5-25-14: Best Friend

Best Friend

 

John 14: 15-21 (NRSV)

”If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

¹⁸”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

 

What makes a good friend?

That was the question on my mind this week while I was preparing this message.

What makes a good friend?

I thought of the way I tend to use that word, “friend”, and the people I’m talking about when I use that word. I came up with a little list off the top of my head of qualities that describe a “friend”:

·         Someone you share common interests with

·         Someone you spend a lot of time with

·         Someone you like

·         Someone you see as your peer

·         Someone you trust

·         Someone you want to get in touch with when something important happens in your life—good or bad—and someone you hope would do the same for you

·         Someone you aren’t quick to give up on if you get in a fight, or things aren’t going well, or they suddenly aren’t much fun to be around—and, again, someone you hope would do the same for you

·         Someone you admire; someone you would praise, and call a good person, and, again, who would do the same for you

But even though I thought I came up with a pretty good list, I didn’t want to depend just on my own understanding of “friend” to answer this question. I turned to a lot of different places for answers to that question. The first source of wisdom I turned to on this topic is to someone who I genuinely think is the most brilliant of all modern philosophers—Winnie the Pooh. Winnie the Pooh—or, rather, his author, A.A. Milne—said: ”A day without a friend is like a pot without a single drop of honey left inside.”[i]

Good old Pooh, always thinking of his tummy. Perhaps the more adult way to put that would be to say that a good friend adds a much-needed element of sweetness to your life—so much so that you simply wouldn’t want to live without such a person.

But a good friend does a lot more for you than just make your day sweeter. A good friend will take care of you. A good friend will put your best interests first—even when it’s not fun, and even when that friend has to give something up for you to be happy and provided for. Nineteenth Century author Jane Austen put this best in her novel Northanger Abbey—“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”[ii]

But real, long-lasting friendship runs deeper still. You might have shared interests, or a similar background, or generally good feelings about any number of people in this world. And if you’re a charitable sort, you might find yourself sacrificing your own happiness in favor of people you don’t even know, and maybe never will.

A good friend does much more than those things for you. A very good friend, the kind that sticks around for the long-haul, shares a sacred piece of this journey of life with you. A very good friend becomes part of you. A very good friend becomes like your other half. Perhaps the philosopher Aristotle said it best when he said that a friend was “a single soul dwelling in two bodies.”[iii]

A single soul dwelling in two bodies. Imagine that kind of love. That kind of deeply-felt, unshakeable, unconditional love is rare. I dare say that even if you consider yourself to be a popular, likeable, sociable person, there aren’t too many people around you who are such a good friend that you would say a piece of your own soul lives within them. We give a lot to other people, especially when we live a Christian life. We give of our time, our talents, our prayers, our resources, our hopes, our aspirations, and tremendous amounts of our love. And we give of those things freely. But who do we give our souls to? Certainly not to just any friend. Not even a good friend is worthy of such a treasured part of you. Only a closest friend, only your best friend, will probably ever know that much of you.

Your best friend. Our culture’s cheapened that word, “friend”, quite a bit. We’ve devalued real friendship as much as we’ve devalued any of our human relationships—it’s easy to cheapen something that you can’t put a price tag on. It’s easy to cheapen something that isn’t always tangible, that you can’t put your finger on and say, “there, that’s it.” We can’t help it. We have five marvelous senses, and we were made to use them. Tangible, concrete things make the most sense to us, and we tend to like those things best.

But, in spite of how we were made, and in spite of what we’ve been taught, there’s a bigger part of all of us that knows that we don’t want to be alone. Ever since Adam asked God to make him a companion to share the Garden of Eden with, we’ve known that we shouldn’t spend life alone. Seeking the company of others is a beautiful part of what makes us human. And this is where friendship comes from—that incredible piece of us that always wants to reach out to those around us. That piece of us that wants community, and fellowship.

