30 Easter 3

EASTER 3

Luke 24:13-35 (Sermon 1:“On the Road”)

(Sermon 2: “Those God-empty Days”)

1 Peter 1: 17-23

Acts 2: 14a & 22-16

Psalm 116: 1-4 & 12-19

PREPARATION

We do not come into this house cautiously with some vague hope in a kindly Divinity.

We come boldly in the name of Jesus Christ, whom “God raised from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope may be confident in God”

Jesus lives,

we celebrate deathless life,

life abundant and life eternal.

Let earth and heaven rejoice

and celebrate Love’s victory!

On which side of Easter are we living?

Post Easter is the new age of God,

where Christ Jesus lives victoriously

and is with us to the end of the world.

No praise is good enough for the God of this new age.

Yet this Holy One treasures our love as if it were perfect.

I will offer to God the sacrifice of a thankful heart,

and call on the name of our Living Lord.

No song is beautiful enough, no good deed is pure enough;

yet this Loving One hears our songs and blesses our deeds

as if they were from all the angels and archangels in heaven.

I will make my vows now to God,

in the presence of the people,

in the courts of the house of the Lord.

PRAYER OF APPROACH

God of the ever-living Christ Jesus, our words of thanksgiving are indeed not enough. The poverty of our best sentences, and the inadequacy of our sacred music, frustrates our attempts to worship you as you deserve. We say we extol you, we praise you, we glorify you. Gladly we sing out our love and adoration for you. Yet we have not expressed even a fraction of the wonder that throbs in our hearts. O God of Jesus and our God, you are that holy Beauty that will always leave us gasping, yet never leave us unloved. All glory be to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen!

CONFESSION AND ASSURANCE

God is merciful; let us entrust ourselves to that mercy.

Let us pray.

Holy Friend, awesome in beauty and love, have mercy on us. In one glance you see our complete lives, not strung out along a time line like a film, but fully present.

You see us giving our best and giving our worst, our enthusiasm and our waning, our courage and our cowardice, our cleverness and our stupidity.

In one glance you see our fluctuating faith, our spasmodic prayers, our arrogant dogmatism, and our timid hopes.

You see the love we have shared and the love we have withheld, the happiness we have spread and the pain we have caused. In one holy glance you see everything.

As your glance encompasses us, we turn our little minds and stunted affections towards you, needing forgiveness, healing and encouragement. Thank you, most Holy God, that you are not put off by our chequered lives. We thank you for Christ Jesus, who came among us shining with truth and grace. We thank you for the consistent love with which he lived, the outpouring of love with which he died, and the transcendent love with which he rose from the dead and lives on in the presence of his disciples. In him you visit and redeem your people.

Holy God, awesome Friend, we thank, praise and worship you for the beauty of your glance, and the persistence of your saving grace. With Christ as our sure guide, may we live to the glory of your name, now and evermore.

Amen!

FORGIVENESS

Sisters and brother, lift up your hearts and live with the liberty of those who have been absolutely understood, judged, forgiven, and restored. You are a Divinely-treasured people!

Thanks be to God!

PRAYER FOR CHILDREN

Some times, loving God,

we wish we could see Jesus

risen from the dead

like those first disciples did.

But do you reckon

it would it make any difference?

Perhaps not.

We would still have to decide,

wouldn’t we?

Still have to decide

whether to trust our hearts to him.

Thank you for the millions and millions

of girls and boys who have trusted him

ever since that first Easter,

Keep us in their gang, please God.

Keep us in your "Jesus gang" forever.

Amen!

PSALM 116: 1-4 & 12-19

See page 140 of More Australian Psalms

Ó Open Book Publishers

email: enquiries@openbook. com.au

EMMAUS SONG

We trudge on the road

and the journey seems long,

for all becomes tiring

without any Song.

We catch up to one

who has gone on ahead,

a stranger he seems

to those who are dead.

He expounds the Word

and confounds our grief,

our hearts come alive

with veins of belief.

Together we dine

at a roadside place,

in the breaking of bread

out leaps Easter grace.

We hurry back home

and it does not seem long,

all journeys are short

when singing his Song.

Ó B D Prewer 2001

SERMON 1: ON THE ROAD

Luke 24:13-35

It was near the end of the day, at the time when most of us feel tired and when (if events have gone miserably wrong) we feel flat and discouraged.

