Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Finally this year I figured out that the Resurrection is way, way too important to relegate to one day of worship, on Easter Sunday. Most of the Church figured that out a long time ago, of course.

This time, this fifty days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost at the end of May, is sometimes called “The Great 50 Days,” and makes up the season of Easter. It’s an opportunity for us to continue to think and talk about the resurrection.

If Christ is alive…if God did in Jesus what had never been done before or since…if in Christ’s resurrection God has shown that His power is greater than anything else, why would we only think about His resurrection on one day a year?! We should, in fact, probably be shouting it every single time we meet…

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

That’s why every Sunday is called a resurrection day. And it’s why the church meets not on the old Sabbath, but on Sunday, the day of resurrection.

This morning we read a resurrection story. It comes again from Luke…Luke 24:13-36.

This is a “road” story, and I love being “on the road.” I love to travel. Because of our moves from Seattle to New Jersey, from New Jersey to Minnesota, from Minnesota to Seattle, plus going home for vacations…we are a family who has spent a lot of time on the road. I also love to drive, so that’s a nice fit.

I can’t tell you the number of times I have been driving as we traveled cross country, and we would round a bend in, say, Montana…and the valley would open up in front of us and the mountains would shimmer in the distance and it felt like a whole new world had opened up, and I was in awe. And I’d want to talk about it, marvel at it. And I would say, with some urgency in my voice,

“Hey kids! Check this out! Isn’t it amazing?”

And inevitably, the kids would glance up (maybe) from their book or game or whatever and say something like,

“Cool”

and go instantly back to their book.

But there’s something about being on the road. The possibilities stretch out. Even though you think you have some basic idea of where you are going, there are lots of unknowns. And always, when you get on the road, you are not only going somewhere, but you are leaving somewhere else.

Anne LaMott wrote a book called Traveling Mercies. The phrase, she says, comes from her church in California. When someone left for a trip, the older members would say, “Traveling mercies.” Love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound. All good things. But I think I’d add another:

Come back changed.

I’m not sure that these two travelers on the road to Emmaus had anything so intentional in mind as they traveled down their road. For such a profound story, there’s an awful lot we don’t know. We only know one of the travelers, Cleopas, by name, and he doesn’t appear anywhere else in the scriptures. We don’t know who is with him. We don’t really know anymore exactly where this village of Emmaus is…just not far from Jerusalem, nor do we know why Cleopas and the other disciple are going there.

We do know they are going away from Jerusalem. Away from the scene of Jesus’ crucifixion. Away from the despair of his death, the one they thought “would redeem Israel.” Away from the confusion of people saying that Jesus’ body was missing, and the uproar over the women who said angels had met them and told them that he was alive.

Where were they going? Were they running away? Who knows? Just away from where they had been. Anything had to be better than where they were. Have you ever felt that way?

And there, on the road, at milepost 2 or 3, as they walked along, Jesus met them. Jesus came to them. Jesus came and found them as they were on the road. They didn’t even recognize him. Why?

Was that their fault? Did God Himself keep them from it? The devil? It doesn’t say. But when Jesus asked what they were talking about, they stopped…and looked sad, and they told him that their lives had been turned upside down. They told him they thought they had seen the hand of the living God reaching down into their lives…and it had been cut off when Jesus had been crucified.

They didn’t recognize him. In the irony of ironies, in fact, they are a little amazed at this stranger’s ignorance (over the recent events) … while oblivious to their own ignorance of the fact that it is Jesus Himself who walks on the road with them. And Jesus does just what you would expect…starts a Bible Study! Shows how the scriptures point to the Messiah’s suffering…and then his glory. Still they didn’t recognize him.

The road would just keep going…Jesus would just keep going. But when Cleopas and his friend turn off, they urge Jesus to stay with them. He does. And somehow Jesus turns everything upside down.

He has already taken their own story and the scripture and shown how the two connect. Now, somehow He ends up as the host at the meal, and when He takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them (just like he had done on the last night of his life, just like he had laid out his own body and his own blood), finally their eyes are opened. Now they recognize him. Perhaps Jesus is seen most clearly when we understand that he gave Himself, with no limits…on our behalf.

Many artists have painted scenes from this Emmaus road story. Rembrandt did several pieces about this event. In one of them, a light glows around a table in a corner. The silhouette of Jesus is clearly recognizable. Across the table, one of the two men leans back, astonishment on his face, his arms just beginning to lift up. He is just discerning who he sits at table with. Because of the light, your eye goes back and forth from Jesus’ silhouette to the amazed man, back and forth. You hardly realize that the other has already tipped his chair over and kneels at Jesus’ feet in the dark. And way off in the background, a servant works by candlelight in another room…totally oblivious to what is happening.

There are more questions than answers here.

• What changed so that they recognized Jesus?
• Why did he immediately leave them?
• Why couldn’t they see him before?

