THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER
April 10, 2005
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
The Very Rev. M. Anthony Seel, Jr.
Luke 24:13-35
"Easter in Us"
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote a poem in memory of five Franciscan sisters who drowned when a ship named the Deutschland went down. In the 35th and final stanza of this poem, Hopkins writes about Jesus Christ, “let him easter in us.” Hopkins uses the noun Easter is used as a verb, and it is this striking use that has evoked comment from Methodist Bishop William Willimon.
Willimon asks, “what could be less like us than Easter? What could be further removed from who we are and where we live than Easter?” [Pulpit Resource, 4/99, 16]
As Willimon suggests, nothing could be further from our everyday thoughts and experience than the high-flying wonders of Easter: resurrection, immortality, eternal life and the rest of it. Which is why it is good to look at a gospel story that meets us at road level. On Easter Day, two followers of Christ left Jerusalem to travel to Emmaus, a village about 7 miles from Jerusalem. Along the way, Cleopas and his companion, possibly his wife, talked what had happened in Jerusalem.
Along the way, they discussed Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion. They discussed what they had heard about earlier that day, that some women had gone to the tomb were Jesus was laid and discovered that it was empty. Furthermore, these same women said that they had seen "a vision of angels" at the tomb who said that Jesus was alive. As they talked and walked on the road to Emmaus, a third traveler joined them.
Here are two followers of Christ who have left Jerusalem disappointed. They are discouraged about what has happened to Jesus and they have discounted the story they heard about His resurrection. They were headed out of town and there was no Easter in them. They once had hope that Jesus was the One who would redeem Israel, but now their hopes were dashed, and they were in despair.
Luke tells us that "their eyes were kept from recognizing" Jesus as He walks with them, and they replay their conversation to Him as they travel. Jesus has some sharp words for them after they complete their sad story.
vv. 25-26 And he said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" and beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them from the Hebrew Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Cleopas and his traveling partner remarked later about this experience, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
They continued walking as Jesus taught them, and they came to Emmaus. Jesus indicated that He was going to journey beyond Emmaus, but His two followers pleaded with Him to stay the night with them, and He agreed to do so. During the evening meal, Jesus "took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them" (v. 30). It is through the taking, blessing, breaking and giving of the bread that the two disciples recognize Jesus. Although Jesus is the guest, He takes on the role of host at dinner.
As we see in this wonder-filled and much-beloved story, it was in the breaking of bread that Cleopas and his fellow traveler come to understand that Jesus their Lord is with them. In this regard, I love what that great German Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer has to say about table fellowship. Bonhoeffer says in his little book, Life Together:
The Scriptures speak of three kinds of table fellowship that Jesus
keeps with his own: daily fellowship at table, the table fellowship
of the Lord’s Supper, and the final table fellowship in the Kingdom
of God. But in all three the one that counts is that “their eyes were
opened, and they knew him.” [p. 66]
In that brief meal that they share with Jesus, “their eyes were opened.” In the simple act of sitting down together with Jesus to share a meal, “their eyes were opened, and they knew him.” Easter came to these two disciples later than for those who stayed in Jerusalem, but Easter did come to them, thanks be to God.
In the Emmaus Road story, we find two important elements of Christian worship. First, Jesus opens the Word of God to His fellow travelers. “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted the things about himself in all the scriptures.”
While we read together more Scripture in our services than any other church, even in Episcopal or Anglican worship, in our sermons and homilies we do not interpret everything pertaining to Jesus from the Hebrew Scriptures. But in every season other than Easter, we do include an Old Testament reading and a psalm. In the Easter season, we read the great witness to Jesus by the apostles in the Book of Acts for our first reading. Secondly, every Sunday we read a New Testament lesson and a Gospel lesson. Afterwards, the Word of God is interpreted in the sermon.
I hope that you have experienced the heartburn that Cleopas mentions as Jesus interpreted the Scriptures on the Emmaus Road. It is an enthralling experience. The catechism in our prayer book tells us that we call the Scriptures the Word of God “because God still speaks to us through the Bible.” The experience of God speaking to us can be close to overwhelming. It is certainly an experience that we can pray for as we encounter God’s Word whether in church or in our private devotions.
The first important element of our weekly Christian worship is the liturgy of the word. The second important element is communion. With two of His disciples in Emmaus, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to His companions. In the sharing of this meal, Jesus is revealed. He’d been there the whole time, but through the sacred meal His presence is understood. God’s presence is experienced in the interpretation of the Scriptures and in the sacred meal that Jesus shares with two of His followers. Through the Word and Sacred Meal, Easter entered Cleopas and his companion.
When does Easter enter us?
In preparation for our Vestry Retreat in January, thirty members of our parish were asked to complete a questionnaire. From those questionnaires, Fr. Bob Haskell of the Diocese of Albany put together a Church Profile for St. Andrew’s. The Church Profile presents eight areas of parish life and interprets the answers given on the questionnaire to assess the strengths and weaknesses of our parish.
The questionnaire is the first step in an approach to church health called Natural Church Development. NCD calls the weakest area the "minimum factor," and as a congregation works on this area the overall health of the congregation is raised. The area that the questionnaire identified for us as our minimum factor is "Passionate Spirituality."
Natural Church Development characterizes passionate spirituality as being grounded in prayer, and marked by enthusiasm and boldness. When was the last time you heard someone speak about an Episcopal Church using the words enthusiasm or boldness? You know that we are often called God’s frozen chozen.
You would think that a tradition that is rooted in a prayer book would be a praying tradition, but sometime the prayer book can actually be a hindrance to an active prayer life for Episcopalians. It is easy to read prayers but not actually enter into a spirit of prayer. The kind of formality and standardization that is part of prayer book worship in the Episcopal Church can lend itself to dispassionate spirituality. It is easy to mouth the words and not be engaged with the what the liturgy is intended to lead us into, which is engagement with God.
There is an antidote to this problem. The antidote is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the power of God that makes the Word of God alive to us. It is the Holy Spirit that makes real to us the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. It is the Spirit of God that puts Easter in us. Through the Holy Spirit we can come together Sunday by Sunday and find the Emmaus Road experience of knowing the presence of our risen Lord with us in the Word and Sacrament that we share.
The Emmaus Road experience shows us that passionate spirituality is rooted in the personal experience of Jesus Christ in Word and Sacrament. Worship at its best is experiencing the presence of God.
Easter in us is more than just a phrase from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. It is what God wants to do in all of us. Easter in us is the resurrection power of life that God desires to place in every Christian’s heart. God generally doesn’t do this unless we are open to it.
Let us pray that God puts Easter in each of us, and through His presence in us, may God’s glory be revealed in the world. In the words of the poem, “let him easter in us.”
Let us pray.
Almighty God, who has caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, and whose Son our Lord Jesus Christ has in a wonderful Sacrament left us a memorial of his passion: Grant us the fullness of your grace to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, and to follow daily in the blessed steps of his most holy life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
