Homily: Yr A Easter 3, May 4 2014, St. Albans
Readings: Acts 2.14a, 36-41; Ps 19; 1 Peter 1.17-23; Lk
24.13-35
Dagobah,
Emmaus and the Recognition Problem
There is a problem that I’ve
noticed as I’ve listened to our Easter readings these past three Sundays. A recurring
problem which runs through the texts. That
problem is the recognition problem.
We saw it first with Mary at
the tomb on Easter morning, when she turns around and Jesus is standing there,
but she thinks that he must be the gardener.
We saw it in our reading last week, when Jesus appears in the locked
room with the disciples, but they don’t recognize him until he shows them his hands
and sides. We see it in our reading
today, when Jesus joins Cleopas and his companion on the road to Emmaus, but
they don’t recognize him.
And if recognition is a
problem for these first witnesses to whom Jesus appears in bodily form, how
much greater a problem is it for those of us who come later! We don’t get to see Jesus’ resurrection
appearances. We don’t get to hear him
call our names the way that Mary does, we don’t get to see the wounds on his
body the way that Thomas does. And that
is a problem.
Do we recognize the risen
Christ in our lives? Is God with us? How do we recognize God’s presence? Can we in our own time see and experience the
divine in the events and activities of our lives? Because let’s be honest. When we proclaim “Alleluia Christ is risen,
the Lord is risen indeed” during this Easter season, there are a lot of people
who don’t see it. There are many people,
within the church and outside the church, who have a hard time recognizing God
as alive and active and present in their day to day lives. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the
Recognition Problem is the biggest challenge facing most Christians. We don’t want to just tell stories about the
past. We want to experience something
that is alive and real and makes a difference in our lives today.
The Recognition Problem is
so important that for centuries it has been and continues to be a common thread
weaving its way through our stories and our mythologies. One of the reasons that I am a big fan of
Star Wars is that I love how the movies reveal in a new way the classic themes of
the human story. In the clip I’m about
to show you, our hero Luke Skywalker has been sent to the planet Dagobah by his
mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi to become a Jedi Knight.
Luke is on a quest. He must learn
the ways of the Force, and to do so he will have to become a disciple of
Yoda. So with his droid R2D2 he sets
off in his space ship, but when he gets to Dagobah, his ship crashes into a
swamp, and there is a recognition problem.
Video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p44pcTXpPOs
So why doesn’t Luke
recognize Yoda? Well, Luke is looking
for something, but he doesn’t really know what he’s looking for. He thinks he’s looking for a great warrior, a
Jedi Master, and he has certain expectations of what that should look
like. And it certainly doesn’t look like
a short ugly creature hobbling around in a swamp with a cane. Luke is too proud to accept help when it is
offered, and suffers from his own biases and preconceived notions.
It’s easy to laugh at Luke
Skywalker, and perhaps there are a few lessons we can learn from his failure to
recognize Yoda. But I also want to
acknowledge the very real pain that occurs when people aren’t able see or
experience God in their lives. When your
life crash lands and you are alone in the swamp and God is not there, this is a
real problem. That is where the two
disciples on the road to Emmaus are as our gospel story begins this
morning. “We had hoped that Jesus was
the one to redeem Israel. But they
crucified him.” Our gospel begins as a
story of crushed dreams, lost hope and broken hearts. Perhaps the only thing worse than having no
hope, is to have once hoped but then to hope no more. “We had hoped . . .” said the two on the road to Emmaus.
Some of you might remember
that Jonathan preached on this very theme on Palm Sunday, and reminded us that
throughout the ages, men and women have experienced the absence of God as a
painful moment in their lives. St. John
of the Cross called it the “dark night of the soul”. C.S. Lewis and Mother Teresa both write about
their ‘dark nights’. It is an agony
which I expect is made even more acute in this Easter Season, as we listen to
the shouts of “I have seen the Lord” all around us.
So why does Saint Luke tell
us this particular Easter story? After
all, he had a few to choose from. As
Luke mentions at the end of the text, there was another resurrection appearance
to Simon Peter that happened just down the road in Jerusalem on this same day,
but Luke chose not to write about that one, and instead gives us this one the
one that happened on the road to Emmaus.
Why does Luke tell us this
particular story? I think it’s because
Luke recognizes the importance of the recognition problem and because he wants
to make us a promise.
I’d like you to do something. Take a look at the service booklets that we
have been following this morning, and tell me this. What are the four main section headings for
our worship time together? Have a look,
they’re printed in the booklet. The four
section headings are:
·
We Gather as a Community
·
We Proclaim the Word
·
We Celebrate the Eucharist
·
We Are Sent.
That is the basic four part
structure of our liturgy that we celebrate together every Sunday morning. Now, think back to what you just heard about
the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It
begins with Jesus joining the two disciples and going with them. They gather as a community. Then, after the disciples have told Jesus
what has happened, Jesus interprets the scriptures for them, beginning with Moses
and all the prophets. He proclaims the word
to them. When that is done, and the day
is nearly over, the disciples urge Jesus to stay with them and they share a
meal together. And Jesus takes the
bread, blesses it, breaks it and gives it to them. Or as we might say, they celebrate the
eucharist. And it is in the breaking of
the bread that they recognize Jesus, and they realize how they’re hearts were
burning within them even before that moment of conscious recognition when he
was opening the scriptures to them. And
then, they get up and race back to Jerusalem to find the others and tell them
what had happened. They are sent.
·
We Gather as a Community
·
We Proclaim the Word
·
We Celebrate the Eucharist
·
We Are Sent.
It is no coincidence that
the four movements of Luke’s story and the four movements of our worship here
this morning are the same. Luke’s story
was shaped by the worship of the early Christian community, and our worship has
been shaped for centuries by Luke’s gospel.
So this is no coincidence. What it is, is a promise. The promise Luke is making to those of us who
experience the recognition problem, the promise Luke is making to those of us
who are broken-hearted, the promise that Luke is making to those of us who are
experiencing the dark night of the soul is this: in Christian worship you will encounter the
risen Christ. In the gathering of the
community, in the proclaiming of the word, in the breaking of the bread, Christ
is present.
Christian worship is a
solution to the recognition problem. It’s
not the only solution, we can experience and recognize God in all sorts of ways
in our lives. And it’s not a magical
solution, it’s not going to give you a guaranteed experience of what you expect
to see every time. But our worship
together each Sunday morning is an opportunity to recognize the presence of God
in our midst, and that’s something that we learn to do together. It is in this gathering that broken hearts can
become hearts that burn with joy within us, and that we can dare to say
together, “We have seen the Lord.”
Amen.
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