Luke 24:13-35

&nb= sp;

We can recognize the living

Ch= rist every day.

A sermon preached by

Dr. William O. (Bud) R= eeves

First United Methodist Church

Hot= Springs, Arkansas

April 26, 2009

There’s a cu= te story about two priests who decided to go the Hawaii one winter. Their finance cam= paigns were over, and Christmas had been really hectic. They just wanted to get away for a= few days and relax and enjoy the sunny beaches of Hawaii. So they packed their bags, and off they went.

When the two priests a= rrived in Hawaii, they decided that they would leave off their clerical collars and just dress like everyone else. So they w= ent to a clothing store in their hotel and bought some shorts and beach shirts, the wildest Hawaiian prints they could find.&n= bsp; They were so excited to be away from it all, thousands of miles from home, where nobody knew them at all.

But no sooner than the priests had gone out on the beach for a stroll than they saw a pretty young woman in a skimpy bathing suit walking toward them. When she got near them, she said, “Good morning, Father. = Good morning, Father.” And s= he kept on walking down the beach.

The priests couldnR= 17;t believe it. Five thousand mil= es from home, standing on the beach, wearing shorts and casual shirts, and this woman knows they’re priests! <= /span>How could that happen?

Later that day, the pr= iests were out on the beach again, and here came the same young woman, dressed in= the same skimpy bathing suit, right down the beach. This time when she passed them, sh= e said again, "Good afternoon, Father. Good afternoon, Father.”

Now the two priest= s were really frustrated. Here they = were, just trying to have a good time without anybody knowing who they were, and = this woman still knew they were priests. So one of the priests spoke up and said, “Hey! Wait a minute, young lady. Don’t go walking off! How do you know we’re priest= s, anyway?”

The young woman turned around and smiled and said, “Oh, come on, Father! You know me. I’m Sister Angelica from the convent back home!”

It’s hard to ide= ntify someone when they’re out of context, isn’t it? (Especially if you’re not lo= oking at their face.) I often have = this out-of-context experience when I see someone at the grocery store or the gym or some commu= nity event, and I know I know them, but I can’t place them. I’ve probably seen them at c= hurch, but because they are out of context, I can’t identify them.

Cleopas and the other, anonymous disciple had just such an out-of-context experience with Jesus on= the road walking to Emmaus. But t= hen they experienced what I call “the Easter Effect,” and suddenly = they realized who he was. As they = were walking along, a man suddenly joined them and began to ask what they were talking about. They couldn= 217;t believe that this stranger had not heard the news about Jesus of Nazareth.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> They told him what had happened wi= th Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. Then Cleopas said, “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem= Israel.= ” Can you hear the note of despair a= nd disappointment in his voice? = Their hopes of the new kingdom of the Messiah had been dashed. But to make matters even worse, so= me women had come in with a crazy story about Jesus being gone from the tomb a= nd even being alive again. So th= ese men were just getting out of town to try to sort out for themselves all that had happened over the last few days.

Suddenly the stranger = spoke with fire in his tone of voice: “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not nec= essary that the Messiah should suffer all these things and then enter into his glory?”[1] At that moment the stranger b= ecame the teacher, telling the two downcast disciples how all these things had be= en predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. But still they did not recognize him as the risen Jesus.<= /span>

How could they not rec= ognize him? Were they just colossally stupid? I don’t think so. I think they were just colossally broken-hearted. I = think Sister Angelica in her skimpy bathing suit could have walked up to them, and they wouldn’t have noticed! Cleopas and the other disciple were so turned in upon their own grief that they couldn’t see beyond their pain to what was really going on.= Don’t you relate to that? When the burdens of your life have= got you down and you have to duck your head just to get through the day, you don’t pay any attention to new people or new opportunities or new experiences. It’s all y= ou can do just to function in the same old way.&n= bsp; The problem with that defensive way of living is that you may miss t= he resurrection God has in mind for you. You may miss the Easter Effect.

Fortunately for Cl= eopas and his friend, their blindness was not permanent. By the time the stranger had finis= hed explaining the Scriptures to them, they were in Emmaus. They begged him to spend the night= with them, and he agreed to stay. = At supper, they allowed this wise stranger the privilege of blessing the meal.= So he took a loaf of bread and hel= d it up. (Wasn’t that just t= he way Jesus used to do it?) Then he blessed it. (Wasn’t that the prayer Jesus always used?) He broke it into pieces and handed= it out around the table. (There = sure is something familiar about this guy.)&nbs= p; Suddenly they saw the holes in his hands—the mark of the nails! Cleopas and his friend looked at each other and said with one voice, “Jesus!”

Then they looked aroun= d, and he was gone. The remains of t= he bread lay on the plate, but the stranger—Jesus—was nowhere to be seen. Cleopas cried out, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us while he taught us on the road? Oh, how could we have b= een so blind!”

Immediately they jumpe= d up and almost ran all the way back to Jerusalem. When they found the disciples, the= y were already buzzing over the events of the day and how Jesus had appeared to Si= mon Peter. (Don’t you wish = we had a record of that first meeting?= ) Cleopas shared with them what had happened on the road and how they had finally recognized the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread.

So here we are today, = nearly two thousand years later, and we make the same incredible assertion. Jesus is still alive. Jesus is still with us. We can recognize the risen Christ = in our everyday lives, even in something as simple as a meal.

