Luke 24:13-35 "Footprints in the Sand"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         The first day was bad.  That was Friday, the day he was crucified.  The second day was worse.  That was Saturday.  The world was terribly dark and forbidding, and the flies were everywhere.  The smell of death was still pungent in the sultry air, as it always was after Governor Pilate flexed his Roman imperial power muscles and went on one of his not infrequent execution rampages.  Now it was Sunday, what we would call Easter.

         The followers of Jesus had congregated in Jerusalem, stunned by the death of the one they loved and consumed by their grief.  If Friday and Saturday were bad though, the very worst day was Sunday.  Sunday was the first day of the Jewish workweek, rather like our Monday when everything gets back to normal. 

         Life has a way of doing that, you know.  Of course, you know.  If you have ever experienced the death of a loved one, you have experienced the inevitable way life all around you resorts to the usual, but you are not anywhere near ready to follow suit.  But still, the laundry needs doing.  The bills have got to be paid. 

         And so it was for Cleopas and his friend.  Life was quickly regaining its old rhythm after the drama of Jesus’ death. 

Surely the two travellers we meet in this story today had awakened that morning, still haunted by their dead hopes and dreams. Jesus was supposed to have been the one to bring about a change in their economic and social circumstances. He was going to be the one to begin the long awaited revolt against Rome, the one who would revamp the oppressive political system and be the new ruler.  But something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. 

         Those were the facts – and, as they well knew, the facts are the facts.  Oh, they had heard the news from the women about the empty tomb.  They had listened to the crazy stories about the angels, and had even heard Peter’s declaration that the body had indeed gone missing. 

         They had tried ever so hard to picture the white linen grave clothes all folded up and stashed in a neat pile in the corner of the tomb – and they had failed miserably in their image making because, deep down inside, they knew that such was the stuff that dreams, not life, are made of. 

         So here it was, the third day. They could not continue in mourning forever, but still the burning questions were these: “Now what?  What do we do now?”

         Of course, they had no answers.  They only knew that they had to get on with their lives – not matter how irrelevant doing so seemed right now. They knew that all that was left for them to do was to go home, somehow to go back to their pre-Jesus lives, pick up where they had left off before they had taken up with this itinerant rabbi.  As Presbyterian pastor, Julie Jensen, writes, they could only go “back to the human condition.”

         And so they took to the road, the road to Emmaus, to a place that, as the Gospel writer of Luke tells us, was seven miles from Jerusalem.  And so we picture the two friends walking down a dusty roadway, bent on answering that proverbial question they had raised earlier:  “Now what?” 

         The Gospel writer tells us that they talked about everything that had already happened – and I guess really not at all about what would happen next.

         Remember when, they reminisced….Remember when he stopped in that ancient vineyard and told us that we were like those vines.  Yahweh/God was the trunk, he said, even as he challenged us to be nothing more than the branches.  How they were laden with clusters of huge purple grapes that day!  

Remember just standing there, the wind mussing our hair, marveling at how wonderful it was to be just a branch in God’s vineyard. 

         Remember when…Remember when he “sent us out two by two and told us not to take anything we didn’t need, and you were trying to hide an extra snack in your bag just in case?  Wow, was he not happy with you when he found out!”  (Jensen)

         Remember when….Remember when we got caught up in the mob scene outside the Praetorium, when we got scared and feared for our own lives, when we abandoned him, watched from a distance as he died.  Remember when the sky became so black.  Remember when he bled from his hands and feet and side.  Remember when his breathing became so labored that we wanted to somehow breath for him because no one should have to endure that agony of not being able to breathe but not yet being dead.  Remember when….

          And so, Cleopas and his friend re-lived the good and the bad times as they trudged along in the noonday heat – even though the good times only seemed to etch more clearly their deepest regrets and disappointments as they walked on the road to Emmaus.

         You know, the funny thing about Emmaus, the destination of Cleopas and his fellow traveller, is that we do not know where it is.  Many Biblical sites have an archeological basis – Nazareth, Bethlehem, Tiberius, and Jerusalem - but not Emmaus. 

         Oh, Biblical scholars and archeologists have tried to place Emmaus into an historical and archeological context.  They have drawn circles out from Jerusalem, circles with a radius of seven miles in a vain attempt to pinpoint this location, which makes me wonder if it is more archetypal than it is archeological.  Oh, a few historic places are possibilities, but, in reality, we really do not know where Emmaus is. 

       Except that the road to Emmaus is where you go when a situation has become unbearable.  Presbyterian pastor Stan Gockel tells us that Emmaus is “the place where we go to escape from the cruelty of life and forget our pains, fears, and failures….. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred—that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas people have come up with— ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always been twisted out of shape by selfish (people) for selfish ends.  (Gockel concludes that) Emmaus is the place where we go when we feel like throwing up our hands and saying, “To hell with the whole dang thing.”

