Maybe fifteen or so years ago, there was a psychological experiment floating around the internet, where there are two basketball teams playing, one in white and the other in black, and you are told to watch carefully and count their passes. So you do, and you see them run and jump and pass and throw and dribble and shoot, and you try to keep track of who’s ahead and who has the ball and what team is better than the other. And when it’s over you’re asked – did you see the guy in the gorilla suit? And you think, the what?
And then it shows you the scene again, and low and behold, right in the middle of it some dude dressed in a gorilla suit saunters across the whole court, just behind the players, and you were so wrapped up in trying to watch the game well that you missed it completely.
That is what I imagine happening to these followers of Jesus- to all followers of Jesus. We are so wrapped up in the game, whatever that may be, and it is so many things, so certain that we’re in it alone, or that we’ve got to figure it out, or that what really matters is the teams and whose side is winning, or trying so hard to keep our eye on the ball and our feet moving, that when the savior who has been through death with us and for us, and is now alive and calling us to life saunters through the scene- walking with us, engaging us in our own lives deeply and perceptively, we fail to recognize him, we don’t even see him.
Our scripture today picks up the very afternoon of Jesus’ resurrection, zooming in close two people walking, Cleopas, we’re told, and another. Based on a few different ancient historians from the early 100s, Cleopas is believed to be Joseph’s brother, so, Jesus’ Uncle Cleo. According to the gospel John, Cleo’s wife, Jesus’ Aunt Mary, was standing by the cross with Jesus’ mother Mary when Jesus died.
So we meet up with Uncle Cleo and his companion –maybe it’s Aunt Mary, or one of Jesus’ cousins, or maybe another friend from the group of those who followed “The Way.” And they are on a long slow walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus, seven miles away. There is no rush, because, why bother? When Jesus died the movement ended.
When who or what you loved, and believed in, and hoped for, and shaped your life around ends, grief descends, and it takes a beat to even believe life will go on. You’ve no idea how. Life gets small. It becomes about remembering to eat, needing to sleep, relearning to put one foot in front of the other, consciously breathing past the bruise in your chest that aches every time you inhale.
So, I imagine them trudging along in grief, reeling from what has happened, unable to make sense of the strange rumors of his resurrection. The future gone.
Easter, we said, means the whole world has shifted, a new age has begun. But resurrection doesn't come to us sudden, sure and complete. Before becomes after! Death becomes life! Old becomes new! And it doesn’t come through our great faith – those early followers had basically none – or through our determination or effort or work to make it so – they didn’t have that either.
Resurrection leaks in through the ordinary moments of real life. I love the gospel resurrection stories because the people in them are never doing anything dramatic. They’re just trying to live their lives in a messed-up world where corruption and violence haven’t suddenly disappeared either. The things they do in all these stories are human things, honest things, wondering together, grieving, walking, talking, eating, offering hospitality, sharing lodging, sharing food. It’s almost excruciatingly ordinary.
Jesus meets us in the normal, real moments of our regular real lives: walking along with us in our grief, inviting us to tell our story. Sharing a meal, and there he is, suddenly hosting us a moment that just turned holy.
We most often recognize that something new is dawning not because it’s undeniable and grand, and fills us with total confidence and we know exactly what’s coming next, but because in the middle of the real right now, in times of unknown, loss and confusion, our hearts are strangely warmed. Or for a brief moment, before it vanishes, our eyes are opened. Or in a deeply familiar movement, something stirs in us and we are nudged by the beyond, somehow God is right here with us.
Cleopas and Aunt Mary, or whoever, are all settled in for the night after spending all day with their visitor when they finally they recognize, this is Jesus they’d spent the day with. His gestures, his actions at the table, the reminiscent move awakens their perception, and they see he’s been with them this whole time. And then he vanishes. And when he vanishes, so do they. They grab their things and hit the road again, and rush all the way back in Jerusalem.
Deep night, the wee hours of morning, what does time matter now? When they arrive, they join in with everyone there also still awake and already talking about their own encounters with the Risen Jesus.
And suddenly Jesus himself appears among them, and still they think he’s a ghost. It’s not until he asks for some food and they watch him chew and swallow this ordinary piece of broiled fish, like an ordinary person, that they feel comfortable enough to talk together with him, to begin to embrace the death of what was and start tentatively living into whatever this new resurrection way of being is going to be.
