Prepared to See Jesus
Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter
April 23, 2023
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35
When I decided that it was finally time to come out to my family, I knew the way it had to be done. And that was over a meal at my grandmother’s table in southern Virginia where I grew up. MawMaw’s table was where all the big family announcements had always been made. It’s where birthdays were celebrated. It’s where Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were shared, and many ordinary meals too. It’s where loved ones who had died were mourned and tears were shed. It’s where prayers were said, politics discussed, and arguments were had. In every way, MawMaw’s table was the heart of our life together as a family. It was there, over the years, where we knew each other best. No matter how hectic our lives became, or how far away we had moved, or how much our lives had changed, we always came back to her table. We might arrive feeling like strangers, but somehow, after eating her crabcakes, spoonbread, and collard greens, we would begin to recognize one another again.
After being closeted for so many years, I was tired of feeling like a stranger among these people I loved so dearly. Tired of feeling like they didn’t really know me, at least, not all of me. And so, on a hot, humid August evening, as dinner started winding down and our food settled in our stomachs—with the deafening sound of cicadas singing in the background and the first of the lightning bugs coming out for the night—I told my family the whole truth about myself. After all those years when my family’s eyes had been kept from recognizing me, I became known to them.
“Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
There’s something powerful about meals, isn’t there? Something about the way we encounter one another at the table that invites us to know one another in deeper ways. Something about satisfying our physical hunger and the hunger we have to be in relationship with others. Most of us can probably recognize that there is a difference between the relationships we form with others
in say the workplace or office or classroom, and the relationships we form with one another over a meal. I’m not saying that I think there’s anything magic about meals. But there is something about eating together that disarms us. That allows us to become vulnerable before one another, and to come out of ourselves. That pauses the feverish pace with which we go about our busy and anxious lives long enough for us to reveal parts of ourselves we might not otherwise be able to share, and to see things about one another we hadn’t noticed on first glance. Those of us who have experienced coffee hour here at St. Peter’s will know exactly what I’m talking about!
We know this about breaking bread together, and its power over us. And do you know what? God knows it too. God knows that one of the most powerful ways to get through to us is by sharing a meal with us. There are countless stories across different ages and cultures and religions even, about God choosing to come among human beings in the form of a stranger—as someone unknown—and to get our attention by revealing Godself in the context of a meal. Of course, God could have chosen to come among people any way God wanted. In power and might. With heavenly hosts, surrounded by throngs of angels. With fire and smoke and trumpets blasting, so that there would be no doubt that this was God! And in some stories about God, this is the way God comes. But in other stories, God comes among us as a stranger. As someone unknown and unfamiliar. As a foreigner. In vulnerability. And so often, it is in sharing food that the people in these stories come to recognize God, in the context of hospitality. When they invite God, unknowingly, to their table and share a meal with God.
I still remember, when we were studying mythology in fifth grade, my teacher, Mrs. Emmanuel, told us a version of this story from ancient Greece about an elderly couple named Baucis and Philemon. Baucis and Philemon end up welcoming two weary travelers into their home in the middle of a terrible winter storm. The strangers tell the couple that they’ve knocked on the doors of all the other houses in the village, but no one would open the door. Baucis and Philemon don’t have a big home, but they invite the strangers inside. They add some wood to the fire, they set two extra places at their table, and they prepare a meal with the best food they have in their humble cupboard. As they are eating, though, they notice something strange begins to happen: the wine jug at their table doesn’t run out. It keeps filling up all by itself! And Baucis and Philemon begin to wonder who it is they’ve invited to dinner! Of course, it turns out that the strangers are the gods Zeus and Hermes. And because Baucis and Philemon welcomed them, the gods grant them their hearts’ desire.
Of course, my Sunday school teacher Miss Rachel told us another version of this story, this one from the book of Genesis in the Bible about an elderly couple named Sarah and Abraham. One day, when three mysterious strangers appear outside their tent, they drop everything and attend to their guests. They wash the strangers’ feet. Abraham goes out and prepares a calf. And Sarah scrambles to get supper together on such short notice for the unexpected company. As they are eating the meal together, however, Sarah and Abraham come to realize that they’re not entertaining ordinary people. And of course, neither is the news the strangers bring ordinary either. It turns out that Sarah will conceive a child in her old age. “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” the strangers ask.
These stories, and others like them, were told to encourage people be ready to receive strangers. They were moral stories, stories meant to remind people of the commands in scripture to care for the traveler, the alien, and the most vulnerable. To always be a good host. Because the truth is, you never know when God might be dropping in to audit your hospitality! When you will be entertaining angels and not know it.
In this morning’s gospel story from Luke’s Gospel, we hear another retelling of this story about God’s self-revelation in a meal. This time the characters in the story are two of Jesus’ disciples who are traveling along the road to Emmaus, a village about seven miles from Jerusalem, on the evening of the Resurrection. I can only imagine they are feeling a lot of feelings: almost certainly confusion, anxiety, and grief. Less than three days ago, Jesus had been tried by the state, sentenced to death, and brutally executed on a cross. His disciples had placed his dead body in a tomb, and covered it with a stone, and that was that. Earlier in the day, some of the women in their group discovered that his body was gone. The women claim that they saw angels at the tomb who told them that Jesus is alive. But who really knows what happened?
Not sure whether to grieve or celebrate, the two disciples are suddenly joined by a stranger on the road. A man who seems really strange, because somehow, he knows nothing at all about the things that have just taken place in Jerusalem concerning Jesus. “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” they ask him. Nevertheless, the day is nearly over, and it’s getting dark, so they invite the man to stay with them.
As they gather at the table, however, there is a twist in the story. Although the disciples are the ones who invited the man to stay with them, they suddenly find themselves as guests at his table. In this story, it is the stranger who hosts them. The stranger who takes the bread. The stranger who blesses it. The stranger who breaks it. The stranger who gives it to them. And it is in this moment—the moment when the disciples are fed by this stranger in their midst—that their eyes are opened. Suddenly, they recognize him—it’s Jesus himself! And just as mysteriously as he came—just as they might be tempted to cling onto him—he disappears from their midst. And they get up, and run back to Jerusalem and find the eleven other disciples, and share with them what has happened, “how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”
One of the most amazing things about being part of church is that each week, we too get to experience this story for ourselves first hand. Every Sunday, as we gather around this altar, we too become guests of the risen Jesus. It’s here where we recognize him—in holy bread and wine, and also, in each another. It’s here where he is our host; where he yearns for us to eat with him. It’s here where our hearts burn within us; where we come to know him, and where we know ourselves to be known by him. It’s here where he is no longer a stranger, and where we are no longer strangers either. And it’s from here that our eyes and hearts are opened to his presence in the world around us, in “all of his redeeming work” as our opening collect reminds us.
Which brings me to a word of warning… If we encounter the risen Christ in the bread that we will break here—if he is made known to us at this altar—then he will be made known to us in the rest of our lives too. In the other six days of our week. And this includes in people and places we might not be expecting to see him. In people who are usually invisible to us. In people we ignore or overlook. In people toward whom we harbor hatred or prejudice in our hearts. In people who get under our skin. In people we don’t even like. In places we are certain no god of ours would ever be caught dead. It turns out that’s precisely where Jesus is alive!
And if we presume to come forward to this table this week and every week, and to hold out our hands to receive his body, then we should be prepared for that. Prepared to see Jesus. Prepared to have our lives radically reoriented. Prepared to follow him with more of our hearts, as they burn within us. Amen.
—The Reverend Edmund I. Harris