Sermon Texts

April 6, 2008

It's not always easy to recognize someone. Years ago when I was chaplain at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, I knew two women who looked very much alike to me. One was a member of our church, and another worked at the college. One time I met the woman from our church on the college campus, and much to my embarrassment I called her by the college employee's name. I didn't really recognize her outside the context where I knew her.

It's not always easy to recognize someone. But why in the world would these two disciples on the road to Emmaus not recognize Jesus? Had they not spent a good three years following Jesus, spending significant amounts of time together? One answer to this puzzle is similar to my problem in Kenosha - quite understandably they were not expecting to see Jesus. He may have talked about rising from the dead, but that didn't register with them. No matter how much this person walking with them looked like Jesus, it couldn't be Jesus because he was dead.

Another answer to this puzzle lies with the words in the Greek original, "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." What kept their eyes from recognizing Jesus? This could be the same answer; their assuming that Jesus was still dead kept them from recognizing him. But often in the Bible in a pious effort to avoid using God's name in vain, authors use a passive verb to refer to God. Luke may be saying that God kept the disciples from recognizing Jesus. This adds a puzzle on top of a puzzle. Why would God do that? Perhaps to allow for the rich experience of this story. First, Jesus uses the time to lay out the Old Testament foundation for what he did and what happened to him, and secondly, the disciples recognize Jesus when he took the bread, blessed and broke it - reminding them of the Last Supper and pointing to the sharing of Communion as a time for recognizing the presence of Christ among us.

It's not always easy to recognize someone. Are there times when we don't recognize the presence of Christ among us? Like those disciples, we may not recognize the presence of Christ because of our expectations. They expected that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel/set Israel free. What that meant for them was that they assumed Jesus would lead them to freedom from their Roman oppressors. Instead the Romans crucified him. Jesus disappointed those expectations.

We may share similar expectations. We may expect that faith in God will give us all manner of blessings. There are those today who preach a prosperity Gospel, promising that firm faith will result in wealth and success. If we hear the Gospels, though, we hear Jesus inviting his followers to take up their crosses and follow him. Jesus invites his disciples to a life of serving others, not being served. In faith we affirm that we are blessed in many ways, yes, but if that's the primary expectation we have of our faith in Christ, we too may be disappointed.

What should we expect? Or where should we look to recognize the presence of Christ? There's no one answer to these questions, but I can't help but remember when Jesus said, "Just as you did it to the least of these, you did it to me." One place to recognize Christ, as unexpected as this continues to be, is in the face of "the least of these" - neighbors in need. Christ may appear to us in many forms - in the spouse who needs our attention, in the child or parent who needs our care, in the friend who needs a listening ear, in the stranger whose need we encounter, in the people in our communities who need help with health insurance or hunger or employment.

Also, like those disciples, we may not recognize the presence of Christ because God keeps us from recognizing Jesus. I don't know that I want to stress this, because we may wonder why God would toy with us in such a way. Yet I have often had a sense that some times are better suited for growth in faith than others, or that what might have been learned one time seemed more relevant or more powerful or more touching at another time. God may reserve an experience of recognizing the presence of the risen Christ for a time when it will touch or transform us most deeply.

Consider Rhonda, our fictional member who returned to church two years ago at Easter time after a number of years away from church. Her older daughter is Wanda, a successful lawyer living and working downtown. Although their relationship has been getting better, Wanda has been estranged from her mother and from church for many years and has had a difficult time accepting Rhonda's return to church. Wanda has always been driven to succeed, first in school, then in work, working long and hard to accomplish this success. She has repeated a pattern that is common among adult children of alcoholics. You may recall that Rhonda's husband, Vincent, was an alcoholic who was killed in a single car accident on the Eisenhower while he was driving drunk. Adult children of alcoholics are often super-achievers because they have become accustomed to working hard either to avoid the anger of an alcoholic parent or to gain the attention of a parent absorbed in his or her addiction. Rhonda has become aware of these dimensions of their family life. She does recognize that Wanda made some of her own choices in how to handle the problems in their home life, but Rhonda also recognizes that she was so consumed with the problems she faced with Vincent that she did not give Wanda the positive attention she needed and deserved. She looks back on Wanda's school years as a time when she was blind - blind to how caring and creative and hard-working Wanda was, blind to some of the needs for affirmation and attention Wanda signaled, blind to the ways Wanda was a blessing for her. Rhonda has been trying to make amends in some ways by working at restoring a more positive relationship with her daughter. She was thinking about this especially this weekend, for they had a really good time together yesterday. Rhonda agreed to host a couple of the St. Olaf choir members, and Wanda volunteered to help. It turns out that Wanda has some colleagues in her law office who are St. Olaf alumni. Rhonda was a little worried about the hosting - she hasn't been around college kids for a while - but she needn't have worried for Wanda was really good at talking with the choir members and making them feel at home. Rhonda's house hasn't been filled with such laughter and good conversation for a long time. As she settled into bed, she wondered why this better relationship hasn't developed earlier. As she drifted into sleep, the thought occurred to her that she wouldn't have been ready earlier - that recognizing the blessing that Wanda is to her depended on her coming back to an awareness of how much God loves her and how loving God in turn involves loving others and seeing Christ in them.

Recognizing Jesus is not always an easy matter. May God's Spirit open our eyes to see the presence of the risen Christ around us, especially in the "least of these," his brothers and sisters. Amen.