Two travellers plodded along the road exchanging disappointments and unanswerable questions.

They were joined by a third traveller who at first seemed just another ordinary person; another run-of-the-mill human being travelling the dusty road of life. They did not recognise this stranger.

Yet as they were to discover in a moment of utter surprise at the close of day, this common traveller was the risen Lord Jesus. God’s Christ; their Lord who they should have been able to recognise anywhere; the very essence of the invisible God. However, earlier, on the road, “their eyes were kept from recognising him.”

CHRIST IN THE ORDINARY

Maybe that’s the way it been happening from the beginning. Maybe that’s the way it still happens in our experience. The with-us-love of God, the death-transcending love of God, the Lord who has been raised up, joins us incognito on life’s journey. Maybe the Christ talks with us in ordinary situations, through ordinary people.

That’s not how we expect it to happen. Nor is it how we would prefer it. We would like our divine Saviour to show himself to us in a dramatic way. Perhaps a dramatic evangelical experience at a revival rally? Perhaps a dramatic mystical experience in meditation and prayer? Perhaps in a profound aesthetic experience in a beautiful cathedral in the flow of beautiful liturgy? Perhaps in a dramatic justice and peace happening like, a few years ago, the people-power in the Philippines which brought an end to the long dictatorship of President Marcos? Perhaps a dramatic vision at the foot of our bed at midnight?

If many of us had our way, we would have a religious menu of such events planned every few weeks to keep us simmering with faith and love, lifting us high above the perennial, plain, plodding, sometimes boring stuff of ordinary life.

My friends, that is not how it usually is with God. This is not the way Christ most commonly works.

There can be of course the special times. These may be dramatic. We can be grateful for them if they have happened to us. But that is not the way it is for many of the loveliest Christians I have known. The dramatic moments a few. In fact, for some lovely Christians there are no such dramatic moments. For some it is a steady growing and walking humbly with a God who stays hidden; some of the most saintly people I have known recount no dramatic times at all.

This I truly believe: the most frequent way God approaches us is in ordinary people, in ordinary situations, those with whom we travel the common path, or whose way crosses ours on life’s journey.

This service today may seem a low-key event, not like the stirring Easter Day service that we celebrated, not like the emotional experience some of our young people enjoyed at their Easter camps. But if you think God is any the less present, you are in grave error. Those who only identify God with the dramatic moments are dismally insensitive to the ways of God and abysmally ignorant of the Biblical revelation of God.

Today, remember those two travellers who did not recognise the stranger who walked with them for a while. Just another ordinary human being constituted the most extraordinary event.

CHRIST LISTENED TO THEM

Think now about another aspect of this story. As they plodded on, the stranger joined them and listened to them! Listened to them! The triumphant, risen, glorious Christ travelled incognito and listened to their fears, doubts and tentative hopes.

In our twisted way of thinking, very important people do not listen to us. They speak with us and more often they talk at us. The more august the person is supposed to be, the more we are supposed to shut up and listen.

But the divine Friend, whose glory the universe cannot contain, listened to them. Like we may at times think, those two travellers thought that life was a complete muck-up! Everything that could go wrong had. Life was a bummer. Evil people were the winners and good people were the losers. Jesus of Nazareth, the most wonderful and most grace-full person they had ever met, had been brutally executed on a trumped up charge. Where was God? How did God allow this to happen? Why hadn’t God intervened to stop this atrocity? “We had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel.”

Jesus said: “Tell me about it.” They did; unburdened themselves to him. He listened.

A TWO-WAY EVENT

After they had poured their hearts out, the next stage in the work of God took place. They were ready to listen to the incognito Christ, and as they listened their soul resonated with the words he had to say.

There is no friendship, human or divine, which is not two way. A true friend is not just a mobile garbage bin into which you unload all your negativity. Friends listen to each other.

Dialogue not monologue is what we hunger for.

This traveller took up what they had been saying and wove patterns of meaning into their puzzling experience. He reminded them of the God of Holy Scripture who worked deeds of liberation through times of suffering and defeat. “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them from all the Scriptures the things concerning the Christ’. He led them into the understanding that in this evil world, what happened to their Master was bound to happen. What is more, it would not happen in vain, for God would vindicate his Messiah.

