The Easter Prayer
Text: Luke 24:13-35
(Gary W. Charles at Cove Presbyterian Church on 4-30-2017)
Emmaus is not as much a destination as
it is a state of mind. Emmaus is “the place we go in order to escape,” writes
Fred Buechner, “Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves
forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest
and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that people have had –
ideas about love and freedom and justice – have always in time been twisted out
of shape by people for selfish ends.”[1]
For Luke, Emmaus is not just where the
two despondent disciples are going; it is what they are doing. They are
getting out of town, doing whatever they can to get Jesus off their minds, out
of their hearts. They are on the way to wherever they can go to forget that
whatever is lovely and sacred dies; they are headed to Emmaus – that place of forgetting,
just when someone makes them remember.
Luke tells us that the unannounced stranger
on the road is really the risen Jesus, but for the two disciples who are Emmaus
bound, he is an ignorant stranger, the only person on earth who has not heard
about the horrendous and horrifying execution of Jesus. The two disciples pour
out their hearts to this utter stranger. They tell him how much they had hoped
Jesus was the one to bring in God’s promised reign.
The stranger on the Emmaus road listens
to their woes and then he speaks. What he says is surprisingly curt. He does
not comfort them, saying, “I know you must be really hurting now. I can feel
your pain.” He says nothing nearly so trite. In fact, he is downright rude. He
calls them: “Idiots! Fools!” Then he
asks them: “Have you never read your Bible?” By the time, he has explained the
story of Abraham, Moses, David, the Exile, and the return to Jerusalem, they
have reached the disciples’ home.
At the house, Jesus bids them
farewell, but they say: “No. Stay with us for evening is coming.” Actually, by
this point, they may well be ready for this biblical know-it-all to move along,
but instead, they offer this stranger their hospitality and the stranger stays
– at least, for a while.
Do you remember that story in Genesis when Abraham and Sarah in their
great old age are visited by two strangers? Little do they know that these aliens
are actually angels. Abraham and Sarah offer them their hospitality and the angels
stay long enough to tell this old couple that the next pregnancy test will be
positive. Years later, in The Letter to the Hebrews, the
hospitality of Abraham and Sarah is described as “entertaining angels
unawares.”
Inside the house of the two despondent
disciples, the story begins to sound something like what you and I often hear
inside this sanctuary, what we will hear with old friends returning home next
Sunday. The sage, talkative stranger takes bread and blesses it and breaks
it and gives it to the two disciples. At that precise moment, the fog
lifts and they recognize that he is no stranger; he is the risen Jesus.
Then two things happen almost
simultaneously. The risen Jesus vanishes from their sight and yet he does not vanish
from their hearts. They experience a serious case of religious nostalgia as
they revisit all he said to them while walking along the road from Jerusalem to
Emmaus.
That is not all they do. Within the
hour, they leave Emmaus. If Emmaus is the place to go when hope has decayed and
died, then they cannot stay there, because hope has been reborn in them. It is
not just that they want to leave; they MUST leave. You cannot stay in Emmaus
once you have seen the risen Lord.
I love this story. I love its powerful
reserve. I love the way it challenges the typical pious Christian comment: “I’m
on a sacred journey to find Jesus.” The Emmaus story is not about our search
for God, but God’s search for us, even when we are deep in denial, lost in
grief, on the run.
I am not an Episcopalian, but I do admire
many Anglican and Episcopalian prayers. During those times when I have walked
the Emmaus road, I have turned to the Book
of Common Prayer for words of insight and inspiration. In Luke’s Emmaus
story, two disciples invite Jesus to, “Stay with us, for it is almost evening
and the day is nearly over.” The Book of
Common Prayer captures this ancient act of hospitality in a moving prayer:
“Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our
companion in the way, kindle our hearts and awaken hope that we may know you as
you are revealed in scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the
sake of your love.”
“Stay with us” is the invitation by the
two hospitable disciples. It is not just their prayer, but the prayer of the
church, the Easter prayer, a most plural prayer. This prayer is born in
hospitality and issued in gratitude, not from a desire to keep God captive here,
but to celebrate God’s grace out there.
When we pray for Jesus to abide with us, we
pray that you and I will be changed from despair into hope, from sorrow into
joy. It is to pray that our eyes be opened to God’s risen presence in the most
unlikely places, among the most unexpected strangers.
If we pray the Easter prayer, “stay with
us,” we will no longer be able to drive by bombed out city neighborhoods as if
they were not our problem or stare at a panhandling stranger as if she were an
anonymous intrusive nuisance. To pray the Easter pray is to follow Jesus out of
here to wherever God’s children cry out in misery, follow him to jail cells and
hospice rooms and civic meetings. The tomb could not hold Jesus, neither can
any church building – no matter how old, no matter how historic. He is risen!
He is not only here! He is
out there!
To pray the Easter prayer, then, is to
hear Jesus shouting for shalom over the separation wall dividing Israel from
Palestine, to see Jesus walking the halls of Congress like a mad man who knows
that peace is possible for those who desire it more than they desire the
economic boom of war. To pray the Easter prayer is to watch Jesus holding a
calculator and announcing that the real federal deficit is a deficit of
compassion for the working poor, the disabled, the sick, and the aliens who
pick our crops, clean our houses, and staff our stores. To pray the Easter
prayer is to follow Jesus to wherever the gifts of clean air, water, and soil
are being spoiled by greed or neglect. Pray the Easter prayer and we will most
likely find the risen Jesus walking along Rte. 29, strolling the streets of Crozet
and Charlottesville with our sisters and brothers struggling to find a safe and
affordable place to live.
“Stay with us” may sound like a nice,
sweet, innocuous church prayer. “Sweet hour of prayer.” “Sweet hour of prayer.”
But the Easter prayer extends long beyond Sunday morning worship hour and intrudes
long after into every part of our day and into every aspect of our lives. Just
ask the two disciples walking the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They probably wondered:
“What bother can this stranger possibly be?” “How much can it cost us to give this
guy some bread and wine?” “Sure, stay with us tonight.”
How much did it cost them? It cost them
their lives. They would never again walk that Emmaus road assuming that they were
alone; never walk that familiar path resolved that life is one long extended disappointing
replay. They would never again listen to scripture read or break bread and
drink wine without remembering how the risen Christ came alive in their midst.
What about us? Are we ready to pray the
Easter prayer? I wish I could jump up and down and say, “Yes, Lord, I am
ready,” but I have walked too far along the Emmaus road, am too well acquainted
with Emmaus, too often comfortable in Emmaus, too stubborn to let go of all my disappointment
and despair and fear.
What two despondent disciples discovered
in the comfort of their own Emmaus home was that it is not so much about whether
we are ready or not, but that the risen Jesus is ready for us, ready to open
our eyes to see his life giving presence even in our haunts of hiding, even in
Emmaus. Luke tells this story to call the church to prayer, the Easter prayer, “stay with us.” It is the most
powerful prayer that will ever come off any person’s or congregation’s lips. It
is a prayer that will cost us our lives.
May God, then, give us the courage, to
pray: “Lord Jesus, stay with us; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts
and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in scripture and the
breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love.”
AMEN
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