About 20 years ago, I attended a clergy conference at a beautiful retreat center in rural Louisiana. The priest who was in charge of the arrangements for our worship was very artistic, and he would create wonderful settings and backdrops for our times of prayer and meditation. One afternoon, we all came into the chapel to find a small dining table in the middle of the room. One of the chairs was down on the floor, another forcefully pushed back. On the table a glass of wine was spilled and there was half-eaten food on the plates. It looked like a scene of sudden violence and I immediately thought of Norway.
I realize that this may seem to be a bit of a non sequiter, but when I was in college, my mother and I took a trip to Scandinavia. While we were in Norway, in Oslo, we visited the city hall, which had been built since World War II. The building had a large central two-story atrium, with murals commemorating various historical events at ceiling level all the way around. Of these murals, I remember only one – and it’s one I will probably never forget.
The mural showed a family’s living room in the evening. The mother was seated in an armchair next to a lamp, knitting; a little boy played with a toy train on the floor at her feet. They were both looking over their shoulders towards the door, startled; the door the father had just opened – only to be pushed back as armed Nazi soldiers burst into their home.
That sudden raid was the first thing I thought of when I saw the tableau in the chapel, with furniture overturned, wine spilled, and a meal interrupted; and yet, as it happens, this scene wasn’t violence. This wasn’t anger. It wasn’t aggression. This was Emmaus.
Speaking for myself, I’m so used to the familiar cadences of the Risen Lord making himself known to the disciples “in the breaking of the bread” that until that scene in the chapel, I’d lost touch with the shock factor, with the intensity, with the whole jaw-dropping “Oh my God!” aspect of that moment of revelation. And yet, think of the context. Think of what the disciples, including Cleopas and his companion, who were part of the greater group of Jesus’ disciples, had just been through.
Here in our Gospel reading, this is still Easter Day, still only two days after the worst day of the disciples’ lives (not to mention Jesus’); the day when their hopes, their dreams – their whole future as they saw it – had been shattered as Jesus’ lifeless body had hung on the cross. In their conversation as they walk now, still numb and disbelieving, they’re going around and around and around, replaying events, replaying rumors, replaying all the “might have been’s,” as we tend to do in times of pain and of grief. Luke doesn’t tell us where exactly they’re going, but I think it’s probably safe to assume that they’re going home, disconsolately returning to a life of routine, of ordinary tasks and ordinary responsibilities; a life in which they will, as the poet T.S. Eliot once wrote, “learn to avoid excessive expectation.” (F, L, H, 419)
“Once bitten, twice shy.” “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” These sayings reflect our emotional truth: if we’ve been hurt, and especially if we’ve been hurt badly, we’ll take steps to protect ourselves from being hurt again. We’ll take steps to “avoid excessive expectation.”
And then, out of the blue, along comes this stranger who joins them, asking them a question that to their ears sounds almost flippant, because the literal translation of what he asks them is, “What are these words that you have been pitching back and forth to each other?” (NIB, Luke, 477) They stop, looking sad, Luke says; but then Cleopas verbally pushes back at the stranger, basically asking him what rock he’s been living under since Friday: “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem that doesn’t know the things that have taken place there in these days?” “Poia?” asks the stranger. “What things?” – and here Luke treats us to a little bit of irony. As one author points out, “…[W]hereas [Cleopas’] question assumes Jesus is the only one who does not know of these earth-shattering events, he is [in fact] the only one who does know the meaning of all that has happened.” (Ibid.)
Still not recognizing Jesus, the disciples proceed to fill their new companion in on everything that’s come to pass, and in the process they make what must be one of the most poignant comments in all of Scripture: “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
But we had hoped…we had hoped the treatment would work. We had hoped the job would come through. We had hoped there would be a baby. We have all hoped, and we have all known the pain of hope denied.
In response to their sad tale, the stranger begins to teach them about the Messiah, drawing upon Moses and all the prophets, opening the Scriptures to them in a new way. As the little group approaches Emmaus, the stranger walks ahead, but it’s getting to be late in the day and the two disciples invite him to stay with them; to relax, share a meal, and have more conversation. They “urged him strongly,” Luke says, and so he joins them – and in this very ordinary setting, with Luke using the same wording as he has with both the feeding of the 5,000 and the Last Supper, the stranger takes bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to his companions. As he does so, their eyes are suddenly opened and they recognize Jesus in their midst.