As he helped them make sense of all that had gone wrong, life did not seem so devastatingly pointless any more. Some light dawned in their minds; their hearts no longer felt desperately cold; hope started to resurrect within their own being. Later they were to remember this and say: “And didn’t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us while we walked?”

When we listen to God speaking out of ordinary situations and from ordinary people, and relating that to the Scriptures, we will find the Word that make sense of situations which on the surface might seem a disaster. But it can only happen if we listen. Having poured out our hearts we then need to also listen, rather than continuing to belly-ache about our hurts and fears and doubts. That is true of contemporary discipleship just as much as it was on that road to Emmaus.

IN THE BREAKING OF BREAD: DISCLOSURE

We come now to the disclosure. The key and climax to this story.

Most likely this account of the risen Jesus was treasured and passed on by word of mouth, and finally included in John’s Gospel, because of what happened at that table that evening.

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Their eyes were open and they recognised him, before he vanished from their view.

The divine Friend, who is incognito with ordinary people as they travel this earthly road, has chosen a special meeting place where he is not incognito, but present in a strangely visible and recognisable way. The bread and the wine at the Table of the Lord are the signs and the reality of his Presence. He makes himself known to us in the breaking of bread. The Table is like a special meeting place of lovers; a trysting place.

This is a truly awesome thing. Spine tingling stuff. Here the majestic Transcendence of the eternal world chooses to be present. That Supreme Light which precedes the beginning of the universe (which physicists call the “big bang’) discloses itself in simple gifts. Bread and wine were the food of the common people of the land. Nothing could be more ordinary yet on the Lord’s Table nothing could be more supra-ordinary. Truly this is wonder-full! Here the Supreme Love that became embodied in the son of Mary, and sacrificed his body and blood on a cruel cross, is present in saving power.

When our hands cradle the bread, when our lips touch the cup, the most awesome thing possible is happening right here.

Please my friends, do not permit familiarity to desensitise you to the Transcendence! The utter Otherness, the utter Beauty, the utter Sacrifice-Love, is truly here.

By hope come to the Table expectantly, by faith let your eyes be opened, by love let the Infinite Lover commune with you as he did with the disciples at Emmaus..

The One who is always with you in the common things of life, and will be even to the end of the world, is disclosed at the Table.

When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Their eyes were open and they recognised him, before he vanished from their view.

SERMON 2: THOSE GOD-EMPTY DAYS

Luke 24: 13-25

Recently I was chatting with a hospital chaplain about a shy, blue-winged duck which has taken up residence in tall bulrushes on the eastern shore of the small lake that borders our home.

She asked me to describe any detailed markings which might help identify it. I pointed out that the blue-winged creature was so timid that it was hard to catch more than a quick glimpse. She smiled and commented: “it sounds bit like God, doesn’t it?”

I grinned and nodded. It did. I was then reminded of an old prayer from Northern England: “Lorrrd. T’ou arrrt l’ke a wee moosie peepin oot a ‘ole in t’e woll. T’ou see’st us, but we canna see T’ee.” Translated I guess that goes: “You are like a little mouse peeping out of a hole in the wall. For You see us, but we cannot see You.”

God is not a publicity seeker. The good Lord is not noted for a high public profile.

More than that. There are cloudy days where God and his Christ seem totally absent. Especially in times of disaster and grief, when we most long for a sign from the Lord that we are loved and cared for. From the stand point of our feelings, dark times can feel the most god-empty times. This remains a sore puzzle, that when we believe we need God the most, God may seem furthest away.

ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

Like on the road to Emmaus.

On the Sunday afternoon following the Friday crucifixion of Jesus, two disciples were walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus; a distance of about 11 kilometres. Luke tells us that one of these travellers was a man named Cleopas. The other person is unnamed. Many have suggested it was his wife Mary. For now, I will run with that. It seems likely that their home was in village to which they were heading. Their hearts were sore, and their faith in tatters, after the horror that had fallen on their beloved Master, Jesus of Nazareth on black Friday. For them it had seemed the ultimate god-empty event in time.

Yet there was a now a small flickering of hope. Some of the women who had visited the tomb that Sunday morning, had returned to the disciples claiming that the tomb was empty and Jesus had risen.

