A Sermon by Pastor Tom Lacey . . .

BREAKFAST WITH JESUS

Luke 24:13-35, Preached at Congregational Church of Boca Raton, April 15, 2007

There's a story told of a town that put together its own Good Friday processional. The man chosen to portray Jesus was a burly truck driver. He was far from "meek and mild!" Still, he wore the clothing of Jesus, put the crown of thorns upon his head and dragged a rugged, wooden cross. Another man played the Roman centurion. He also got into his part. As the truck driver Jesus walked by, the centurion jeered him, mocked him, struck him and even spat in his face. This was more than the truck driver playing Jesus could stand! He turned to the man portraying the centurion and vowed angrily, "I'll be back to deal with you after the Resurrection!" 

Our text this morning is about seeing things as they really are. As the prophet Elisha in the Old Testament prayed, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see,” so his servant could see that the hills around them were filled with horses and chariots of fire, we also need our eyes to be opened. We generally see whatever we have been taught to see, which is why “the apple, or the nut, doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Of course as we grow up we start to see things more with our own eyes and from our experience, and less from our parents and teachers. Still what we expect to be there is what we end up seeing, like the young pastor who was asked by the local funeral director to hold a graveside burial service for someone with no family or friends. He started out early but quickly got himself lost, making several wrong turns. A half-hour late turning into the cemetery, he spotted a backhoe and its crew, but the hearse was nowhere in sight, and the workmen were eating lunch. The diligent young pastor went to the open grave and found the vault lid already in place. Taking out his book, he read the service and preached an impassioned and lengthy sermon, sending the deceased to the great beyond in style. As he was returning to his car, however, he overheard one of the workmen say, “I’ve been putting in septic tanks for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like that.”

What we want to see this morning is that it’s very important for us to take another look.

As scripture says, “The Lord will lighten my darkness,” but we have to be willing to look at things as they really are. A pastor remembers this story about an Israeli army soldier. “One day he was on patrol in an area of occupied Palestine when he felt a rock strike him in the back. Before he had a chance to turn around, another rock had struck him in the shoulder, then another hit his helmet. He whirled around, his rifle ready to fire. In his sights were several Palestinian children. Children. They were picking up more stones to throw at him. The soldier did not want to fire, but he could not allow them to attack him again. Suddenly, he had an idea. He bent down and picked up three of the rocks. He picked them up and began to juggle. Yes, juggle. The children were mesmerized and forgot about their stones. The soldier did a few tricks, the children laughed; he did a grand finale, and they applauded. He took a bow and walked away.”

Don’t let your physical eyes fool you. We have to be willing to see through things and look past others: “We walk by faith, not by sight.” 2 Corinthians 5.7 Sometimes our loved ones say things to us that they don’t mean. Look past the words. Don’t take things personally; it’s not about you nearly as much as it’s about him or her. Call them on the words, but don’t cause them more pain. Our children or someone else we care about, may be putting on a false front, a show of bravery in the face of fear, a mask of indifference in the face of hurt, we need to see through these. Don’t let people fake you out. Try to see what’s really going on. Take a moment to really take a look and then respond to what’s real. Though it’s true that first impressions are lasting, they may not be the truest.

Look at our disciples on their way to Emmaus. Jesus is right in front of them, but they are blind to him. It’s not until much later on, during the breaking of the bread, that they recognize him. It was at that moment when he took the bread and broke it that they knew he was their Lord. You would think they would have recognized him while he was explaining the Scriptures. Their hearts had burned with excitement as he interpreted the passages to them; that should have been indication enough that this Stranger was their Lord. Come to think of it, we might have expected that the two men would have recognized Jesus at the moment he joined them. It’s the kind of instance when you expect a miracle: two people walking in loneliness and need, talking about their Lord, and lo, he appears. And of course, they recognize him. But it didn’t happen that way. Instead, Jesus was revealed to them when he broke the bread. You see, that’s because words aren’t enough. You can’t read the Bible and just get it. The Bible is not the dictionary, where you can simply read words and that’s all it is.

It takes something more. Just walking with him isn’t enough, in the sense of just coming to church or calling ourselves Christian. It’s not in the building or in a word.
It takes something more. We don’t just follow the words of Christ, we follow the risen life.

Ours isn’t a book to read alone, but a life to recognize. After all, what does it matter if you can read the words, but miss the worth? The Christian life is life with a living Lord. So come alive. Catch the resurrected spirit. Claim the power of being a Christian. There is strength in that name.

