“Experience the Routine of the Resurrection”
Scripture Reading: Luke 24:13-35
Sermon Transcript for April 6, 2008
By Pastor Bob Coleman
As Ellis just prayed a prayer of thankfulness for the return of spring, when we went out to Iowa last week they still had the remnants of 55” of snow. Piles of sand everywhere because they ran out of the ice melt. When they left it was just as winter-looking as when we came. Coming back to see green grass, knowing I’ll probably have to mow it by the end of the week, puts us in to the spring feeling indeed! That’s a routine that happens this time of year. We expect it. It’s been two weeks since Easter and we’re past what we consider the watershed celebration and event in the whole history of Christianity. The whole purpose of God’s plan and purpose in Jesus Christ. Not the crucifixion, but the resurrection. Now you have to go through the crucifixion to get to the resurrection that is true.
The followers of Jesus on that Easter-time, and the days following in particular, were experiencing the routine of loss—the heartache, the disappointment. It didn’t feel much routine, but as we see in recording the scripture almost of them go back to something they can count on. The fishermen go back to fish. Maybe Matthew went back to collect taxes we don’t know; it doesn’t say. But today’s Scripture, when we get to it in a moment, will be talking about two people who are dealing with that in a personal way. The followers of Jesus in the Scripture today had just experienced the death of Jesus, the destruction of all they had hoped for. They were living out in His death their own disappointment of their death to come, coping with it the best way that they could that any of us can. Just like Kevin Findley with his father, Dewey with his brother, Joyce with her mother, Opal with her daughter, Lloyd with his mother. It goes on; it’s the routine. We lose a father or brother or mother, it’s not something we want. The failing of airline companies and bankruptcies, the loss of homes—these are not what we want but they do point us to moments that we may reach most to seek something beyond ourselves. Because when things are going well, when you get up and you go to work or school or to the routine in your retirement and it’s sort of an average day, you probably do not think all that much about God. It’s when something happens to us that we may be pushed to that.
Psalm 116, parts of which we heard today, and other parts of it talk greatly, there are fifteen references in that whole Psalm about death and destruction and men being liars and those disappointments of life, just as the crucifixion would be. But it leads us in that psalmist to the phrase “For you O Lord have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living.” We must live in the land of the living and the living contains joys and sufferings. We cannot ignore or get away from those. Eugene Peterson says, “How do we live in the world that is filled in that way and seems so disconnected from the living God?” What we need to do is to recognize first the truth in reality. The land of living is peppered with potential disconnection from God, disappointments, terrible actions of humans, heartaches, destructions by both natural and other means. Those early disciples experienced just like what we experience the rough edges of life.
There is an understanding, though, that routine also applies to resurrection. Now granted, we have just one day a year, but in truth we are to live as resurrected people the rest of our days. As we will now go through the Scripture for this morning of Luke 24:13-35, known as the Emmaus Road experience, I want us to listen for that mix of feelings and what the people did with that. Cleopas and either his friend or his wife, it does not say.
13Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; 16but they were kept from recognizing him.
17He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?"
They stood still, their faces downcast. 18One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"
19"What things?" he asked.
"About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. 20The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; 21but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”
There is the routine of disappointment. As soon as you’ve put all of your faith and strength and hope in somebody else, inevitably they will disappoint you. When you put all of your strength and hope in yourself, inevitably you will disappoint yourself. It’s who we are; we are broken people. It’s part of what life is. But they go on in Scripture,
“And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. 22In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning 23but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. 24Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."
They were walking in the presence of the resurrection, but they still yet could not see what they were experiencing. They were in the land of the living with the disappointment but the routineness of resurrection around them and present with them in Jesus they do not yet capture even though they have heard from friends what the friends now believed. But they could not accept it.
So Jesus responds,
25He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?" 27And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”
He showed them, Jesus did, in that experience recorded here, that the event of Jesus’ death was not a new event. It was something to be expected, anticipated; in fact, necessary. But it was an experience tied to God’s involvement in all of life. For God is there in the midst and in the presence of the valleys of the shadows of death and disappointment as well as in the joyful experience of the resurrection. It’s a fulfillment, this event through Jesus, a fulfillment of what God had been doing all along. Continuing on with the Scripture,
28As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther. 29But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.
Was that typical, mid-eastern hospitality, not letting a stranger go on by themselves in the dark? Possibly, maybe something said this was more than just a stranger but a special person. Continuing on,
30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.” It is no small phrase that He breaks the bread. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"
33They got up, returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together 34and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” 35Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when He broke the bread.
