Community Church Sermons

Third Sunday of Easter – April 14, 2002

"The Get-Up-And-Go Gospel”

Luke 24:13-35

 

Someone once said that the Emmaus Road story is sort of a parable of a worship service. What an intriguing idea! The service begins with two people walking along the road that first Easter day, and they are joined by Jesus, although they don’t know its Jesus. You know how the call to worship goes that promises: Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. And as they journey along in the opening scene of this worship service – these two people, plus the unrecognized Jesus - they’re chatting away about all sorts of stuff – yesterday’s Orange and White football game up at Neyland Stadium – so-and-so’s operation over to Park West Hospital – that putt on Number 9 at Toqua that just lipped out of the hole and would have been a birdie if it’d gone in – talkin’ about all sorts of stuff, so much so that you couldn’t even hear the pre-service music being played on the organ. I once had an organist who found all that pre-service chatter pretty disturbing. So one day she thought, “I’ll show these people!” She started playing that ol’ organ kind of low and slow, and as she played, the volume of the voices rose up to overcome it. Then she pulled out a few more stops, and pushed that volume pedal a little deeper, and the pipes brought forth a more voluminous sound. And the voices of the chatterers came right along with it. And so it continued – she ratcheting up the volume, they matching her without even realizing it. Finally she had that organ singing in its loudest, fullest, most wide-open voice. And those people got just as loud and full and wide open.

 

And then she stopped. Cold turkey. Instant off.

 

And with the organ suddenly silenced, that sanctuary was filled with noise of a sort you might hear on the floor of the New York Stock exchange the day the Enron scandal hit. But to me, all that congregational cacophony was not the funny part. The funny part was that none of the people even noticed she’d stopped!

 

So there they are, chattering away in the pre-service along the road to Emmaus, talking about this-and-that. And then someone mentions the crucifixion of their friend Jesus last Friday, and like an invocation offered at the start of worship, a sacred hush falls upon them all. The two disciples share their remembrances, not only of Jesus’ death, but of his life and what they once thought it would mean. Like a time of sharing concerns in the congregation just before the Pastoral Prayer, they pour out their hearts.

 

Can you follow this order of service here on the road to Emmaus?

 

The Scripture lesson follows, and this time it is Jesus – still unrecognized by his companions – who speaks. He remembers passages from the Psalms and from the Prophets, and then exposits those texts so his listeners will see how they apply to what happened on Friday and to their lives and circumstances now. This is good preaching, and Jesus is so expert at relating God’s hopeful, loving truth to these brokenhearted disciples that they prevail upon him not to end the traveling worship service as they arrive in the outskirts of Emmaus. They ask him to stay. And he agrees. So they decide to have supper, and you’ve probably already guessed that it is the final act of worship. It is an ordinary meal – of bread and wine. It is Communion.

 

And it is just then – in that moment of breaking bread – that their eyes are opened! They recognize that the One who has been with them is…JESUS!

 

And then a strange thing happens. POOF! Jesus is gone.

 

And Luke tells us that this impromptu worship service concludes in yet another way quite typical of worship services today – especially the 8 o’clock service at our church. You know how those 8 o’clockers are! They all arrive at church at the last second, and they are so intent on making a quick getaway afterwards that they back into the parking spots! In fact, I’m told that some of them actually leave their engines running.

 

And so we can appreciate Luke’s description of these two disciples, having worshiped, prayed, proclaimed, and communed with the living Christ. Now he writes, “That very same hour, they got up and WENT!”

 

Funny how some of these important events in the Bible really do parallel our lives today!

 

But honestly, I’m left with two questions.

 

First, why did Jesus vanish so quickly? Why didn’t he stay for dessert? Or at least for a cup of coffee? Why didn’t he hang around long enough to chastise these two disciples for the unbelief and doubt that had sent them running to Emmaus in the first place? Can you figure it out? Why did Jesus just get up and go?

 

And the second question is basically the same, but it has to do with these two disciples. Why didn’t they hang around a little longer basking in the experience of the risen Christ? Why didn’t they start a church there in Emmaus where the visitation happened? Why didn’t they erect a shrine? Or at least establish a Christian gift store with cheap little trinkets sold at exorbitant prices? Why did these two disciples just get up and go?

 

“That same hour, they got up and went…,” writes St. Luke.

 

I’ve been puzzling over these questions this past week, and I’ve started to see that there is a connection between them. I think the reason Jesus got up and went was to keep those disciples from getting the idea that Christian faith means to sit back and enjoy! Oh, you know how it is. Many of us have known people who have come into a monumental, life-changing experience with the living God, and no one has ever heard from them again. I don’t mean that literally, but what I do mean is that sometimes people have religious experiences that turn them into spiritual zombies whose obsession with the experience is far more pleasurable than having to face up to the reality of being a husband or wife or parent or child or worker or neighbor. I can offer you a little self-confession this morning that, in the days following my own rather dramatic conversion experience, I became a person who would much rather spend time with God than with my classmates in college. I mean, they were so…so… spiritually lacking, whereas I was so…so…spiritually enlightened. In fact, they were so spiritually ill that they could not even appreciate my talking to them in the language of bible passages. They did not even respond to my constant attempts to save their totally depraved and worthless souls from spending an eternity in the fiery flames of hell. I mean, can you imagine that? How could people not WANT a friend like that?