It’s innately human. Jesus, fully human, experienced this exact same instinct his whole time on this earth. You might think the Son of God, fully infused with the Divine, could have done his job on his own. But he didn’t. That wasn’t what he wanted, and wasn’t what he chose. The only time he chose to be alone in his ministry was immediately after his baptism, when he spent forty days and nights fasting in the wilderness. Immediately after he came back from that retreat, the first thing he did was find companionship—twelve people to minister with him. Twelve people to spend nearly all of his time with—twelve very good friends. And as his ministry grew, so did his circle of friends, and Jesus welcomed that. Jesus didn’t want to do his ministry without friends. He couldn’t. And today, two thousand years later, neither can we.

Now, I spent a longer time this week than I usually do setting up the “central point”, if you will, but this week, I found something in our lectionary-appointed Gospel passage that really intrigued me. This week, our lectionary has us continuing on in the last third of John’s Gospel. By this time, Jesus has established and planted his ministry. He’s making his way ever closer to Jerusalem, and now his priorities are shifting. Because he has made so many friends, and because he has invited so many eager people into discipleship and fellowship with him, he doesn’t have to worry that his ministry is going anywhere—there’s plenty of people at work now, ready to plant his love in every corner of the world. The only problem is that they just don’t know it yet.

So Jesus needs to start preparing all of his disciples—all of his friends—for the day when he won’t be with them in the flesh anymore, and the day that they’ll need to go out on their own and do his ministry. So like a very, very good friend, this week we hear him giving words of comfort and reassurance to his disciples—you might not see me all the time, he says, but you’ll never be alone. I’ll never let that happen. And then Jesus starts preparing his disciples to hear about something new. Something that we hear call the “third person of the Trinity”, and something that we’ll hear all about in just a few more weeks on Pentecost Sunday—Jesus starts telling his disciples about the Holy Spirit. But Jesus knows that if he just says, “the Holy Spirit is coming”, his disciples won’t understand. So instead he says, don’t worry when you don’t see me around all the time anymore. There’s going to be a new person keeping you company from now on. In the new Revised Standard Version of this story—what I read to you today, and what I nearly always read and preach from—Jesus calls the Holy Spirit an “Advocate”. But, I have a contemporary, conversational paraphrase of the Bible written by a man by the name of Eugene Peterson called The Message that I also turn to a lot for a more modern insight into the Word. In his paraphrase of this morning’s Gospel reading, Peterson doesn’t call the Holy Spirit an “Advocate”, but rather a “Friend”.

A friend. I love this. I especially love this because I think, out of all three persons of the Trinity, it can be hardest to try to wrap your head around who the Holy Spirit is, and what the Holy Spirit does in our world. This makes it easy.

We can do our ministry in the world because we decided to be friends of Christ, and Christ enthusiastically accepted us. And whenever it gets hard to minister in our world—as it so often does—we have a Friend by our side. Someone who helps us. Someone who encourages us. Someone who wants the best for us. Someone who believes in our greatest potential. Someone who loves us. A force that spends all of its time with us.

But, perhaps more than anything, God our Creator sent us the Holy Spirit so that we would have someone in our lives who really fits Aristotle’s definition of a friend—“a single soul dwelling in two bodies.” The Holy Spirit is the work of God, the voice of God, the very essence of God, living every moment within us, and helping us, in turn, live every moment within God and his love.

Amen.

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[i] I found this and many other adorable Pooh quotes here: http://www.winniethepoohquotes.org/category/winnie-the-pooh-friendship-quotes/

[ii] This quote came from this site: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/friendship

[iii] I also found this quote at this site: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/friendship

5-18-14: Ebenezer

Ebenezer

John 14: 1-14 (NRSV)

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe^* in God, believe also in me. ²In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?^{* 3}And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. ⁴And you know the way to the place where I am going.’^{* 5}Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ ⁶Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. ⁷If you know me, you will know^* my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’

8 Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ ⁹Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, “Show us the Father”? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me^* for anything, I will do it.

 

About six months ago I had the very great privilege of hearing our Bishop, the Rev. Mark Webb, preach at my alma mater, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. He’s an amazing preacher. At the beginning of his sermon, he shared with us a story that’s been making its way around the internet for a while now. I wanted to share this same story with all of you, because the point of it is something we all need to hear every once in a while:

A professor was leading a business class at a college. One day, at the beginning of his lecture, he took out a big jar, and placed it on the table in front of him. He then took out a bag of fist-sized rocks, and his class watched him as he placed these big rocks, one by one, into the jar until they reached the top.

