Beloved Stranger

Scriptures:     Acts 2:14, 36-41                     Romans 6:1-5

I Peter 3:13-22                      Luke 24:13-35

 

On a slow news day, every now and then the newspapers will print a story about somebody who, as they were eating breakfast, saw the face of Jesus in a sticky bun - or in a piece of French toast - or maybe in a water stain on the wall.   Now, these things tend to be fairly subjective – most people will look at the same sticky bun or piece of bread or water stain and won’t see anything, but some people, if they hold the sticky bun up and at this angle, and turn their heads just so, will see an outline of the face of Jesus.  Of course, what can you do with the sticky bun or piece of French toast in which the Savior’s face is visible, at least to you?  Eating it would seem almost sacrilegious, although, come to think of it, we do eat the body of Christ when we take communion.  Do you put it in a drawer and save it?  It probably wouldn’t be so good to try to hang a sticky bun or piece of French toast on the wall – folks visiting your house will look at you funny, though I assure you that if you do, ants will come from the east and the west, the north and the south to pay fervent homage to your new religious icon.

In our Gospel reading today, we hear of two disciples of Jesus who encountered the resurrected Jesus….as they were discussing with Jesus their grief at his execution.  The story has a playful, almost prankish feel to it:  two followers of Jesus, one of whom is named Cleopas while the other is unnamed, are walking from Jerusalem to their home in Emmaus, seven miles outside Jerusalem.  “Fleeing” might be a better word than walking, as if they were escaping from a crime scene – the unjust execution of Jesus - at which they had been witnesses, a crime which might have threatened them had they remained.  As they walk, a stranger joins them in conversation.  We are told that the stranger is Jesus, but that Jesus was unrecognized by them. We’re told that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  Perhaps they were blinded by their grief.  Jesus could have started waving his arms and saying, “Yo, guys, I’m not dead; in fact, here I am right in front of your nose!”  But instead, Jesus listens as they wallow in their grief.  It might have been a bit like the scene in Tom Sawyer where Tom shows up at his own funeral, very much alive, but stays hidden a while to hear all the nice things people were saying about him.  Finally, when the two have talked themselves out, Jesus engages them in a sort of walking Bible study, pointing out passages that give them a different perspective on the events that had caused such pain.  When they arrives at their destination, they invite Jesus in – and as Jesus, the guest, takes the bread, gives thanks, breaks it, and begins to pass it around, in that moment, the two disciples suddenly recognize the One to whom they had been pouring out their hearts – and at that moment, Jesus vanishes.  After Jesus vanished, they said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us, while he was talking with us on the road, while he was opening up the Scriptures to us.”   Even though their eyes did not recognize Jesus, their spirits somehow knew that they were having an encounter with the Divine.  And the two disciples return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, no longer fearful of the authorities, to share their account of their encounter with the stranger who was the Beloved. 

For the travelers on the road, the Risen Christ appeared to them a stranger.  And yet the Risen Christ was the Beloved.  In most of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, the disciples do not immediately recognize him – primarily, I suspect, because they did not expect to see him.  For the two disciples, it was only when Jesus broke, blessed, and passed around the bread, as he had done so many times, as he had done when he fed the crowds, as he had done for his disciples at the last supper, that they recognized the Risen One in their midst.

We’re told that the two travelers on the road did not recognize Jesus, because their eyes were kept from recognizing him.  Often we only see and hear what our minds allow us to see and hear.  Our eyes and ears and other senses take in so many sensations and so much information, but it is our minds that organize these sensations and this information in ways we can understand it – and in the process, filter a lot of it out.   And certainly those in power and their mouthpieces in the media encourage us to focus on what they want us to see and to ignore what they want us not to see.  And so we see but don’t really see, hear but don’t really hear.  Particularly in our overly-busy, overly-scheduled society, we often go through our days on autopilot – I know I do.  As Jesus did when he opened the Scriptures to them on the road, I believe it is part of our tasks as people of faith to take moments to turn off our autopilot, to turn off the media noise machine, to put aside the mental filters and see, really see, with the heart as well as the eye. 

I was on a bus ride to DC yesterday with an interfaith group – some were Christian; most were Jewish, a few had no commitment to a faith community – “spiritual but not religious”, you might say.  We were going to a climate march that was held there.  The leaders held an interfaith service on the bus trip.  After we got off the bus, the person who had sat next to me on the bus, an older Jewish man, and I were talking as we walked.  At a point, he spent some time lamenting the younger people, as he saw them, focused on their I-phones and shutting out the world.  And then he said something, in a way that struck me: “We don’t even see each other.”  We don’t even see each other.  And I certainly hadn’t really seen him earlier, when we were riding on the bus together, seated next to one another – The bus started out at 6:30 a.m., and I was tired, and he himself seemed fairly closed off….he was probably just as tired, and had likely found me closed off to him as well.  When he learned I was a pastor, he told me, “Well, I don’t know if you do a lot of marriage counseling” – I don’t – “but my daughter” – his daughter was a rabbi, and had led part of the interfaith service on the bus – “gave me a prayer that has transformed my life and my marriage.”  He said that every morning before he got out of bed, he prayed “I give thanks to you, living and everlasting King, for you have restored my soul with mercy.  Great is your faithfulness.”  For this man, in letting him wake up for another day, God had restored his soul.  But for him, it wasn’t enough just to give thanks to God….he had to respond: “and what am I going to do about it.”  God has restored my soul for another day.  What am I going to do about it?  And what he would do is to tell his wife thank you for being a part of his life for so many years.  And I met his wife later that day and she said the same thing.  The man emailed me this prayer, and just reading it on paper, my response was, “oh, that’s nice.”  But as the man opened up to me what this prayer had meant to him, I found my heart strangely warmed.  And indeed, as our group went through the day, as we worshipped together on the bus and marched together in the street, we went from being a collection of strangers on a bus to, at least for a time, a kind of beloved community.

We here at Emanuel are a community, and as new people arrive, they move from being strangers to being beloved - well, most of the time anyway.   Today we welcome a new member to the beloved community, Scarlett Marie,  so young, her whole life ahead of her.  In our reading from Acts, Peter tells the crowd, among many other things, that the promises of God are for us, and also for our children – and for those far away as well, but today we’re focusing on children – and it is on that basis – that promises of God are for us and for our children - that in our tradition we baptize children.   

In our tradition, baptism is one of the sacraments – the other is holy communion, which we’ll celebrate next Sunday.  Augustine defined a sacrament as an “outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.”  An outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace.  Put another way, it is a time in which God is present in a special way.  Protestants recognize baptism and holy communion as two practices with direct connection to the practice of Jesus, who was baptized by John and who instituted holy communion at his last supper with his disciples.   In baptism, in this sacramental moment, we will hear Scarlett’s parents and godparents make promises, to raise Scarlett in the Christian faith.   And we will be making a promise as well, as we say, “We promise our love, support and care.”   As we say those six words, “We promise our love, support, and care” – and, of course, to love, support and care for Scarlett will mean loving, supporting, and caring for Scarlett’s family, I would encourage us to take ourselves off autopilot for a moment, really see Scarlett and Scarlett’s family, and really commit to love, support, and care for them.

The two returned to Jerusalem, and told those gathered there how Jesus was revealed to them in the breaking of bread.  May our eyes be opened so that God may reveal Godself to us – yes, here at church, but also in our families, in other people around us, and in the fragile beauty of nature.  May we have eyes to see, and hearts to respond.  Amen.