 

I think Jesus knew. Jesus knew what people are like, and that we tend to try to escape from the hard realities of human life. We want a moment of spiritual ecstasy that will change everything, and that will so satisfy us that we can devote ourselves to it and not have to live lives that more frequently call upon us to change dirty diapers, and resolve conflicts, and learn to love unlovable people, and live as ordinary human beings in a very broken and difficult world.

 

So Jesus got out of there fast! Before they could grab his ankles and kiss his feet and turn him into a statue and themselves into saints with-a-capital-S.. Jesus got up and went…so the disciples would get up and go!

 

And Luke tells us something interesting. “That very hour, they got up and went back … to JERUSALEM…”

 

You see, they had to go back to what they were running away from. They had to go back to the real world of hurt and pain and disappointment, and all the people who dwell there. Jerusalem, you know, is where cross the crowded ways of life. Jerusalem is where disciples who deny Jesus hide. Jerusalem is where the people who murder the prophets live. Jerusalem is where powerful oppressors and those they oppress live in constant tension and conflict. Jerusalem is where tanks roll even today, and fire their guns, and where suicide bombers blow themselves up.

 

Jerusalem is not so much a place as it is a people.

 

And the two disciples from Emmaus have to get up and go to those people. They have to get up and go to share the good news. They have to get up and go with the message that the love of God is the most powerful force in the world. That the way of Jesus actually works! That the worst sin can be reversed. That the deepest hurt can be made whole. That the most violent conflict can be resolved. That even death itself can be conquered through the way of Jesus!

 

And because Jesus lives, there is hope for doubters, and deniers, and crucifiers, and oppressors, and those oppressed, and tank crews defending their nation, and even those who mistakenly believe suicide bombing is the way to get a nation of their own, and peace to go along with it.

 

They had seen the risen Jesus with their own eyes! They had experienced him in their own lives! They had been cleansed, and renewed, and born all over again!

 

And now they had to get up and go tell others with their words and with their actions!

 

Fred Craddock tells of a church he once served, not too far from here. It was over by Oak Ridge which was just a bitty town in those days. But when the atomic energy came, the town began to boom almost overnight. Every hill and valley and shady grove had recreational vehicles and trucks and things like that. People came from everywhere and pitched tents, even lived in wagons. Hard hats from all over, with their families, and children paddling around in the mud of the trailer parks. Their church was not too far away. And it was a beautiful church – a white frame building, 112 years old, with an old pump organ that Ms. Lois played. Fred says even today that ol’ Ms. Lois could play those hymns just as slow as anybody.

 

The church, he says, had beautifully decorated chimneys, and kerosene lamps all around the walls, and every pew was hand-hewed from a giant poplar tree that had once grown nearby. After church one Sunday, Fred asked the leaders to stay.  He said to them, “We need to launch a campaign in all those trailer parks to invite all those people to church.”

 

“Oh, I don’t know,” said one of the leaders, “I don’t think they’d fit in here. They’re just temporary construction people, you know. They’ll be gone before you know it.”

 

Well, there was some discussion, and finally it was decided to vote on it next Sunday. So next Sunday, right after service, they had a meeting. “I move,” said one of the leaders, “that in order to be a member of this church you have to own property in the county.” Someone else said, “I second that.” They called for a vote. And the motion passed. Fred voted against it, but someone reminded him that he was just a kid preacher, and besides, he didn’t have a vote anyways.

 

Years later, when Fred moved back this way, he took his wife Nettie over to see that little church over near Oak Ridge. The roads had changed, of course, and when the Interstate came in, the geography got kind of mixed up so the church was hard to find. But he finally found it. Down the state road, and onto the county road, and then finally down the little gravel road they drove. And there it was –that pretty little white building – back among the pines.

 

Fred was surprised when he saw it. It was different! The parking lot was full! Full of motorcycles and trucks and cars parked all over the place. And out front was a big new white sign.

 

BARBECUE – ALL YOU CAN EAT!

 

The church is a restaurant. So he and Nettie went inside. The pews are pushed back against a wall, and the organ that Ms. Lois used to play as slow as anybody is still there, tucked back in a corner. But in the middle of the church now there are all these aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs, and lickin’ their fingers, and listening to Country music from the jukebox. All kinds of people, says Fred. Parthians and Medes and Edomites and dwellers of Mesopotamia. All kinds of people.

 

Fred turned to Nettie and quietly said, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church. Otherwise, these people couldn’t be in here.”

 

I guess that’s why Jesus got up and went so fast. So you and I would have to get up and go. And the Church of Jesus Christ would have a chance of becoming a source of healing and hope for the whole world…

 

….instead of a barbecue restaurant.

 

Let those who have ears to hear….get up and go!