Sermon - Seeing With New Eyes

Preached on April 26, 2009 at First Congregational Church of Tallmadge, Ohio, UCC.
Luke 24:30-48

I want you to think about that moment, which is a very particular kind of moment, near the end of a good mystery novel or a suspenseful movie, which is the moment when you finally learn what you have been trying to figure out the entire time. It may be the identity of the murderer, or of the spy working inside the agency. Or it may be a moment of revelation that you didn’t see coming, only because you didn’t know what to look for. Whatever the revelation, it is a moment that changes the way you understand everything that came before. As you think back on each scene and every part of the plot, you see everything differently.

This is the moment that is described twice in the Luke’s gospel on the evening of Easter. It happened the first time for the two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus and invited him to eat with them, and it happened a second time for the rest of the disciples back in Jerusalem when the risen Christ visits them. Both times, the disciples have trouble recognizing Jesus or believing that it’s him. The larger group in Jerusalem are described in this strange way: “they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement.” What an interesting way to describe their mix of emotions: they disbelieved in joy and amazement. Both groups have trouble, and both times, Jesus opens their minds to understand the scriptures, going back to Moses, the prophets, and the psalms. He goes back to the scriptures to make the point that they should have expected resurrection. Even in that dark weekend, when their teacher had been killed and they feared arrest themselves, they should have trusted that God’s word of life, of love and grace, is the last word, always. They should have trusted, because that has always been the story told of God, from Moses, to the psalms, to the prophets, who wrote of hope even when they were in exile, and their home and Temple in ruins. The disciples were met by the risen Christ, and that was the moment that changed the way they understood all of history that had come before. It changed the way they understood life itself.

These stories from the gospel make me wonder how we understand life. What is our basic operating understanding of how life works? There is, on the one hand, the answer that we see in the person of Jesus Christ. But there is also a basic understanding that many of us live with, which says that most, if not all, of life is left to chance, luck, and forces beyond our control. See if this resonates with you. Life is an attempt to build and protect our experience of happiness, security, peace, and health. We plan for our future and build a good life in a struggle against a hostile world. First, there is the threat of economic crisis, in which our retirement plans are rewritten and our jobs threatened, all because of the actions of executives and/or elected politicians who did things (or didn’t) in ways that we can’t even understand. We try to protect ourselves from violence at home or abroad, except that we don’t really understand where that comes from either or how to prevent it. And we try to keep our health, but how do you protect yourself from diseases that are unpredictable in where and when they begin, and whether or not they will be treatable?

So much is out of our control. But, we are Americans, so we are optimistic that we can hold economic hardship, violence, and disease at bay for while if we just work hard enough, make the right choices, and get a little bit of luck. Maybe God will even help us out a bit on the part that’s left to chance. Notice how, in this view, the emphasis is on what we can do for ourselves.

But is this what life is about, carving out a bit of peace and happiness against a hard and challenging world? And what happens if that doesn’t work? What happens if we do all the right things and still meet hardship? Will we be left feeling like Macbeth after all his efforts to secure his throne, when his tragedy closes in, who says:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing. (Macbeth Act V, Scene V)

There are times when life feels that way, and that’s probably how it felt to the disciples that Sunday long ago. They had followed Jesus, trusting that they would make a difference, but in the end the powers of the empire, and the priests and politicians of privilege who thrived under the status quo had been too strong for a rabbi and a small band of disciples who healed illnesses one at a time, proclaimed good news for the poor, fed the hungry, and proclaimed a new order by sharing table hospitality with mixed classes and characters. It seemed like they had lost, that life was a tale told by an idiot. It seemed like that so much that they didn’t even recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, and didn’t really believe it when they saw him back in Jerusalem. Not at first, anyway. But then came that one luminous moment. Then came that moment that changed the way they understood all that had happened, and life itself.

Those first two disciples finally recognized Jesus when they had stopped for a meal and invited him to join them at the table. When they saw him break the bread and share it with them, in that moment they knew that it was Jesus, and even when he mysteriously disappeared from that place, they said to each other, “were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” In a moment, they understood everything differently.

The moment is less dramatic in the room back in Jerusalem. But notice the chain of events that Luke tells so carefully. At first, the disciples are terrified, thinking that he is a ghost. Jesus tells them not to be afraid, but to see his wounds. Next comes that great line about how “they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement.” And then Jesus asks for something to eat, and they have fish, and over this meal he opens to them the scriptures, to show how God has always been present in this world. If they had viewed the world from this perspective, they would have expected the resurrection.

Eating bread and eating fish. Those were the moments that changed the way the disciples understood the world. I think there’s a clue here, because in the life of Jesus, the table had always been a central symbol of the kingdom of God. He fed bread and fish to the crowds when he taught them, that we might understand that the teaching of Christ is food for our souls. Jesus was criticized for eating with sinners, and in response he told the parable of the prodigal son, to show us how great God’s love is for every single child. He broke bread at the last supper and said it was his body, to show how completely God reaches out to us in mercy, to show that not even life itself is too great a cost for God’s love.

I bet that all those memories came back to them as they shared those meals with the risen Jesus. In a moment, they realized that these gifts were what life is really about. Life is not a treacherous battle against threats to carve out some happiness. Rather, life is a wonderful, beautiful gift. Life is full of chances to share what we are blessed with around tables with family, friends, neighbors, and even strangers. And where there is suffering, where there are challenges, these are places where the love that we celebrate is put to best use, where it matters most. Notice how this view begins with the gracious gifts of God, not dependent on our achievement.

The thing about the resurrection moment is that it doesn’t change the circumstances of our lives. It doesn’t do away with pain and suffering, and it doesn’t add to our pantries or bank accounts. But it does affect the way that we see and understand our circumstances. Our faith does not deny that suffering and injustice are still present, for now. But we also proclaim that the kingdom of God is not put on hold until we die and enter heaven. When life is understood as a gift of love, then we discover what Jesus said, that the kingdom of God is among us. William Sloan Coffin, minister at Riverside church in New York, described the difference between viewing life as a threatening and viewing it as a gift, and tells us what is needed to make the shift.

“As I see it,” he said, “the primary religious task these days is to try to think straight....You can't think straight with a heart full of fear, for fear seeks safety, not truth. If your heart's a stone, you can't have decent thoughts--either about personal relations or about international ones. A heart full of love, on the other hand, has a limbering effect on the mind."

Instead of viewing life as a series of threats against which we strive for happiness, we suddenly understand that life is a blessing of grace that helps us to meet the times of tragedy. I believe that there are moments that come to each of us, which have the power to reveal life as it really is, and to affect they way we live in every other moment. These moments are sacred. They fill us with love, and from then on, everything looks different. I’ve heard it said that maybe heaven isn’t a different place, it’s just a new set of lenses to see the place where we are. There’s some truth to that. So may God give us a new way of seeing everything that has come before, and everything that is yet to be, and most of all this sacred, present moment.