Eyes Wide Open

Easter 3
Luke 24: 13-35

Who doesn’t love a good story? We go to the movies not only to see rock-em-sock-em, crash and burn action pictures but to be immersed in a good story. We like to tell stories about our lives and listen to funny or revealing stories that our friends tell. We complain when a movie or a TV program doesn’t have a good plot. A good plot—that’s just another way of saying that a story engages us, interests us, tells us more about the characters than we knew before.

This past two days, the vestry and I met with Canon Randall Warren from our diocesan offices to trade stories with each other. We heard some silly stories—like when I asked folks to talk for a minute or so about lawnmowers or spatulas. We heard some personal stories—like the view out our kitchen windows or to tell another person about the first car they owned. And we heard and told many stories about the community of St. Hilary’s—about some of the joys and pains you have shared these past years.

I heard about stories of the church’s activities in holding a silent auction or participating in the CROP Walk. I learned about how it used to be a practice to ring the bell in the bell tower. I heard about the time Fr. Crist found some kids sledding off the roof of the church. We heard about how some people felt excluded by some of the past ministries of the church. We all heard about how some folks are feeling nervous and anxious since Pastor Terri left. And we heard again about the things that are important to this community—good worship, a sense of belonging and a commitment to providing help for refugees.

If we look at the gospel we’ve just heard, let’s count the number of stories contained in this large story: First, there are the stories that Cleopas and the other disciple are telling each other. Stories about Jesus, his betrayal and his death and the fantastic story about the women finding an empty tomb and the hope that Jesus had risen.

Then along comes this stranger and Cleopas and the other disciple start telling the stranger the same stories, maybe giving him some background that they didn’t have to tell each other—since it appears this stranger is the only person in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard about this Jesus character.

Then the stranger turns the tables on them. Count it—we’re up to three stories. The stranger begins to tell them stories they thought they knew—stories of the prophets and their ancestors—but he tells these familiar stories with a new twist. And they move from being downcast to being delighted in what this stranger is telling them. Their cold, lifeless hearts are warmed and their passion begins to grow.

Then they invite him to stay with them for supper. And their eyes are opened—they recognize him for who he is. He vanishes and story Number Four begins—they run the seven tough uphill miles back to Jerusalem—and tell their story to the disciples who are gathered behind closed doors.
Four stories contained in this mega-story. But wait! There’s more. Because, you see Luke wrote the story down and we’ve heard it. So the story has become ours once again. Whether you’re hearing this story for the first time or for the 50th, this story is ours as well.

I love, love, love this gospel passage: it was the passage we read at my wedding, the passage I selected at my husband’s funeral, the passage I want read when I die. Because it captures so much of our journey as Christians. It captures so many truths—how story shapes us as individuals and as community. Yes, even the silly stories our vestry told each other about lawnmowers and the view out our kitchen windows and first cars. We come to know one another in deeper ways.

And the Road to Emmaus points us to the delightful ways that God meets us just where we are and takes us by delight and surprise. Delight and surprise. The disciples felt the reality of Jesus’ presence even before he revealed himself to them. Their hearts were burning within them. Notice that the gospel doesn’t say: They became satisfied with themselves because they finally figured out the logic of the scripture. The story doesn’t say that they high-fived one another because they were able to put down on paper what they’d experienced. No, their hearts burned within them.

And then “their eyes were opened.” Now this is a phrase that echoes another eye-opening experience…do you remember what that one was? Go all the way back to Genesis when Adam and Eve disobey God. Their eyes were opened and they saw their nakedness. They were revealed for who they are.

But in this story, the disciples eyes are opened and not only do they see Jesus for who he is…but they also see themselves for who they are—evangelists—people who are compelled—not by guilt or a sense of duty but joy—to high tail it back to Jerusalem and tell the others what they’ve seen and who they’ve experienced.

A journey that began with shattered hope becomes one of reversal—they literally change direction and are transformed in the process. As layer upon layer of the story is experienced and revealed, God shines through. So it was for Cleopas and his companion. So it is for St. Hilary’s.

