Sermon for SMHP, Year B, Easter 3
Note that we
are picking up early, the last part of the Road to Emmaus story.
As they came near the village to which they were going, Jesus
walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him
strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is
now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. 30When he
was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to
them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him;
and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other,
‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the
road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ 33That same
hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their
companions gathered together. 34They were saying, ‘The Lord has
risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ 35Then they told
what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the
breaking of the bread.
36While they were talking
about this, Jesus himself stood among
them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and
terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to
them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look
at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost
does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he
had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.
41While
in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have
you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and
he took it and ate in their presence. 44Then he said to them, “These
are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything
written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be
fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the
scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the
Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and
that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all
nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these
things. 49And see, I am
sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you
have been clothed with power from on high.’
I wanted to
start back with the part of the story which is left out of our lesson for this
morning, because Luke’s story of the events which happen after the resurrection
of Jesus is really all one long story.
Our text for this morning picks up at verse 36, which begins “While they
were talking about this…” In order to
understand it, we have to know what the “this” is in that verse. So what is it? What were they talking about there in
Jerusalem?
Jesus joined
some pilgrims walking to a village called Emmaus, a village which appears in
scripture exactly one time, in this story.
A village that the geographers can no longer identify.
An ordinary
place.
Jesus walks
along with them, but they don’t know it’s him, so they tell him all about the extraordinary things which have
happened in and around Jerusalem over the weekend, which has just ended. And this is where we pick up the story. They approach Emmaus, that unremarkable town,
and Jesus moves as if he is going to continue up the road.
But they
prevail upon him to stay. It is almost
evening, and they have a comfortable place to stay and some food. So Jesus accepts their hospitality, comes
inside, takes a place at the table, picks up a loaf of bread and breaks
it.
Ordinary
bread. An ordinary meal.
And in the
breaking of the bread, they recognize him.
There are ten
distinct stories about Jesus sharing food with others in scripture. They range from this story of table
fellowship with a few pilgrims in a little town, to the time that Jesus blessed
five loaves and a couple of fish and the disciples passed out food to some ten
thousand people in the town of Bethsaida, on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.
The biblical
scholar Markus Barth once calculated that “In approximately one-fifth of the sentences in Luke’s Gospel and in
Acts, meals play a conspicuous role.”
One fifth. If Luke, the evangelist who set out to write
“an orderly account” of Jesus, focused that heavily on table fellowship and the
ordinary moments in which people ate and drank together, I daresay we ought to
pay attention to it as well.
We
ought to take note of the fact that Luke’s resurrection chapter, some
fifty-three verses, contains not one but two stories about Jesus eating.
Jesus
eating is important.
The other people at the table are
important. The type food is less
important, which is important.
Bread. Fish. The ordinary food of the people of
Jesus’ age. And every age before and
since.
In
the first of these stories, told in Luke, chapter five, Jesus calls a tax
collector named Levi to be one of his disciples, and then Levi throws a banquet
for Jesus.
We
have no idea what was served at the banquet.
But we know who was there!
“A large crowd of tax collector
and others,” according to Luke.
“Tax
collectors and sinners” according to the Pharisees who question the disciples
about the dinner.
In
the next story, in Luke seven, Jesus potentially redeems himself by dining at
the home of one of the Pharisees, Simon.
Let’s pick up the story at verse 37:
37And a
woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that he was eating in the
Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. 38She
stood behind him at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her
tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and
anointing them with the ointment. 39Now
when the Pharisee who had invited him saw it, he said to himself, ‘If this man
were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is
touching him—that she is a sinner.’
Even when he is in “respectable
places,” Jesus is drawn to the ordinary people.
People like us. People who know
they are sinners, and know that they need
to draw near to Jesus, because he is the one who can help them turn their lives
around…and offer them grace and forgiveness when they fall short.
Jesus became incarnate to eat with
us. Not to be the King of the
Pharisees. Or The King of the Jews.
God is already the King of the
Jews. Always has been.
Jesus was certainly the greatest of
the Pharisees, the greatest of the rabbis, the one who could do theology
because it was quite literally in his DNA.
But God did not send The Son to take
on our nature and our lot in order to provide a special guest for our
banquets. Read the stories about food in
Luke—this is abundantly clear. The
banquets are moments in which Jesus reminds us that his mission is to the least
of these. To all of us—every station,
every situation.
It is a lesson we have been slow to
learn. Two thousand years later, we tend
to invite Jesus into the big stuff, the big moments. We set aside a day, call it “The Lord’s
day.”
Isn’t Tuesday also The Lord’s Day? Or are
the other six days just about us?
We’ve gotten good at inviting Jesus
into the big moments. Oscar
speeches. Thanksgiving Dinner. There’s a whole movement dedicated to
“Keeping Christ in Christmas.”
Here’s the movement I want to
start: “Keep Christ in Breakfast.”
Because I gotta tell you, it’s pretty
easy to “keep Christ in Christmas,” and forget what he taught you by Boxing
Day.
Look it up.
Our world needs some things right
now, wouldn’t you agree? Our state, our
nation, are in the hands of an evil that is well versed in Christmas Jesus, but
not too familiar with breakfast Jesus—the one who ate with sinners and tax
collectors. The one who fed hungry people
in Bethsaida because that’s just what
you do. The one who turned banquets
into object lessons on loving our neighbors.
All of them.
What our world needs is people who
wake up every morning with their minds “stayed on Jesus,” as the old gospel
song says. People who invite Jesus to
share their breakfast, and their lunch and their whole day. People who are walkin’ with Jesus and talkin’
with Jesus.
Our world needs people of theological
depth, and that means spending time with Jesus.
Time in prayer. Time cracking
open our Bibles during the week.
And most importantly, keeping our
Jesus lenses tuned on the world. Looking
for those inbreaking moments of incarnation that are happening in our weeks—I
promise. Just as Jesus showed up in
unexpected places in the first century, he shows up in unexpected places in
the twenty-first century!
This week he showed up with Syrian
civilians who were terrified by the sound of bombs going off near their homes.
He showed up in the immigrants who
come looking for a safer home for their children. He stopped to eat with a mother trying to
feed her children on a Burger King salary.
He rested a while with a husband who is terrified that Medicaid isn’t
going to pay for his wife’s medicine. He
was with you, in moments of sadness and fear and joy.
I know that Jesus was in those places
because those are the places where Jesus always chose to put his body. Places of pain and sadness, and places of joy
and unity. And all the ordinary places
in between.
Jesus ate a piece of fish with his
disciples *not* because he loved fish so much.
Frankly, they were all probably pretty sick of fish.
But he ate a piece of fish because
that’s what they were doing, and he
wanted to be there with them.
Where Jesus puts his body matters.
And since we know he wants to be
where we are, where we put our bodies
matters.
So let’s invite him to breakfast, and
remember that he is incarnate with us all day.
He is with us, and we are reflecting him.
Keep Christ in breakfast. And the whole day long. The world will be better for it.
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