Were Not Our Hearts Burning?

Sunday, April 6^th, 2008

Third Sunday of Easter

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

Luke 24:13-35

Theme: “Where does Jesus speak to you? Jesus meets us where we are.  ”

 

¹³Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” ¹⁹He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” ²⁵Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. ²⁸As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.  

                                               

I’ve shared with you before of the time when I made my profession of faith on the eve of my tenth birthday, at summer camp, Natchez Trace State Park in West Tennessee while John Wood, then pastor of First Baptist Church, Paducah, was bringing the message to the youth with whom my family and I had joined for the week. 

 

I’ve also shared with you of the transforming impact Steve Shoemaker’s telling of the parable of the prodigal son had on me, in calling me back into engagement with faith in Jesus Christ and reconnection with his church. 

 

I’d like to share with you this morning of what those two events had in common, but to do that, and to present a fuller picture of that, I would also need to share with you about a couple of hundred if not more intervening moments that connect the two.  Unfortunately, time does not allow for that lengthy a discourse.

 

Have you ever had an experience like the one Luke is describing here that happened to Cleopas and his companion?  One where you live through something, and it isn’t until AFTER, when you are thinking BACK over the event, that you realize there was something going on inside you that was having a profound effect on you, but you just didn’t realize it at the time?

 

Those two signal events in my life, my initial choice to follow Christ, and my subsequent choice to CONTINUE to follow Christ, despite the struggles that had arisen in my life and in my mind and in my heart, were just such events. 

 

The first, in retrospect from the point of view of someone 34 years older, was a much more innocent choice.  In many ways, it was the thing that needed to be done.  I was at the age where I was becoming more and more aware of what it was to KNOWINGLY make choices that went against what I KNEW to be the RIGHT thing to do; not necessarily the LEGAL thing to do, or the ACCEPTED thing to do, or the EXPECTED thing to do, but the RIGHT, the CORRECT, the JUST, the CHRISTLIKE thing to do.  And I was beginning to struggle with learning how to do that on a regular, consistent basis.  Even at that age, I was beginning to understand myself enough to know that on my own I did not have the strength to say no to the wrong, and yes to the right all the time.  That is, in somewhat simple terms, what prompted my choice to make the decision to surrender to the way of Christ in a public forum. 

 

The more recent event, the later choice to CONTINUE my relationship with God through Christ, to reengage in a denomination that I’d grown antagonistic towards, to remain active in a faith family that accepted those struggles as part and parcel of the life of discipleship, was in many ways a more profound experience.  It came in the wake of some of the roughest spiritual experiences of my life.  It came at a point when I was still questioning everything that I had on some level up until then accepted as gospel, but was now not so sure of.  In some ways, I consider it to have been a more informed decision.  It felt like much more than a rededication, more than a recommitment; it felt like a new encounter, a revelation that even though I was nowhere near the same place I was fifteen years earlier, even though I was more uncertain of more things than I had ever been, there was still a place for me in that community, and in the arms of God. 

 

What ties the two events together is not MY presence.  I was, for all practical purposes, two completely different people at each event.  In the first, I was a child catching a glimpse into the coming world of conflicting desires and hopes, expectations and goals.  In the latter, I was a young, weary, beaten soul, wondering if I would ever find the comfort of home again – in any form.  What ties them together is CHRIST’S presence.

 

In some ways, I see my own experience reflected in the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  Though completely unknown, and virtually unnamed – Cleopas appears nowhere else in the New Testament – we understand that these traveling companions were part of the group that followed Jesus around during his years of public ministry.  We don’t think of it often, but Jesus wasn’t always by himself or accompanied SOLELY by the twelve disciples as he went about preaching, teaching, healing and challenging his listeners to understand the gospel. 

 

I’ve sometimes wondered to myself what Jesus must’ve sounded like, what he might’ve looked like, how he might’ve walked.  In my imagination, he is fearless, direct, dynamic and more charismatic than I can even describe.  I realize that in large part, that is ME reading back into history what *I* would expect to see if I were to encounter Jesus on the road to Emmaus.  But the reality COULD have been radically different.  He may have simply blended into the crowd.  Scripture speaks of how he drew crowds, and that people – even learned scholars – were amazed at the authority with which he taught and spoke.  That tells me that there MUST have been SOMETHING about him that drew people to him.  It might have been in his speech, in the manner with which he spoke – that made you realize that this was a man of substance. 

 

I remember when we first began asking our Hispanic friends to volunteer to read the scripture passage at the beginning of the devotional time at our gatherings.  With most of those that we work with, it is rare to find someone with an education level beyond elementary school.  There are a few who’ve completed middle school or high school, and only a handful that have college-level training or education.  It shows in their speech and in their ability – or lack of ability – to read.  We understand that and don’t make an issue of it.  If someone struggles with the readings, there is always a degree of patience and a truly loving waiting that happens as a few people chime in to help with some of the more difficult words. 