Do you see Jesus in the everyday aspects of your life? That’s how he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection. It wasn’t= in power and glory with legions of angels and blinding lights and all the spec= ial effects of heaven. He walked = with them. He talked with them. He went fishing with them. He ate with them. Could it be that Jesus is still pr= esent in the simple times of our everyday lives?= Does Jesus sit with you when your family gathers around the table fo= r a meal? Does Jesus ride with yo= u in your car? Is Jesus around whe= n you enjoy your recreation? Is he present when you give yourself in service to someone else?

I read a kitchen plaqu= e on somebody’s wall somewhere that had these words on it: “Christ is the Head of this House, the Unseen Guest at every Meal, the Silent Listener= in Every Conversation.” Wo= uld that not transform our daily existence into an experience of the holy in our midst, if we took that statement seriously? That’s what happened in the = resurrection. Jesus not only broke the bonds of = death; he also transcended the boundaries of space and time. The risen Christ is with us—= at every meal, in every conversation with our kids, as we sit around the break table at work, as we sit in class at school, as we enjoy our recreational activities—Jesus is there with us.

All of life, therefore= , is a spiritual experience. That= 217;s the Easter Effect. The French theologian Teilhard de Chardin once said that we are not physical beings ha= ving a spiritual experience so much as we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. Father Gerald Web= er put it this way:

Spiritual experiences are not a matter of finding God, nor are they a matter of waiti= ng till God fairly screams, “Look, here I am!” Spiritual experiences surround us.= We fall over them dozens of times a day. We can’t avoid the= m if we try. A spiritual experienc= e is simply a matter of recognizing and acknowledging our relationship to God in whatever is going on in our lives at the moment. God is involved in all we do and d= oes not pop in and out of our lives. We live surrounded by God. We li= ve and breathe God just as we live and breathe air. To know that either air or God is present, we need only to pause and reflect for an instant to see that we are immersed in them.[2]

In a more poetic way, Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote in her poem “Aurora Leigh,”

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.[3= ]

B= lackberries are good, and sometimes we need to enjoy the simple pleasures—the bla= ckberries—of life. But there is also a dee= per reality in everyday living, a spiritual dimension, a presence of the risen Christ. If we can open up our eyes to see with the eyes of faith, then we w= ill walk with God every day.

O= ne of the saints of spiritual life was a Carmelite monk in the 17^th century named Nicholas Herman. He is better known as Brother Lawrence, and his contribution to the history of Christian spirituality is called The Practice of the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence was a cook in the kitchen of the monastery in France = where he lived. Even though he spent h= is days in manual labor and menial tasks, he developed a faith that “practiced the presence of God” whatever he was doing. He said, “The time of action= is not different from that of prayer. I enjoy God with as great tranquility in= the hurry of my kitchen, where frequently many people call upon me at the same = time for different things, as if I was on my knees at the holy Sacrament.”= = = [4= ]

W= hat if we could practice the presence of God in our kitchen, in our office, in our classroom, in our family room?<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> Wouldn’t that make a differe= nce in the way we see reality? Wouldn’t that make a difference in the way we experience life? Again, Brother Lawrence says: “There is not in the world a kind of li= fe more sweet and more delightful than that of a continual walk with God; those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it.”= = [5= ]

If you want to exp= erience life in all its abundance, one of the most important mental and spiritual shifts you can make is to realize and to practice the presence of Christ in your life at all moments of the day, wherever you are and whatever you̵= 7;re doing. Then, acknowledging the presence of Christ in your life, you can become the presence of Christ in t= he life of someone else. This is= the full Easter Effect: to realize the living presence of the risen Christ, and then= to become the embodiment of his Spirit in the world. You can represent the living Christ. You can be the way so= meone else knows he’s for real. How’s that for an opportunity of a lifetime!

This opportunity came = as a phone call for a man named Jack Stevens.&n= bsp; This Jack Stevens was not the late Arkansas financier, but a young Christian businessman in Atlanta. He got a call one day from a friend of his who directed a local Boys’ Club. His friend = asked Jack if he could pick up a young boy and his mother and take them to the hospital. The boy had leukemi= a and probably only had a few days to live. Since the kid lived just a few blocks from Jack’s office, Jack agreed to the request. In a little while the boy’s = mother was sitting in the front seat of Jack’s nice new car. The little boy was so weak that he= was lying down, his head in his mother’s lap, his little feet resting on Jack’s right leg. After starting the motor, Jack glanced down at the boy, and for the first time, t= heir eyes met. The boy was staring intently at him.

Then he asked, “Mister, are you God?”

Jack hesitated, then answered softly, “No, son, I’m not. Why do you ask?”<= /span>

“Because Momma s= aid God would soon come and take me with him,” the boy said. His words nearly broke Jack’s heart.

Six days later, the li= ttle fellow did go to be with God. But in that six days, a radical change took place in Jack Stevens’ life.<= span style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> The picture of that young boy lyin= g with his head in his mother’s lap, the eyes of that helpless child, and the plaintive question, “Are you God?”—these images became bu= rned forever into Jack’s heart and mind.&= nbsp; He knew he had to do more with his life than he had been doing. Just making money was not enough a= ny more. Soon Jack Stevens was t= he director of the Joseph B. Whitehead Memorial Boys’ Club in Atlanta, giving h= is life to make better lives for the children of the city. The presence of the living Christ = became real in the way Jack shared his love with those kids. Jack experienced the Easter Effect= .

You can be sure of this today: Christ is alive. Chris= t is with us. If we see with the e= yes of faith, we can recognize him in the everyday experiences of life. We can help someone else experience the reality of the risen Christ. That’s the Easter Effect. May your heart burn within you, be= cause Jesus is near. Amen!