’t quite as familiar as The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, it is nonetheless a classic book in the history of science that describes the process surrounding paradigm shifts. A paradigm shift, also known as a scientific revolution, is a moment when a new way of thinking takes hold because the available evidence no longer lines up with the assumptions and theories that have previously explained everything. In the scientific world, these shifts start out slowly, with a few intrepid researchers recognizing that what they are seeing doesn’t fit within the assumptions and calculations that have always guided their thinking. Then, over time, more and more people see that these new observations require a different way of thinking about the world, and ultimately, a new theory takes hold to explain what has been seen and experienced.

In the scientific world, one of the best-known paradigm shifts came back in the Renaissance, when astronomers changed their understanding of the relationship between heavenly bodies and the sun. Before that time, the guiding assumption—the paradigm—about the planets and the sun was that everything revolved around the earth, as originally explained by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy. Although many things were—and still are—explained quite well by the calculations in this system, over time new measurements and observations just didn’t match up with what was expected under the Ptolemaic system. Finally, in the early sixteenth century, as the exceptions became far more complicated than the rules, Copernicus proposed a new theory that fit much better with the observations of that era, placing the sun, not the earth, at the center of the solar system, and his theory still stands as the centerpiece of our own emerging observations about our solar system and the universe.

By now, you’re surely wondering what Ptolemy and Copernicus and paradigms have to do with Peter’s vision that we heard from the book of Acts this morning. Ultimately, you see, Peter’s vision was the first dramatic paradigm shift in the life of the early church, the first spiritual revolution for Christianity. The story of this vision seems to have been so important to the early church that it is told twice, first in chapter 10 of Acts by a narrator, and now in chapter 11 in Peter’s own words. Almost all of the followers of Jesus up until this point were Jews, and so the early church seemed to be just another sect of Judaism who recognized the particular man Jesus as the Messiah. But ultimately what gave Christianity its staying power is that the church began to welcome non-Jews into the community of faith.

This was not universally accepted—our telling of the story today actually comes from Peter’s defense of his actions when he was called before the council of elders in Jerusalem. He had previously supported the party line that required non-Jews to become Jews and be circumcised if they wanted to join the church. Then one day he was praying and saw a vision of unclean things—animals prohibited from the Jewish diet—coming down from heaven on a sheet. As the sheet came closer, Peter heard a voice speaking to him: “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” He refused, insisting that to do this would make him unclean. Then it happened again, with the voice this time proclaiming, “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.” After this happened a third time, Peter knew that something was up and that the Spirit was speaking to him, and then three men arrived at the house with instructions from the Spirit to take Peter to a Gentile household in another town. Along the journey, he felt the Spirit instructing him “not to make a distinction between them and us.” Once he arrived at the house, heard their story, and started speaking to them, the Holy Spirit fell upon them as well, and so he decided that he could do nothing but welcome them and acknowledge what God was doing in them and through them.

When word of this started to spread in the early church, Peter was criticized for eating with Gentiles and making himself unclean, but he insisted that this was the movement of the Spirit. As he put it to the council in Jerusalem, “If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” The council could find no further objection and were silenced by Peter’s story, and they too praised God for the wonder of salvation that had spread to the Gentiles.

Peter’s encounter here, then, was the first paradigm shift in the life of the early church. They moved from being an exclusively Jewish sect to establishing a welcome for all people. After this, the church began intensive engagement with people who were different from the first disciples, without regard to nationality, ethnicity, or past religious history. The church recognized that God might work and speak in new and different ways, and so it was called to do the same. And the church was forced to acknowledge the differences that stood at the core of its community even as it still found a way to stick together. The Gentile question was not settled once and for all—our brief reading from Galatians this morning reminds us of another moment when the apostle Paul was confronted by a group who wanted to require that all Gentiles be circumcised before joining the church—but the ultimate pathway to the new paradigm was clear after Peter’s meeting in Jerusalem: all people would be welcome in the church.

The church has experienced, even endured, many paradigm shifts in the two millennia since Peter’s vision of clean and unclean foods. Our understanding of God shifted as the doctrine of the Trinity took hold after the Council of Nicaea. The Protestant Reformation brought a renewed focus on scripture and deepened the doctrine and practice of salvation by grace through faith. More recently, our particular branch of Reformed Christianity has come to welcome women to ordained ministry, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) just two years ago removed nationwide restrictions on the full participation of gay and lesbian persons in the life of the church. These are paradigm shifts— maybe not quite as radical as what Thomas Kuhn described when he said, “What were ducks in the scientist’s world before… are rabbits afterward” (The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, p. 111), but they certainly are radical changes for us that emerge out of the depth and breadth of our experience of God and our world in these days.