He then spoke to his class and asked them, “Is this jar full now?” They all agreed it was.

“No, it isn’t!” he said to his very confused students. He then took out a bag of gravel, and started pouring that into the jar, shaking it until the gravel was filling in all the spaces between the big rocks.

He asked his class again, “Is this jar full now?” With a bit of reservation, most of his students replied, “Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t!”  he said, and then he took out a bag of sand. He poured the sand into the jar, until it filled in all the spaces between the gravel and the big rocks, and reached the top of the jar.

He asked his class a third time, “Is this jar full now?” By this point his students were on to him, and said “Probably not.”

“No, it isn’t!” the professor said. Then he took out a bucket of water, and poured it into the jar until it filled in all the spaces between the big rocks, the gravel, and the sand, and until the water reached the brim of the jar.

“Now,” he told his students, “this jar is full. What do you think the lesson behind all of this is?”

One smart-aleck student raised his hand and said, “that no matter how full our schedules are, we can still cram more in?”

Everyone laughed. But the professor said, “No. The point is this—if you don’t put the big rocks in that jar first, you’ll never get them in.”[i]

If you don’t put the big rocks in that jar first, you’ll never get them in. The reason why that story has gotten so popular is the same reason that professor shared that demonstration with his class—the point is about our priorities. The big rocks in our lives. The rocks we put in our jars first. The heaviest weight in our lives—or, if you will, the cornerstones of our foundations. The rocks we build on.

Our Tuesday Bible Study group found that rocks are really the theme of this Sunday, as far as our Revised Common Lectionary is concerned—every scripture passage but our Gospel lesson mentions rocks, stones, and what we do with them. What we build with them. Or, what we destroy.

The latter is what we see in this morning’s lesson from the book of Acts—the story of the apostle Stephen’s death by public stoning. This is a truly amazing story. I can’t imagine a more powerful way for people to remember me, after my time on this earth has come and gone, than how we are left to remember Stephen based on this story—this account of him giving his life over entirely to God, praying for the forgiveness of those who hate him so much that they would make him die so gruesomely, and, at last, his peaceful passing into God’s Kingdom. Wow. Just wow.

This is also the most chilling writing I’ve ever come across in the Bible. I want the screenplay rights to this story. And, to me, the most chilling part of this story is not Stephen’s violent death, but the introduction of a new villain—Saul. And so our biblical author, Luke sets the stage—Stephen, this story’s hero, this young man who had only just begun his ministry, delivers his Oscar-worthy speech to the vengeful masses, knowing full well that it would probably cost him his life. Moments later, our tragic hero is tied to the proverbial train tracks. Then, as his fate is sealed, the camera pans off into the distance, as Stephen’s assailants throw their coats at the feet of the scariest villain you’ve ever seen. The camera pans up and introduces us to this dark, lone figure as he twirls his handlebar mustache and nods in a sinister glee of approval of a death he ordered.

The stones are thrown. The big rocks are thrown. The big rocks that could have been used to build are instead used to take a life. The big rocks. All we know about Saul is his name, and his agenda—if our big rocks signify our priorities, we know full well what Saul’s are. The persecution and destruction of a new movement, and the eradication of anyone who would proclaim the Lordship of Jesus.

Where we put our priorities, where we invest our time, what we make most important to us, where we put our hearts—our big rocks—carry a huge amount of weight. Even when we don’t know it. Where we choose to invest our strength, how we choose to use our special skills and gifts, matters more than we may ever know. And it’s very easy for one of us to say, what does it matter what I do? I’m only one person, after all.

But Saul was only one person. A young man like Stephen, dwelling in a small place, at a single moment in time, doing what was right in his own eyes. His big rocks. And the big rocks of his life compelled him to take many others. It’s hard to imagine that someone with such dark and corrupted priorities could ever do anything good for the world—that someone so bent on destruction could ever build something good, and meaningful, and lasting. But this is what we mean when we proclaim that God is loving. This is what we mean when we declare that God’s love forgives, and redeems us. Most of all, this is what we mean when we say that Jesus saves—half of our New Testament would never have existed were it not for this man, once a murderer. You can argue our Church, our pastors, would never have been were it not for this man who became the very first Pastor. A pastor more commonly known today by his Greek name, Paul.

