Comments for Jim Other sermons   

            That first Easter, two people, followers of Jesus, walk the seven-mile road from Jerusalem to the town of Emmaus, discussing what they have heard. Jesus meets them and walks along with them; but they don’t recognize him. Why not? They don’t recognize him for the same reasons we don’t recognize him – though, at this moment, he is in this place, right beside us.

            It’s amazing that they don’t recognize him because they know everything they need to know in order to see him.  So, as they walk, this mysterious stranger questions them. They tell him how Jesus was a mighty prophet in word and deed, handed over to crucifixion by the religious establishment, their sense of deep disappointment at his apparent failure to save Israel. And yes, they had heard that some women had found his tomb empty, had seen a vision of angels telling them he was alive, and how others had found it to be just as the women had said. Everybody had heard, and nobody had seen.

            The story has Jesus then teaching them as they trudge along. But, here too, he is not telling them anything they do not already know. “How stupid you are,” he says, “and slow of heart to believe everything in the tradition you already know.” And he talks about Moses, the Prophets, and the scriptures. They reach Emmaus and it is time to part, but something has been happening in them. They urge him, “Stay with us.”

            It’s that way today. Everybody has heard, but nobody has seen. We know the Easter story. Some of us have heard it all our lives. We say we believe it, come to church, sing the hymns, and hear the words. But we act just like those two on the Emmaus Road. Our lives are really run by doubt, disappointment, and discouragement. And why is that? What is missing is the encounter with the living Jesus. I suppose those two travelers are entitled to some little doubt, in that they had not yet heard that Jesus had appeared to others, though that might not have mattered either. But we have heard all of it, and we doubt. We say we want to see for ourselves.  But, in fact, Jesus is walking with us and we don’t recognize him.

            It is a remarkable aspect of human beings that we often cannot see what is right before our eyes. Earlier in Jesus’ life, the followers of John came to Jesus and asked him if he was the Messiah. He answered, “Look around you! The dead are being raised. The blind see and the lame walk. Connect the dots!” That is what Jesus is saying to the two on the Emmaus Road. Open your eyes. Connect the dots.

            For me, our annual stewardship campaign reminds me of the encounters I am describing. We hear about all God has done and is doing now through this congregation and the United Church of Christ. Look what Christ Congregational Church has become and accomplished over the last six years or so. I am regularly told that we have so many new visitors that we can barely keep up with them. We have come through an extraordinary building program, which was done in the right way in every way, and are now in the midst of some exciting organizational transitions. And I guarantee you, I pledge to you, transition will continue – change is the norm, more changes, bigger changes. And what does that require of us? Recognizing Christ in the midst of it all. Trusting the message of faith, hope, love – and a generosity of substance and of spirit. If we are generous, especially at stewardship time, with anything even remotely approaching the spirit of God’s generosity with us, the results will be astounding. Open your eyes.  What do you see? Connect the dots.

            But yet – but yet, people get worried. People get discouraged. Yes, we know all about the teachings, we know what Jesus says about our hearts and our treasure, we know the Resurrection story backwards and forwards, and we know that in the past, it has all been true – but now, in this moment, we don’t see any sign of Jesus anymore. He’s left us, if he was ever really here, and dumped everything on our shoulders. And so Jesus, at this moment, is saying to us, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that you already know!” Open your eyes. Connect the dots.

            All the Resurrection stories in the Gospels are about really seeing Jesus, really knowing the Resurrected Christ. And, yes, the more literal-minded we are, the more we stumble over the stories. But really meeting, really seeing the Risen Christ is about seeing with the heart. It is about not just looking at the surface of reality, but looking in and through reality. Jesus appears to doubting Thomas, I think, as a kind of favor to a guy almost totally lacking in intuition and insight. If you want to use Thomas as your model, fine, Jesus seems to be saying, but “More blessed are those who don’t see, and yet believe.” For most of us, we see, but we don’t really see. We hear about Jesus, but don’t meet Jesus. We walk alongside him, sit next to him, get stuck in traffic with him, maybe even share a household with him, but don’t really see him.

            So what was happening when those two followers urged Jesus to stay when he was about to move on? They could look back on that journey and say, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” When we start to connect the dots, our hearts come alive – become aflame.

            Then, “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” Here, I think, the language of the Gospel takes us as far as language can go – pointing us to the experience of God. In that simple meal (the first reenactment of the Last Supper, and in a sense, the first Holy Communion), Christ is encountered, seen, met, recognized – as both visible and invisible. Absent in a literal sense. Yet fully present, in a literal sense – as literal as the bread and cup; as literal as those beside you at the table. And in that moment they recognized not only the presence of Jesus, but they experienced their own hearts burning within them, and knew that their hearts had been burning within them, even as they walked alongside a Jesus whom they could not recognize.

            Do you see how profound this really is? It’s all before us, if we but connect the dots. This mystery is at the heart of all true religion, I believe. For example, the Buddhists will tell you that to become enlightened is to realize that you are already now, and always have been, enlightened. You have not experienced enlightenment, because you have not realized that you are already experiencing enlightenment. For me it’s come in certain glum moments when someone of wisdom and spirituality has looked me in the eye, and said, with love and bemusement, “Silly man! Don’t you realize how well you are doing, and how happy you are!”

            I think it is the same thing with Jesus. It is hard for us to really acknowledge how well things are going in our lives and with Christ Congregational Church, even though we have been living fully in the midst of how well things are going in our lives, and at Christ Congregational Church. If we fully realized how we truly feel, that our hearts are now, and have always been burning within us, think how generous we would permit ourselves to be.

            During our staff discussions, we spent considerable time talking about how to have Holy Communion and the presentation of the pledges this morning. Separate? Combined? Which first? If we receive the pledges first, and then offer communion, is that not rather like asking for the payment of some indulgence, before you can qualify for what is really a gift of grace? Or, the other way around, will people be juggling pledge cards and trying to receive communion?

            But as I’ve prayed and thought about this, it’s clearer to me that the presentation of the pledges and the receiving of communion are both one event. And that event is the meeting of Jesus as the living and Risen Christ. Seeing him, knowing him, and recognizing him – in the commitment to give and in the breaking of the bread. And also, on this characteristically busy CCC morning, in the fellowship of the special Stewardship reception downstairs, in the deepening journey of an Open and Affirming, Anti-Racist Church, in the compassion of the Called to Care Ministry. See this morning as an expression of all the ways we meet Jesus and recognize him on a Sabbath morning. See it that way. And let us meet Jesus with a deepening awareness of how our hearts are already burning within us?

AMEN.

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