With this unlikely story, tiny seeds of hope in Cleopas and Mary began to stir and push against the hard shell of despair. But it remained a most unlikely event. Those stirrings were likely to soon subside under the light of reason. Resurrection? Not likely. Let those poor bereft women comfort themselves with such imaginings if they so wished. But these two travellers had to keep their minds on reality. Get back home and get on with the onerous business of living without the delight of having Jesus around.

Yet, what if..........? If? If the unlikely event was true? It was not impossible. Many Jews believed that at some future time (“at the end of days”) God would break into this world with a new Messianic age. On that great day the dead would rise from their graves. If the resurrection of their Master had in truth taken place, then that great, new, glorious age of God had commenced. The new age had broken free from the bondage of evil and death.

So it was that in the bruised mind and heart of these two disciples walking to Emmaus, grief parried with hope, and doubt sparred with faith.

As they talked together about their crushed expectations and the few tendrils of hope that had emerged that morning, they were joined by a stranger. They did not recognise him at all. This stranger enquired about the earnest conversation they appeared to be having as he overtook them on the road.

Fortunately for them, they did not tell him to mind his own business. Instead they poured out their hearts to him. He listened to every word, and maybe to some things in their hearts that were left unsaid.

Then gently he admonished them for their doubt. Insightfully the stranger spoke with them about certain passages from the Holy Scriptures from Moses to Isaiah, and helped them to see that the Messiah was bound to suffer as Jesus had. And that it was through such suffering that the Messiah would display his true power and glory.

As he taught them, ideas in their minds stared clicking into place, and their hearts warmed with renewed longing and hope.

Time passed quickly as he chatted with them. Before they knew it, they had arrived at their home in Emmaus. As darkness was falling the couple invited the stranger to stay overnight with them.

Later that evening, when they gathered around the table for the evening meal, the stranger took the bread, said the prayer of blessing, “Blessed are you, Lord God of the universe, who from the ground you bring forth bread.” He then broke the bread and gave it to them. It was as if a curtain fell from their eyes and they recognised their risen Lord Jesus.

In that same moment Jesus just disappeared, leaving them burning with renewed faith and love. So excited were Cleopas and Mary, that they left their home and hurried back to Jerusalem to share the good news with the other disciples.

EASTER CONFOUNDS US

I don’t ask you to understand these mysterious Easter stories. Jesus just comes and goes. No doors are needed. He is sometimes immediately recognised. Other times not.

These gospel records confound our understanding. They leave us gasping, and grasping for explanations.

In fact, if we were not mystified by the nature of these Easter events, then I would be suspicious that we may have fallen for a trite fairy story.

Easter heralds the greatest mystery of all mysteries. The disciples witnessed an astounding event which they could not easily explain yet which they knew was more real than the solid, locked doors behind which they had been hiding. More real than the road on the way to Emmaus. More real than the cross and the tomb. More real than all Rome’s legions. Christ was risen indeed.

I will attempt no explanations. I have no intention of trying to plumb what has proved too deep for even the most profound minds among the greatest Christian thinkers for two thousand years. This sermon has a much more modest aim, on which I will now focus.

WHERE ARE YOU, GOD?

I take you back to where I started: To the apparent absence of God at those times when we have desperately wanted a God to comfort or clearly direct us. The God who is like that elusive blue-winged duck among the reeds on our lake, or the God in the old prayer from Northern England: “Thou art like a wee moussie peepin out of a hole in the wall. For Thou see-est us, but we cannot see Thee.”

I invite you to think about those god-empty days when we grope in the darkness but see no light, and reach out for comfort but feel no divine, guiding hand. Dark times when we have been shattered by loss of health, or employment, or maybe by the breaking of a marriage we had thought was secure, or the death of a person who was very precious to us. Or maybe those grim occasions when terrorism or road accidents plunder our peace and happiness. Those utterly dismal days. Times rather like that apparently god-empty Good Friday, that appalling cross, the hasty burial in the stone tomb, and the dismal Saturday that followed for those who loved the Lord Jesus.

Where are you God? Where are you Lord Jesus? Where are you in our god-emptiness?

Cleopas and Mary, on the road to Emmaus, were still in the god-empty zone. They may have been experiencing a few stirrings of hope, but not enough. Where was God? Where was this Lord Jesus whom they had believed was indestructible?

THE ANSWER IS CLEAR YET MYSTERIOUS

The answer later became clear. The Lord had been with them on the road, but they had nor realised it.