Our priorities, where we invest our strength, where we invest our resources—our big rocks—build the world we live in. But we learn how to set our priorities, how to name our big rocks, based on the advice and example of others. So it’s easy for us to misplace our big rocks. It’s easy for us to decide to use our big rocks to build something meaningless, something harmful, or something that won’t last. Take a look at the world around you, and you’ll see where people have misplaced their big rocks—what people have built with them. Racism. Classism. Sexism. Pollution. By equal measure, you’ll see what people have destroyed when they’ve used their big rocks as weapons instead of as resources.

Our world is eroding because of people’s misplaced big rocks—because of people’s very bad choices. But, closer to home for us here, our Church is in trouble. Our congregations start to erode when we throw our rocks instead of building with them. When we worry and squabble about money instead of making a plan for the stewardship of our resources. When we pick out verses of our Bible in isolation to attack a person’s choices, instead of remembering that God is love. When we use our bonds of sister- and brotherhood to shut out the outsider, instead of practicing radical hospitality.

Our big rocks. We can do a lot with our big rocks. We can build a lot with our big rocks, if we pick the right ones. We can name our big rocks for the Gospel—for love, for truth, for justice, for righteousness, for grace, for forgiveness. We can make Jesus our cornerstone, and his uniting ministry our foundation. Or, we can fill our jars up with sand and gravel and water, and focus on the trivial, and accomplish nothing.

And if you weren’t at Tuesday’s Bible Study meeting, and you don’t know where the title of this sermon comes from—Ebenezer—no, I don’t mean the miserly old Scrooge of Dickens’ folklore.

One of my very favorite hymns is one that we didn’t sing this morning, but that you all will sing later on this summer. It’s #400 in our hymnal—yes, it’s one of those hymns I love so much that I can tell you the hymn number off the top of my head—and it’s called “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”. The second verse of this hymn starts, “Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by thy help I’m come. And I hope, by thy good pleasure, safely to arrive at home.”

When you skim down to the bottom of that page in the hymnal, the publisher tells you what Bible story the author was referring to when he decided to use the word “Ebenezer” in the second verse. If you haven’t looked it up, the story can be found in 1 Samuel 7. It’s the story of a prophet by the name of Samuel, who, with God’s help, saves Israel from the Philistines. After this victory, Samuel lays down a commemorating stone, and calls it “Ebenezer”, and says, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” Ebenezer, when you break down the two Hebrew roots that make up that name, means “helping stone.”

The first big rock we should put in our jars, the first big rock we build with, the cornerstone of the foundation of our church, should be our Ebenezer—the stone that reminds us that with God, all things are possible. The stone that reminds us to put God first, because everything else we need will follow. And if we build our Church with a proper, God-centered foundation, we can build something that will last, and that we give future generations of Christians a place to call home. And through a big rock that trusts in Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life, we will build stepping stones to the Father.

Amen.

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[i] Here’s one of many places around the internet where you can find this anecdote: http://www.appleseeds.org/Big-Rocks_Covey.htm .

5-11-14: Mother Shepherd

Mother Shepherd

 

John 10: 1-10 (NRSV)

“Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit. ²The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. ³The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. ⁴When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. ⁵They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.” ⁶Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them. ⁷So again Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep. ⁸All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them. ⁹I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. ¹⁰The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

 

Mother’s day is a great day. There can be a lot of joy on a day like today. This is a day that a lot of people celebrate, in one way or another. This is a special day. And for a lot of people, this is a day they look forward to. A day that warms their hearts.

But Mother’s Day can be a hard day, too, especially at church. I recently had a conversation with a clergy friend of mine who is leading her very first ever Mother’s Day worship service as we speak. A few weeks ago, when we had this conversation, she was trying to decide how she wanted to incorporate Mother’s Day into her service—how much she would make her service about Mother’s Day. Whether she would act like today’s any other day, or whether she would make the theme of the service all about mothers, or somewhere in between.

