God Among Us

Luke 24: 13-48

I only know that God is present when it is in the past.  I mean so far in my life, it is only when I have looked back and reflected on something that has happened that I have been sure that it was God.  I can hardly recall an occasion where in the moment, I was able to proclaim with solid certainty that God was there and that whatever unfolded was the work of God’s hand.  And I wonder why that is?  Why is it that for most of us, we aren’t sure of God’s presence until the moment is long in the rearview mirror?  I think of encounters with strangers or people I hardly knew.  I think of the times when I didn’t get that scholarship or didn’t win that 1600 meter race or the occasions where things fell apart and it is only when I look back that I can say with certainty that God was there.  But I wonder why that is?  I wonder why I wasn’t sure at the time.  I wonder why it is only with hindsight that we can see what it is that God has in mind.  I know I am not alone, I have heard this from others too.  So, why is it that many of us struggle to recognize God when God’s spirit is literally right in front of us?

Perhaps this is true in part because we human beings tend to be all wrapped up in our own affairs.  In spite of our best efforts, we can barely get ourselves out the door with our whole heart in tact so it isn’t much of a surprise that we don’t see what is right in front of us.  Or maybe our failure to see God is part of how God operates.  Maybe God knows us well enough to know that if we knew at the time, that what was unfolding in front of us was God, we might turn and run the other way as fast as we could.  Or what if we often fail to see God because we are looking for something else?  Maybe it is simply that God arrives on the scene in ways that are so different than what we expect, that it is just too surprising for us to recognize.  And in fact that is just what happened to the two travelers on the road to Emmaus. 

We are told that one of them is a man, Cleopas, and the other person goes unnamed, which probably means that it was a woman.  (The biblical authors tend to forget that women are people and therefore are worthy of identification.)  The two travelers are talking and walking, probably slowly because they are so into what they are saying, going round and round about what really happened, what they really saw and whose report was the most accurate.  Suddenly amidst their conversation, someone appears, a stranger to them, who wants to know what exactly is occupying so much conversational energy.  They are so upset, distraught and confused that they can’t help but to be rude to the stranger.  Then, one of them says, you must be the only person who doesn’t know what is going on, you are so out of the loop!  You must not be from around here.  You must not hang around with the guys in our group…otherwise you would know at least some of the details of what happened.  But while they are annoyed by the stranger’s question and still deeply grieving, they do not hesitate to recount what it is that has got them so wound up.  Immediately after condemning the stranger for asking, the two travelers begin recounting the story of Jesus of Nazareth- they tell the stranger of Jesus, the prophet, mighty in word and deed, handed over, condemned to death and crucified.  And then as if the stranger, in that moment becomes something other than a stranger, they say, “But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” …They are waiting…But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.  We had hoped he was the one to redeem us.  Then the stranger, who they still do not recognize, reminds them that the story they recounted is all a fulfillment of the scriptures.  He reminds them that the messiah had to suffer and die.  It gets dark and the stranger attempts to depart but they convince him to stay.  This stranger, who walked alongside them on the road, takes bread from his knapsack, blesses it and offers it to them.  We don’t know exactly how much time passed, but we know that the moment was gone.  And it is only when they looked back and reflected on their encounter with the stranger that it hits them.  God was right there in front of them and they missed it- the stranger was gone. 

They were so wrapped up in their own affairs that they missed it.  They failed to see who it was.  The stranger was Jesus.  They race off to Jerusalem to tell the others.  When all of them are gathered, they begin to share the story of what unfolded on the road, shouts, “ahas,” confusion abound…and then a voice is heard, “Peace be with you.”  Silence, immediately…you can hear a pin drop.  They are afraid and shocked.  He spends the next moments convincing them that he, Jesus of Nazareth, appearing to them, is not a ghost.  He eats fish and shows them his wounds and they touch him while he reminds them again that they need not be afraid.  As Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “They were wounded now--all of them--the hands that had joined him to other people and the feet that had joined him to the earth. They had holes in them, sore angry-looking bruises that hurt them to look at, only it was important for the disciples to look, because they had never done it before....He wanted them to know he had gone through the danger and not around it.”  Jesus wanted them to know that even though he isn’t what they expected, he is indeed what they had been waiting for.

Jesus’ friends and followers expected him to return all “prettied up”.  And instead he appears to them dirty, with his wounds and hard life laid out before them in the flesh.  They can’t look away or avoid the pain.  They can’t clean him up or hide the messiness that is his body.  And I think it was no coincidence.  I think Jesus made sure that he appeared to them as he was on the cross on purpose.  I think he found them with his body ravaged, I think he appeared to them as he was, so that they could never again avoid the hurting body of another.  How many times have we expected to encounter the Holy in a neat and tidy package, and instead God moves among us in the form of the annoying guy at the Post Office who wants us to buy his book?  How many times have we expected to meet God in the glory of alleluias in worship and instead God comes to us at coffee hour after the celebration is over and someone we hardly know begins to cry?  How many times have we expected to welcome God’s Spirit among us in the silence of prayer and instead the phone rings and the interruption was what it was all about in the first place?

As much as we would rather wait for God to show up in the form of the tidy and comfortable, if we wait for perfection, if we wait for what we expect, we will miss God entirely.  Perhaps like us, the Disciples were hiding in their waiting.  They expected something miraculous, something huge, something spectacular, something other than a wounded man with an open heart, but in their waiting, they missed what they had with them all along.   They didn’t recognize Jesus perhaps because they didn’t want to believe it themselves.  Recognizing him would mean responding to him, recognizing him would mean living as he lived, recognizing him would mean that everything is different. 

Jesus showed up tattered and torn with his wounds uncovered to remind them what it means to follow him now that he is gone and Easter is done.  Now that the parades have ended, the procession is over, the lilies are wilted, what is left are the hungry, the lonely, the addicted, the lost, the imprisoned, what is left, is all of us.  What if God shows up and we fail to recognize because we are looking for something else?  What if God is among us and we are waiting for someone else?  What if we are not to wait any longer because Christ is among us?  May our hearts burn after having encountered the risen Christ.  Amen.