Surely Jesus is in this place

Easter 3A

May 4, 2014

Luke 24:13-35

“Surely God is in this place, but I didn’t know it.” In the 28^th chapter of Genesis, Jacob is in the process of traveling to Haran to escape the wrath of his brother Esau.  Esau had threatened to kill Jacob after Jacob had tricked their father, Isaac, into giving Jacob Esau’s blessing.  During his travels to his uncle’s house, he stops one night to sleep and during the night dreams of the angels of God ascending and descending a staircase and God speaks to Jacob and tells him that God will not leave Jacob until God does for him what he has promised.  And in the morning, Jacob awakes and the first thing out of his mouth was, “surely God is in this place, but I didn’t know it” (Genesis 28:16a).

Generations later, two people were walking down the road on the first day of the week.  They were joined by a stranger, with whom they engaged in conversation for the duration of their journey.  They would invite this stranger in for the night.  They would have a meal.  And their eyes would be opened in the breaking of the bread, but it would only when the stranger disappeared that they would say to one another “surely it was Jesus in this place, but even though our hearts were burning, we didn’t notice it.” 

In the story of the journey to Emmaus, Luke addresses a question that has been plaguing both the early Christian community and those outside of the community – If you really have a risen Jesus, where is he?

Prove it.

In fact, it was such a big deal that in Matthew 28, there is an account of the priests paying off guards so that they would tell people that Jesus’ disciples had come and taken his body away in the middle of the night so that any resurrection talk would go away.

So the early Christian community was struggling with this.  And so were the outsiders who were hearing about accounts of a risen Jesus. 

And it is a story that we can genuinely place ourselves into and have it speak to us in the same way that it spoke to the early Christian community. 

One of the things that Christians have come up against in recent decades is a battle between some Christians that are trying to prove the existence of God, and some Atheists that are trying to prove that there is no God and that the notion of faith is silly. 

Prove it, the atheists say.  If you really have an all knowing, all loving being, where is he?

Further, they say, if there really is a higher power, where is he when abuses happen in the church? Where is he when natural disasters happen?  Why in the world would he allow his own child to die for the likes of the rest of us? And why would he let us go to war in his name? 

And, if we are honest, there are parts of the Christian community that serve to egg them on a bit.  Factions who claim that school shootings happen because we have said no to God in schools because there is no corporate prayer.  Factions who claim that natural disasters are punishment for the actions of feminists, gays, and liberals.  Factions who claim to be pro-life but push for violence instead of diplomacy, call for cuts to food stamps and nutrition programs for children, cry out for the need to arm ourselves to the teeth with guns so we can protect our castles, even if it means someone has to die, and advocate for the death penalty. 

If there really is a God, critics say, we’re not seeing it.  Because if there really was a God, you would live better with each other. 

Prove it.

It’s not a new struggle.  There has always been a struggle to figure out who God is, what God looks like, is there more than one God? If there is only one God, how does this whole evil thing work?

If Jesus died and rose from the dead but we haven’t seen him for ourselves, how can we be sure that he really rose from the dead?

Prove it.

At the time that Luke wrote his Gospel, the early Christian community was in the middle of a crisis.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus tells the disciples and those around him that that generation would not pass away before Jesus returned. 

But that generation was passing away rapidly.  If not already gone. 

And if that was something they were doubting, where else was their faith shaky?

And it’s in the midst of this that Luke gives us this story of Cleopas and his companion traveling from Jerusalem back to Emmaus.  It was the evening of the resurrection and word had been spreading around that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Cleopas and his partner didn’t seem to be on the resurrection party train, though.  They hadn’t seen the risen Christ for themselves.  

But then they were joined by a stranger…one who didn’t seem to have any idea what all had taken place in the past three days…Which, if you were from that area would have been pretty impossible.  But this stranger knew an awful lot about scripture and for seven miles he led them in bible study.  And the topic was the messiah. 

Intrigued by this man, they invite him to stay in their home for the evening.  That’s when it got weird.  Breaking standard protocol, the stranger took on the role of host at the meal…took the bread, broke it, and gave it to them.

They had seen this before…but where?

And in that moment, their eyes were opened.  And in that moment, Jesus vanished from sight. 

In a moment in which bread was broken, they recognized Jesus.  And they RAN back to Jerusalem to tell the disciples, who had also seen the risen Jesus. 

But what about our Emmaus story? It’s really easy to stand here and say that we can always recognize Jesus in the breaking of the bread, in the sharing of a cup. And these things are true.  Jesus promises to be present in bread and wine.  And he is.

But there is more to the story than that. 

And in a world where Easter has become a commodity that you can put in a basket and wrap with pastel cellophane and tie with a pretty bow for only $14.99 at Walmart, for many, there is that need for proof more concrete than a promise to be there in a meal. 

And to be honest, if someone were to approach me on the street this afternoon and ask me to prove that God exists, I would have to admit that I can’t.  None of us can, really.  Because God exists beyond the realm of explanation, and to try and put a skin color or age or any other physical characteristic on God is to put God into a box and make God an it rather than the thou that God is.  To paraphrase the Rev. Dr. Martin Marty, when we think we have proven that God exists, it’s not God.  That’s what faith is all about.  And that’s why faith seems so silly to critics…how can you believe in something you cannot prove scientifically?

What I could, do, on the other hand, is speak of my experience of God, and more particularly of Christ in the world.  Because while I do see Christ in the bread and in the wine we take at communion, it’s not just there that I know that he’s present. I see him in friends and family, in first responders, doctors and nurses, in teachers, in mothers and fathers, in aid workers, in people who help the least of these…I see Christ.  Jesus has a funny way of going around and disguising himself in other people’s skin.  You can see him in the child smiling and laughing in church on Sunday, in the kid who helps his classmate pick up her books in the hallway on Monday, in the volunteer at Ronald McDonald house on Tuesday.  In the places where suffering lives, you can see Christ, not in the suffering itself, but in those who come to the aid of the ones who are suffering.  And he promises to not leave us alone until he has done for us what he has promised. But we’ll hear about that in a few weeks. 

Surely Jesus is with us, even though we don’t always know it.