As I heard stories from the vestry members, I saw Christ revealed and your vestry members experienced Christ revealed—in each other, in the stories about St. Hilary’s past and in the hopes for the future. We spoke and prayed about this community’s strengths and discussed how we might discern new ways God might choose to reveal God’s self—to St. Hilary’s and to the world.

God is all around us. Jesus is present to us in the breaking of the bread and also in the opening of this church to house a refugee family. In the dedication of people to Meals on Wheels. In the fun to be had in outdoor summer services. In the ways we welcome and incorporate new members and support each other in our daily lives. In the ways we pray for the world.

Now we may want to try to hold onto a particular experience of Jesus but “He will not stay put, stay the same, stay with us. "Stay!" is our chorus, but his refrain is, "Follow!" B.B. Taylor

The living Lord has called your former pastor to follow him to a new community. He calls this community to follow him to a new way of being—with each other, with the community and with the world. One thing stays the same—this Lord loves you, protects you and will never abandon you. This Lord even now is strengthening you for the journey.

Invite him in to stay, yes. And recognize when he goes, he has not left you alone. But calls you out to tell your brothers and your sisters—we have met him. And in this way, another layer of the story is revealed. Your story becomes another chapter in this marvelous, transforming megastory. Kingdom without end.

So stay tuned. Stay involved. Stay committed to each other and to meeting him on the road—wherever he may be met.

Blessed are You...when you believe AND when you doubt

Sermon March 30, 2008
John 20: 19-31
Preached by Pastor Deb Seles

Call me Thomas, tho that is not my name. My real name’s been lost to history. Generations know me only as “Thomas” meaning “The Twin.” Even my Greek name, Didymus is just another way of saying that I was a twin. So call me Thomas.

The other way you know me is as “Doubting Thomas.” “Thomas the Unbelieving One,” “Thomas the Skeptic,” Hestitant, suspicious, mistrusting. You’d be too if you’d heard the tales they were telling.

We hadn’t been together since that awful Thursday night. That night we last ate Supper with him. That night he blessed the bread and the wine with those strange words—this is my Body, this my Blood. We were repulsed by the suggestion of cannibalism. Blood is unclean to us Jews. And to be invited to partake of our leader’s Body and Blood—well, we thought it a sacrilege. And yet he seemed to indicate it was a necessity. A way of reliving what he was about to go through.

We were all skeptical and unbelieving that night. From his pronouncement that one of us would betray him. And when he said Peter would deny him—well, some of us could believe it—Simon always being the impetuous type. Still, none of us was prepared for what would happen. And we were disgusted by our behavior that night. To a one, we abandoned him when he needed us the most. We argued and wept and fought with each other in the intervening days. Accusations flew back and forth about what we could have, should have done.

So when they came to me with tales about his reappearing, part of me wanted with all my life to believe that death had not conquered the One we knew as pure Love. But the other, sensible part of me declared that it could not be. No man has ever risen from being three days dead, never mind that he predicted it. I thought it must be mass hallucination. Wishful thinking because we were so filled with guilt.

I said what any of the rest of them would have said if they hadn’t been there: “Until I see the place where the nails went and plunge my hand into his wounds, I’m not going to be fooled.” Angry? You bet. Angry at God, that He, the Almighty would allow this. What kind of Father demands that level of sacrifice. And I was angry at myself, at us for both believing him and then abandoning him. Even if he wasn’t the Son of God, as he said, he was our friend and deserved better than we gave him. Deserved much, much better.

But living in my heart was the passionate desire to believe what the rest of them had experienced. Those emotions were twins living side this Twin—anger and desire. I suspect you’ve experienced twins like those: guilt and desire, anger and desire. I suspect that’s why my story resonates with your own, you who have never walked with him in the flesh, never felt the hot sun of Galilee on your necks as you walk mile after mile with him and the crowds that gathered arond him.