And so as our world changes in these days, the church is called to continue to reexamine the assumptions—the paradigms, if you will—that we have held about our life together. As participation in the various institutions of our world declines, the church must reconsider its own organization so as to ensure that mission and not institutional survival stands at our forefront. As more people identify a spiritual longing and yet have no traditional religious affiliation, the church must rethink how it responds to the spiritual needs of our world. And as we struggle to maintain the financial and human resources to survive in traditional ways, we might just have to imagine a different, more fluid, more flexible way of being church together so as to be good stewards of our limited resources and offer an effective proclamation of the gospel to and for our changing world.

The question in these days is not whether we will embrace this shift but how and when—and will it be too late to make a difference? How do we let go of the constraints on our thinking that limit our vision of our changing world? How do we imagine that God might be calling us to a very new and very different thing? How do we welcome the new frontiers of this age as new things emerge and challenge the assumptions that have shaped us into the people and church that we are? These are not easy questions, just as the changes around us are not easy to accept. But it was not easy for Peter to understand his vision of the Spirit on that rooftop and it was not easy for the council in Jerusalem to welcome his story—and yet I don’t think any of us can imagine the church being anything like it is today without these paradigm shifts from its early life.

So as our world changes and our church changes, may God open our hearts and minds to the Spirit moving in our midst to change how we see our world, may God open our ears to the stories that reshape us and remake us, and may God strengthen us to be all the more faithful amidst our changing world as we show our love for one another and all our world through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

We Need a Shepherd

April 21, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 23
preached on April 21, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Shepherd me, O God,
beyond my wants,
beyond my fears,
from death into life.

—Psalm 23, paraphrased Marty Haugen

These are days when we need a shepherd. It might be a bit strange for us to need a shepherd when there are no sheep nearby, when the last pastureland in Queens shut down before many of us were even born, but the last week made me long for someone to be present with us through difficult times.

This past week has been one of the toughest in recent memory. If we look back, it had plenty of difficult history, as it already held anniversaries of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building and the Columbine massacre, to name just two. But the new horrors of this past week were almost too much to bear. First, the bombing at the Boston Marathon killed three people long before their time and injured hundreds of others, then the ensuing investigation and manhunt for the perpetrators consumed the nation for much of the week and culminated in an intense 24-hour search for the two bombers that left two more dead and shut down an entire city for a day.

But that wasn’t all that shocked us this past week. In Iraq, a wave of bombings continued across the nation as local elections were held yesterday, and some 33 people were killed by bombs on Monday alone. An earthquake on Friday in the Szechuan region of China left over 150 dead and thousands injured. Closer to home, the city of Chicago witnessed its 100th homicide of the year on Thursday. Two letters laced with poison were mailed to the president and a U.S. Senator. Fifteen people were killed and hundreds injured in a terrible explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas. And somehow our United States Senate came up four votes short of passing a bill favored by nearly ninety percent of the American people to finally require background checks on most gun purchases.

The violence and strife around us is just too much to bear, and that’s without considering all the other stuff that is going on with our friends and families and neighbors, all the unemployment, the sickness, the cancer, the addiction, the depression… It’s all just too much to bear. There’s just not much we can say. These are days when we need a shepherd.

It’s not even that we just want a shepherd—we actually need one. What are we supposed to do with all these things? We are used to dealing with grief in our lives—in fact, I think we have gotten pretty good at it over the years. Yet it seems that nowadays we are constantly bombarded with news of deep pain and hurt: so many deaths, so much violence, wars and strife escalating around the world, so many things that show us the deep brokenness in our midst, so much that reminds us that we are not the people God wants us to be. And the more we learn of all this, the less we know what to do with it. We need something, someone to show us the way. These are days when we need a shepherd.

