Sermon delivered by David Burrow April 23, 2022 - First Congregational Church, Algona, Iowa
Click here for an audio version of this sermon. (13 MB - .mp3)
That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus' disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.
He asked them, "What are you discussing as you walk along?"
They stopped, looking downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?"
And he replied to them, "What sort of things?"
They said to him, "The things that happened to Jesus the
Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the
people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of
death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem
Israel; and besides all this,it is now the third day since this took place. Some
women from our group, however, have astounded us:
they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came
back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced
that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things
just as the women had described, but him they did not see."
And he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"
Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets,he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.
As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther.
But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over."
So he went in to stay with them.
And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them. With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight.
Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?"
So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.
Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the
one true Church, apostolic and universal, whose holy faith let us now declare:
We believe in God Almighty, infinite in wisdom, power, and love, whose mercy is
over all his works, and whose will is ever directed his children’s good.
We believe in Jesus Christ, Son of God and also man, the gift of the Father’s
unfailing grace, the ground of our hope, and the promise of our deliverance from
sin and death.
We believe in the Holy Spirit as the divine presence in our lives, whereby we
are kept in perpetual remembrance of the truth of Christ, and find strength and
help in time of need.
We believe that this faith should manifest itself in the service of love as set
forth in our example of our blessed Lord, to the end that the kingdom of God may
come upon the earth, Amen.
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
Then the king will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.’
Then the righteous will answer him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?’
And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.’
When I was growing up, my family travelled quite a bit. My dad had worked as a teacher all over the western half of the country, and after moving back to the Midwest, my parents would visit friends they’d made in Colorado, Idaho, and California as a way to keep costs down on cross-country trips. Many of those same people would stop and visit us in southeast Iowa while they headed to vacations in the East. The trips we made are some of my best memories from childhood, and they instilled a “wanderlust” in me that I still have to this day.
For years I kept track of my travels by taking a dog-eared atlas and going over the roads I’d been on with a highlighter. As a kid I made it to twenty-seven of the fifty states and to five provinces and two territories in Canada. I considered myself very well travelled, and compared to the other kids in my town, I was.
I’d find out as an adult, though, that North America was just a tiny part of a very large world. I made my first trip away from this continent in 1985, and it was to a place I never really intended to visit. At the time my brother Paul taught world history, and he had been selected for a program that took teachers around what was then the Soviet Union. Originally he intended for his wife to accompany him. She got pregnant with their first child, though, and understandably she didn’t want to be traveling across the Iron Curtain in that condition. Paul asked if I’d like to fill in for Nancy, and I started the very complicated process of completing the paperwork necessary for a trip that would take us to what are now Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine.
While most of that trip was carefully scheduled and supervised by the Soviet travel agency, there were still times we were on our own and needed to figure out things. One of the biggest challenges was just finding where to go when nature called. Not being a country that got a lot of tourists, Russia didn’t have those little “man and woman” pictograms we’ve gotten used to in the West. All the signs were just Russian words.
Fortunately my math background taught me the Greek alphabet, which is similar to Cyrillic. That helped me sound out the words, and I’d find one particular alien-looking word that had been borrowed when the czars intermarried with the French royal family—the word “toilette”.
Discovering where the restrooms were just opened up more mysteries, though. Next was the issue of discovering which of the two rooms was which. There were two common ways of marking the doors in the Soviet Union. Most frequently I’d see carved pictures of old-fashioned hats—a top hat for the gents and feathers and flowers for the ladies. The other possibility was one of two Cyrillic letters. Fortunately the label on men’s rooms looked like a western “M”, while the women had letter unique to Russian that makes a “Zh” sound.
Even after entering there were differences, since the toilets we know in America are very different from what is found in many other parts of the world. Eventually, though, I was able to sort out where to go and to do what I needed to do. The hard part was just figuring everything out.