Don Marquis, the New York newspaperman in the 1920s, loved to tell this story, which was passed on by Dr. Francis Leo Dolden:  "Marquis was laid low with a heart attack. It was urgent that he be taken to a hospital at once. All the ambulances were in service, so a hearse was sent for him. But on the way to the hospital, the glass-paned hearse was halted in a traffic jam.  The hearse pulled up next to a smart, little open roadster in which two frolicsome young women were gaily chattering. Then, they glanced through the glass panel where Marquis' burly figure lay under a blanket. At the moment, he caught their eyes, and in spite of heartburn, appalled them with a slow, magnificent wink.  Marquis used to say: "I'll bet they led better lives after that." Things are not always as they appear, you know.

Think about our situation as Christians, and Luke’s as a gospel writer: Your leader is no longer “alive,” but you are still trying to get people to believe in him. That’s what is different about Christianity. It’s not merely the words, say as in Muhammad’s case with Islam’s Koran. The Christian faith is faith in Jesus Christ. But he was killed, and then just to make it more difficult, we say he is still alive, though in a brand new, resurrection way. So, naturally the question is where is this crucified, killed, and now resurrected Jesus? This is what our Emmaus story has to answer. Where is he? How do we know him when we see him?

Luke tells us: Only by watching him break bread, only by participating with him in his sacramental meal, only when we are willing in some way to share in his broken body, taking in his crucifixion act, only then do we get to see beyond the veil that lies in front of our eyes. Just like those disciples who couldn’t see him until the brokenness of the crucified Messiah was represented before their eyes, we can’t have the resurrection without the crucifixion. The crucifixion isn’t a once in a human history affair. It doesn’t stand on its own, but it is a continual pointer to where to find the possibility of resurrection today. “Find a penny, pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck.” We may only like the resurrection side of the coin of Christianity, but we always have to pick up both sides of a coin. They come together. 

Tracey Bailey stood before the judge with his head held high, his jaw set defiantly against the sentence the judge was about to pronounce. The words of his high-school wrestling coach echoed in his mind: “Don’t you ever hang your head. Don’t admit defeat.” And Tracey wouldn’t hang his head, not before his ashamed and heartbroken parents, not before his shocked community, not before this judge, and certainly not before God. No one would see his pain. The citizens of Goshen, Indiana, had been stunned to learn that Tracey Bailey—captain of the wrestling team, member of the student council, good student, from the church-going Bailey family. He had fallen in with an unruly group who used alcohol to fuel their frequent petty vandalisms and thefts. But one night, the boys, in a drunken frenzy, had broken into the high school and torn apart whole classrooms. Now the judge wanted to hold them up as an example to others with similar mayhem in their blood. Tracey was sentenced to a five-year term.

In prison, Tracey was determined not to bend an inch. He would be tough. He would never admit defeat, no matter how much he was hurting. But during a stint in solitary confinement, Tracey happened to catch sight of himself in a mirror, and the sight shocked him. He didn’t just look hardened. Deadened was more like it. And he knew that the deadness would keep reaching down past his countenance into his very soul. All his toughness melted away, and tears began to flow as he prayed to God and admitted his defeat. There was no one else to turn to, and he couldn’t rely on his own reserves anymore. Tracey doesn’t know how long he prayed, but he does know that God heard him. One of his guards approached him and offered him prayer. Someone else gave him a Gideon Bible. And soon he joined the prison Bible study. When he was released early from the center, Tracey worked for a few months to pay off his debts and make restitution to the school he vandalized. Then he entered college, studying for an education degree in science and math. He decided that he would pay back society by becoming a teacher. You might say that he reached his goal. In April 1992, Tracey Bailey attended a special ceremony at the White House where the president awarded him the annual Teacher of the Year Award. Thanks to Wesley Taylor

The Emmaus story is the story of a God who will not leave us alone, even when we are hurt and disappointed, even when it seems that the brightest and best in life has been destroyed. The death of Jesus could no more stop God from loving us than the night can keep the sun from coming up in the morning. Every time the love of God is alive in us, Jesus is alive in us. And God’s love cannot be destroyed by all the cruelty and hate and prejudice in the world. The love of God, having gone through the night of sorrow in Christ’s Good Friday, rose again at the bright dawn of our Lord’s Easter morning. He came to our world to be broken. His body comes to us, not in sublime and delicate beauty, but broken. He makes us whole by himself being broken. Do you have the eyes to see him, broken and yet glorified, crucified and now risen, having died but forever being alive? He is here, Christ Jesus, Lord and Savior. Open your eyes and your heart and see, and live.

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