AN OPEN ENDED EASTER – Luke 24:13-35
The Rev. Dr. Richard W. Reifsnyder
1st Presbyterian Church
Winchester, VA
April 5, 2015 – EASTER
“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him”
Luke 24:31
I always marvel that people find their way to church on Easter of all days, when the story
may be the most challenging of all the biblical stories to accept. Sophisticated people turn up
their noses at the resurrection. Cultural consumers reduce Easter to the robins reappearing in
spring, butterflies emerging from cocoons, bunnies bringing baskets filled with fertility symbols
(eggs, that is). Even churched folks may be leery of the gospel claims on this day, the empty
tomb being absorbed into generalized messages of hope and renewal.
So although I marvel that you are here, I realize that on some level it is because you sense
that without Easter we don’t have a church. It is God’s most dramatic, surprising, unexpected,
blow me out of the water, action, an event which can’t easily be accommodated or acculturated
to the modern world. Something in us realizes that on this event the Christian story stands or
falls---God breaking the bonds of death, ending the cycle of discouragement and despair,
offering the hope of new life.
Last week we received the most adorable picture of our granddaughter Christie—they are
all adorable, of course, but this one made us laugh out loud. Our son Josh was cajoled into to
being the Easter Bunny for some town children’s event, and the picture showed him in his quite
elegant full body bunny costume, welcoming the children who came to have their picture taken.
Most of the children were smiling, but then it was Christie’s turn, and swooping her up into his
lap, she took one look at that oversized bunny face and burst into tears of terror. Daddy’s voice
coming from behind the mask did nothing to sooth her fears. Think of it, though. If the Easter
Bunny is scary, imagine the effect of someone coming back from the grave. It would not
necessarily be comforting, because if a man could rise from the dead, then all bets are off, a new
world is hand, the days of thinking we’re in control and can plan out and organize our lives and
be sure all things are done decently and in order are gone! Now what?
In Luke’s gospel, the initial word from the women that the tomb where Jesus was buried
was empty, does not generate faith. What they reported seemed to the disciples “an idle tale.” It
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wasn’t until they encountered the risen Lord along the Emmaus road that they grasped---or rather
were grasped—by this extraordinary occurrence—and found their lives transformed.
The encounter on the road to Emmaus is the lengthiest and perhaps most important of the
resurrection appearances of Jesus, so perhaps it is surprising we don’t even know where Emmaus
was. Three different towns in Israel claim to be the original Emmaus. But maybe that
anonymity is just right, because the Bible wants us to know it was just an ordinary road, an
ordinary journey taken on Easter afternoon, a journey not unlike the ones we are on. It is
significant that it is on such a road, such a journey that the risen Lord makes himself known.
We owe it to those first Christian disciples to do our very best to understand the utter
hopelessness of their situation after the Crucifixion. “We had hoped Jesus was the one to rescue
Israel” they tell the stranger who comes up alongside them. Indeed, they had invested their lives
in what now had to seem a cruel joke. Once they had basked in the reflected status of a celebrity,
whom crowds followed to be taught or be healed. Now he had been judged a non-person,
discredited and disgraced in the eyes of the whole world, subject to a cruel death fitting only for
one whom the Romans intended to shame and humiliate.
Can you imagine what these two disciples were talking about as they walked the road,
clinging together in common misery, perhaps going over events again and again in their minds,
as if repetition of them would bring relief? They may have felt so many different emotions, not
only pain and grief at having lost their friend, but perhaps anger and a sense of betrayal at being
let down, or confusion at having had their hopes dashed, or desperation in their efforts to
understand and accept, even fear as they wondered what was in store for them now.
They certainly weren’t expecting resurrection; they certainly weren’t figuring on meeting
Jesus again. They certainly weren’t going to find any comfort in seeing budding crocuses and
colorful tulips as a sign of new life. Belief that Jesus was alive wasn’t some kind of wish
fulfillment. He came along side them, a face like all faces, his glory hidden behind the
countenance of a stranger. They could not see, they did not recognize, until he revealed himself
to them. “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him,” Luke says.