Figuring things out was an issue that came up with the disciples on the road to Emmaus in today’s first reading. Jesus walked with them, but they didn’t recognize him. At first glance, it appears that those disciples were pretty stupid. You’d think that if their friend came up and walked beside them, they’d know who it was.
The text says that “their eyes were prevented from recognizing him”. This makes it sound like God was forcefully preventing them from understanding they were with Jesus. It could be that, but it could just as easily be that they had come across someone in an unfamiliar place—like trying to figure out where the restrooms are and which one is which when you don’t understand the language. They needed to encounter Jesus in a more familiar setting to realize just who it was they were with.
The second reading today reminds us that we encounter Jesus all the time—even when we don’t realize he’s there. When we serve others, we are serving God: “What you did for the least of these, you did for me”. That’s a message a lot of people who call themselves “Christian” choose to ignore. They’re a lot like the pharisees were in Jesus’ time. They’re happy to criticize everyone else’s sins, but they don’t show their faith by helping those in need. They leave the hungry, thirsty, and lonely to fend for themselves, and this reading makes it clear that in doing that, they’re turning their back on Jesus.
The reading from Matthew is part of an account of the final judgment. The part I didn’t read this morning says that those who ignore people in need are “goats” who are condemned to eternal punishment. A surprising amount of so-called Christians are among those “goats”. They keep to themselves and stay out of places where they might encounter “those” people. They fail to recognize that the people they’re avoiding are in fact the embodiment of Jesus, and they’re no better at recognizing Christ than the disciples were on the road to Emmaus.
There’s a song that we teach little kids that on the surface has nothing to do with Jesus, but really reflects what these readings are about. Every December you’ll hear the words “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake; he knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake”. While that song reminds us that “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”, it’s good advice for all of us who call ourselves Christians. It reminds us that God does know what we’re doing, and we should always choose to do good.
In addition to recognizing Christ when we see those in need, we also need to make sure people can recognize the good of Jesus when they see us. It’s not enough to just call ourselves Christian or to know we believe in Jesus Christ. We need to show that we are Christian through our actions.
Showing that we’re Christian is the focus of one of my favorite books in the Bible, a book that a lot of Christians tend to ignore. That book is the letter of James. James is probably best known for the line “faith without works is dead”, and another line from the book is “Be doers of the word and not hearers only”. Those words remind us that we need to get off our behinds and go out and do the work of Jesus in the world. If we are Christian, we need to be Christ’s hands and feet and make sure others can identify Jesus when they see us.
When we look around, it’s amazing just how often we can identify Jesus in ordinary people. For instance, a little over six years ago my sister was diagnosed with leukemia. She entered the Mayo Clinic in the middle of December, and I went over to Rochester to spend a very snowy Christmas day with her. We expected it would be a sad day, but what kept it from being that was a young male nurse who was working the holiday shift on the cancer ward. Jacob had the perfect combination of strength and compassion, and he was the gift both my sister and I needed that Christmas.
Neither Margaret nor I saw Jacob again. Mayo has a policy that their primary care nurses rotate through different wards, which keeps both patients and staff from getting too attached. Margaret would spend most of the last six months of her life in Rochester, and she’d encounter dozens of health professionals there. Those people had made a commitment to serving “the least of these”, and they really were serving Jesus through their work.
Jesus lives on in health care workers. He lives on when people donate to the local food pantry or the CARE team. He lives on when we take the time to help people who need a hand. He lives on when we treat all people equally, regardless of where they come from, how much money they have, how they vote, or how they choose to live their lives. Jesus leaves when we love our neighbors, when we see God in other people and treat them the way God would want to be treated.
The good news of this Easter season is that Christ does live. To celebrate that good news, we need to make sure Jesus lives in us and is at the core of everything we do, everywhere we go. We need to make it easy for other people to see Christ in us. So, let’s follow the words of another old childhood song and make sure “they’ll know we are Christians by our love”.
(C) 2023 davidmburrow@yahoo.com