The only thing that seems really clear is that Jesus had come and found them.

That seems important to me. There’s nothing we seem to like better than telling Jesus when he’s obligated to show up. Or trying to reproduce the exact circumstances so that we can make it happen again.

I’ve told you before of a foundational experience I had with Jesus walking around this hill over 20 years ago, and that I could point out the exact manhole cover where I was when it happened. Well, I’ve been back there 300 times since, and nothing has ever happened.

Probably these two guys would be tempted to go back to just the same bush, the same mile marker where Jesus had joined them, to see if they could orchestrate everything and make Him come again. To which Jesus would probably say:

“Why do you seek the living among the dead?”

Like it or not, there is great mystery in our faith. God meets us on the road on his own terms, in his own timing. Do we have a part? Sure!

Trying to be open and attentive. It’s the best use of what we would call spiritual disciplines: prayer, fasting, scripture, to be in spiritual shape, to be aware and sensitive to God, eyes open.

No matter how many times we go back to that same spot in the road, God may not be there. Or not in the same way. “He isn’t here…he’s risen!” And he calls us onward.

These men came into contact not with a formula, not with an idea, not with a theological concept, not with a memory, but with a person, Jesus Christ…who was raised. They would not be the same ever again. Now notice…if the story ended here. If the men stopped here. Who knows what might have happened? You might not be here right now.

But they go on the road again, back to where they had been. But everything looks different. Is it even the same road? They march double-time, they run, they’re down, exhausted, they’re up and running, sweating, adrenaline pumping. When they arrive back in Jerusalem, they burst in on their colleagues, already gathered, and already processing a different appearance of Jesus:

“The Lord has risen indeed, and appeared to Simon!”

Now Cleopas and his companion add their story. They told what had happened on the road, and how Jesus had been made known in the breaking of the bread.

What happens when people tell the stories of the living Christ acting in their lives? Doors open. The road looks different. People are changed. Forever.

Fleming Rutledge, an Anglican preacher, tells the story of her father, who was 86 at the time… and her father’s sister, her Aunt Virgina, who was 92. Virginia had been in a nursing home for many years after a severe stroke. Rutledge’s father would often go to visit, though the visits were often difficult for him. Virginia said very little, usually. One day, however, she said quite a bit. So much that her father went straight home and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Here’s what her father wrote:

Virginia said today, “Am I going to die soon?” I told her I could see no sign of it, and that such things were, for her and me “in the hands of the Lord and I trusted him.” She thought a minute and said, “Yes, I love the Lord.” And after a minute she said, “Do you love the Lord?” I said yes, I certainly did, and she closed, with a suspicion of a tremble in her voice, “I thought you did.”

You could have been like a servant in a back room, or walking by the doorway and not even noticed the conversation between these two elderly people in a little hospital room. You wouldn’t have had any idea that the living God was in that room. Even Rutledge’s father, at the bottom of the paper, wrote, “End of episode.” But of course, it wasn’t. It gave life to her father, then to her and her husband and then to their children, and then to others (like us) who hear it, and feel Jesus draw nearer to us.

Two years ago as our team traveled in China, we would arrive at one of the leadership schools of the underground church that we visited. Brad, one of our Bethany missionaries, had arranged the itinerary. We’d have maybe four hours to spend with the students, and none of us spoke one another’s language; we had one interpreter…and I thought,

“Brad, this is bad planning, what will we do with all this time.”

Well, we had lunch. That took about 20 minutes. Then Brad would say,

“Well, let’s share testimonies.”

We’d hem and haw and look at our feet, and a few of us would tentatively share something about how God had met us at some point in our life in a particular way. And that was great.

And then it was the students’ turn. One person would share with great enthusiasm how God had met them, brought them through a hard time, and arranged their release when they’d been arrested. And another would pop up, fervent and eager to tell where and how God had met them even when there were no Christians in their family or their entire village. And on and on. It could last hours.

These were people on the road, and part of that road was very unpredictable, very bumpy. But their eyes were open, searching, eager to see the hand of God in life. And when they saw it…they had to share it. They ran to tell.

Today, the risen Jesus meets us.

• Speaks to us in the scriptures, and our hearts burn within us.
• Meets us at the table, in the breaking of the bread.
• Meets us in the midst of confusion, despair, sadness.
• Meets us not because of us, but because of Him.

And in fact, is with us, whether we recognize him or not. And when we finally figure it out, he wants us to tell others.

Each week as we gather for worship, I find myself praying:

“Lord, would you cause us to be different people when we leave today than we were when we came in. For you, for me, Lord, would you somehow meet us so that just the very being in your presence would change us?”

We’re on the road too. Traveling mercies. Love the journey. God is with you. Come home safe and sound. Come back changed.

Even as the followers of Jesus were talking, sharing, testifying… the risen Jesus comes and stands in their midst and says simply:

“Peace be with you.”

The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!