Heart of Love

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was 1 Peter 1:17-23 and Luke 24:13-35:

They say that hindsight is always what? 20/20. And of course we say that, or we get accused of that, because it’s about wrong decisions we might have made, or if we had known all the information at the time we might have done something different. It’s one of those phrases that helps us remember that we gain wisdom because of bad decisions and we make bad decisions because we lack wisdom. And yet, what the phrase also reminds us, although used less often this way, is the way we only see things once we have looked back at them, the things we missed noticing along the way. Or it’s the way we change the story and reevaluate everything based on what something led to it. And so we have to understand that that is what the early disciples and the early church did. The gospels are not autobiographies of Jesus, and they were not written at the time, but are stories look backing through the cross, and more importantly through Easter. They look back to the things that had taken place, things they had missed all along, and saw it in a new light, the things that they didn’t realize, the things they had overlooked and didn’t understand and but do now, because of Easter. It reveals how God had been involved, but they didn’t know. Their hindsight made all the difference in understanding and telling the story of Christ.

We see the same thing is true in the story from Luke. Cleopas, who seems to be associated with the disciples in some way, although we don’t know how, because he is never mentioned before, and never mentioned again, and another unnamed man are walking to Emmaus. We’re told that Emmaus is about 7 miles away from Jerusalem, although it actually says its 60 stadia away, but I’m sure none of you know how long a stadia is, and I had to look it up; it’s 600 roman feet, although I have no idea how long a roman foot is. But that’s what our best manuscripts say, but other manuscripts read 160 stadia, which is about 19.5 miles. Now, since they walk both there and back in one day, most scholars are in agreement that the 7 miles is probably the better number, but they are still guessing, because we don’t actually know where Emmaus is, as there was no town of that name in 1st century Palestine. So, we have two ordinary men, going to an ordinary town, of which we know nothing about. My interpretation is that this vagueness for details is so that it is much easier to put ourselves into the story. We could be the unnamed traveler, and the unknown town we are going to could be our own home.

In the Breaking of Bread

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 24:13-35:

In the Protestant tradition, we have two things which we consider to be sacraments, baptism and communion. This stands in contrast to the seven sacraments in the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox traditions. During the protestant reformation, the seven were narrowed down to two because these are both things that Jesus commanded that we do and also things in which Jesus also participated. And what we see in scripture is that the early church continued and participated in both of these things from the earliest days, and so in today’s scripture readings we find both of them, or at least a form of them, taking place. The first is Peter’s call to baptism in which 3000 people are baptized, which makes me think about the logistics of baptizing 3000 people in one day, and while we never are actually told that the disciples are ever baptized, we presume that they were, maybe by John the Baptist, or perhaps by Jesus, but this becomes an important and identifying aspect of the early church that obviously continues through to today. And then we have Jesus implement the practice of communion on his last night with the disciples, which we know from the writings of Paul continued to be a significant act in the early church, and we have at least a part of a communion meal in today’s passage from Luke.

Even though we are now several weeks past Easter, in today’s passage we find ourselves back on Easter morning, with two followers of Jesus who are traveling out to the town of Emmaus which is said to be some seven miles from Jerusalem, although some manuscript traditions say 19 miles, although where the town is, is unknown because there is no record of a town by that name, although there is much speculation of where it might have been. But, it’s entirely possible, and we’ll return to this idea, that we’re not supposed to know, that it’s supposed to be sort of any town, a generic town, one that is meant to represent our town, or a place where we can put ourselves in the role of making this journey. But regardless of where it is, on Easter morning, they have heard that Jesus’ body was not there, and that the women, or at the very least Mary, have encountered the risen Christ, but, like the other disciples, they don’t appear to believe it yet. They’ve heard it but have not processed it, have not accepted it, it has not taken root in their hearts and mind. And so, they set out going home and as they are making their way, they are discussing the events, although the Greek word used here could also be translated as arguing, when Jesus appears before them. Except, like in other versions of the resurrection story, they don’t know that it is Jesus.

In The Breaking Of The Bread

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was Luke 24:13-35:

In our Easter celebration I said that to really understand the Easter moment is to not really think about what happened in its details, but instead to simply experience that proclamation of hope, that momentous moment when everything was changed, to let it flow over us like water.  This morning’s passage is a continuation of that Easter message.  Even though we are now two weeks past Easter, we must remember that we are still in what is known as Eastertide because Easter is actually celebrated for 50 days, but today’s passage takes place on Easter morning, as these two men are leaving Jerusalem in order to go to Emmaus.  But let me back up for just a moment to remind us all of Luke’s version of the Easter story.  On Easter morning, Mary, and several other women, went to the tomb with spices they had prepared for the body, but when they get there the body is not there, and then two men appear to them, and while they are not called angels that is what we might call them, and then tell them that Jesus is not there, that he has been raised from the dead, and so the women all run off to tell the disciples, and, in Luke’s words, “all the rest,”  what they had seen.  Not believing the women, Peter ran to the tomb and he too saw that it was empty.

In the ancient world there were several groups of people who were not allowed to testify in court because it was said that their testimony was not believable, that is they were liars by nature.  One of those groups was shepherds, and this Luke having shepherds making a proclamation about the birth of Jesus is unique, and anyone want to make a guess about another group of people who were not allowed to testify?  That’s right, women, and so the women also making the first proclamation that Jesus is risen is also a very unique characteristic of the Christian story, and probably one of the reasons why Peter doesn’t believe what they have to say and so he needs proof for himself, much like Thomas did in the passage we heard last week.  After all this has happened, then we are told at the beginning of today’s passage that “two of them,” presumably two who are included in that portion of all the rest who were told about the resurrection, are going to a village called Emmaus.

The story of the walk to Emmaus is the longest and most fully developed of all the Easter accounts we find in the gospels, and yet we really don’t know anything about these men. We are told that one of them is named Cleopas, but the other man remains unnamed, and this is the only story we have from them.  While it appears that they had something to do with the followers of Jesus, we have not heard about Cleopas before and he never appears again.  These are just two ordinary men traveling to some ordinary town, and we really don’t even know much about it.  Emmaus is not a town we know of as existing in Palestine during this time, except from this story.  We don’t know where it was and we don’t even know how far away from Jerusalem it was.  While the passage we heard today says 7 miles, there are discrepancies in the Greek manuscripts we have giving different distances, including some that say it was 19 miles away.  Our best manuscripts say 7, and the fact that they travel there and back all in one day has led scholars to use the 7 mile distance in their translations.  But again that is to get bogged down in the details rather than in what the story is actually trying to convey to us today.