Is this More than Just Heartburn?

The Second Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13-35        

    “They said to each other, ‘were our hearts not burning within us while he talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’” Will you pray with me?

            God of our roads and broken bread,

            May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing in your sight oh God, our strength, and our redeemer. Amen.

           

             This past week, a friend of mine was passing through Statesville. When people come to Statesville, I take them to my favorite restaurant, Carolina Barbeque; they have the best chicken I’ve ever had. We were eating, and marveling at the weather. It was one of those rare, perfect spring days when the temperature was just right. I decided that my friend and I needed to go see an icon of my childhood, something that made Statesville unique. We drove a little ways and turned onto Oakwood Drive. Pretty soon, we were at this monumental tree. This tree had been around since before Statesville had been incorporated back in the late 18^th century.           

            This tree, better known to the residents of Statesville as Moses is a tree that towers over the landscape. The limbs of the tree could themselves be planted and tower over the other trees. It is by far the best climbing tree that I have ever seen. But for some reason, my friend wouldn’t get out of the car. I wanted to play, I wanted to climb the tree and relive my childhood, but she thought I was certifiably crazy. You see I’m leaving out a minor detail. This tree, that my grandparents played in when they were little, sits in the middle of Oakwood cemetery, the largest cemetery in Statesville. Just a few hundred feet from this gigantic tree, is the Lee plot, where my uncle and great grandparents are buried. But we’ll get back to that.

            The duo on the road to Emmaus had built their hopes and dreams, everything on Jesus of Nazareth. Their leader had shaped them; he was supposed to redeem Israel. They were very much trying to determine what’s next, where they would go from there. I think for Cleopas and his companion their best bet was to continue with their dinner reservations for the Passover was over. Jesus was dead and gone and for them, life had to go on.

            Then something happened that would change their lives forever. A man, a stranger started walking along side them. The man asked, “Why the long faces?” I’m sure the companions replied, “Seriously? Have you been under a rock or dead to the world for the past three days? Jesus the one we knew to be the Messiah for our people is dead. Our hope, gone, our faith, destroyed. But then we heard from some women who went early this morning to pay their respects that Jesus wasn’t there, and frankly we’re a bit lost.” I’m sure the stranger looked at them with holy frustration and love.

            The stranger didn’t turn out to be a stranger after all. This man, who walked along with them on the hard seven-mile journey was Jesus, the one they knew as Christ. Were our hearts not burning? In that moment, that snapshot of grace did we not feel God surrounding and enveloping us?

            Now for many of us, it would be easy to explain away the resurrection. It would be easy to say that Cleopas and his companion had a case of heartburn after such a bountiful Passover feast in Jerusalem. That would make things easy, wouldn’t it? The resurrection would fit back into our nice little boxes. We could roll the stone back in front of the tomb and say that Jesus fought the good fight, but in the end the candle was extinguished. Hope had died. Those women were just crazy.

            We’re all guilty of that. We came last Sunday and lilies flanked our altar, we sang the magnificent hymns of Easter, and then we all went home feeling good because Christ is risen. Then comes the Sunday after Easter. Things are back to normal, the lilies are gone, and the crowds have dissipated. For us, Easter is already gone. We’re putting the Easter baskets back in the attic, and frankly it’s good because we have other things to attend to. We all have dinner reservations in Emmaus.

            Luke’s Gospel makes it clear that the resurrection comes in the quiet moments when we’re putting our Easter baskets away. Whether it was early on the first day of the week while it was still dark, or even in the blindness of our own darkness as we head to wherever Emmaus is for us. We are the people precisely in need of the resurrection. We are those companions blinded; we are the women at the tomb astounded. For Easter changes everything, Easter changes us.

            My little brother some years back found a resurrection scene that is basically a nativity set of the tomb. You have the cross that stands on the hill with Jesus there, the women looking sad, and the soldiers carrying on about their business. On Good Friday you can close the tomb and then come Easter Sunday you put out the angel that holds a banner that says, ‘He is risen.’ That’s all good and well but then Scott in a moment of theological clarity asked something that the adults didn’t have an answer for. He asked very directly, “Where is the walking-around Jesus?” You see Scott saw the Jesus of the cross and the empty tomb, but where was this Jesus who conquered death? We spent some time searching for a walking around Jesus, and we finally found one. So every year, on Easter we place the walking around Jesus in front of the tomb. You see, the empty tomb is not the miraculous part of the story.

            The awe-inspiring, life-changing part of this story is that Jesus walked around. Jesus walked around not in vengeance or in a get-even spirit. Jesus walked around and changed the course of time. Jesus walked down the road to Emmaus and we are still talking about it today. I find that amazing, don’t you? This man, this Jewish Rabbi changed the course of history. This resurrection is serious business.

            One note of geographical clarification for you, as hard as we’ve tried, we can’t find the road to Emmaus that Luke talks about in the 24th chapter of his Gospel. We don’t know where in the world these men were headed, or if they even made it to Emmaus or just stopped somewhere along the way. I often wonder if that was intentional, if by chance, in God’s holy wisdom and humor, the road to Emmaus is for us. That road, that way, that path we are walking down is very much the same road that Cleopas walked down.