      

       We have all been on the road to Emmaus, you know – or, if we have not yet been on the road, someday we will be. 

       “When?” you may ask.  “When have I been on the road to Emmaus?”

       Well, you know you are on the road to Emmaus when you are like Cleopas and his fellow traveler who talked with the stranger they met on the road and admitted to him:  “We had hoped.”

       You are on the road to Emmaus when for you, like Cleopus and his friend, hope is a thing of the past. You are on the road to Emmaus when your hope is gone, when you can only embrace the bitter disappointment of the past tense.  “We had hoped…”

       We had hoped that he would be the one to set Israel free.  We had hoped that he was the Messiah.  We had hoped that the marriage could have been saved, that the child would have lived. We had hoped that he would not be sent to Afghanistan, that he could have come home safe and sound.

       The road to Emmaus is not a happy journey, and we hate to see people on that road.  Oh, how we long not to let others wallow in their grief.  We want to hear the future tense from Cleopas and his friend, from all those who suffer. 

After all, looking ahead to a bright tomorrow means that they are getting back in the swing of life’s rhythms in a timely way. 

       “You are dating again, right?”  “At least the little one did not suffer – and God loves the tiny angels.”  “He is serving his country – a good patriot.”  “People can do a lot with only one arm.”

       But the road to Emmaus is a dark road, and such platitudes will not bring the light.  When we walk the Emmaus road, we are admitting our deepest disappointments.  We are embracing the past tense. 

       But, you know, that is OK.  It is all right to walk for a time on the Emmaus road – though there is an important caveat. 

       And the caveat is this:  When you do find yourself on the road to Emmaus, you may be grieving, you may be deeply disappointed, and you may be living in the past tense of hopelessness.  But when you find yourself on the road to Emmaus, never believe that you are walking all alone. 

       If you do, you see, you are likely to miss the stranger – because, somewhere along the road to Emmaus, you will meet someone, as Cleopas and his friend did – someone in the guise of a parent or grandparent, a teacher, a church member, a friend.  You may not recognize the stranger, but he will definitely recognize you.

       And the stranger will not tell you to buck up and get over your grief and disappointment.  No – instead the stranger will listen to you as you tell your story.  The stranger will walk beside you, not in front or behind you.  The stranger may even carry you - lest you strike your foot upon a stone, as the Psalmist writes. 

One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.

In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.

Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,

other times there were one set of footprints.

This bothered me because I noticed

that during the low periods of my life,

when I was suffering from

anguish, sorrow or defeat,

I could see only one set of footprints.

So I said to the Lord,

"You promised me Lord,

that if I followed you,

you would walk with me always.

But I have noticed that during

the most trying periods of my life

there have only been one

set of footprints in the sand.

Why, when I needed you most,

you have not been there for me?"

The Lord replied,

"The times when you have

seen only one set of footprints,

is when I carried you."

      

       And when the day is done, invite the stranger in.  And he will take the bread you offer, and he will bless it, and he will break it – and you will recognize him – by his compassion, by his caring, by his accepting you for who you are, in spite of who you are.

      

       It is an unremarkable story really – about two unremarkable people, one of whom does not even have a name, two unremarkable people who find their lives transformed – at a simple evening meal, no less – because they did not walk alone and because took the stranger in. 

       The stranger, of course, is Jesus, and he does not hang around.  The Gospel writer says that he immediately vanished from their sight.  Poof!  He was gone.

       But that is the way it is with Jesus.  He does not stick around – not even for us - but instead he always leaves us signs – the Holy Spirit, bread broken and shared, a set of footprints in the sand, a listening stranger as we stumble our way to Emmaus.

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.

         

John 20:19-31 "Living the Resurrection"

You are welcome to use parts of this sermon, but if you do, please attribute them properly! 

         So – do you feel transformed?  Resurrected?  Or - how about simply renewed?  Even a little bit?  Is your life different?  Or is it pretty much the same as it was – with its own set of broken dreams and fears about tomorrow?

         I mean, Easter was supposed to change everything, right?  Easter was going to put us on a new road.  Every year, we are told that Easter will make our lives different.

         That is why we sang those joyful hymns last week, right?  “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.”  That is why we let loose the alleluias and decorated our sanctuary with fragrant lilies and tulips and those powerfully sweet smelling hyacinths, right?  That is why we rocked the rafters with the Hallelujah Chorus and marveled as it reverberated off the walls and ceilings, right? 

         Easter was supposed to have changed everything, right?  Right….It has only been a week, but, for most of us I would venture to say, the Easter Spirit is gone already.  Poof!

         Most of us have retreated back into the tombs of our own making, the ones that lock us up from the inside.  Some of us are once again living in the shadow of illness, others in the graveyard of failed relationships and family crises.  For still others, it might be job insecurity and loan debt.

