Jan 04 2009
Practice Resurrection
Preached by Winton Boyd on January 4, 2009
Sermon text: Luke 24:13-35
Today, we return to our sermon series on the “Essentials – the biblical backpack” stories. From now through February we will conclude our series on the most important biblical stories every Christian should know. So, even though today is Epiphany Sunday, we are talking about Easter and the resurrection. This story about an encounter on the road to Emmaus is one of the most beloved of the resurrection stories – but also quite mysterious. I want to highlight some of these mysteries not because I question the validity or power of the story – but to highlight that it’s truth may be less in the details and more in its powerful symbolism.
*No one knows whether the village Emmaus actually existed. Various attempts have been made to place it, but the truth is that more than being a physical place, Emmaus is a symbolic place – where “the broken hearted go to get away.” It could be called the place of escape and despondency. The place where one goes when facing the truth of one’s life seems too overwhelming.
*Jesus’ coming and going in the story is very strange. The text says Jesus simply, “came near” the two disciples as they were talking on the road and that after sharing a meal he “vanished.” They did not see him coming nor did they recognize him when they were talking, and then they did not see him leave.
*The story suggests that the travelers invited Jesus to spend the night with them. After they share a meal and discover who he is “in the breaking of the bread” – after realizing their hearts “were burning within us” while they talked to him – and after Jesus had vanished – they decided to walk/run the seven miles into Jerusalem to tell the other eleven. What was to be a relaxed evening turns into a hectic night.
*Who is this Cleopas? He appears nowhere else in the New Testament. He is not on the list of disciples. Yet, he seems to be very informed quite early about the weekend’s events. He knew not only of the crucifixion, but also of the appearance to the women just that morning. However, if he knew of the women’s sighting, why was he leaving Jerusalem so quickly? Was there no curiosity about what they had experienced? Why didn’t he stick around long enough to know that Simon Peter had gone to check out the women’s story?
*Most of all, why did Jesus appear to these two? Of all the people who could spread the story or been credible eyewitnesses, why these two?
If the village is mostly symbolic and if this disciple Cleopas is unknown –how does such a story become a centerpiece to the resurrection narratives of our sacred texts?
First, it was a reminder that God makes Godself known to the most unlikely of people. This story of Jesus’ appearance to these to unlikely travelers occurs before his appearance to the disciples in the Upper Room. Whatever resurrection means it is not the private property of the religious elite or connected – but is available to each of us in surprising and unlikely times and ways. Cleopas and his companion are nobodies who have no idea what God might be doing. They could be any one of us. Their road to Emmaus is an ordinary road, the road each of us is on every day. This is what sets this story apart from the other accounts of Jesus’ Easter appearances.
Secondly these two unlikely disciples were, in the words of Wendell Berry, “practicing resurrection” – without knowing it. They were living with a recognition that death doesn’t have the last word even when it didn’t look that way. In their case, they “practiced resurrection” by offering hospitality to a stranger – which led them into a caring community with others – and which allowed them to partake in the sharing of a meal which turned out to be the sacrament of communion when God’s power and life became evident to them in a totally new way. The opening their hearts to others, even as they were broken hearted themselves, led to an experience of resurrection.
So what does “practicing resurrection” look like for us? We are not despondent followers of a crucified master teacher – although we may at times be broken hearted nobodies on our own road to Emmaus.
How is that we declare life in the face of death, vitality in the face of the mundane, energy in the face of all that seeks to weigh us down.
One person who has been doing that in many ways for many years is the writer and poet Wendell Berry. This small farmer/writer from Kentucky has been a voice for those who believe in the sacredness of the earth and the sacredness of human relationships. He has a wonderful poem, included on your insert, titled “Manifesto – The Mad Farmer Liberation Front.” As a small farmer fighting all those cultural and institutional pressures that that seek to discourage and deny him life, he wrote this poem to declare his own life in the face of death; and to encourage all of us to take a hold of the life in front of us. I would like to read portions of this poem, as an invitation to all of us to consider how we might “practice resurrection” in our own lives.
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front (excerpts)
Love the quick profit, the annual raise
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap.
Swear allegiance
to what is highest in your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it.
Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go.
Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.
That which begins in confusion and despair and uncertainty, that which puts each of us on the road to Emmaus, a village set apart from the pain or confusion of our lives, may just have a surprising ending.
Emmaus is where we open our heart to the strangeness and/or stranger and a new way is made known.
Emmaus is where life in all its beauty and mystery lies before us.
So, wherever we are on that road, dear friends, let us practice God’s promise of resurrection. In the name of God and with the power of our faith, let us declare our own life. Let us live in the face of the death around us. Let us have fun, let us laugh and let us listen to the way our “hearts are burning within us” – for God is alive, God is near, God is here in the breaking of the bread, the caring of community and in the hope within us.
Amen.
