Text: Luke 24: 13-35 Title: Practices of Resurrection


[PDF]Text: Luke 24: 13-35 Title: Practices of Resurrection...

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Text: Luke 24: 13-35 Title: Practices of Resurrection Date: 05.08.11 Roger Allen Nelson A few days after September 11, 2001 Nancy Gibbs was driving her two children home from school ~ they were four and seven. The music on the radio was interrupted with an update about how many were feared dead at the World Trade Center. With a great gust of indignation the youngest blurted out, “They should have been more careful. They should have watched where they were going, the men flying those planes – they shouldn’t have knocked those buildings down.” The 7-year-old replied, “That wasn’t an accident. They meant to knock the buildings down.” “No, they didn’t” “Yes. They did. They wanted to kill those people. They were bad men.” Ten years later, in the wake of the death of Osama bin Laden, Nancy Gibbs writes: And I wondered. When was it, somewhere along the way, that she discovered the presence of evil in the world? At 4, it was unthinkable. By 7, it was undeniable. She did not need fairy tales; she knew what evil looked like, smelled like, and I wondered exactly how and when that happened ~ and whether it happened sooner for children like her born into peace and prosperity and then baptized on a beautiful fall day by cataclysm. Gibbs goes on about how ten years of fighting terrorism has shaped us. She wonders whether the practices of terror changed us. She asks about how children, somewhere along the way, learn and grow and become who they are…. Well, dear friends, this wonderfully odd story about two men walking along the way to Emmaus invites us to consider the practices of resurrection. As those who are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ how do we learn and grow and become who we are? As those called by the gospel, how are we shaped ~ not by practices of terror, but by practices of resurrection? Three points…. Three practices of resurrection…. There was nothing special about Emmaus. Best historical guess: a small village about seven miles northwest of Jerusalem. No symbolic importance, no big shakes. Our text tells of two ordinary Joes walking back to an ordinary town. After the cataclysm of the crucifixion they were walking away. They weren’t insiders, they weren’t seekers running to the grave, they weren’t believers waiting in an upper room, they were just two guys walking back home.

Maybe against a dark Friday sky they saw the limp body of Jesus being pried off a cross. On Saturday they sat with that day-after-death-polite-funeral-home-stiffness. The resurrection rumors surfaced on Sunday morning, but they were the wild tales of women. There was no way to confirm or understand. It all seemed like too much: too much to take, too much to process, too much to swallow, too much to believe…. So, as the sun turned toward the horizon, they headed for home. They walked away; they walked the road to Emmaus. Frederick Buechner describes the road this way: Emmaus can be a trip to the movies just for the sake of seeing a movie or to a cocktail party just for the sake of the cocktails. Emmaus may be buying a new suit or a new car, or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the noblest ideas that men have had ~ ideas about love and freedom and justice ~ have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends. Emmaus is where we go, where these two went, to try to forget about Jesus and the great failure of his life. They were walking away. And then Jesus appears. The resurrection means that Jesus is loose on the earth. He is not bound by death; he is not consigned to the grave; but he is alive and somehow present. Jesus shows up as dawn lights a garden. Jesus shows up where friends are grilling fish on the lake’s shore. Jesus shows up behind doors locked in fear. Jesus shows up as two guys are walking back to Emmaus. One practice of resurrection is the expectation that God is not bound to temple or Torah, but God will come along side us as we tuck our kids in bed, as we care for ailing parents, as we meet a friend for a beer, as we go to the movies, as we walk in the woods. Jesus ~ loose on the earth, unexpected ~ shows up. Jesus shows up as paroikos ~ the Greek word translated here as stranger, foreigner, exile, or alien. He doesn’t appear in the synagogue or sanctuary, but in his resurrection just like his incarnation, he appears as one on the margins, as one hardly recognized, as one out of the loop. He appears and tracks down two that are walking away, two that are “foolish… and slow to believe.” But, after Jesus shows up they high-tail-it back to Jerusalem to proclaim, “It is true! The Lord has risen….”

If the resurrection is true ~ then Jesus will appear in our lives. There may be something about him that reaches beyond our religious frameworks and alights or aligns where we least expect. He may disappear just when we think we have him in our grasp. We may not be able to nail him down. But, to practice resurrection is to expect, look, long, wait, be open, trust, believe that Jesus is loose on the earth, coming along side us. (Point 1) A few weeks ago I met with a young couple who are bringing their daughter to be baptized in a few weeks. The conversation was lively, honest, sprinkled with laughter and the husband/father paid me one of the finest compliments I’ve ever received about preaching. It wasn’t the typical, “Nice sermon, pastor….” Or, “Good job! I liked that one!” Or, “You talk real purtty, with all them fancy words….” But, he said, “You take the text seriously. The sermon is about engaging the text…..” A second practice of resurrection is engaging scripture. Jesus comes along side in the slanted light of late Sunday afternoon but the travelers don’t recognize him. He doesn’t identify himself or offer his wounds as proof. He doesn’t call them by name, or comfort, or challenge them to commitment, but as they walk he opens for them the scriptures. He takes the text seriously and engages them in conversation about Moses and the prophets. He invites them to see the events of the last few days in a different light. He helps them see Jesus differently ~ even the Jesus they don’t recognize walking with them. We are shaped by engaging this living, mysterious, untamable, confronting, confounding, comforting Word. It’s a tether. It’s a lens. It’s a library. It is a multi-voiced chorus that speaks the voice of God. It’s a vehicle of revelation ~ the way in which God chose, and continues to choose, to reveal God’s self. It would show us the world, show us ourselves, and show us God. It would help us see things as they truly are ~ not as they are twisted and distorted. It would help us hear God’s voice ~ not the lies that flood and fill our hearts and minds. A second practice of resurrection is engaging scripture and that means reading it, studying it, sitting with it devotionally, passing it along in VBS, and “Children in Worship,” and Sunday School and Christian day schools and colleges. That means listening to scripture preached…. There are practices of terror that blare and blather and demand our attention, but to practice resurrection is to enter into this strange world of scripture to be shaped. (Point 2) And finally, you know the story. These ordinary Joes don’t recognize Jesus by his gait, they don’t even recognize him as he walks them through scripture, they recognize him at the table. In some odd twist, Jesus assumes the role not of guest but of host, and as he takes bread, gives thanks, breaks it and as he gives it to them they recognize him ~ the self emptying God, broken and poured out for the world. Again, Buechner puts it this way: This is the substance of what I want to talk about: the clack-clack of my life. The occasional, obscure glimmering through of grace. The muffled presence of the holy. The images, always broken, partial, ambiguous, of Christ. If a vision of Christ, then a vision

such as those two stragglers had at Emmaus at suppertime: just the cracking of crust as the loaf came apart in his hands ragged and white before in those most poignant of words in all scripture: ‘He vanished from their sight’ – whoever he was, whoever they were. Whoever we are. Whoever we are ~ we live and raise our children in a wonderfully colorful and complicated world. We are surrounded with love. We are confronted with evil. We live in a mosaic of cultures and faiths and ambivalence. We are bombarded by images and texts. But, to practice resurrection, in part, is to look and listen for God who is loose on this earth and not bound by death. (1) It is to engage scripture. (2) It is to take bread and wine ~ with other ordinary Joes. To sit, hold it, and wait for Jesus ~ who promised to be present. (3) Now, that may not be all flashy or splashy, but those simple practices ~ scripture, communion, and faith in the resurrection endure ~ through terror and falling towers until kingdom come. Even so, come Lord Jesus. Amen.