Our psalm from the Lectionary today reminds us of the wonderful shepherd we have before us. These incredibly familiar words are often the first on our lips in times of loss, the first attempts at comfort when we face confusion and pain and hurt, the first thing that comes to mind during a week like this. Psalm 23 is so often recited at funerals or offered in times of deep loss, seemingly giving us comfort and consolation for days yet to come, in a world separate from our own, but if we read more closely we might just see that this is a shepherd for the here and now, a God who brings us what we need and frees us from our want not just in the future but even more in the present. God shows us the way to a new wholeness and peace in the midst of the uncertainty and confusion of our world. God invites us to lie down in green pastures and find rest. God leads us beside still waters to bring calm to our busy days and restore our souls. God walks with us and shows us how to journey in the pathways of new life. God guides us and directs us and comforts us even in the darkest valley, and there is nothing that we should fear—no terrorist who can do us harm, no earthquake that can shake us to the core, no threat that can separate us from God’s deep and real and present love.

And so the psalm speaks incredible words of comfort and hope just when we need a shepherd. t shows us the way to emerge from the darkness that surrounds us in days like these. It helps us find our way into new life when there seems to be nothing but death around us. And it helps us to recognize God’s presence among us, shepherding us “beyond [our] wants, beyond [our] fears, from death into life.”

But in these days when we need a shepherd, Psalm 23 also tells us that there is more to this shepherd’s work than just bringing us comfort right where we are. This shepherd might bring us comfort in a surprising and unusual place: at a table prepared in the presence of our enemies. This table is not just for our comfort— it is for our growth, for our real peace, for our honest engagement with the places where we fall short, for our hope of new relationship with those who seem to be set against us. Our comfort and peace amidst strife, then, do not come at the expense of the life of others but rather as “a banquet of love in the face of hatred” (Marty Haugen). Only then, after this strange and incredible feast, are we anointed as God’s own with oil that overflows, bringing us grace, mercy, and love beyond our wildest dreams.

And finally this comfort becomes all the more real as “goodness and mercy… follow [us]” throughout life. Strangely, they do not come before us but rather follow after us, maybe partly because we are as responsible as anyone else for bringing them into being in our world, but maybe also because God gives us these things in ways beyond our understanding, in glimpses that are clearer when we look back upon our most difficult days. And this goodness and mercy then sustain us as we find a new home in the house of the Lord for the fullness of our lives and beyond.

These familiar words of Psalm 23 are perfect for days like these when we need a shepherd, for these weeks when our hearts seem so heavy that they cannot bear anything more, for these moments when we can do nothing more than turn to God and offer a cry for help. And so in these Easter days when the resurrection still seems so far away, in these moments when it seems nearly impossible to believe that Jesus is alive and at work in our world, may God shepherd us through the darkness, pain, and sorrow of our world, beyond the want and fear and despair of difficult days and guide all of us into new life. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Poor Doubting Thomas

April 14, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on John 20:19-31
preached on April 14, 2013*, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Poor doubting Thomas. For centuries, Thomas has borne the brunt of contempt in the church. Just because he was out doing something else the first time the risen Jesus appeared to the disciples, just because he insisted that he wanted to see Jesus for himself, he’s been labeled “doubting” for all time. And not only that, his story shows up in the lectionary every year on the first Sunday after Easter—it’s as if we have to keep rubbing salt in his wounds over and over again, constantly reminding ourselves about Thomas’ inability to believe without seeing things for himself just in case we are tempted to do the same.

But the story is not quite so simple. As the gospel of John tells it, Thomas wasn’t the first person to doubt the resurrection of Jesus. The two disciples who first went to the tomb saw that Jesus’ body was missing, but they didn’t understand or believe the resurrection until they themselves met up with Jesus later. And even Mary wept outside the tomb because she was so sad that Jesus’ body had been stolen—until she realized that the gardener who was comforting her was no less than Jesus himself. It was only after Jesus started appearing to the disciples that the believers began outnumbering the doubters, so they started closing ranks against those who didn’t understand it or wanted to see it before they believed it. Their own experience of the resurrection made it difficult for them to think that anyone else wouldn’t believe it!

So when Thomas missed out on Jesus’ appearance to the disciples on that first Easter evening, when he stood adamant that he would not believe them unless he saw “the mark of the nails in his hands and put [his] finger in the mark of the nails and [his] hand in [Jesus’] side,” he was destined to be shunned and set apart. There was a clear divide: Those who had seen the risen Jesus believed, but those who had not did not.