They sought to recapture the routine, to go back home to Emmaus, to take that stroll of nearly seven miles, to walk the whole way because there is no other way but to go forward in life. But they found in that routine of the walk, to find the routine of the resurrection. Because the resurrection is not captured for one moment in time or one day or one event, it is something that you live in all experiences. In fact, the most challenging piece for us is that when something painful or disruptive happens to us, we may have one of several responses. We tend to seek the old, familiar, and the comfortable. We need to have something routine in our life by which we can hold on. Pictures, what we do with pictures at the time of a funeral, if you have them available most people will display them. It’s the recounting of history. You tell the stories about the life of the person because it’s recounting of history, holding on to that which you know, something to give you hope, promise or at least comfort. But even at that moment, though you may ask questions that are a challenge to our beliefs, ones we’ve held on to, particularly if it is a sudden death of a young person. We need something beyond ourselves to make sense. So we try to hold on, to grab back in to that routine.
One of the responses to grief is to get back in to work, to get back in to something routine so you can feel like there is normalcy in your life. And there is good advice to that. It’s the truth. But what we tend to do is we ignore what we can find there—that God is in that routine. God is in our workplace. God is at school. God is where God is all over in every place and every time. But we are blinded to it because of our grief. What God provides for us through the routineness of the resurrection is a doorway through which we can pass that opens up to living the resurrected life. Jesus becomes an open window through which we can see clearly what God has been saying all along. And we understand the setting of the sorrow as well as the joy in the whole of life.
For you see, resurrection life is not something yet to obtain when we die our physical death. The resurrection life is with us now. It is to be received as only God can give it. But we must live it and anticipate it and experience it. The resurrection life is here and now in our daily lying down and our waking up. The resurrection life is found in the ordinary and the routine. Even when we experience pain and heartache and disappointment, Christ is there raised from the dead. As we walk through the valley of the shadow of death or in the height of the mountains, it all makes sense when we know that Christ is there with us. In the breaking of the bread and the common meal of life, each time we sit down together and eat, the Lord is there and the routine of the resurrection can be lived.
That’s why God placed in Deuteronomy 6:4-8 particular verses that are known as the “Shema”. “4Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. 6These commandments I give you this day so that they are upon your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. (Teach them one translation says) Talk about them when you sit at home, when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.”
This was foundational for the faith that Jesus was saying, “It’s that routine”. The gift of God is as close as God is which is every where and every time. We have numerous gatherings around meals when we celebrated Anita’s life and death and life to come. The resurrected Lord was there because we anticipated it. These next two weeks we’ll have two luncheons where we are inviting the congregation to come together for a meal; two opportunities and two ways to recognize the resurrected Lord as being present. There will be opportunities, even today or tonight, to break bread with someone. You will go eat someplace and share it with some one I trust. The Christ will be there, the resurrected Lord. The routineness of the resurrection is in the breaking of that bread. Maybe you will take a nap this afternoon or make a funeral call or play a game with your children or grandchildren. You will experience the living resurrection in that routine. Call a friend, take a walk, notice the daffodils, the other flowers. When you prepare for bed this evening, take a moment to accept the routineness of that but also to experience the living resurrection. When you awake and go to work tomorrow or to school or to the routine of your retirement, the Lord will be there also. Look for Him and the routine of the resurrection will be available to you. All of these are places and times and events where God will be present, but we need to open our eyes to see, to experience. God is showing us the gloriousness in the routine and the routine may be for you a resurrection.
There was a question asked by an old scoffer who doubted the Christian faith and he said, “Well, how do you know that Christ has risen?” And the response was, “Because I have been with Him this morning, afternoon and evening and He will be with me all through the night.” The believer can live in the resurrection with the living Savior and that’s the gift that we have. It’s important then that as we, in a moment, share what can be for some of you the routine of the sacrament of communion. It is both routine and special and glorious at the same moment. For in the breaking of the bread, in the singing of the birds outside, in the person sitting next to you, in the awareness of the sorrow of your own sin or the sin or someone else in your life and the forgiveness of that sin, that routine is the resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ. Don’t take anything for granted but recognize in the routine of your life that Christ is there. That’s when God becomes most important to us. Oh, yes, we need Him in the hour of our pain and our sorrow and we might remember Him in our joy and our celebration, but as we breathe in, as we breathe out may be experience the routine of the resurrection.
E-mail Comments to: Pastor Bob Coleman