         Well, do not despair if you are feeling untransformed or un-resurrected or even un-renewed today, if, in your estimation, your life has not really changed since last Sunday even though it was supposed to. 

         Do not beat yourself up about it, but rather take to heart that this sermon is for you.  It is for you because you have reacted to this whole resurrection business pretty much the same way as the disciples did – and it only took them a single day to descend into the shadows.

         As Anglican seminarian Byrony Taylor writes, when we find the disciples in our Bible passage today, we see that they “are hiding from fear of the Jews. Are they hiding from God like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden? Perhaps they are, in a way. What was the last thing they did before the arrest of Jesus? They fled and denied knowing Christ, even though each of them had said they would be willing to die for Jesus. They are still not willing to die for Jesus. They are hiding and they are terrified.

         They know Jesus is dead. They know that his body has gone from the tomb but they have no understanding as to what this might mean. I think they believe what Mary first tells them, that the body has been taken away and they don’t know where they have put him. Mary has since told them that she has seen the Lord but this just makes no sense to them.”

         If the disciples’ lives had changed at all, it was not a positive transformation.  In these verses, we find them more confused than ever.  However, most of all, we find them afraid, and so they are holed up in the back of a non-descript Jerusalem home, off an alleyway in a not-so-good part of the city.  The shades are drawn, the windows shut, the door locked.  Thomas has drawn the short straw, and so only he has ventured out to slink in the shadows to scrounge up some food and some water.

         Yes - the disciples are afraid.  They are afraid because the Jewish authorities might be on the lookout for them.  They are afraid because they might be arrested and tried and crucified like Jesus.  They are afraid because, should that happen, they too will surely be abandoned in their time of greatest need. 

         But they are also afraid that Mary Magdalene’s story might be true, that she really has seen Jesus.  And if that is so, then surely he will come looking for them as well – even now as the eleven nervously sit about, their tempers short, sweating in their hidey-hole where not a breath of air is stirring.  And if Jesus does show up, they can just imagine what he will say to them:  “Where were you?”  “You abandoned me?” Horrible thoughts, just horrible!

         And, of course, it is at this moment as they play that terrifying conversation  with their rabbi over and over again in their heads that Jesus does turn up.  But he does not turn on them, as they had anticipated he would.  Astonishingly, he stretches out his hands and whispers, “Peace be with you. I forgive you, you thought you were no longer my friends but you are still my friends, and I say peace be with you.”

         And then Jesus declares, “I send you.  Go and forgive others as I have forgiven you.”  And perhaps the unspoken words are these:  “You are not much.  You have got a lot of failures and faults.  But you are all I have – and you are enough.  Therefore, I send you.” 

        And then he breathes on them – gives them each a shot of the Holy Spirit.  Just like God breathed on Adam at the very beginning of time, Jesus offers them each a slug of life itself.  “Now, go and live the resurrection,” he might have said in parting.

         Thomas, of course, missed that profoundly spiritual, deeply life-changing moment of both forgiveness and commissioning.  No wonder he was disappointed, miffed, a wee bit angry, wanting his own special proof, which he articulated in as graphic a way as he could think of, given the circumstances. 

         “Unless I see the nail holes in his hands, put my finger in the nail holes, and stick my hand in his side, I won’t believe it could happen to me.”  And that’s all I have to say about that!  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience the others had.  You just wanted it for yourself.

         And lo and behold, Jesus took Thomas at his word, returned a week later, offered Thomas that same peace and forgiveness that he had offered the others and, as a sort of bonus perhaps, told Thomas he could in fact put his hand not simply on the wounds but in the wounds. 

        "Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be unbelieving. Believe.”  The Bible text does not actually say that Thomas did as he was invited to do – though certainly artists down through the ages seem to think that he did.  However, whether it was from touching the wounds or hearing the words of peace and forgiveness, Thomas made his confession:   “My Lord and my God.”

         This story of Jesus first appearing to his disciples and then a week later to Thomas is the passage that the lectionary assigns for us to read on the first Sunday after Easter every single year.  Maybe those folks who developed the lectionary – that three year cycle of Bible readings that frame our church year – maybe those folks figured they ought to give something to people like yourselves who came back to worship on this, one of the lowest attendance Sundays in every church in all of Christendom, people like yourselves who do not feel particularly different after the lilies and the Hallelujah Chorus, but who came back anyway to continue your seeking, determined to, in some small way, do as Jesus said and actually live the resurrection.

         And so the lectionary creators gave us this story of Thomas, hoping, I think, that we would discover something so fundamental in this incident as well as something deeply profound about this particular disciple.

         What is striking to me first in this story is that Jesus comes offering peace, not a sword.  Jesus breaks into that locked, airless room in Jerusalem that is ripe with fear.  Jesus breaks into the tombs that the disciples have created for themselves, but he does not bury them with anger or malice or resentment.  He does not bury them with all those things that the world heaped upon him at the time of his death. 