You might ask, what’s the big deal? Today’s Mother’s Day, so let’s embrace it. But, as time has gone on, we ministers have had to realize that for every person who is celebrating today with their mother, with the mother of their children, with their grandmother, with their own children, grandchildren, step-children, or God-children, someone else is mourning. Today we’re reminded of the mothers we lost, or never had. We’re reminded of the hurtful, the neglectful, the abusive mothers. We’re reminded of women who cannot celebrate their motherhood today—the women who suffer from infertility, the women who lost their children, the women estranged from their children. The women missing their babies.

This deep well of simultaneous joy and grief is exactly the stuff that makes us beautifully human. If nothing else, we can warmly celebrate that today. And whatever this day means to you this year—whether you’re going out to lunch with your mother, or with your children or grandchildren after church today, whether you’ve sent or received flowers or cards, whether this is a happy day for you, whether this is a day that brings you some grief, whether this is a day you avoid, or whether this is just May 11^th, just any other day of the year—whatever this day is outside of the walls of this sanctuary, in here, in God’s space, this day is something altogether different.

We have a rich tradition in our churches of seeing how God is like a Father to us, and rightfully so. We call our Creator God the Father. We read Gospel passages where Jesus calls our Creator God his Father. We pray every week to our Father. We sing hymns like “This Is My Father’s World”. Our tradition gives us a beautiful, comforting image of a God that loves us like a Father loves his own children, and most of the year, that image tends to rise a little bit higher than most others.

Mother’s Day gives us an opportunity to see God in a different way. This Sunday we’re invited, and encouraged, to consider the feminine side of our God. We’re invited to consider the God who created us male and female, both in the divine image. We’re invited to consider God the Mother.

God the Mother. We all came from an earthly mother. We all came from a human mother. Some of us were blessed with a mother who was loving, and selfless, and nurturing. Some of us were blessed with a mother who was a wonderful part of our lives, and made us who we are, for the best. Some of us weren’t. Some of us had painful experiences with our mothers, some of us never knew our mothers. And many of us, I think, had the experience of being raised, educated, strengthened, nurtured, and inspired by at least one person who wasn’t our mother at all.

However you might describe your own earthly mother, let’s understand that the God who mothers us is never earthly, but divine. And, when we leave this place and venture out into the secular world, whether or not we find Mother’s Day to be a day worthy of celebration, let’s know that God has mothered us, and rejoice in that.

God the Mother. So who is God the Mother? How is God like a mother? How does God mother us? For this, I turn to our Scriptures.

God protects us.  And please understand that when I say this, I don’t just mean that God doesn’t want us to get hurt, or that God looks out for our best interests. Those things are obviously true, but God does so much more than that. God has the downright ferocity of a mother animal when it comes to protecting us. Have you ever watched a movie, or a nature show, where somebody gets a little too close to a bear cub, and the mama bear comes charging to the defense of her baby? That is the kind of God we have. Our God is the God of the mama bear. That is how fiercely God will defend us from anything that would take us away from God. Our mama-God watches out for predators.

In this morning’s Gospel passage from John, Jesus warns his disciples about the predators, about the thieves and bandits, who dishonestly try to go after God’s beloved children—or, as Jesus puts it, God’s sheep. Like a protective mother, Jesus gives us advice. Like a protective mother, Jesus warns us about the dangers that face us in the world. Like a mother who might tell her children not to open the door for strangers, Jesus warns us about the things of this life that will hurt us, and separate us from God. Jesus warns us about the skewed priorities, the bad habits, the bad relationships, the lifestyle choices that tempt us away from God our Mother.

But God makes a home for us. There’s a strong theme throughout all but one of our scripture readings this morning about shepherds and sheep. This is the kind of mother God is to us—one who leads us home like a shepherd leads the sheep. And when we stray from God, not only does God forgive us, but God goes looking for us. With our Mother God, we always have a place to go. No matter what, we always have a place where we belong. God gives us a family and hospitality, and shows us how to give that to others.

And God provides for us. If you ever need a reminder of this truth, you need not look any further than this week’s Psalm. The Psalm we recited as our call to worship. The Psalm that I’ll bet a lot of us could recite from memory. For many, the most beloved of all one hundred fifty of our Psalms—Psalm 23.

