April 26 -- Third Sunday of Easter

Friends in Christ, grace to you and peace from Jesus, who comes to us, and walks with us today and always. Amen.

Well, I spent some time this week following the advice I’ve learned and shared frequently in my ministry...but haven’t always followed myself, to be honest.

I’m often saying, especially in terrible times, when you don’t have the words — when we don’t have the words — we fall back then on the holy words of the church:  The ancient prayers of the faithful, the lyrics of the hymns God’s people have been singing for decades and even centuries, the litanies and greetings and call-and-responses that have carried us through.  You know, like:  “The Lord be with you, and also with you; Christ is risen, Christ is risen indeed; God is good, all the time.  All the time, God is good.”  And of course, when we don’t have words, we fall back on the holy words of Scripture.

And this has been another tough week.  This week we learned of Doug's death, one of our own members.  Doug just joined the congregation in January.  He died from the many complications associated with Alzheimer’s.  And like so many in this terrible season of pandemic, Cecelia wasn’t able to be with him physically at the end.  Patty's mother Dorothy died too...also not related to the virus, but the whole situation is plagued by this physical distancing.  Patty’s a member of Bethlehem and has been walking a long journey with her mother (and father) in their declining health.  Please pray for Cecelia and her family, and Patty and her family, especially her father in this time of deep grief.

These are just two situations where words are hard to find.  There are thousands more, and especially in these days.  And how we can be rendered wordless.  Preachers, whose job it is to share words!
Feeling dry.  Feeling at a loss.  Feeling choked up.    
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Did you know the Road to Emmaus is a windy, down hill?  Down hill walking can be a gift, on one hand, I know.  But it’s also hard on the knees for one thing, and for symbolic purposes, I think the imagery is loaded:
the disciples are spiraling downward.

They don’t have the words.  They’re getting (or already are) overwhelmed with sadness and bad news.  They had hoped, they had hoped, they had hoped…
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So anyway, back to me :)  I decided to follow the advice I’ve shared before, but don’t always follow so well:  I fell back into the story, this Road to Emmaus text specifically.  I’ve preached on this text many times.  I’ve read it and riffed on it many more, you’d think there would be something for me to say, but I was coming up wordless this week.  Spiraling down, like the disciples in the wake and waves of the news and our people, our family members, our friends, and all those we don’t know who are suffering right now.  So much pain out there, so much pain in here [heart].

So one night this week — how does one fall back into the text — I lit a candle, poured myself a little scotch, and just started hand writing out this long Gospel text from Luke.

(BTW, if that sounds at all like a life-giving activity, I strongly encourage you to do the same with this or any of our lessons from Scripture.  Don’t do it if it feels like mindless punishment, writing on a blackboard the same thing over and over.)

There is just something that happens, when we fall back.  When we go back to the text.  When we dive deeper than a quick read.  True confessions: there are some Sundays, in my preparations that I only read over the text once or twice.  Just to get it in my head, [rushed] “Oh yeah, Road to Emmaus.  I know this.”  Maybe you long-time Christians do the same when familiar texts come up: “Here we go again, with the Easter story, I know this already…”

We don’t always and deeply “dwell” in the Word, do we?  I admit that I don’t.  There’s bills to pay, people to call, kids to feed, Zoom meetings to make, and on…and especially in a period of descending chaos.
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Well, here’s what jumped out at me in my writing out Luke 24: 13-35, in my attempt at dwelling:

There is this interesting dynamic in the movement (or lack) of the two disciples vs. Jesus.  The only movement the disciples are doing is yes, downward, to Emmaus.  But what I noticed was also a certain paralysis.  There’s that moment at the beginning when the disciples stood still, looking sad.  That struck me.  It’s like they were stuck, in their pain and their grief.  In their despair, the draining of hope.

The only direction they could go was down, seven miles down.  Paralysis means a loss — literally a loosening — of power and ability from performing regular functions.   Sound familiar?

People beating themselves up for not being able to perform regular functions these days, or confused why they can’t “take advantage of all this down time”?  Why’s our house in disarray when we’re in it so much?  Why can’t I get to those projects or make those phone calls or update those records or whatever?  Why am I wanting to curl up and pull the covers over my head?  Paralysis?  A loosening of power to do regular stuff?

How we had hoped too, we’d be back by now, recovering soon, up and at ‘em...thought Jesus would redeem Israel...

And then, even after the seven mile walk with the risen Lord, opening the scriptures to them, journeying with all along the downward path, they were still stuck that evening.  Crashing for the night.  Closing up shop.  Maybe a little light was shed that day by this stranger with them, but sundowners, they’re lost, confused, scared — paralyzed — all over again.

Jesus was ready to go on, on the other hand.  Always moving.  (Theme in Luke.)  Jesus is the opposite of paralysis.  The contrast is stark.  It’s procession vs. paralysis in this text.  Jesus is always in procession.  This text begins with Jesus moving too.  Action verbs like “coming close” and “walking along,” and  then he’s ready to keep going even at the end of the day, even through the night.

And here’s the goldmine, friends in Christ:  At the bottom of the hill, Emmaus, when the day is done, the disciples ask Jesus to stay with them in their paralysis — in their stuck-ness, in their fear, and absence of hope, in their sorrow and in their confusion and anxiety about what the future holds.  They plead with him, it’s like the only energy or strength they have left, the only pull they have.  They urged him, the text says.
“So he went in to stay with them.”

Precisely when we’ve got nothing, Christ comes through the door and stays with us.  Precisely when we’re at the bottom, out of answers, out of words, out of hope, out of joy, out of peace, out of faith, that’s exactly when Jesus stops the procession for the moment and stays with us.

And then, in the breaking of the bread, their eyes, our eyes are opened.  In the physical being together and physical eating together, and physical praying at table together and I’ll just add the physical singing together — how I miss you all and our being together in body!

In the breaking of the bread, their eyes, our eyes are opened!

Suddenly they realize, wait a minute!  Wasn’t he with us all along.  Through all our paralysis, through every step of our decline to Emmaus.  When we crashed?  When we couldn’t go on?  He was there all along, opening the scriptures, walking beside, never leaving!

And right in that moment, he vanishes, and they’re OK with that.  I’ve always loved that.  You might think they ought to crash all over again, right?!  As if they are losing Jesus all over again!  But it’s the remembering that powers them, that fuels them.  “Were not our hearts burning…”  It’s this re-visioning that doesn’t just lift their spirits:
It sends them “that same HOUR” all the way back to Jerusalem!  The text says, the moment they recognized him, that night at table, they got up and went all the back, up the hill to Jerusalem!

That’s Christ resurrection procession, as opposed to despairing paralysis.  That’s what Christ does for us too, friends!

Christ is with us, in every step we take, in every crash we make, through all our confusion, and fear, and anxiety and heartache.  Christ is with us.  Christ is with you, and so…

Our paralysis is cleared too.  Even through the night of pain and pandemic, the loss of words, even death itself, even 7 miles down, through Christ, we can now, you can now process up hills...to go and tell the others — to share our bread, to love our neighbors, and to descend with them like Christ descended with us.
This is most certainly true.  Alleluia.  AMEN.