"Christ Is With Us" - Easter 3A

Saint Luke 24:13-35

There is a wonderful proverb: “People say you don’t know what you’ve got until it's gone. Truth is, you knew what you had, you just never thought you’d lose it.”1

That bromide is perfect for these days when we can’t help but feel that we have lost so much to a virus.  Covid-19 has taken some things away from us but it has taken everything away from close to 200,000 people across the globe who have lost their lives to the disease.  That’s a staggering number of deaths but think of the even larger number of mourners who have been left behind.  

Every one of those fatalities leaves  loved ones – partners, family, neighbors and friends who loved them, cared about them, and now have a hole in their hearts where they once were.

As a community we are acting so that there are not more of them.  Most of the leveling off of the virus is not due to advances in medical science but because we are behaving ourselves.  We are staying home.  When we go out, if we do, we are wearing our masks and keeping a safe social distance.  

Some people see this as giving up some of their freedoms.  They see it as a governmental plot to take away some of their rights.  They want to be liberated from the bonds of governmental interference while at the same time cashing their individual bail out cheques.  

Nobody is going to tell them what to do so they march shoulder–to-shoulder in defiance not because they feel so much like they have lost something but that something has been taken away from them.

Those who think that the state is overreaching and that, for the sake of the economy, we should open everything we can need to walk, as I did on Friday, through a funeral home chapel full of countless  (Countless!) cremation caskets of victims who fell to the virus.  It was disturbing because their recent deaths could have been prevented just as future deaths can be by being judicious.

I prefer to think that the current limitations are something I do for the sake of others out of a sense of duty.  

I wear a mask in public not because I fear I’m going to catch something but to show people whom I don’t even know that I care so much about them that I don’t want to risk giving them anything.  

Wearing rubber gloves in stores protects me, to be sure, but it also tells my fellow shoppers that I don’t wish to transmit anything to them.

Staying at home may be boring but I am reminded of the meme: “Our grandparents were called to war to save the world; we’re being asked to sit on the couch and watch Netflix to save lives. We can do this.”2

That doesn’t diminish those things that we miss and miss dearly.  

The opportunity to watch students walk across a stage somewhere to get their diplomas.  

The marriage ceremonies that have to be moved to another date or celebrated with family and friends online. 

The funerals that I have attended where a limited number of mourners had to be scattered around the chapel like bee-bees in a boxcar.  

Those are the big things.

There are little things as well.  Eating in a restaurant.  Going to a movie.  Seeing a play at the Paramount.  Getting a haircut.  (If this goes on much longer I, for one, am going to be sporting my 70's look.  Will my wearing bell-bottoms and a tie-dyed T-shirt be far behind?)  

We never realize that we have lost something until it is gone because we never thought we’d lose it.||

The two forlorn disciples on the road that first Easter Sunday evening are dejected because they never thought they would lose Jesus.  He was not that old, and he had years of rabble rousing ahead of him.  His battles with the religious leaders might have gone on until he reached old-age had he lived.

But he didn’t.  Something went radically wrong for the radical rabbi and he got himself killed.  Their friend, “a prophet strong in what he did and what he said, in God’s eyes as well as the people’s”3 had been killed.  Their friend wasn’t just killed, mind you, he was crucified which was, quite literally, a fate worse than death.

The two travelers must have had all the  emotions one could ever think of running through every fibre of their beings – sadness, disappointment, discouragement and maybe ever anger – because they had lost something they thought they never would lose.  Things had not panned out as they had wished and now their lives, even their religious lives, were in a shambles.

They had heard reports that earlier that morning, before they hit the road, that some of the women in their group  had seen Jesus but those sightings could easily be dismissed because, as my friend and pastor,  the Rev’d Shannon Kershner, reminds us:

The women’s testimony about Jesus, their Jesus, being raised—the women’s words about God’s resurrection power breaking the eternal hold of death—it seemed to the eleven male disciples to be only empty talk, a silly story, an idle tale.
I’ll let you in on a secret, though. It’s about the Greek word we translate as “idle.” That Greek word is leiros. Leiros is not used anywhere else in the New Testament, but the most accurate translation of it is not “idle.” Leiros is more like the stuff organic farmers use to fertilize their fields. My Southern preacher self won’t allow me to be any more explicit than that. But for reasons of decorum, we will just say this morning that the male disciples thought that the news the women carried back from the tomb was nothing but pure and total nonsense. Leiros.4

Maybe the disciples thought that the best way to avoid stepping in any leiros was to walk away and so they headed off to a place called Emmaus which was about seven miles, or a short stroll from Jerusalem, to talk about what they had lost and how they could carry on.