Even amidst this divide in the disciples’ experiences, everyone came together again the following Sunday evening, just as they had done on that first Easter night. They gathered in the house and closed the doors— but somehow Jesus still came and stood among them. He spoke to them right away: “Peace be with you,” hoping to calm their hearts and minds and make his presence clear and real. But he knew that they were looking for more than his peace—at least some of them were looking for proof that he was who they said he was. So he immediately invited Thomas to do exactly what he wanted and needed to do: “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

That invitation seemed to be all that Thomas needed. John doesn’t tell us that Thomas actually did any of this, but he does record an immediate response: “My Lord and my God!” Jesus then spoke up again, practically turning away from the disciples and addressing those of us who read the gospel later: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Here Jesus doesn’t criticize Thomas for his doubting tendencies, and he certainly doesn’t single him out for this attention, because even most of the disciples didn’t believe his resurrection until they had seen it for themselves! Still, these words give a bit of extra encouragement to those of us who might be reading this story a bit later and so haven’t had seen the risen Christ with our own eyes.

Thomas was certainly not the last person of faith to harbor doubts. It is not a requirement of the Christian faith to never ask questions. Our welcome into the Christian life at baptism does not require us to have everything about our belief sorted out. And if we required everyone who presented themselves at the Lord’s Table to fully understand and explain what happens there, I myself would not be welcome! So I think Thomas was actually onto something when he questioned the resurrection of Jesus because had not experienced it for himself. We remember him because of his doubts, but that should be a good thing for us. As much as we might try to convince ourselves otherwise, doubts are a natural part of the life of faith. Presbyterian minister and writer Frederick Buechner put it nicely, I think:

Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don’t have any doubts you are either kidding yourself or asleep. (Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC)

Stories of people like Thomas help us to be more comfortable in asking good questions, in acknowledging the depth of our struggles, in helping us consider our doubts in such a way that they give us space for deeper faith, in allowing our belief to emerge and enlarge over time as we grow deeper in our experience of God. Ultimately, the reality is that faith and doubt are not opposites. When we come to believe something, our questions are not so much put aside as they are honestly answered. When we take up faith, we allow God to step in and fill in the blanks on our doubts. We recognize that we do not have all the answers and trust God enough to fill in the rest. We place our trust not in our own understanding of what God has done and is doing but in the depth and breadth of God’s life among us. Doubt gives us the space we need amidst the certainties of our world so that faith can step in. So ultimately I think Thomas’ doubt was not his problem but rather the very thing that gave him the space to believe.

Now don’t get me wrong—I’m not even beginning to suggest that you ought to start doubting something if your faith is strong. But what is clear to me from this strange and wonderful story about poor doubting Thomas is that God is big enough to put up with our doubts. Ultimately, Jesus didn’t ostracize Thomas because he doubted but in fact gave him everything that he needed to set his doubts aside. In the same way, we are called to honestly engage and confront our own doubts so that we can come to deeper faith, for ultimately our experiences of God in our lives show us the things we need to believe and hope and trust in God’s work in our world just as Thomas’ experience of the risen Christ enabled him to believe the strange and wonderful story of the resurrection.

So as this Easter season continues, may we encounter the risen Christ in our lives just as Thomas did, so that we can engage our moments of doubt, experience the new life of Christ in our world, and deepen our faith and trust in all that God is doing to make the whole creation new through Jesus Christ our risen Lord. Thanks be to God. Amen.

*While this is not the text for the day, I am preaching from a slightly adjusted lectionary schedule after Easter this year.

No Ordinary Journey

April 7, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on Luke 24:13-35 for the Second Sunday of Easter
preached on April 7, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It started out as just an ordinary journey, two of the disciples walking about seven miles from Jerusalem to the nearby village of Emmaus on a Sunday afternoon. But it was not an ideal time to make the trip. Passover celebrations were in full swing in the city, and people were coming and going everywhere. Others were catching up on trips that they had postponed for a day due to the Sabbath. And the disciples were still somewhat shocked and saddened by the strange events that had swirled around them just a couple days before as their friend and teacher Jesus had been tried and executed by the religious and civil authorities of Jerusalem.

That morning before they left, though, some of the women who had accompanied them along the way reported that the tomb where they had laid him on Friday was empty. Most everyone felt that this was pretty silly, really—an idle tale—it was time to get on with life and put Jesus behind them. So the two disciples began that day’s journey as a pretty normal walk along a familiar road, with their spirits somewhat subdued by the grief and pain that were still in the air even as they started to think about how they would go on with life without Jesus.