This story reminds us that quite apart from anything we do or don’t do, can or can’t accomplish, God is doing something. God is bringing something new out of impossibility. Hope from emptiness, a future from nothing, life from death: these are what only God can accomplish.
God does not save individual souls for some kind of after-life reward. God awakens people into the ongoing, unfolding salvation of us all.
And when God does it, we don’t scramble to make it so. To live into resurrection, we do two things: First, at some point, we recognize and receive it. And second, right away, we tell each other about it.
Look, could this be God? Jesus is right here! Were not our hearts burning? Is a new thing beginning?
This is how new life, and transformation, and being part of the world’s healing goes.
You get glimpses.
You get warm hearts and aha! moments, and flashes of realization that you’re not alone, and the occasional joy-terror that this is all way beyond you (and also, amazingly, includes you), and that’s about it.
You don’t get ongoing, constant confirmation, or some kind of sure knowledge and security, or escape from suffering, and you don’t get tangible flesh and blood presence of Christ anymore –except you do, only now Christ is present in the bread and wine shared and complicated living and breathing human being right here next to you.
It’s all too much to handle alone, you’ve got to tell others what happened to you on the road, so you hoof it back to the community – wait until you hear what happened to me – bear this with me, hear me out, help me hold the enormity of this, and tell me if I’m crazy. Oh, and also, I believe you now too. And I want to hear your story again because it’s so much like- and so different from - mine. How did the risen Jesus meet you?
And so on the other side of death a new era has begun, and something unstoppable is happening. And in their walking feet, and leaking sadness, and strained voices, and interpreting heads, and listening ears, and burning hearts, and hungry stomachs, and intuitive memory, and honest struggling, and gaping future torn wide open, they are being brought into the Body of Christ, they themselves are becoming the Body of Christ.
Hope is now embodied in and through and between them and their ordinary lives in the world. The life of Christ now lives through them. It’s not theirs to make happen, God is doing this. Even their recognition or not is God’s work. Their eyes were kept from recognizing him, scripture says, their eyes were opened and they recognized him.
This is Church. We need to gather together, we need to hear the others tell how he appeared to this one or that one, in this way or that way, and to admit our own failure to recognize, so that we can help each other watch and be ready to respond when he comes to us, or at least able to say the next time we come together and he is made known to us in the breaking of the bread, Was not my heart burning within me yesterday, when I poured out my grief to a friend who really listened to me? Or I had a quiet moment of stillness and gratitude? Did I not recognize the Lord’s own suffering when I prayed in anguish for all those human siblings being crushed under cruel power and uninhibited evil? Were not my own eyes opened to God right here when I watched the world through the eyes of my tiny grandson for whom every single thing in the world is new, and fascinating, and marvelous? Did I not hear Jesus’ voice in the voice of my next door neighbor as we worked outdoors alongside each other, or in the thick silence as I sat with my cousin in her paralyzing fear and worry? And then we, who have been heard in our story, get to respond to you, in yours, The Lord has Risen Indeed! And he has appeared to me, and to Kristen, and Andrew, and to Sue, and to Georgia, and to Ryan.
And then you or I are not walking alone with a heavy, anxious heart, or busting with new “I just have to share” joy and no one to listen. We are carrying it here, to this community who is saying to back to us – we hear your prayers and lift them with you to God. We’ve seen the Risen Lord, and we will help you watch for him. There is a bigger story, and we will watch for it together.
We are the Body of Christ.
Jesus is here in our midst, made known to us in the breaking of the bread, and because of that, we get to recognize from time to time, like the dawn of a new morning, that he is walking alongside us out there on the journey too. We carry within us the age that is coming, so we live into what will be. It’s hard to see and it’s harder to trust, so we have each other to help watch for and live into what is already unfolding right here.
And this meal we are about to share forms us for the age to come, when there is no more hunger and full community, when the belonging of all to God and one another is complete. The church is just the ordinary people absurdly awaiting and brazenly proclaiming with our lives that the love from which we all came and for which we are all made, is where it is all heading too, so we will live that way right now.
So let us then, the gathered Body of Christ, invite the host to the table set before us, and see what happens next.
Amen.
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