He would always be with them on the road. With them when a stranger walked beside them and renewed their faith. With them even when they thought they walked alone. With them at table; with them in the breaking of the bread. With them as they scurried back to the locked room in Jerusalem where other disciples had retreated. With them a week later when Thomas was present. With them on the shores of Galilee serving them barbecued fish for breakfast. With them to the end of the world.

There is a simple message that emerges from the resurrection stories. The disciples were taught never to think of Christ as absent. They never knew when he might show himself. They were led not to depend on his visible presence, but to rely on his enduring promise: “I will be with you always.” Jesus was living in the eternal world; a timeless day which intersected this one, and filled each earth-day with abundant opportunities.

There is no such thing as a Christ-empty day. No such thing as a god-empty situation. The God of Jesus was there on the cross. There in the sealed tomb. There in the garden on the Sunday morning. There on each road that a person travels: from Jerusalem to Emmaus, from Sydney to Calgary, Humpty Doo to Vienna, Cairns to Katmandu.

Feelings are fickle. The promise endures. I have had to painstakingly learn that lesson. I the romantic, too-tender soul, who feels the pain of others too readily; I the intuitive thinker and minor poet; I the moody pilgrim who has visited John Bunyan’s “slough of despond;” I the “bruised reed and smoking flax” who had no native expectation of any achievement in life. I now know better than to trust my feelings. God’s faithfulness it what really matters.

I know that to “trust and obey” the living Christ, incognito amongst us, is the source of resurrection empowerment. Christ is risen indeed! I cannot depend on my emotions. Not even on my better intuitions, for they can be compromised. But God’s promises in Christ Jesus stand forever.

Fundamentally, you and I do not differ that much, do we? None of us can afford to allow our moods to dictate our faith. Christ the living Word is the only thing that matters. The whole Christian experience of two millennia testifies to the faithfulness of that Easter promise.

Pessimism (sadly current in some circles) is not a way of life that is compatible with the way of the living Christ. And the allied delusion, cynicism, is faith’s direct enemy. Cynicism is the sophisticated disease of the Prince of Darkness whose kingdom wants to drag us down to a self centred misery and despair. Trust and obey. Trust the Easter witness, and hold nothing back, and you will be amazed at what changes can occur in your attitude and actions.

COMMITTED TO EASTER?

Are we committed to the Easter good news?

I could conclude by reminding you of Mary and Cleopas: “Did not our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road?”

But even that can be precarious. Heart burn, even the pleasant kind, is not an infallible sign of the presence of God!

Easter demands a decision: to follow the risen Christ or not. It involves the will.

To trust when there is no apparent flame in the heart, to love when it is difficult to love the unlikable, to pray when God seems to have hands over ears, to smile when we are only making tedious progress, to laugh when death wags a skinny finger at us, and to reach one’s hand into the darkness trusting that though we feel it not, the risen Christ is with us all the way from here to eternity.

That is the Easter way. That is the course on which we are set. And if not, then we are to be most pitied.

THANKSGIVING

Loving God, our elusive yet all-sustaining Friend,

in spite of the negative doubters around us,

we dare to celebrate your glorious Presence!

In this post-modern world

where the illusion of your absence

is felt keenly by numerous souls,

we thank you for your gifts

that break through to nurture us.

We give thanks

for the accumulated sanity

of the Holy Scriptures

through which you speak to us

even when our hearts feel cold.

We give thanks

for the caring communities

of your holy church

where you are present

with encouragement

and profound healing.

We give thanks

for those special, holy times

when for a few seconds or hours

this world’s shrouds split open

and we glimpse your glory.

Most of all we give thanks

for the gift of Christ Jesus

who makes himself known

in the breaking of bread

to all who keep the tryst.

Loving Lord, elusive but faithful Friend,

in spite of our scrappy faith and love,

we dare to celebrate your glorious Presence!

Hallelujah!

From Jesus our Future: Prayers for the 21st Century, page 50

Ó B D Prewer and Ó Open Book Publishers

PRAYERS FOR OTHERS

Praying for other people is not an escape from reality, but an engagement with it.

Let us do so now.

Most loving God, source of resurrection life, we offer you our lives, along with the prayers we bring to you, so that our prayers and our deeds may work together in unison for the healing of the world for which Christ lived, died and arose.

Teach us so to pray, loving God.