 

The first time Lucio volunteered to read was actually the first time I’d ASKED someone to read.  He jumped at the chance.  Literally, jumped out of his seat and came forward.  In talking to him, he is a mostly quiet person, hesitant to speak.  He usually makes some sort of self-deprecating comment and laughs at himself in any conversation we have.  But when I handed the Bible to him and showed him where to read, he paused briefly, and then in a sure and unhesitant and firm voice, began to read without missing a beat or a syllable.  His voice was full and confident and much more so than mine can, it filled the sanctuary.  At the end of the reading I had to stop for a minute before I could go on, it was that moving. 

 

I sometimes think that may have been what happened when people heard Jesus speak.  He may not have LOOKED any different, but when he opened his mouth, you KNEW there was something different about him.

 

So these disciples, these folks who had followed Jesus from a near distance for part if not all of the three years leading up to that day, meet him on their way to Emmaus and they don’t recognize him.  They’re engrossed in talking about what had happened that week, that Friday, and that morning.  Still trying to figure out what was the truth.  Because, for all the exposure they’d had to Jesus over whatever time they’d been hanging out with him, they were still expecting him to BE THE ONE to rally the people to rise up and overthrow the rule of Rome in their land.  But they were faced with the treason of their own religious leaders and the stunning ending to the week that was the death and burial of their master and teacher.                

 

And some man met them on the road, in the middle of their journey, in the middle of some comment that probably began with the words “but I thought he was going to…” and ended in the utter desolation of the cross and the tomb, regardless of what was being whispered about as of that morning, and asked them what they were talking about, seemingly completely clueless.  So they decided to fill him in.  THEY knew, after all, what the skinny was.  THEY had an inside line on who Jesus REALLY was.  They actually had a BETTER perspective on him than even his disciples did.  THEY were too close to him to see the bigger picture.  But it was all over.  He ended up getting caught and stopped and killed, just as Rome had always done and would always do. 

 

We still do that, don’t we?  Larry Norman, one of the first Christian Rock Musicians, has a line in one of his early songs entitled Readers Digest – written in the late 60’s or early 70’s – is a long stream of consciousness litany of trying to connect present day realities with the eternal truths of faith – a line that is particularly applicable to the week just past jumped out at me – “we shot all our dreamers and there’s no one left to lead us”.  He speaks to the fact that we would really rather not have a true dreamer to lead us.  We don’t want someone who makes us feel the truth of how we are – sometimes weak, sometimes strong, sometimes wise and sometimes foolish – even criminally so at times, so we get rid of them.  We find holes in the story, we find the secret skeletons in their closets.  We knock them down to our level rather than let them lead.      

 

What the travelers found out, of course, was that this stranger that walked with them was the genuine article.  He took their understanding of what they’d seen happen and began to transform it – through patient explanation and enlightening conversation – began to make them ready for the reality that they did not completely take in until he joined them at the table, and took and blessed and broke and gave. 

 

So we come to this part of the message.  What does this mean for us here today, for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton?  How can a walk along a dusty road between Jerusalem and one of its outlying communities speak to us today?  Imagine Warsaw to be Jerusalem.  Imagine somewhere between here and Farnham to be Emmaus – there is actually no clear certainty as to where the town mentioned in Luke IS even today.  But picture yourself walking that distance.  And you are in conversation with the friend beside you, so it’s probably not a focused, “let’s get there as soon as possible” walk.  Your steps ebb and flow with the conversation.  A regular walking pace for an average sized human being is about two and a half to three miles an hour, four if that’s all you’re doing and you are in a hurry.  So you have somewhere between 3 and 4 hours to talk as you walk.  And somewhere around the Intermediate School Jesus steps onto the road and asks what you are talking about.  Now, it’s someone you’ve known for probably at least a year.  But you don’t recognize him.  After all, he’s dead.  You saw him die on Friday. 

 

You get to Emmaus, and it’s getting to be suppertime, so you invite him to stay with you.  And he does, and you sit down to the table and he takes charge, and takes the bread and says the blessing and when you open your eyes it hits you like a ton of bricks that it is JESUS sitting beside you.  And you realize what he’s been talking to you about as you walked down to the Totuskey Bridge and as you huffed your way up the hill on this side and the rest of the way down here was all about who HE REALLY WAS.  But you didn’t GET it until NOW.  And here you’ve been following him … or following AFTER him … for so long, it seems.  You just didn’t dare hope for any more, because the worst that could happen ended up happening.  And yet, here he is, right in front of you. 

 

Why, you ask yourself, didn’t I see that it was him sooner?

 

Let’s pray.