Along the road, a stranger eased his way into their conversation. He asked them what they were talking about and why they were so sad as they walked along the way. Apparently he had not heard of the events of Thursday and Friday, so they brought him up to speed as they walked and talked. But this stranger didn’t share their sadness at the death of their friend and teacher. Instead, he suggested that this person, this Messiah, had come for this very reason, to experience these very things, to suffer and die and then enter into his glory. He wasn’t worried that the tomb had been found to be empty—instead he suggested that this was all exactly as God had intended and very much in line with all that Moses and the prophets had said over the centuries. The conversation with this stranger made the seven miles on the road pass quickly for the two disciples, and what had seemed to be an ordinary walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus started to become something to remember.

Like the disciples, I’m quite a fan of a good walk. A brisk walk remains my preferred way to get exercise, even though I certainly do it far less than I should! On nice days like we’ve finally started having recently, there’s nothing quite like a good walk to clear my mind and get a little blood flowing. And there’s no better way to restore my spirit after some busy days than to share a walk around New York City with a good friend. Most of my walks are pretty unremarkable, really—I don’t expect to have a grand epiphany of life that helps me to understand God and the world better or run into someone who will change my life. Normally they are just ordinary journeys, a way to get from point A to point B and give me some time to clear my head and assess the day before I dive back in to the busyness of the world.

By the time those two disciples and the stranger who walked with them got to Emmaus, it seemed to have been a pretty ordinary journey, save for the especially good conversation with the stranger that had helped take their mind off their grief and sorrow. As the disciples started to head into the village for the night, the stranger who had walked with them prepared to continue on to his destination, but it was late, so the disciples invited him to stay the night and join them for a little more conversation. When they sat down for dinner, the stranger “took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.”

In this moment, something happened. As he broke the bread, as this guest took on the role of host, this stranger was no longer unknown. The two disciples realized that they had known this man all along. They had not been talking with a stranger all day—they had been talking with Jesus. Not only that, the reports of the empty tomb were true—Jesus was alive! But then just as quickly as they had realized that it was Jesus with them, “he vanished from their sight.” It had indeed been no ordinary journey after all—they had spent the afternoon with Jesus without even knowing it!

That walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus was pretty incredible—it’s nearly impossible to beat that kind of a story! Even when I look back on the best conversations I’ve had while walking, none of them even begin to measure up to what the disciples experienced! But this extraordinary journey can still illuminate even the most mundane walks in our lives. Like the disciples, we can share our hopes and dreams and struggles and fears with those who walk with us along the road. Like the disciples, we might just meet someone unexpected who can help us understand where we have been and where we are going. And like the disciples, we might just encounter God in strangers we meet along the way.

Even when things are pretty normal and uneventful along our journeys, we can trust that God is working to prepare our hearts and minds for whatever encounter is ahead for us, that God is walking with us along the varied roads of our lives and opening our eyes to the fullness of the divine presence just when we need to recognize this new thing in our midst. Because of this incredible encounter on the road to Emmaus and at table with Jesus, we can trust that even our most ordinary journeys can be filled with the wonder and grace and mystery of our God who is made known to us in the breaking of bread.

This extraordinary journey was not over for the disciples. They had to get back to Jerusalem as quickly as they could. They had seen the Lord, and they had to let everyone else know about it, even if it was late, the road dark, and their bodies tired. By the time they got back, reports were streaming in from near and far of encounters with Jesus—not only had the women seen an empty tomb, not only had they talked with Jesus all afternoon along the road, Peter had seen him too! Their return to Jerusalem was no ordinary journey—even though it was the same road they had walked just a few hours before, their sorrow had turned to joy. They were ready to celebrate the resurrection and figure out what was next for them as they kept following Jesus along this new road together.

And so as we too go our way on the roads of life, as we walk the Emmaus roads of our world with friends and strangers and even on our own, as we gather and go forth from this table of joy where we trust that we will meet our risen Lord, God calls us to trust that all these are no ordinary journeys. All our lives are holy encounters with God, where anyone we meet might show us the face of God, where any meal we share might help us to see our dining companions in a new light, where every step we take helps us to see God’s new creation a little more clearly and shows us how we can join in, where we are called to proclaim the wonder of resurrection to our world that is so afraid of death.

And so as we gather at this table today, may God open our eyes to see the risen Christ present among us so that we might rise to serve and show his risen life to others and prepare to meet him on the extraordinary journey ahead. Thanks be to God. Amen.