Psalm 23 really shows us the tender side of God. We hear about a God who nurtures, and even spoils us. We hear about a God who frees us from the burden of wanting, because God always knows what we need. We hear about a God who brings us peace, and serenity. We hear about a God who gently leads us to where we need to go. We hear about a God who keeps us calm, even during the hardest times. We hear about a God who keeps us fed—physically, and spiritually. We hear about a God worthy of our lifelong trust. A comforting God. A healing God.

And a sacrificing God. God would give up anything for us. Our epistle lesson from First Peter reminds us that, in spite of how much more God wants for us, and in spite of how much God gives us, sometimes we will still suffer. Even though our God protects us, sometimes we will still get hurt—sometimes, we’ll even get hurt because we’re children of God.

But even when we’re hurting, Peter reminds us that we can handle it. We’ve been imbued with the strength of our mothering God. And more than that, we’ve been redeemed and spared. God, like a mother, would give up anything for us—even God’s own Son. We’ve been saved because God, our mother, saved us. In the familiar words of John 3:16—“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him may not perish but have everlasting life.” And, as Jesus reminds us in this morning’s Gospel passage, he came so that we may have life, and have it abundantly. God, our mother, goes without so that we can have everything.

But what we need to understand about God more than anything, is that God is everything. There aren’t enough words out there to describe what God is, or what God does for us. We can come up with as many images as our minds can make to try to capture what God is, and still, we won’t do God justice. God is too vast for our mortal understandings.

There is no wrong image for our God—whatever you find sacred is right. And we’ll see God at work in the world around us in many forms—God will be for us whatever we need God to be.

But just know, that no matter how you imagine God, no matter what or who God is to you, no matter what God means to your life right now, you are loved, like a mother loves her child. And there’s no where we can wander off to that is too far away for the love of our Mother, Father, Shepherd God to bring us back into the fold.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Amen.

5-4-14: Breaking Bread

Breaking Bread

 

Luke 24: 13-35 (NRSV)

 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles^* from Jerusalem, ¹⁴and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. ¹⁵While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, ‘What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?’ They stood still, looking sad.^{* 18}Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, ‘Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?’ ¹⁹He asked them, ‘What things?’ They replied, ‘The things about Jesus of Nazareth,^* who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, ²⁰and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. ²¹But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.^* Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. ²²Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, ²³and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. ²⁴Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.’ ²⁵Then he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah^* should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’ ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. ³⁰When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. ³¹Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. ³²They 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?’ ³³That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. ³⁴They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ ³⁵Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

 

On May 24, 1738, a young Anglican priest decided to go to a Bible Study meeting in London. The text of the day was Paul’s letter to the Romans, with a special look at Martin Luther’s notes on the Epistle.

This certain Anglican priest was at the lowest point in his whole ministerial career. He was a well-respected Oxford professor, and seriously revitalized the faith practices of Oxford’s undergraduate population. Riding on that steam, he accepted an offer to visit the Americas for the first time in his life, and to take his ministry to the colony of Georgia. He got off the boat in Savannah determined to bring the Good News of Christ to the Native American population. However, not only did he fail to achieve that incredibly high goal, but he also broke up with his girlfriend and then faced months of legal issues after she sued him for taking back his promise to marry her, and for not serving her communion during one of his worship services.

This priest came back to England a broken man, deflated in spirit and convinced that he could minister to no one. And he almost gave up. But, with his one last vestige of faith, he decided to take a trip to Aldersgate Street to visit a Bible Study that changed his life, and made his “heart feel strangely warmed.”

This is the story of one man, on one day, on another continent, nearly 200 years ago. And yet, it’s fully possible that not one of us would be sitting here today were it not for what that man experienced after that Bible Study on May 24, 1738—because that man was John Wesley, and he went on from that Bible Study to plant the seeds of what grew into the United Methodist Church[i].

Now, I’m not just telling you this story to remind you all of how meaningful Bible Study meetings can be, or even as an opportunity to make a shameless plug for the one I moderate on Tuesday mornings at 9:30am (although if that’s a natural consequence of this story, so be it).