         Instead Jesus comes offering forgiveness and the peace that passes all our understanding, the peace that is part and parcel of true reconciliation.  Jesus comes and shows them a way out of the tomb, setting them on the path of a new beginning.

         As United Church of Christ pastor, Kate Huey, reminds us:  “Whenever we're afraid and hiding out, all locked up, God comes to us in the midst of our fear and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever doubts churn in our minds, whatever sins trouble our consciences, whatever pain and worry bind us up, whatever walls we have put up or doors we have locked securely, God comes to us and says, "Peace be with you." Whatever hunger and need we feel deep in our souls, God calls us to the table, feeds us well, and sends us out into the world to be justice and peace, salt and light, hope for the world.” Forgiveness is a powerful tool. 

         Now if the vast potential of forgiveness is one thing we can take from this story, then the role of belief and doubt in our lives and on our spiritual journey is surely another.

         In my research for this sermon today, I learned that the Greek word used in this Gospel narrative for “believe” has less the meaning of “believe” as we generally define it and more the meaning of  “trust.”  And so we might well read:  “Take your finger and examine my hands. Take your hand and stick it in my side. Don’t be untrusting. Trust.” 

         It is not a question of doubt versus belief, but rather it is a question of trust.  Doubt is all right, if it is linked to trust. Doubt in the midst of faith is a good thing.  As theologian Frederick Buechner wrote, “Doubt is the ants in the pants of faith.  It keeps it alive and moving.”        

         And so Lutheran pastor, David Lose, challenges us:  Can we understand “that doubt is not the opposite of faith but an essential ingredient? That hardboiled realism is an asset to vibrant faith? That (we) can bring (our) questions and skepticism, as well as (our) insights and trust, to (our) Christian lives? 

         Doubt, then, as well as forgiveness is a powerful tool, and perhaps that is why in our story, in the very last verse, Jesus blesses Thomas – slips in a final beatitude – meant not solely for this much- maligned disciple, but for us as well.  Oh Thomas, you never doubted the experience of the other disciples.  You always trusted Jesus.  You just wanted that extraordinary experience for yourself.  Don’t we all!  “Blessed are you who trust – trust that I am risen, that I am here - even if you do not see me.”

         The picture on the front of our bulletin is a painting done by Caravaggio, an early 17^th century Italian artist known for his dramatic lighting and his close physical observation of his subjects. 

         In this painting entitled “The Incredulity of Thomas,” the artist shows our disciple not just putting his hand on the wound in Jesus’ side - with perhaps the backs of his fingers touching whatever was inside.  Caravaggio paints Thomas actually wedging his finger deep into the gash – right up to the second knuckle and still going inward.   

         Surely the artist could have gotten his point across in a less graphic way!  I actually always found this particular depiction of Thomas and Jesus kind of gross, the disciple’s fingers probing deep inside an open wound – until this past week when I read an analysis of this painting by another artist, Jan Richardson, who is also an author and Methodist pastor. 

         She writes, “As Caravaggio sees it, Christ stands to the left, chest bared, drawing Thomas’ hand into his wound as two other disciples look on. It is an intimate scene: Christ bows his head over Thomas’ hand, gazing at Thomas as he pulls him toward his wound; Thomas leans in, brow furrowed, the other disciples standing so close behind him they threaten to topple him straight into Jesus.

         Yet Thomas seems about to tumble into the wound of his own accord. He is doing more than merely looking where Christ leads him; his whole being is absorbed in wonder. The first time I saw this image, I immediately had the sense that Thomas was thinking, ‘There’s another world in there.’” 

         Richardson goes on to say, “Perhaps that’s what strikes me so about Caravaggio’s painting: it stuns the viewer with the awareness of how deeply Christ was, and is, joined with us.

The wounds of the risen Christ are not a prison: they are a passage. Thomas’ hand in Christ’s side is not some bizarre, morbid probe: it is a union, and a reminder that in taking flesh, Christ wed himself to us.”

         There is another world in there – and we are a part of it.  It is as real as the nail holes in Jesus’ hands and feet, and as real as the wound in his side.  It is as real as the final blessing he gives us – in spite of our doubts – or perhaps because of them.  It is as real as the forgiveness he offers. 

         There is another world in there – a world that Jesus embodied, a world of justice, peace, and compassion.  There is another world in there, and just as Jesus invited Thomas to probe and peer and so become part of the new life pulsing inside those injured hands and scarred side, so he invites us to be a part of the world that is his Good News, the world of transformation, renewal, change.  He invites us to be part of that world even as he sends us out, like the disciples long ago, sends us out to live the resurrection.  

by Rev. Nancy Foran, Raymond Village Community Church U.C.C.