I was in a Balducci's supermarket this past week, and I noticed they still had Easter candy on sale at half price. I was sorely tempted to buy a chocolate-covered coconut Easter egg, something that was always part of Easter when I was a child, but I resisted the temptation. Maybe storeowners have a hard time letting go of Easter because it's a long time until Memorial Day, when they can sell flags. This year is unusual in that Passover is almost a month later than our date for Easter. The Eastern Orthodox Church celebrates Easter on April 27, five weeks after our celebration of it.
The lectionary of Scripture readings for this time of year holds us on Easter day for at least three Sundays. And that's a good thing. Easter is the foundation of our faith, and the Gospels are rich in narratives that focus on Jesus' resurrection. For the last two Sundays we have heard about Easter experiences recorded in the fourth Gospel, the Gospel according to John, and in the third Gospel, the Gospel according to Luke. Today we heard another Easter experience from Luke's Gospel—his great Easter story about the Road to Emmaus.
On the afternoon of the first Easter, "two of them"—meaning followers of Jesus, were walking away from Jerusalem on the road that led to Emmaus, thought to be a town seven and a half miles west-northwest of the city. They were talking about the things that had happened during the weekend, as we would say. A mysterious stranger overtook them, and initiated conversation.
That encourages me. The God of the Bible is an active God. That is why I like to begin worship services with the words Let us worship the living, loving God. God is active, alive, seeking to connect with us.
In the story the one we know to be the risen Christ asked the travelers what they were talking about. What do we talk about? We don't have to be serious all the time, but we don't need to be trivial, or worse, self-absorbed or demeaning all the time either. A study edition of the Bible uses the title On the Road as its heading for our story: On the Road to Emmaus. But On the Road is also the title of a book that had a strong influence on my generation. Jack Kerouac published On the Road in 1957, and it became the defining novel for what came to be known as "the beat generation." On the Road described a rootless life, marked by disillusion and despair. Its language was coarse; its conversations narcissistic. I sometimes think God has a hard time getting through to us when we're so obsessed with ourselves, when our conversations are so limited.
Jesus joined the travelers in our story. He initiated conversation with them and engaged them in a discussion about messianic hope and fulfillment. The time must have passed quickly, and soon the three people were at the village where two of them expected to spend the night—an inn or a private home—we do not know which, only that it was in Emmaus. Jesus acted as though he were going further. The other two invited him to be their guest for the night. "Stay with us, because it is almost evening." Traveling in the dark was not very safe in those days. "Stay with us."
The first verse of a familiar hymn is based on their invitation to Jesus.
Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide.
Stay with us; abide with us.
The two travelers extended hospitality to Jesus, and he accepted. Hospitality is highly valued in Middle Eastern culture—which makes the present Israeli-Arab conflict even more tragic.
My understanding of hospitality has been shaped by at least two things, the first of which I have talked about before. In a negative way, my understanding of hospitality was affected by an experience I had in 1971, when Nancy, our daughter Jennifer, and I took our first trip to Europe. We stayed for a week with friends in Holland who are not churchgoers. On Sunday they suggested to me that if I wanted to attend a worship service, there was a Protestant church down the street. I was glad to have the opportunity to attend a Dutch church, so I went. No one welcomed me; no one smiled at me. In fact, people looked away from me, and when the offering was taken the person on my left reached the plate over me to the person on my right. As I made my way down the aisle to leave, people looked away. The minister greeted me warmly at the door after the service, but the damage had been done. Later I realized that the people acted out of shyness rather than hostility, but I left that church experience vowing that any congregation I was connected with would never treat a visitor the way I had been treated that day. Since then hospitality has been a high priority in my ministry for more than thirty-six years, and it will always be so—in part because of an experience in a Dutch church..
Ironically, a Dutch priest and theologian Henri Nouwen has been the positive influence in my understanding of what Christian hospitality can be. Through his writing he has helped me understand hospitality as providing safe space, sometimes literally and sometimes figuratively, to travelers on the journey of life—space where it is safe to be oneself, space where it is safe to do the difficult work of changing and growing, space where people can wrestle with the great questions about God, life, death, and destiny, space where it is safe to heal from whatever wounds us on our travels. On Good Morning America just a few hours ago a woman talked about how long it takes to recover from abusive religion, from the negative brain-washing practiced by various churches and sects. People searching for meaning will not likely spend much time in churches that wrangle over what kind of music is appropriate for worship, or obsess about a narrow definition of marriage. People searching for meaning need safe space—hospitality.
In Luke's story there is an interesting reversal, not unusual in Gospel narratives. Jesus the guest became Jesus the host to the two people who had offered him hospitality. When the three people were at a table, Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to the other two. And the text says, "Their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight." Deeply spiritual experiences can be like that—fleeting, transitory. But they are very real.
The two people were not so much disappointed at Jesus' disappearance as they were comforted and exhilarated by his living presence. "Did not our hearts burn within us he talked with us on the road," they said. Memory was the basis of their joy. They got up from the table and returned to Jerusalem so that they could tell the other disciples what they had experienced. They entered a new way of experiencing life as they remembered how their hearts had burned. It wasn't so much that they had an explanation of how Jesus was able to be with them after his crucifixion. It was that they had a story to tell, and so they told it.
That says to me that an Easter perspective can change the way anyone experiences life. Nobody can control all the things that will happen in life. But we can control the way we handle whatever happens. The friends and followers of Jesus were like the two travelers, plodding along in desolation after his death by crucifixion. The risen Christ overtook them, and they became hopeful and energetic, open to new possibilities rather than being paralyzed by fear and grief. They had a story to tell. As Maya Angelou says, "A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song."
During this past week as I was thinking about this sermon and the Emmaus Road story, I overheard a young woman talking on her cell phone at the next table in Starbucks. She was talking to her father, and her voice reminded me of my daughter, who as you know, died in 1999. More than once the young woman said "Dad!" just as my daughter used to do. For quite some time after Jenny died, I dreaded hearing a daughter say "Dad" to her father. But this past week I found myself smiling as I sat in Starbucks, remembering the good times of the past, the times my heart burned within me because I was so happy. Because of Easter my heart burns in a different way. It burns with the quiet confidence that death does not have the last word. The last word belongs to the God of life and love.
The God of Easter keeps coming to us in different ways, through prayer and meditation, through the breaking of bread and sharing a cup, through the lives of other people, through being in a safe and welcoming place. The risen Christ is larger than our understanding of him. He will not be contained in theological statements, however carefully we may write them. But he is as close to us as the air we breathe. He warms our hearts, gives us comfort, and strengthens us for the work of hospitality and peace with justice in the world. He offers us a way of living that is filled with endless possibilities. He invites us to be Easter people, and for me that has made all the difference.