I’m also reminding you of this very famous story about the origins of our own church so that I can pose this hypothetical question—where would we all be today if Wesley didn’t act at that moment when he felt his heart was “strangely warmed”? Where would we be if Wesley didn’t act on that newfound spiritual conviction? Where would we be if Wesley decided that, great as that moment was, he had it right when he returned from Georgia—what if he really did throw in the towel on his ministry when the going was rough? What if he hadn’t recognized Christ working through that Bible Study to bring him back? Or, even—what if he didn’t act when he did? What if he waited too long? Would our church be here?

The two gentlemen that we hear about in today’s Gospel story from Luke experienced an Aldersgate moment of their own when Jesus broke the bread in front of them, and they finally recognized that he had been in their company all along. You can say that they finally realized that their hearts had been “strangely warmed” on the road to Emmaus, when Jesus was talking to them, and teaching them about the Scriptures. But as soon as they finally got it, Jesus was gone. The moment they finally understood that they were walking and talking and breaking bread with Jesus Christ himself—he was gone. They missed their opportunity. They missed their shot at enjoying his presence. They were too late.

If last week’s Gospel reading from John was about “Doubting Thomas”, then we can say that this week’s Gospel reading is about “Doubting Cleopas”, and his friend.

The difference is that we know who Thomas is. He was one of the Twelve, and he is mentioned at various points in all four Gospels. But who are these two gentlemen in this week’s story from Luke?

Luke implies that these two men are two more disciples, but they clearly aren’t among the Twelve. From the way that they talk to Jesus, and the way that they describe Good Friday and Easter morning to Jesus, it sounds like they were as close to Jesus as Mary Magdalene was.

But who are they? We really don’t know. One of these men isn’t named at all, and the one Luke does name, Cleopas, doesn’t show up in any other story anywhere else in the New Testament. We really don’t know who these two men were—they were just two people who really loved Jesus. They could be anyone. They could even be us.

Or, maybe, we could be them. When are we like these two men, Cleopas and his unnamed friend? What are our “breaking bread” moments? What helps us recognize Christ among us, or Christ working through us? What helps us see the divine in our world?

I’ll wager we could answer that question lots of ways. But, sometimes, we might literally have our own “breaking bread” moments in the breaking of the bread. It’s no coincidence in this story that Jesus breaks the bread at dinner with these two men in the exact same way that he did in the presence of his twelve disciples at their Last Supper. Jesus knew that this would help Cleopas and his friend recognize him. In the same way, we might see Jesus working through our own selves, and our church, in our sacred practice of communion—that might be true for you when we partake in the Lord’s Supper in just a few minutes.

Last week, when we read from John about our friend Thomas, we talked about doubt. We talked about how easy and natural it is for us to doubt. We talked about how our doubt even protects us sometimes. The thing is, though, that sometimes when we succumb to doubt, we miss out on some wonderful opportunities. That’s what happened to Cleopas and his companion—they doubted what the women told them. They doubted the women’s testimony that Jesus was really risen from the grave. And because of that, they didn’t recognize that Jesus was right in their midst until it was too late.

Sometimes we are like these two men in that way, too. Sometimes we miss the boat. Sometimes we wait too long, or we don’t recognize the works of Christ among us until it’s too late, and we miss out on a great opportunity to minister to our community.

It can happen to the best of us. But if that ever happens to you, if that ever has happened to you, just know two things:

1) Aldersgate moments don’t happen every day. John Wesley only had one. And if you have such a strong moment of revival in your spirit, where you, too feel your heart is “strangely warmed”, you’ll know it—Wesley couldn’t mistake his. If that happens to you, that’s your shot. When you feel the Holy Spirit working within you, act on it. Your Church will support you.

2) Even though the two men in this morning’s Gospel story had to be kicking themselves for not recognizing that Jesus was with them sooner—like when he was talking to them about the Scriptures, and he practically had a blinking neon sign over his head that said, “I’m Jesus”—those two men still made up for that missed opportunity by giving witness to their friends and neighbors about what they saw. Two weeks ago, on Easter Sunday, we talked about the importance of bearing witness to the Risen Christ. It’s never too late to share your testimony.

And, as we prepare to partake in the Lord’s Supper together, remember that it’s never too late for us to revisit the breaking of the bread. That beautiful, sacred symbol is always available for us to recognize Christ among us once again.

Amen.

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[i] You can read more about John Wesley here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley .