In some ways, this story of what happened on the road going to Emmaus is one of the best for making Easter real in our day-to-day lives. As Brad said last week, we don’t stay at that mountain-top Easter place of brass and tympani and lilies for very long. We find ourselves very soon back in our daily routines, in the ordinariness of our lives. Our new Easter shoes get a bit worn and scuffed and after a while, we don’t even much care.
Those disciples who were going back to Emmaus that day were pretty dejected, actually. Jesus had been crucified and though they wanted to hope that something more was going to happen, they didn’t much believe it. It must have felt to them that day that everything was back to the same-old, same-old, and all his promises just idle fancy.
Don’t we feel that, too, all-too-often? Try as hard as we might, we just can’t seem to lift our lives up to the place of faith and joy we would like to feel. Like those dejected disciples that day, we need what a recent invitation to a conference promised: Come for the “Time of Your Life: Transform the Rat Race into a Sacred Journey.”
Well, as we know, God can do strange things to lift us up, even when we least expect it. Can moves in mysterious ways to transform our lives. It was a stranger, after all, who showed up to walk along with them that day. A perfect stranger. And when they arrived at home, they invited that stranger in to have a bite to eat. And as they broke bread together, it suddenly hit them. It was the Risen Lord right there with them. Their eyes were opened to what had been there all along and their hearts were beating like mad. In the walking and the talking and the table fellowship, that stranger became a friend, a very special friend, of course, whose love opened their eyes and restored their hope. Easter happened to them, for them, right there in the very ordinariness of the walk and the talk and the shared meal. Their “rat race” would never be the same.
I want to share with you an experience I had recently that opened my eyes in some new ways to the meaning and power of this very Bible story. I took a couple days off after Easter and went to visit my mom in Phoenix, my home town. And while I was there I went to a place called “Justa House,” a day shelter for homeless people where my mother volunteers once a week.
Justa House was started a couple years ago by a friend of mine, a Methodist minister who felt called beyond the ministry of the local church to do something for homeless people. He did a little research and found that while many programs already existed, there was nothing for people over the age of 55, many of whom are more vulnerable on the streets because of their age. Scott persuaded a fellow United Methodist to lease him a building at a good price near Phoenix’s “skid row.” He was ready to get started, but he really didn’t know much about working with homeless people. So he decided that the way to get started was just to talk with them and find out what they need. You might say that he just showed up, a stranger to them, and began walking their walk and talking with them and listening to their hearts.
Well, as you might expect—it is Phoenix after all and it was already 90° in the shade when I was over there last week--they needed somewhere to get out of the heat, toilets, showers, a telephone and some clean clothes. Actually, Mom and I spent that morning sorting donated clothes and stacking them by size. They wanted a couple beds, in case they’d had a really bad night on the street, so they could get a little sleep. They wanted some lockers where they could keep their stuff safe.
You might be surprised to hear, as was my friend, Scott, that they wanted a couple computers so they could check in with friends and look for jobs. They wanted someone to help them with their money and their taxes and so forth. They wanted a library because it’s nearly impossible to have access to books and magazines on the street. And Scott got all that donated by Methodist churches.
And, since opening, he has added a volunteer dentist and some other doctor types for them. And some social workers to help them get any benefits to which they’re entitled—about half of those who come are veterans. And some counselors, because quite a few are seriously mentally ill.
But the two things he told me about that maybe touched me the most are that they wanted coffee and newspapers, they said, so that they could start out the morning like most people do, having a cup of coffee and reading the paper. And so they go through about 400 cups of coffee a day there at Justa House. And some nearby bakeries donate pastries and another organization brings in lunch for the nearly 120 or so people there each day, six days a week. And they eat together, just like people with houses do, around tables of four and six.
But also, even before they knew Scott is a minister, they said they wanted a place for prayer and worship—not one of the high pressure, pledge-your-life-to-Jesus- before-you-can-eat kind of places, but a safe and loving place. And so Scott made one of the rooms into a worship space and they have Bible study and prayer and communion every week.
I was there right after Easter and the worship room was full of lots of chairs. I said: “Wow, you have a lot of folks who worship here.” Scott said: “Well, we had a bunch of extra visitors here for Easter, just like every other church.”
It took awhile to walk through the building with Scott as he was showing me around, because he talked to each person, by name, and chatted a bit about something that was going on in their life. He said: “Some of our great volunteers, when they first come down here, are afraid that they won’t know what to say to a homeless person. I tell them—they’re just like everybody else, you and me. Some people have homes, some don’t. We’re all just people.”
What struck me was the ordinariness of it all, of the people there that day, of their needs and of their wants. And the ordinariness of what we can share—clothes, food, books, coffee. And when we take some time to walk together, and talk, and share a meal, just like on that road to Emmaus so long ago, Jesus still has a way of opening up life to us so that we can see what’s been right there all the time, but we were missing it.
The real power of the Resurrection is the power of restoring hope and restoring relationship. It’s the power of pulling relationships back together and sitting us down together so that the distances between us just disappear and we remember that we’re all, simply put, brothers and sisters. Some with homes, some without. Some with all our faculties, some who’ve lost a few along the way. Some with healthy minds and bodies, some who never healed from battles fought years ago. Some men, some women. Some with caring families, some without.
The real power of the Resurrection makes strangers into friends and sits us down at the same table, together. And when we break that bread, together, and eat, Christ is there. And our eyes are opened. And our hearts are full. As C.S. Lewis put it: we are “surprised by joy!” And we can hardly wait to tell somebody about how beautiful and how special it all is, just as I’m sharing this story with you this morning.
Sometimes we work to make Christianity way too complicated or something we do only on special occasions. The Emmaus Road story shows us that even as something as huge as the Resurrection itself becomes real in the “every day,” with those we serve and with everyone with whom we share this life day in and day out. It shows us that the great Easter miracle is something like what Willa Cather described: “miracles rest not so much upon healing power coming suddenly near us from afar, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for the moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what has been there around us always.”
In the very ordinariness of our lives, Christ brings new life and reconciles us to one another and to God. As we walk together, as we talk together, as we share a meal together, Christ is here. As we share the shirt off our back, as we give of ourselves, Christ is here. As we live together, pray together, worship together, share the sacrament together, Christ is here.
It’s beautiful. It’s a miracle. And it changes everything.
Alleluia. Christ is Risen. HE IS RISEN INDEED.
Amen
© Patricia Farris, 2008. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
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"Jesus Himself Comes Near"