Unraveled Hopes and Dreams

05/05/2019 Sermon by Pastor Melody Webb
​Scripture: Luke 24:13-35 

It is the first day of the week, and three days have passed since Jesus’s death on the cross – long enough, in Jewish belief, for the soul to have left the body. Those who followed Jesus and believed him to be the Messiah, the one sent to deliver Israel from Roman domination and restore its earthly kingdom, have stayed in Jerusalem for three days after the Passover; now, they begin to return to their homes – disillusioned and disappointed. Despite Jesus telling them he would be raised from death, nothing has happened. They heard a rumor that some of the women claim that he is alive, but when John and Peter went to see for themselves, all they found was an empty tomb. It just doesn’t make sense. How could we have been so sure that this was the answer we’ve been waiting for? That God had finally heard our prayers and our hopes and dreams were finally coming true? And now, God just pulls the rug out from under us. It feels like a cruel joke.
 
We’re beginning a worship series today called, “Unraveled: Seeking God When Your Plans Fall Apart.” One thing our gospel lesson reminds us today is that we’ve all experienced times of disillusionment and disappointment. We’ve all gotten out hopes up for something, only to have our plans, or our world, fall apart. So in this series, we’ll be seeking to answer the questions, How do we move forward when our tightly-knit plans unravel into loose threads? What do we become when our identity—or the path we’re on—comes undone? What if all of this is not the end we fear it will be?
 
I want you to take a moment and think about the most recent time that you became disillusioned or disappointed. When is the last time your plans, or your world, started to become unraveled? Perhaps it came with an unexpected illness or injury; maybe it was a job or promotion that fell through, or a relationship that ended, or any other number of life situations that didn’t work out they way we had hoped. As you remember that sense of loss, those feelings of sadness or despair, don’t be afraid to confess silently to Jesus, to tell him about your disappointment, as we offer a prayer together:
 
[moment of silent prayer]
 
Our scripture today begins when Cleopas, a relative and follower of Jesus, along with his unnamed companion, set off on the road to Emmaus. They are leaving Jerusalem, their place of shattered dreams, their place of pain and disappointment, their place of grief. As they journey, they feel free to discuss their pain and disappointment with each other. It is good that they have one another for this journey, so that they don’t have to suffer alone, in isolation. It is also good that there is an openness, a vulnerability between these two friends, that makes it possible for them to be real with one another, to speak honestly about their grief and despair. There are no masks to be worn here, no reason to hide or pretend. This is what spiritual friendship looks like. In church lingo today, we may call this friend our accountability partner – that person who shares your faith, your beliefs, your values, and who is there to listen when you need to talk and who will offer encouragement and prayer and support. And you offer the same to them.
 
One of the first things I want us to hear from the text today is that this is a pattern for spiritual friendship that God expects us to have with others. Corporate worship can only take you so far on the journey of faith. We all need close spiritual friends with whom we can talk and share intimately about our struggles, our disappointments, our fears – as well as our joys and hopes. And, we need to learn to be this kind of spiritual friend to others – to be willing to listen and not cast judgment, to be a safe place where confidences are kept, and to be an encourager to others on their own journeys. Spiritual friendships like these most often develop out of smaller settings, out of Bible studies, Sunday school, and small groups, or out of conversations over coffee, or pie or even a beer. Remember that even though Jesus taught crowds of people, he gathered regularly with a group of 12, and had an even smaller inner circle of three – Peter, James and John, with whom he was even closer. If our faith is a journey, then who are the two or three close spiritual friends that you are journeying with?
 
As we return to our text, notice how, when a stranger begins to walk with these two friends they bring him into their conversation. Even though they didn’t know it at the time, this stranger was the Risen Christ. Their willingness to share openly with each other created an opportunity for Christ to join their conversation. Does that ever happen to you? Have you ever been willing to share something about your life or faith experiences with another, and as they begin to share something about their own life or faith, you suddenly recognize that this is a God-moment? That there is a divine presence in the conversation, that in connecting with another person in this way, you’ve somehow entered into a holy encounter with the divine?
 
Over the past few weeks, I have been privileged to have some of these encounters. They’ve occurred as I had coffee or lunch one-on-one with another, or as I sat and talked with a family in distress, or as I’ve listened to others ask or reflect on questions in our Wednesday small group. When we experience doubt, worry, fear, disillusionment, grief or disappointment, and then are willing to share those experiences with another in a search for hope, for answers, for God to help make sense of it all, then we’ve opened a door for God to step into that very situation, that very pain, and to take the unraveling and do some mending. Psalm 139 reminds us that God hems us in, before and behind. (v. 5)  This is the next thing I want us to learn from this lesson today: God is always waiting for us to offer our doubts, our shattered dreams, our sense of loss, our pain and despair, to God; then, God can show us what resurrection looks like.
 
In the midst of the conversation, as Cleopas and his companion begin sharing their pain and disappointment with this stranger who has joined their journey, Jesus begins explaining the scriptures to them – explaining the whole God story. Theologian N. T. Wright imagines this part of the conversation, with Jesus saying, “Hasn’t it occurred to you that all through the Bible God allows his people to get into a real mess – slavery, defeat, despair, and finally exile in Babylon – in order to do a new thing? Isn’t that what the prophets and the Psalms were about as well? Passage after passage in which Israel is promised that God will rescue them from slavery, even from sin, and sometimes even from death – but first they have to go through it and out the other side? Well then, supposing that’s what had to happen to the Messiah himself, Israel’s personal representative?” (Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C: A Daily Devotional. Westminster John Knox Press.) In other words, Jesus is giving them the new picture, the new pattern for faith. That even though our world is filled with pain and suffering, that even though our plans sometime become unraveled and world falls apart, that the holy work of resurrection and restoration occurs precisely out of such circumstances. It is only when we have let go of the other things we use to try to bring joy, healing, comfort, happiness, and admit the truth of our pain, our loss, and our need for restoration that God can begin to mend.
 