            And if that is the case, what snapshots, what moments in your life did you feel your heart burning within you? Where were those tiny crumbs that helped you come to a better understanding of the resurrection? Where were those divine moments when creation intertwined with Creator and you were for but a moment, transformed?

            John Wesley, the Anglican priest who eventually started the revolution that brought forth the Methodist denomination talked about his Aldersgate experience. He was in London one night and went to a church on Aldersgate Street, and felt his heart strangely warmed. He knew in that moment, he was surrounded by grace.

            What was it for you? Was it that friend who called you or visited you when you needed them? Was it that parent, whose only presence here on earth is the memories you still have? Is it that nurse at the hospital who smiled in a way that let you know you were safe? What moments were your heart burning? What moments changed the course of your history?

            The beauty of the Gospel story is that it happens to us! The good news of the road to Emmaus is that the road we walk may bear a different name, but a stranger who seems vaguely familiar comes and allows our hearts to burn. The good news of Jesus is that resurrection is real, and happens to us.

            The other night I watched a wonderful movie. The 2012 film, Perks of Being a Wallflower chronicles the story of Charlie, the high school freshman dealing with mental illness who is taken in by some incredible seniors. There’s a beautiful line in that movie as Charlie is realizing what this road of life is really about. He proclaims, “I know we'll all become somebody-we'll all become old photographs and we'll all become somebody's mom and dad. Right now these moments are not stories, this is happening. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story. You are alive, and you stand up and see the lights on the buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment I swear, we are infinite.”

            When I was a junior in high school my road to Emmaus took a drastic turn. I can remember the week like it was yesterday, I was participating in Leadership Statesville 2009, which was a youth program for up and coming community leaders. Throughout the course of that program we visited different parts of Statesville, once a month, on a Wednesday we’d see everything from the airport to the jail to city hall to get an idea of how things worked in our community. But that particular Wednesday we went to all the art galleries in downtown Statesville. Now my friend and I were bored out of our minds. We were honored to be considered part of Statesville’s leaders, but I think we felt like Charlie in that movie, knowing we’d be somebody someday; we just weren’t there yet. In all honesty we didn’t want to listen to some man talk about the meaning of his painting of a bridge. So my friend and I did the unthinkable, we skipped one of the art gallery exhibits and bought two bottle cokes from one of the stores. There we sat outside the art gallery in the stairwell, talking, laughing, and smiling. Now to discourage younger ears that are hearing this and to make the educators here happy, we got caught skipping. But even amidst a lady yelling at us for how delinquent we were, we did everything to keep ourselves from laughing at how great of a day it was.  Later that evening I received a text from my friend thanking me for a beautiful time, and how she was looking forward to hearing me preach that Sunday.

            No matter the trouble I got in that day from skipping, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. For that moment of grace was a moment that I look back and realize that my heart was burning within me. I’m starting to realize that these snapshots I’ve been talking about, these photographs caught in time when we feel like all is right with the world, these are not fleeting moments best left in our memories, they are encounters with a stranger on the road. These moments that we look back and see the memories that shaped our faith, we see there in the background, a stranger, a friend, a family member who made Jesus come alive for us.

You see that memory is one where I can’t help but see Jesus in, there’s reasons behind that, I received a phone call just two days later, that my friend Abbey who spent that time with me smiling and drinking a coke, was killed in a car accident.
            I tell you this story not to leave you with death and despair, that’s not my job during the Easter season. You see ever so often I’ll get down my yearbook from the year before Abbey died and read the message Abbey wrote in it, “Roberto, let me just tell you I have no idea what I would have done without you this year! I mean who would I have to pick on, and who would pick on me? I’m so glad we’ve gotten to know each other, these next few years will be great, but it’s only the beginning of something crazy, I love you, Abbey.”

            Friends we all have encountered Jesus on our roads, Jesus who comes to us, and reminds us that this is only the beginning. We see those old snapshots, and we yearn for explanations, for reasoning, for clean-cut ideas that make giving up acceptable. But then, somehow, some way a stranger comes, and reminds us of the burning within us, reminds us that there was this crazy thing that happened two millennia ago and still begins in our lives today.

            Years from now, if I’m lucky enough to have a family and kids, I think on a Spring day I’ll take them over to Oakwood Drive in Statesville. We’ll go visit some of the people who are there, we’ll see my uncle, and I’ll tell them what a wonderful person he was, and how proud he would be of them. I think we’d head over to  a church member’s plot, and tell the story of the first funeral I ever preached at. I might even point out First Baptist over the hill there, where my friend Abbey’s funeral was. But then, we’d veer off, and go play on that tree Moses. It sounds crazy, right? But the beauty of the resurrection is that there are times on our roads to Emmaus that we can park on the side of the road and play in the cemeteries, because our hearts will be burning. You see people of faith are silly enough to play in cemeteries, because death has been swallowed up in victory. Love could not be kept silent by the grave. Suddenly in that snapshot encounter with Jesus, playing in the cemetery isn’t that crazy after all.

All glory, honor and power be to the one who was, who is, and who is to come.

            Amen.