Isn’t it curious that these followers of Jesus did not recognize Jesus when he walked with them on the road? Perhaps they were blinded by their grief. Maybe it was inconceivable that they would ever see Jesus again.  (They could have been thinking that what they had was lost to them for good.) For whatever reason, these two followers of Jesus failed to recognize Jesus on the road. Even when the risen Christ opened up the scriptures to them, they fail to see him for who he was.
It was only when he was at the table with them, engaged in conversation with them, sharing a meal with them, breaking bread with them, giving them nourishment, that their eyes were opened and they saw that the stranger was Jesus.5

It wasn’t until then that the disciples remembered.  

It was around the table that they remembered what they had lost and were reminded of  what was missing in their lives was the fellowship that he and his followers had around a meal.  There were countless times that Jesus was seen at dinner with friend and foe alike. 

In fact, it’s worth noting that at the center of the spiritual lives of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments, we find a table: the table of Passover and the table of Communion. New Testament scholar N. T. Wright captured something of this sentiment when he wrote, “When Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn’t give them a theory, he gave them a meal.”6

Now, when he wants them to have an experience of the resurrection he gives them another meal.  

“In his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Dr. Eugene Peterson has observed that this pattern of being blessed, broken, and given is at the heart of the Christian story. This he rightly insists, ‘is the shape of the Eucharist. This is the shape of the Gospel. This is the shape of the Christian life.’”7

We are currently experiencing the loss of one of those elements.  We still have the Gospel.  We still, to the best of our ability, are leading Christian lives.  What we are missing is the Eucharist.  What we are missing is that moment when we see each other come forward as a community to watch bread be broken and wine outpoured.  

What we are missing is hearing why this table gathering is unlike any other summed up in the words: “Jesus took bread, broke it and said, ‘This is my body.’ Jesus took a cup, blessed it and said, ‘This is my blood.’”

What we are missing is the taste of the broken bread and sweet smell of communion wine.

That is what we had which we never thought we would lose.

Jesus was always about the business of bringing people together and sometimes he had to do it in different ways by different means.  

He fed thousands of curious onlookers with a few loaves of bread and some fish.

He had dinners with his friends Mary, Martha and Lazarus, fine upstanding citizens, but he also heard the complaint that he ate with tax collectors and sinners.  He plucked one of those tax-collectors named Zacchaeus out of a tree, invited himself over for dinner, and changed his life. 

So while the great feast of the church, the Eucharist, is not available to us as an entire congregation I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit can use YouTube and Zoom and all the other online marvels to keep God’s people connected until the day comes when what has been lost to us for a little while will be found and  we are able to gather again around the table of the Lord. 

That day, while still unknown, is most certainly nearer today that it was yesterday and tomorrow it will be nearer still.  

The promise is sure that until that day comes the resurrected Christ will still be found with us every day in every way on any road we may find ourselves traveling even if it is only the now well-worn path between the family room couch and the refrigerator in the kitchen. 

We still have him.  We haven’t lost him.  Christ is with us.  Amen.

__________

1.  Fern Ashley. “The Truth Behind 'You Don't Know What You Have Until It's Gone'.” Elite Daily. Elite Daily, June 26, 2013. https://www.elitedaily.com/life/you-dont-know-what-you-have-til-its-gone.

2.  Editorial Advisory Board. “From the Editorial Advisory Board: Stay-at-Home Order.” Boulder Daily Camera, March 27, 2020. https://www.dailycamera.com/2020/03/27/from-the-editorial-advisory-board-stay-at-home-order/.

3.  Saint Like 24:19b.  (PHILLIPS) [PHILLIPS= The New Testament in Modern English. J.B. Phillips, trans., (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)

4.  Shannon Johnson Kershner. “Easter Rising.” Easter Sunday Morning Worship.  The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago.  March 27, 2016.

5.  Brian Stoffregen. “Luke 24.13-35 3rd Sunday of Easter - Year A.” Crossmarks. Accessed April 23, 2020. http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/luke24x13.htm.

6. William H. Willimon. “Sunday Meeting.” Pulpit Resource 48, no. 2 (2020). 

7.  Barry, Jones. “The Dinner Table as a Place of Connection, Brokenness, and Blessing.” DTS Voice. Dallas Theological Seminary, October 26, 2015. https://voice.dts.edu/article/a-place-at-the-table-jones-barry/.