Third Sunday of Easter A; 04.19.26; G. Miles Smith+
Luke 24:13-35
How many Easters have you seen come and go? Probably quite a few.
How many Easters have I officiated? Well…quite a few.
They come…and the celebrations are grand…and then they go.
And then, the stories that the world tells instead about life…and death…become preeminent…very very fast…eclipsing Easter.
One may very well wonder then…whether the stories that the Church has been given to tell about Jesus…are merely “idle tales”?
One of the benefits of knowing scripture…is that the experience of this kind of wondering…has been there from the very beginning.
It is important to realize that the scripture passage which we heard today from Luke 24…is preceded…by a story…in which the female disciples who first discovered that Jesus’ tomb was empty…rushed back to the other male disciples…and told them what they had seen…and the other disciples considered it all to be…but an “idle tale”.
And then, it was decades later…that the gospel of Luke was written…and a whole new generation of people could hear their own wondering…echoed in this story of the empty tomb. Is Easter just an idle tale, after all?
Every generation has not only wondered this…but the scripture itself even invites us to wonder it.
This is just one reason among many…why it is so important that the Church can be a place…where people can have an engaging experience…with scripture.
Because every generation who hears the proclamation that “Christ is risen!” will encounter the dissonance…between that gospel news…and the news of the day.
It is important that we are able to realize again and again…just how extreme this contrast is.
The story of the gospel that is told with great drama at Easter and Christmas…is not…a story about an admirable guy…who ended up being treated badly…but nevertheless got to go to heaven…leaving nothing behind changed.
No, the story that we have been given to tell…is that the Son of God…came into the world…was loved…but was also very much unwelcome…and violently cast out…but returned…beyond anything anyone then or now can conceive as possible…and has left behind a continuing ripple through time…of a new pathway to be reconciled God…and to each other.
This is an audacious message…and it is…a very strange way…for God…to save the world.
It is…easy…to consider it only an idle tale.
It is easy…to find that Christ is unrecognizable…in the midst of a similar sadness…that goes right back to those two disciples…walking along the road to Emmaus…who even when they were visited by the risen Christ himself…could not recognize him.
Yes, finally, they would recognize Christ was risen…when he broke bread with them at their home…when suddenly their minds were opened to realize it was he. But then, Christ just as quickly disappeared…again.
Nevertheless, their world had been permanently changed. They could no longer see death…or sin…or judgment…or enemies…or empire…as the last word about God.
Anyone who dares to be Christian…anyone who dares to rejoice at Easter and Christmas…is in this same vulnerable place…as the very first disciples were…caught between a world very much stuck in the same old rut…and an impossible experience of Christ…which can turn our worlds upside down.
The gospel story today…specifically declares…that that impossible experience…can still be had…and Christ may be known…in the breaking of the bread…in Holy Communion…right here and now…and in every time and place…until the end of history.
(This does not mean that God has given us the gift of…a ritual…but that Holy Communion is a ritualization of God’s gift of God’s self…in Christ…to you…and the whole world.)
It is intended that we be able to recognize the real presence of Christ in this prayerful gathering.
And it is definitely possible. But it is not guaranteed.
We can be just as overwhelmed by the world as the Emmaus disciples…and bring that with us to church...and be blinded by our sadness…and unable to experience the deep reality of God… through scripture and Holy Communion.
But if we keep giving ourselves to these moments over time…then the Holy Spirit will give Christ to us.
And this is the strange way that God is saving the world.
Every Sunday…scripture and Holy Communion…is slowly…and sometimes suddenly…shaping us by the Holy Spirit…into becoming a different people…a different kind of fellowship…than the fellowships of the world.
It is hardly perfect…because we are not.
Maybe we have a 50% chance, at best, of actually living as a Christian?
There still remains so much within us…and the world…and the Church…that needs to be healed through judgment and grace.
But this prayerful gathering…and the life we are seeking to make following Christ…is a sign of what God wills…and of what is to come.
Whether we can recognize it or not…Christ keeps forming countless fellowships…through the Spirit…with scripture and Holy Communion…and it is supposed to be a disruption of the ways of the world…just as was Easter.
The criteria for entering into this prayerful fellowship in Christ…does not involve…your politics, your opinions, your status, your assets, your appearance, your age, your health, your nationality, your ethnicity, your gender or sexuality, or whatever else we can easily enough manage to think of to split us up and turn us into strangers or enemies. No one will be checking any of that before you come up to the altar…to receive Christ in his Holy Comunion with the Father.
But participating in this unusual fellowship…does continuously call us to be willing…to discern Christ…in scripture…in Holy Communion…in our neighbor…which includes you and me…and everybody else out there...and in the scripture of creation itself.
Because God the Father…in Christ the Son of God…through God the Holy Spirit…is making a new world…yes through an inexplicably long passage of time…where sin and sorrow and evil and death…will be healed through judgment and grace.
And so, here we are again…in yet another Easter season…being called to wonder…to imagine the unimaginable …and to recognize the Christ who dwells with us…often unrecognizable.
