How
Do We Know This Is Real?
Sermon preached by the Reverend Patricia Farris
April 10, 2005
Scripture:
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19 and Luke 24:13-35
On the third Sunday
of Easter, we hear the story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. It’s
a great story. Whether you know it by heart or are hearing it to today
for the first time, I hope it captures your imagination and comes alive
for you, so that just as happened for those dejected and frightened disciples
so long ago the living Christ changes your life. Hearing this story, we
join the earliest followers of Jesus who were struggling to make that
transition from a Jesus who had lived among them—teaching and preaching
and healing—to a risen Lord, a resurrected Savior---still living
among them. But now, you see, no longer doing the work himself, but empowering
them to be the people whose very lives would carry his message forward.
It’s essential that we find our place in this story, too, ordinary
people empowered by Christ to change this world by the power of his love
alive in us.
Luke’s
story takes us back to Easter morning. Later on that day, two disciples
were leaving Jerusalem, having experienced the crucifixion but not
yet the resurrection. They were walking to Emmaus, about seven miles
away, grieving, afraid and dejected. But as they were walking along,
going over everything that had happened, reliving it, trying to make
sense of it, a stranger appeared and walked along with them. They
did not recognize him, even as he asked: “Why are you sad?”
Thinking him to be the only person in Jerusalem who didn’t know
what had just happened, they recounted the whole tale of Jesus arrest
and crucifixion. They had heard the women’s accounts about how
the tomb was empty and the angel that had told them he was alive,
but these two had not seen it. How were they to know if this was really
real?
As
they approached the village, the stranger prepared to continue on,
but they urged him to stay for dinner. At the table, when he took
the bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them---their eyes and
hearts were opened and they recognized him as their friend and their
Risen Lord. He vanished from their sight, but they had been transformed.
They were so energized that they got up, they rose up and they themselves
were resurrected. They went all the way back to Jerusalem to tell
the others about how he had been made known to them in the breaking
of the bread.
For
these two disciples, the truth of the resurrection was made real that
day. Their hearts burned within them and they recognized him in the
breaking of the bread. In that truth they
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"How Do We Know This Is Real?" Sermon
by Rev. Patricia Farris, April 10, 2005
found hope and courage and new energy and could turn from their mourning
and fear to become disciples of the now risen Lord.
In
all of the reflections over these last days about Pope John Paul II,
I heard a somewhat similar story from his own life. Long before he was
famous, long before he was pope, before he was ordained a priest, he
was a young seminarian in Poland. In the cold winter of January, 1945,
late in the war, a young 13-year-old Jewish girl emerged from a Nazi
death camp near death, unaware that her whole family had been killed
in the camps. She was alone, barely able to walk. She made her way to
a train station and climbed into a coal wagon. Even though the train
moved slowly, the wind cut through her and she got off in a small village.
Sitting in the corner of the station, no one looked at the girl in the
striped uniform of a prisoner.
A
young man approached her, a stranger wearing a long robe, “very
good looking” she later said. He asked her why she was there and
where she was going and she told him that she was trying to get to Krakow
to find her parents. He disappeared and soon returned with a cup of
hot tea, telling her he could help her get to Krakow. He went away again
and came back with bread and cheese. When she still could not walk,
he carried her to the next village where they got into a cattle car.
Another family was there. He gave her his cloak and built a small fire
to keep her warm. After they arrived in Krakow, she did not see him
again until 1998 at the Vatican, where she finally had the opportunity
to thank Karol Wojtyla for saving her life.
For
Edith Zierer, this stranger embodied the love of the Risen Savior. And
as Pope, he was able to move from this simple act of compassion in the
saving of one young Jewish girl to become the first Pope since Peter
to visit a synagogue, the first to repair Catholic-Jewish relations
following the war, the first to offer an apology when he prayed at the
Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.
Much
has been said about Pope John Paul II. His legacy is indeed mixed. He
was rigid and controlling. He silenced dissidents within his church
and many say shut down the invigorating openness of Vatican II. He seemed
incapable of acknowledging the seriousness of the clergy sexual abuse
scandal in this country and his inaction deeply disappointed many American
Catholics. He came out strongly against birth control and the ordination
of women, even going so far as to stamp his statement on that subject
with the seal of papal infallibility.
Fortunately,
we Protestants are quite free to examine and debate all that and make
up our minds for ourselves. Because at the same time, this pope was
a remarkable man, and there is much we can learn from him. His energy
and charisma made him a media star, carrying
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"How
Do We Know This Is Real?" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, April
10, 2005
his
message to millions. He reached out to youth with genuine affection,
hundreds of thousands of whom kept vigil outside his window as he
died and stood in long lines to show their respect this week. He furthered
interfaith relations as the first modern pope not only to visit a
synagogue but also a mosque, and who gathered representatives of all
faiths in Assisi, Italy to come together to pray for peace.
Thomas
Groome, a professor at Boston College, said in a radio interview this
week that one of this Pope’s greatest gifts will not be immediately
recognized but may, in the long run, prove to be one of his most important.
Prof. Groome said that John Paul will be remembered for his teaching
about “the new evangelism.” For Pope John Paul, this meant
a shift from an old evangelism that focused on bringing people into
the church to empowering the people to live their faith in the world
with joy and conviction. The new evangelism, he said, is about transformation
in our lives, living in the world in such a compelling way that people
see the living Christ in us. For this Pope, that meant not only personal
acts of kindness and compassion, but also included social justice,
becoming advocates for the poor and oppressed, seeking peace. The
new evangelism is outward focused, directed not at the needs of the
church but on the needs of the world. The new evangelism is about
living in such a way that our very lives tell the story, the story
of a Risen Lord, whose presence and power and vitality has raised
us up to be instruments of his love.
The
risen Christ walking on the road to Emmaus that day did not glow with
light. There was no halo around his head. He looked like an ordinary
person, a stranger. It was through his presence with them and the
breaking of bread together that they knew him to be their risen Lord.
Now, through our faith in him, we are changed and converted from being
ordinary people into living, breathing disciples whose lives show
forth his power and his love. To outward appearances, we still look
the same as we always have. But now when people meet us, when our
path crosses theirs, we may for them be a stranger, but because know
a risen Savior and live his love, they, too, will experience God’s
love for them through us and they will find in us a little bit of
life made new. This is what the Pope would have called the new evangelism,
emphasizing how lives are changed, how this world is transformed,
when we live out our faith in compelling and authentic ways. Our lives
preach the Gospel. This is how the world will know that our faith
is really real.
We
say it each time in our communion liturgy when we pray over the bread
and cup, these words that echo back to that first meal with him in
Emmaus. “Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and
on these gifts of bread and wine. Make them be for us the body and
blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ,
redeemed by his blood”…that we may be for the world the
body of Christ.
Not
long before his death, John Paul had written a prayer to be read during
this season of Eastertide. In it he said: “It is love that converts
hearts and gives peace. Lord, who with your death and resurrection
revealed the love of [God], we believe in you…”
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"How
Do We Know This Is Real?" Sermon by Rev. Patricia Farris, April
10, 2005
May God’s love through the presence of our Risen Lord convert
our hearts and give us peace and send us into the world changed, made
new, alive with his message, eager to share his love simply and boldly
with all whom we meet.
Notes:
Roger Cohen. “The Polish Seminary Student and the Jewish Girl He
Saved.” New York Times, April 6, 2005, p. A11.
Prof. Thomas Groome interviewed on NPR, April 2, 2005.
Prayer in New York Times, April 4, 2005, p. A12.
© Patricia Farris, 2005. Permission is given for brief quotation
with attribution. All other rights reserved.
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