After a long journey of talking together, the two friends invite this new companion to share a meal with them. They’ve made a connection, a new friend, and so they extend their hospitality – welcoming him even further into their lives. I want us to consider honestly for a moment when we have made room for someone new in our lives? Have you ever asked a complete stranger into your home for a meal? That may be taking it a little too far, you may think. So let’s think about the context of our faith community. When is the last time you personally invited someone from church to your home for a meal, or to meet you for coffee, or lunch? In what other ways might God be calling each of us, individually, and the church as a whole, to be inviting others into our lives, into our homes, into our inner circles – for friendship, for community, for encouragement and support along the journey of life and faith? When is the last time you offered a meal to someone – someone grieving, someone recovering from surgery, someone dealing with a long-term illness or injury, someone that just had a baby, or someone who eats most of their meals alone? Aren’t we all hungry? Not just physically hungry, but aren’t we all longing for connection and relationship? Don’t we all have unravelings in our lives that need mending, and that it sure would be a relief to just talk to someone about?
 
When the friends invite this stranger to a meal, their eyes are finally opened to see that this is indeed Jesus when he becomes the host himself, taking the bread, as he had done before, blessing it, breaking it and sharing it with them. When Jesus broke the bread, something in themselves broke open. Hope welled up within them. What had seemed like an ending maybe wasn’t an ending at all. True, Jesus would not be there in the physical body to continue teaching and healing they way he had before. But Jesus wasn’t dead. Christ is alive! His teachings are true! The kingdom is real! And they’ve just had the privilege of experiencing it firsthand!
 
Rachel Held Evans, a 37 year old Christian author and progressive evangelical, died yesterday from complications due to an allergic reaction to antibiotics. She forged new paths for women in the more evangelical and fundamentalist denominations of Christianity, most of whom do not accept the authority of women to be pastors or faith leaders. She sort of rose to fame with her book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood. But the first book of hers that I read was a sort of memoir called, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church. I was drawn to it as soon as I saw the title, because I had had my own journey with losing and then finding my faith. You might say it was my own journey to Emmaus. I left behind the Jerusalem church of my childhood, where nothing made sense to me, the words I most often heard quoted from the bible were used as weapons to shame and denounce some, while being used to justify the power and control held by others. Many of us in the Christian community are grieving Rachel’s death. As one of my friends wrote yesterday, “I’m not one to be emotional about a person I’ve never met, but this one is very difficult. Feels like I’ve lost a friend.”
 
I want to share an excerpt from her book, Searching for Sunday:
 
“The very first thing the world knew about Christians was that they ate together.
 
“At the beginning of each week they gathered – rich and poor, slaves and free, Jews and Gentiles, women and men – to celebrate the day the whole world changed, to toast to resurrection. While each community worshiped a bit differently, it appears most practices communion by enjoying a full meal together, with special prayers of thanksgiving, or eucharisteo, for the bread and wine. They remembered Jesus with food, stories, laughter, tears, debate, discussion, and cleanup. They thanked God not only for the bread that came from the earth, but also for the Bread that came from heaven to nourish the whole world. According to church historians, the focus of these early communion services was not on Jesus’ death, but rather on Jesus’ friendship, his presence made palpable among his followers by the tastes, sounds, and smells he loved.”
 
She goes on to quote another writer, Barbara Taylor Brown:
 
“With all the conceptual truths in the universe at this disposal, Jesus did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do – specific ways of being together in their bodies – that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself… ‘Do this,’ he said – not believe this but do this – ‘in remembrance of me.’”
 
“So they did.” (Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church. Nelson Books.)
 
In the United Methodist church, we believe that in the sacrament of holy communion, when we share the broken bread and the cup of blessing, that we encounter the presence of the Risen Christ. Jesus used table fellowship to teach his disciples how to live in the kingdom of God. Jesus himself sits at the table, and everyone is invited to be fed with the Bread of Life; and to drink from the cup of salvation. When our world falls apart, Jesus says, let me fill your need, your hunger, with my Bread from heaven. As you remember my body being broken, remember that I know your own brokenness, your own pain, your own suffering. And I have overcome death and hell. So eat this bread, be filled with my love, my compassion, my strength, my hope. Let me quench your thirst for justice and righteousness with the cup of blessing, offering forgiveness for many. Eat and drink and be restored. I am with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. There is grace and mercy and healing at my table. And look, look at all those others sitting around the table with you. They are on this journey with you. You are not alone. You have a whole community of spiritual friends who also know what it is to experience pain, and loss, and discouragement. But they also know the miracle of resurrection. You are all my witnesses. So walk with each other. Invite strangers into your conversations. Tell them about the power of God’s love to heal and mend, to restore and bring new plans and new relationships to life, to give you a hope and a future.
 
When Cleopas and his friend realized what they were experiencing, they got up and ran back to Jerusalem, to tell the others their story of hope and resurrection. And when they arrived, they found out that others had also seen the Risen Christ – had their own resurrection stories. And so the church was born.
 
Prayer: Abide with us, O Lord, for it is toward evening and the day is far spent; abide with us, and with Thy whole Church. Abide with us in the evening of the day, in the evening of life, in the evening of the world. Abide with us in Thy grace and mercy, in holy Word and Sacrament, in Thy comfort and Thy blessing. Abide with us in the night of distress and fear, in the night of doubt and temptation, in the night of bitter death, when these shall overtake us. Abide with us and with all Thy faithful ones, O Lord, in time and in eternity. (A Lutheran prayer)