But notice how they came to have their eyes opened. First Jesus interpreted the
Scriptures, which the travelers knew, but whose meaning they didn’t grasp were about him until
he told them. They had to learn how to interpret Scripture through the prism of Jesus—even as
we must too. And then they shared a meal, and in the breaking of the bread, their eyes were
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opened and they recognized him. Not through some mystical experience did the risen Lord
reveal himself, but through participation in word and sacrament—ordinary means of grace. A
good reminder.
This story of Emmaus does not answer the question of how God raised Jesus from the
dead or even why. Emmaus is a story of transformation, an account of what difference Easter
makes. From bewilderment and confusion, and hopelessness, the disciples are raised to new life,
with new faith and direction. Sometimes we affirm Easter the way in the way we affirm, say,
that Venus is 67 million miles from the sun. It may be trustworthy, true, but it just doesn’t
provide much help in planning the day. Sometime we affirm Easter as true, our security that all
will be OK when death is on the horizon, way down the road, we hope, but not something that
impacts us much now. But Emmaus suggests Easter is not just about then; it is about shaping
our response to the world now. It is about daring to follow Jesus, in confidence that he is alive.”
Have you been following the story of the reburial of the bones of England’s King Richard
III. In Shakespeare’s version, Richard III is one of England’s great villains, killed on the
battlefield by the victorious Tudor family, from whom the current Royal family is descended.
The discovery and exhuming of his bones, buried under a pavement, and their reinternment
following a magnificent ceremony at Leicester Cathedral, with a eulogy given by Benedict
Cumberbatch (I included that just so I could get to say his wonderful name!)—the reburial has
caused a whole reinterpretation of Richard’s role in English history. Historians and ordinary
Englishmen and women are having a field day, and the consensus is that he was a far better king
than the Bard’s play presented. If the resurrecting of the bones of some 500 year old king causes
such rethinking, how much more did Jesus’ resurrection precipitate a re-imaging and cause a
reshaping of the disciples understanding of who Jesus was. If Jesus was dead and now is alive, if
the itinerant rabbi is no longer just a good teacher, now gone, but the one risen to be Lord of
Lord, King of Kings, what then must I do, how then must I live?
It is an open ended Easter that Emmaus presents to us. Life which seemed closed, fixed,
finished, done for, is now broken wide open, fresh with new possibilities, filled with unexpected
opportunity, ready to be transformed and disciple.
Do you know the story of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm in Americus Georgia?
Jordan was a great preacher who not only talked about the gospel, but lived it every day. Jordan
bought a farm in rural Georgia in the 1940s and invited others—both black and white---to join
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him in a communal Christian venture, as a witness to a God who breaks down barriers and opens
up new possibilities. It was a radical venture for its time. Jordan made important contributions in
other ways. He did a paraphrase of the gospels he called the Cotton Patch Gospels, which
applied Jesus message to contemporary life. Habitat for Humanity was born in the 1960s within
the Koinonia Farm community. Though frequently harassed by the Klan and others well into the
1970s, the Koinonia Community persisted and still exists.
Jordan said it was one thing for him to endure such threats, but quite another to ask his
family as well. One day, his little daughter came in from school crying. “What’s wrong?” he
asked. “Daddy, some of the kids are mean. Bob Speck when he sees me coming down the hall
comes up and knocks me down. He says ugly words to me, too.” Jordan’s heart went out to his
daughter, “honey you’ve got long fingernails. Why don’t you scratch his eyes out?
And she said, “I thought about that, but I heard you say that Jesus said we’re supposed to
love our enemy, and I thought maybe I shouldn’t scratch his eyes out.” He said, “Well, I’ll tell
you what I’m going to do. Tomorrow I’ll go to the school and I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse
me from being a Christian for about 15minutes while I really give it to Bob Speck.”
“Daddy, you can’t do that.” she said. “Why not?” Jordan asked. He little daughter
replied. “You can’t be excused from being a Christian for 15 minutes.”
On that road to Emmaus, the disciples reported that their hearts burned when Jesus spoke
to them. It’s Easter, and who knows? Maybe our hearts will burn as we meet the risen Lord,
who has defeated death and returned to us, commissioned us, breathed his Holy Spirit upon us to
do his work. We can’t be excused from following him for fifteen minutes. He is with us now in
life, in death, in life beyond death.
THANKS BE TO GOD WHO GIVES US THE VICTORY THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
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