Maybe your doubt runs high when your own children suffer, when you see good people punished and wicked people reign, when you wonder about your own ability to do good. Maybe secretly you yearn to see Him in the flesh when the news of the world is more and more about war and corruption and division than it is about peace and love and forgiveness. I don’t blame you. None of us would blame you.

But HE called you “Blessed” because you do believe without seeing. Millions after us have believed without seeing Him in the flesh. And there is the miracle, the miracle that you and all his followers have been living. Not the stupendous, being raised from the dead miracle, but a miracle, nonetheless. For you are the evidence that He LIVES!

See, he commissioned us that night: He sent us out to be to the world what he had been. He gave us the gift of His Spirit, the spirit of His love and reconciliation. And he gave us the gift and the power to forgive sins. Again, no small thing for us Jews—we’d always been told that only God had the power to forgive sins. His saying that when he was alive got him into trouble again and again with authorities. And even we wondered about it but we gave him the benefit of the doubt—because of who he was. But that night he gave us, our sorry lot, the very people who abandoned him, he gave us that power to forgive. And above it all, he granted us peace.

Of course, as we all eventually learned, his peace is not the world’s peace. It’s not the peace of complacency and comfort or safety. We huddled together in that room looking for the world’s peace, the safety that is found behind locked doors, behind old ways of living. His peace called us out into the world. His peace gave Peter, the Denier, the courage to stand in front of the crowds gathered for Pentecost and to declare who Jesus really was. His peace caused many of us to be tried by suspicious, fearful Romans and to be put out of the temple by suspicious, fearful fellow Jews. His peace caused many of us to go to our deaths, martyrs.

And perhaps his peace causes you, 2000 years later, to move out of your own comfort zones. To forgive one who betrays you. To speak to a person very different from you and to really learn her story. To minister with refugees from across the world and to learn of the gifts they have to give this nation.

Perhaps you, like us, struggle to find your unique mission. “How,” you may even now be asking, “how is God calling us, this community to love the world as God loves it?” Not how do you grow you membership, how do you bring outsiders to know or to believe exactly as you do, but how can the people of St. Hilary’s love the world as God loves it?

There are those who say that a religious person never doubts. They want certainty. And maybe that is why some are attracted to churches and movements that seem to promise all the answers. But even a casual reading of Scriptures reveals that doubt always has had a place in faith.

For a sincerely religious person is humble. As we walk with God, we discover a deepening of our lives and we know there are points at which the human intellect and reason cannot fathom the Infinite. I don’t know how Jesus rose, don’t know how it is that people fall in love, don’t know why some people are inspired by music and others by constant challenge. I do know that lives have been changed because we choose to believe and choose to follow the One who calls us to new life.

A poet once said: “Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.” So maybe it’s significant that I’m nicknamed Twin—the Doubting Twin who knows faith. I doubted because I feared the others had succumbed to an illusion. I wanted to believe in the reality of a risen Lord but it was too much for my mind to wrap itself around. I had to let my experience and my heart take me where my mind could not go—to a greater reality. And when I saw him, that’s when I threw myself to the ground and confessed him as My Lord and My God.

Perhaps your own doubt is leading you to a greater faith, a desire for a higher God. If you doubt there ever would be a kind of God who would create human suffering, you are saying there is a kind of God who is all Good and all Loving.

If you doubt there is a kind of God who would hate people and punish them, you are believing in a Higher God - a God of love and of forgiveness.

If you doubt God could solve your problems, you can nevertheless WONDER how he will do it and be willing to be pleasantly surprised "Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother."

My prayer for you is that your journey with God may be full of WONDER. I pray that you will experience faith that is a radical trust in God as the ground of your being. I pray that you will have faith that is a centering of your whole life in the Risen Lord. I pray that you will experience faith that results in a new way of seeing, seeing all of creation as abundant rather than hostile.

May your faith be more about “beloving” than “believing.” May this community be bearers of God’s love to a world that is crying out for healing and forgiveness. May the community of St. Hilary’s be instruments of the peace Jesus breathed on us that evening. The peace he still breathes on the world.