Cleopas jumps up so quickly that his stool tumbles over, the other disciple jerks in surprise and spills his wine, and Jesus vanishes from their sight. No longer hungry, the two leave their meal behind and immediately head back to Jerusalem to rejoin the other disciples and to tell them everything that has happened – how the Risen Jesus “has been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
It’s no accident that the very first promise we make in our Baptismal Covenant is that we will “continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship;” that we will continue “in the breaking of bread and in the prayers.” We know that Christ is revealed in the everyday life of a community, especially a community of faith – revealed in the communal meal, communal discernment for ministry, communal worship; revealed in shared joys and shared sorrows; shared stories and shared prayers. Christ is revealed in the quality and in the intentionality of the relationships we have with each other and with the world – a point Bp. John Taylor emphasized as the presenter at our final Thursday Lenten program here at St. Matthias.
The Golden Rule is key to our intentionality, he said, and every major faith tradition has its own version of this critical behavioral guidance. Because we are to “do unto others as we would have them do unto us,” Christ is revealed, or Christ is denied, in how we treat other human beings, and in how we treat all of God’s Creation.
You may remember that in my sermon last week, I shared Sojourners’ founder Jim Wallis’ memory of a guest speaker at his high school who rather loudly and forcefully pointed out to individuals in the audience that they were “the only Jesus someone would see.” Each of us is the only Jesus someone will see; and that is both a privilege and a tremendous responsibility, because we’d better be sure that the Jesus we’re showing the world is a Jesus that Jesus himself would agree with.
In this day and age, and more and more frequently in voices online and in the news, the Jesus that is now being lifted up seems to be the vengeful warrior Jesus who appears in chapter 19 of The Revelation to John.
John writes, “Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” (Rev. 11-16)
A few words about The Revelation to John, which you may already know. Revelation is probably the most well-known example – and perhaps the most notorious example – in the Bible of a distinct type of literature known as “apocalyptic” literature. Apocalyptic literature has to do with the end times, and it can sound pretty scary, with its fantastical beasts, symbolic imagery, and general cosmic upheaval. Interestingly enough, and perhaps counter-intuitively, apocalyptic writings are actually messages of hope. They are written reassurances to communities and groups that are being persecuted that they will ultimately be delivered; and that in God’s time, the righteous will prevail. Apocalyptic writings insist that God is in control, that what the persecuted are fighting on earth is happening simultaneously on the cosmic level; and that the results will work out just as they’re supposed to, no matter how dire things seem to be at the moment.
Now, because most of these situations of duress and persecution on earth were politically related, and messages of hope generally portrayed the defeat of the power group in question, apocalyptic was written in a kind of literary and numerical code imagery that the good guys could understand, but that the bad guys couldn’t – so The Revelation to John is actually coded good news for first century Christians who were being persecuted by the Roman Empire.
What’s not so good, however, is anyone lifting the heavenly warrior with the blood-soaked robe out of the text and context of Revelation and claiming that that highly specific image of Christ is the image of Christ. There are two other images of Christ in Revelation in addition to the warrior, and by far the dominant image of the three is Christ as the Lamb who was slain for us; Christ as the Lamb seated upon the throne of heaven. And, in fact, what is revealed to John again and again and what he returns to in his writing again and again, is a repeating vision of the perpetual, ongoing worship in heaven – the worship of the Lamb.
The warrior Christ is a limited Christ, limited by the meanings we attach to John’s text and, perhaps, limited by the comfort we may get from having a Christ in this guise. Christ the Lamb, who as the Good Shepherd has already laid down his life for the sheep; Christ the Lamb is much more consistent and coherent with the message of the Christ of the Gospels: the Christ who takes, blesses, breaks, and gives; the Christ of the Gospels who walks with, who teaches and heals, who inspires and empowers – and who waits.
Going back to Emmaus, one pastor has highlighted Jesus’ seeming to indicate that he’s going to keep on walking. She writes, “Drawing near to their destination, Jesus leaves [the disciples] free to continue on without him….His love is such that we are always free to turn our backs upon him, close the door of our hearts against him, bolt our minds shut in fear of what inviting him in might involve. Here he makes no ethereal entrance as in John. An invitation must be issued.” (F,L,H,423)
An invitation must be issued. Jesus may be right outside that door of our hearts, poised to come in; but he doesn’t force himself upon Cleopas and his companion and he doesn’t force himself upon us. We have to want him to share our table, to share our lives. We have to want him to pitch his tent among us and abide with us. We have to want the pleasure, and the honor, of his presence – and we have to invite.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!
Amen.