Walking Witnesses

Walking Witnesses <-- Audio link – A sermon based upon Luke 24:13-35

Good morning. I bring you greetings from the Sisters of Bon Secours at their retreat center outside Baltimore, MD. I’ve been there this week with a group of pediatric chaplains on retreat and was much blessed by my time.

The sisters of Bon Secours, which translates to “good help” from its native French, are a vibrant community of living faith. They live into their original mission of providing good help to the poor and the sick. In the early days of their ministry, I imagine poor families didn’t know what to think when a nun showed up on their door to live with and care for them until they returned to health. I imagine it was like walking along and suddenly having Christ in their midst.

And that’s where today’s gospel lesson takes us too. As we’ve walked in the footsteps of Jesus through Holy Week and Easter, we’ve seen him make his presence known in so many ways. Whether it was riding a donkey into Jerusalem or standing up to admit his identity to those who would arrest him, this Jesus guy is not one to stay hidden for long… but also not one to be pinned down. So, let’s look again at our scripture passage.

What we have are two of Jesus’ followers walking to Emmaus. Now, this was a well-known village and we don’t know why they were going there nor do we need to. All we need to understand is that it’s a common place to them. Then, Jesus appears to them but they didn’t recognize him. They told Jesus about all that had happened in the past week including the empty tomb that day. But Jesus could tell that they were not able to see the big picture of his resurrection yet so he illuminates the ways his life was represented in ancient scripture. Then he started to walk away but his two followers invited him to spend the night.

This is where the story turns. They go to into a house and share a meal. The scripture doesn’t say it’s the Eucharist… it’s just a meal. Jesus then blesses and shares the bread. At this point, they suddenly recognize him and he vanishes. They 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?” Finally, the two takeoff back to Jerusalem to share this with others.

So what does this scripture have for us? Well, there’s definitely more than one moral to the story in this passage but what do we need to hear today?

First of all, I think God is telling us that it is okay when we don’t recognize Christ in our midst. This scripture tells us that followers were “kept” from recognizing him. Now it could have been their own inattention or grief or it could have been Christ himself who preferred to be unrecognized. The scripture does not tell us. But regardless of the cause, Jesus was obviously not offended by this. He interacted with them in whatever form they could receive.

This seems important because how often do we really recognize those God moments when we’re in them? Sometimes we do. However, quite often we are going about our day to day lives unaware that we were even part of meeting someone else’s deep and sacred need. Frequently, we hear from someone a few days later that they are grateful for our presence and how desperately they needed the eyes of compassion and hands of caring that we offered. Or how about those times when we feel so lost and something seemingly random happens that gives us new direction and focus? We could not see God working but we sure did reap the rewards of God’s presence in our lives.

So, we need to hear that it really is okay to not recognize Christ or those God moments at the time. There’s no need to feel ashamed or like we weren’t what God wanted us to be. We still took part in the work of the Body of Christ, even if we were unaware of what the whole body was doing.

Which brings me to the second point that recognizing when we’ve encountered the living Christ is fleeting and complicated and awe inspiring all at the same time. When Christ’s followers’ eyes were opened to who he was, they instantly realized that they were in the midst of a holy moment and then he disappeared. Can you imagine what that must have been like? They were being hospitable and then they caught a glimpse of Christ and then he was gone. It’s like the way Moses only caught a glimpse of God’s backside.

But our lives are the same way. When we do get that phone call thanking us for being there, the wind of the Spirit sweeps through our heart showing us God’s presence. When we look back at those seemingly random events that gave us what we truly needed to move forward, we feel the awe of God’s presence. You see, we catch glimpses of God but can’t capture the moment. This recognition of the living Christ leaves us knowing that God was working in the world but it’s not something we can pin down.

It reminds me of the song the nuns sing in the Sound of Music. When referring to Maria, arguably a Christ figure in the movie. They sing, “How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?” and “How do you keep a wave upon the sand?” You can’t and that’s the point. That upon recognizing the living Christ among us, we can’t capture it in a moment because Christ lives in movement.

This brings us to the final point which is that upon recognizing moments of the holy we are changed and are compelled forward. When Christ’s followers realized who had been in their midst, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” They realized that that burning of joy, hope, and love that was welling up within them was the first proof of Christ’s presence with them. Then they immediately took off to tell others and spread this good news.

Now, let’s look deeper at this for a few moments. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road…?” This is a powerful shift in the passage and it could be easily missed. They had just seen with their own eyes the risen Christ but what they immediately went to was how he had made them feel even when they didn’t yet recognize him. To me, that says something.

Poet Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I think the same can be said for Christ. Oh sure we share stories of all that he did and said. Those stories really touch people and are important for our faith formation and growth. But when we really start talking to people about their faith and share our own, what people talk about are very personal encounters they had… God moments… moments of Christ in our midst. And they talk about the emotional experience of being touched by it.

And when we talk further with one another about our faith, we inevitably get to how those moments became the force for movement in our lives. We encounter the living Christ in some way or ways. The experience speaks to our hearts by whispering love, healing, joy, and hope to us. Then we are compelled forward to act more fully and boldly in the body of Christ. We may not use those words, but the meaning is the same. Christ reaches in and touches our lives. But it’s not in the recognition that we find blessing. Rather, it is in the part that stays with us that we are blessed and can then in turn bless others.

Sisters and brothers, I’ve been saying now for two and a half weeks that we need to be looking for Christ in our midst and that is truly a valid calling. However, more important than looking for Christ in our midst, we need to be reaching out and living as if we are encountering the living Christ every moment. We never know when it will happen. I even suspect that nearly all our moments are really Christ moments if we’ll truly open up to them. And if we do approach life with that attitude, I bet we would catch even more glimpses of Christ in our midst that would impact us even more deeply. And this would in turn compel us forward in even more exciting ways because living in the movement of the Spirit through the Body of Christ is never-ending in that way.

So, as we leave here today, I think the challenge is to be open to what these moments are doing to change us and how we can be open to the movement they create. How are we taking that experience of how Christ makes us feel and moving forward with it? What is Christ calling us to? Is it that we need to get to know new people? Maybe people different from us? Is it that we need to be involved in some form of ministry? Write a note to people God places on your heart? Is it that we need to open our own hearts to be touched more deeply by others? To be open to healing? Maybe we need to reach across the aisle and forgive to rebuild a relationship? Maybe we need to reach around the globe and heal relationships there?

I don’t know where the movement that God calls us to individually and collectively will take us. But I do trust that growing, loving, and living in the Body of Christ will bless us and spread beyond us in way ways we will never be able to count. And just like Jesus’ followers that encountered him on the walk to Emmaus, we will be forever better for the experience. Amen.