Luke 24:14-35
Able to See the Risen One
James Sledge May
4, 2014
When
I was in seminary, I had a wonderful opportunity to take part in three week
travel seminar to the Middle East. Fifteen students, five from my seminary and
five each from two others, joined a group of lay leaders from various churches
on a trip that visited sites in Jordan, Syria, the Sinai peninsula, Israel, and
Greece.
One
of the things you discover in the Middle East, especially outside the cities,
is the remarkable hospitality of the people, much like the biblical culture of
hospitality, except in Israel. That’s not a knock on Israel. It’s just that its
culture is largely imported from Europe and America and so very unlike
indigenous, Middle Eastern culture.
One
day, after visiting a number of archeological sites in Jordan, we made our way
to an out-of-the-way, little village. There was an old Crusader castle on the
hill overlooking the village, but it did not draw many tourists. We were the
only Westerners, or tourists of any sort, at the single, little hotel that was
about halfway between the village and the castle.
We
arrived a couple of hours before supper, and a few of us decided to walk the bit
less than a mile down the hill into the village itself. As we walked along the
road, people would lean out the windows of homes and talk to us, ask where we
were from, how we were doing, where we would go next, and so on. One boy – I
guess he was 10 or 11 – asked if we would come in and join him for tea. But we
wanted to get to the village and back before supper, so we said, “No.” He was
insistent, running from the upstairs window down to the front door, showing us
the teapot he would use, telling us it would be no trouble at all.
We
were very appreciative. We thanked him repeatedly, but we had to keep going. It
is by far my single biggest regret from that trip, and it ranks way up there on
my list of all time regrets. To have visited in his home and enjoyed his
hospitality would surely have been one of the more memorable and meaningful moments
of the entire trip, certainly much more so than the few closed shops we saw at
the bottom of the hill.
I
have kicked myself over the years for not stopping, and I’m often reminded of that
day when I read a biblical account that features hospitality. When I read the
story of Cleopas and another, unnamed disciple meeting Jesus along the way but
not recognizing him at first, I wondered if I would have missed out had I been
walking along the Emmaus Road that day.
After
all, I did not have time even to accept someone’s hospitality that day when I
walked down a Middle Eastern road. Cleopas and his companion meet the risen
Christ only after they extend hospitality, insistently, not unlike that little
boy in Jordan. And they do so even though they are tired, confused, and heartbroken.
Had I been there that day and Jesus walked ahead as if he were going on,
I likely would have said, “So long. Nice talking to you.”
We
live in a culture that is hectic, busy, and anxious, that is about doing things
and accomplishing things. It values production and efficiency, and it hates to
“waste time.” Even on vacation, we must do things. That afternoon in Jordan, my
friends and I had set a little agenda for the next two hours, and we did not
have time to waste. So we kept going, completing our agenda but missing
something much more important. Our busyness blinded us to the wonderful
opportunity right in front of us.
Busyness
follows us to church. Our Sundays, our Sabbaths, are often as scheduled as the
rest of our lives. We have to fit in church between other activities and
events. At times all we can manage is to come in, grab a quick spiritual
pick-me-up, say hello to friends, and go on to the next item.
I’ve
told some of you about a time when my aunt visited the first church I served.
She left her home that morning and made the several hour drive to the church,
arriving 10 minutes or so before worship. She came in by herself and sat down.
(Shawn and our girls were out of town.) When my aunt and I talked later that
day, she told me that nary a soul had spoken to her. The church was small
enough that some would have realized she was not a member. And she was alone. After
worship she walked down the church’s center aisle as people slowly made their
way out. She lingered for a while where folks were gathered just outside the
narthex. But no one spoke to her.
Now
don’t get the wrong idea. This was not an unfriendly congregation. Quite the
opposite. We had a Wednesday Fellowship dinner every week with attendance that
rivaled worship. People hung around for a long time chatting and catching up
after worship and were very attentive to people who were sick or hurting. They did
not mean to be rude to my aunt. They were just busy catching up with friends
they had not seen in a while, grabbing someone to attend to some committee work,
rounding up kids so they could rush off to soccer practice, or some such thing,
and they simply did not see her. They missed her standing there, and I wonder
if, like me, they might have missed Jesus if they had been traveling down that
Emmaus Road.
___________________________________________________________________________
I
recently finished reading the latest book from Old Testament scholar and
prolific writer Walter Brueggemann. It’s entitled Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, and I put
this quote from it on the bulletin cover.
“Sabbath
is variously restraint, withdrawal, or divestment from the concrete practices
of society that specialize in anxiety. Sabbath is an antidote to anxiety that
both derives from our craving and in turn feeds those cravings for more.
Sabbath is an arena in which to recognize that we live by gift and not by
possession, that we are satisfied by relationships of attentive fidelity and
not by amassing commodities. We know in the gospel tradition that we may indeed
“gain the whole world” and lose our souls (Mark 8: 34–37). Thus Sabbath is
soul-receiving when we are in a posture of receptivity before our Father who
knows we need them (Luke 12: 30).”[1]
We
live in a world of doing and producing and acquiring, but Sabbath is about
stopping and receiving. Sabbath recognizes that faith, spirituality, and
becoming fully human are not things that we can acquire by doing. They can only
be received, but our busyness can make it hard to receive, difficult even to
see the gift, the grace, standing right in front of us. Lord knows I need to
slow down enough to see, to notice the person right in front of me, to see the
chance to receive or extend hospitality, to be open to the possibility of the
risen Christ being made known to me in the breaking of the bread.
Do
we have the time? Can we let go and enter a Sabbath posture of waiting and
receptivity? The risen Christ awaits us, longing to give us sustenance and
nourishment that cannot be acquired, only received. God’s presence is here. Be
known to us, Lord Jesus, in the breaking of the bread.
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