April 6, 2008
Third Sunday of Easter
Pastor Harry Mueller
I really thought we had a meaningful lent and joyous Easter season so far. I loved the music, and the preaching. I enjoyed hearing from some of you about the connection between your artistic endeavors and your spirituality. For me there was also another dimension to lent. I was asked over about a month's time to help with four funerals for non members. These are people who have no church at all but just an overwhelming need and a lot of pain. Some had been alienated by congregations in the past and have never reconnected. Three of these funerals were tough situations. One was a suicide which brings all the questions from those left behind, If only I had seen this coming, I would have, I could have, I should have. There is guilt and anger and a lot of stuff going on when depression leads to suicide. Another funeral was a hit and run accident. There is understandably anger and the possibility that no matter what you do, lawyers and courts will have their own time table, so the pain will keep coming back on other's timetables. The last one was a 1 month old child. Here the pain is really real. The guilt, the hurt, the loss of promise is so real. I am very willing to step in to situations like these when I am asked because sometimes, as it did on one of these occasions, I can be sure of the type of theology the grieving people will hear. I'm quite fussy and concerned about this! Quite frankly, I don't believe in the idea that "God needed another little angel in heaven," so it was a 1 month old's chance. I don't believe that a hit and run proves that "when your time is up your time is up." I don't believe that when depression leads someone to suicide they are abandoned by God because they have committed the worst sin. I get involved with people I don't know, and with the exception of maybe a visit before the funeral, I have a chance to say, God understands pain of this sort. God walks with us. God puts us in families, gives us community, and congregations so that other people can help absorb the pain and loss or the anger or guilt. This is how God is present at a time of death. People become like a blotter that soaks up a spill on the carpet. God gives us community at times like that. This is the Body of Christ.
It is with that in mind that I have thought about this story for the last few weeks. It is the story of the two on the road to Emmaus. Maybe they were hurting and disappointed. Maybe they were retreating from all the disappointment in Jerusalem. They had thought Jesus was going to do something miraculous and defeat the Romans. Now their hopes and dreams were dashed. I would bet all the feelings the people I encountered during lent were a part of the two on the road to Emmaus. Then the two in the story did a rather neat thing. They invited this unknown stranger to stay and eat with them. I have told people, on a few occasions, when they are caught up in their grief for a long period of time that they need to stop focusing on their own grief and focus on someone else. This is exactly what the two on the road to Emmaus did. They invited the Lord, whom they hadn't recognized, to stay with them. It was in the breaking of bread that they made the incredible discovery.
This shouldn't be surprising to us. In their book, The Last Week, Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan, talk about the sacrifice that has been part of the religious life of the Israelites. They talk about the animal sacrifice in which one of two things could happen. The animal could be burned on the altar and the smoke would ascend to the heights to God. I talked a bit about this on Good Friday and mentioned how the smell of the packing plant in my home town of Albert Lea must have been the exact same smell the temple produced. (Then as I drove home that night I thought , gosh it must have been the same smell outside Ausweitz. It is a another whole sermon but the problem with all the world's empires, including our own, is that we keep going back to sacrificing our children. I think about it every week as we read the names of those sacrificed in Iraq. But Jesus wanted to move us from human sacrifice to the community created in a meal) That is the other thing that could happen in the sacrifice, the animal, once it was slain and its blood spilled on the altar, could be given back to the sacrificer, and become a meal, which was now a sacramental gift from God to the one who sacrificed. So the sacrifice becomes a sacrament. I love that idea. I see it present in this story. This is my body Jesus had said. Do this to remember me, or discover me. He said this on the night of his betrayal and in this story he's present. So here at Emmaus, he is recognized in the breaking of bread.
In our theology we talk about the presence of God in the meal. I have really loved to think about the community present around the table inn a meal. It is for all. In the short evening we had with the young kids who were preparing to come to communion for the first time during Holy Week we talked about all the real and remembered and imagined community around the table. It's so cool--- There are rich and poor, people of all colors. Gay and straight, Republican and Democrat, able bodied and handicapped. You name it. I love to think about how the earth spins and the sun comes up over different continents and we can know that 8 hours ago people in northern Europe communed. 12 hours ago in Africa, in two hours in California, this same hour in south America, in 12 hour maybe in Asia. Its really neat. I asked the kids about a time tunnel and what that would be like. We imagined getting in one and going back 500 years ago, at that time it was Martin Luther who communed, 100 years ago my great grandmother, In another 50 years, I hope our grandchildren will be. In order for that to happen however it begs of us to be responsible citizens and caretakers of God's earth, and our memory and story. It's really cool.
Now a really interesting thing happens in this story---In the beginning the depressed dejected and disappointed travelers are on the road leaving Jerusalem. This was obviously the center of the focus of the struggle to reform religion and confront it's willingness to strike an unhealthy allegiance with the Roman occupiers. This is the allegiance I talked about on Maundy Thursday. It's the allegiance between Caiaphas and Pilate. I can imagine the disciples, in their defeat, as they were leaving Jerusalem. But pay attention to what happened. After the meal and the discovery that the Lord was with them still, they went back to Jerusalem. If there isn't a hopeful sign and an example in there for us I don't know how it could be made any more clear. The disciples were energized to carry on. They went back into the fray. They would not be defeated. Jesus was crucified but the risen Christ is present. You can kill the messenger but not the movement. God will not have it any other way. So the disciples were moved to get out of their grief, get out of the anger, get out of their mourning, reverse their retreat, and go back to Jerusalem. Wow.
When I look around at the politics, and economics, and international relations, and racism, and general health of the creation, I think God is present. How could God have become disinterested in what's going on around us today? God is present in the sacrifice that has become sacramental. This is not a new thing for God.
Then, going further, remember the line of the disciples about how Jesus interpreted the scripture for them. I thought about the stories of how God encouraged similar turn arounds for people all through out the story. Remember Elijah retreating in to the cave and God appearing to Elijah and saying get out of here, go and anoint Elisha so he can carry on the battle with the king and Queen. Remember how God turned the prophet Jonah around, when Jonah didn't want to go to the wicked city of Ninevah? But when Jonah finally went the whole city was changed. Do you remember how God turned Saul around from a persecutor of the followers of the way to becoming the greatest promoter of it? Do you remember how Esau is reconciled to his brother when Jacob turns around to come home after the feud that separated them? Do you remember how the father and prodigal son are reconciled after the son comes home? I wonder which of these stories or parables they understood in the conversation with the Lord on that road? Whatever it was it turned them around.
One of the favorite images of mine that I love to recall in the Easter Season is the scene from the end of the great musical, Fiddler On The Roof. Remember how the family is being exiled and they pack up their cart and began to hit the road. There in the very last scene the fiddler comes down off the roof and plays the fiddle for them as they face their future. Think about it. The sacrifice has become the sacrament. We are energized by this to go back into world around us that begs for a sign of grace.
Amen