Sermon, April 24, 2002
3 Easter, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Sermon, April 24, 2002
3 Easter, Year A
The Rev. Lowell E. Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas
Gospel – Luke 24:13-35 Jesus appears on the road to Emmaus
The late Anthony De Mello was fond of saying that we all have three things that block us from the experience of reality, three decisive filters that control what enters into our conscious minds: our attachments, our beliefs and our fears.
An attachment is whatever we cling to, certain that it is necessary for our happiness. Without it, we believe we cannot be happy. Our attachments feed our beliefs. Notice how your attention will focus on whatever confirms your beliefs and will block out much that threatens what you believe. And it is our fears that rivet our attention and energy. De Mello says, "You falsely think that your fears protect you, your beliefs have made you who you are and your attachments make your life exciting and secure. You fail to see that they are actually a screen between you and life’s symphony." (The Way to Love, p. 46-47)
Cleopas and an unnamed friend are walking the seven mile road from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus. It is the afternoon of the first day of the week, a day later generations will call Easter Sunday. A stranger comes near to walk with them. In some ways he is a familiar stranger, but their recognition of him is filtered by their attachments, their beliefs and their fears.
They tell about the events of the past few days – of the execution of a Galilean named Jesus and their wonder about what has happened. They had hoped that he was a mighty prophet, one who would redeem Israel. And here, as we listen in on their conversation, we hear them reveal some of their attachments. They have inherited a love for their nation Israel. They believe that Israel is God’s chosen people, but that belief has an important context. In order for Israel to be a happy people, they are certain that Israel must once again dominate its geography. Their attachment is to a particular form of security and power for their nation. It includes their power over a particular geography, the land given to Abraham. It includes their exclusive religious domination over that region, a theocratic Jewish government. It probably also includes claims of an exclusive love or preference that God has for them. And the only way this dream of happiness can be achieved is for someone to be overthrown. In that century, it was the Romans. In our century, it is the Palestinians.
This is a belief they have inherited from centuries of cultural conditioning. It appears in their scriptures. It is taught from their synagogues. Even in liberating words such as those from the prophet Isaiah: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name," this attachment and belief is repeated as the prophet claims that God despoils Egypt and Ethiopia and Saba in exchange for Israel. Their history tells the story, and it feeds their fears. Fears of the others, the different, the Egyptians and Cannanites, the Romans and Palestinians and all the others who are different, who may harm them. But a deeper fear motivates their beliefs and their attachments – the fear of suffering. These enemies, these others bring suffering to their people. And even deeper, is the fear of death. The others bring death; and nothing is more fearful than death.
If only God would raise up a mighty prophet like Jesus who would destroy and expel these enemies, so that once again our people could return to power and security, then we could be happy. Then we could feel God’s special love for us. Cleopas and his friend explain this to the stranger, how the execution of Jesus has destroyed their hopes for their people’s deliverance and happiness.
But now, they say, there has been an unanticipated surprise. It doesn’t fit with their expectations. Some women, of all things, women with a vision of angels said he was alive. The men didn’t see any angels, but they found his tomb empty. What could it mean?
The stranger then speaks. With piercing insight he goes to the core of their fear and to the error of their belief and to the prison of their attachments. "Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer...?" That’s what they have most feared – suffering and beyond that, death. The stranger says do not fear. Death has become the way of freedom. They have always believed that suffering was bad and to be avoided. They have always been attached to a kind of happiness defined by security, esteem and power for themselves and for their nation.
But the stranger takes them through the scriptures and reinterprets them. He rescues ignored passages and changes the conventional meaning of others. For them, it is like hearing the Bible again for the first time. The stranger opens their eyes beyond their blinding patriotic beliefs. What did he tell them? We don’t know, but we can imagine, especially when we look at the new interpretations that the emerging church later would proclaim.
He probably took them to Jeremiah’s suffering servant, and to the psalm that sings of the rejected rock as the building’s cornerstone. He may have mentioned the suffering of Job or the quiet melody of universalism that echos as a clarion theme throughout the Hebrew scripture. Whatever he chose to reinterpret, he wove a compelling fabric of ignored teaching that claimed that suffering is a divine tool for growth and freedom, and what God does to redeem, God does for all, not just for a nation or a particular people.
Their hearts burned as he spoke. Their eyes were still closed, they were still stuck in their familiar ways of thinking. But they were open enough to invite the stranger, the familiar stranger, into their evening meal. "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."
It was Jesus. Who at the supper just a few nights ago had identified his own life, his body, with bread that was broken and given away. That body a few hours later was broken on a cross, a life given away. Something in that remembered gesture broke through. Now their eyes were open. They could see clearly. And their deepest fear, their fear of suffering and death, evaporated. They were fearless and free. Their attachments their beliefs and their fears were gone. For the first time, they experienced reality with clarity, and they could be happy.
They were no longer attached to the belief that they must dominate in order to be happy and free. They walked a new way. Their new way was a life of security and esteem and power, but its source came no longer from driving away an enemy. It’s source was an eternal, present, vulnerable, open love. A love like Jesus. With that love, they could embrace the world with a fearless freedom. With that love, they were happy. With that love, they changed the world.
That love walks beside us today, sits next to us in this place. That love invites us to challenge whatever we are attached to, whatever we think we can’t live without. That love asks us to question our beliefs which limit and define our full experience of life. That love beckons us to fearless freedom, a freedom that takes whatever we fear, and breaks it open on the altar of Christ in order to bring new meaning, new life. "Be known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread."