DATE: May 4th, 2014
SCRIPTURE:
Luke 24:13-35
© Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Seabury Center
What did they fail to see? What had they missed? Two followers of Jesus walked along the road to Emmaus, away from Jerusalem, and sifted through the events of the past week – not just talked, but grappled, ‘pitched words back and forth between them,’ in the literal Greek. Like two 3rd graders bent over a Rubik’s Cube, they shuffled through the details, trying to match up the pieces and create some kind of coherent picture. Jesus had been a prophet, a great man, blessed by God and by the people. Yes: And more than that! They had hoped he would be the One, the One to redeem Israel; overthrow the Romans and restore peace and prosperity – because that’s what messiahs did. But instead, he’d been executed, his life snuffed out; his greatness mocked by the finality of death. And it had been final. The body had been wrapped and buried, three days hence. Why then, had those foolish women been prattling on about an empty tomb? And angels? None of it made sense. As they puzzled, “Jesus himself came up and walked along with them. But they were not able to recognize who he was.”
Why not? Was Jesus wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, or a big curly wig? Did he wave a hand and dim the sight of his traveling companions, so they wouldn’t realize who he was? Maybe. But it seems to me that we miss seeing all the time, not because our vision is obscured by some divine hand, but because our expectations limit our sight. Ever run into someone you know in a different context and find yourself unable to place the face? You blink and stutter, wrack your brains – because you don’t expect an old college classmate to walk into your yoga class, or a fellow Westporter to cross your path in downtown Chicago. So it takes some doing to put the pieces together. To come up with a name to go with the vaguely familiar face.
Cleopas and his companion did not expect to see Jesus on that road to Emmaus. They’d left him back in Jerusalem, sealed up in the tomb.
It turns out, expectations can be misleading – and pernicious. Like gremlins they can distort our view of the world, muddy the waters, prevent us from seeing the picture clearly. It’s like the riddle about a father and son who were in a terrible car crash. They were rushed to the hospital and wheeled into two separate operating rooms, both in critical condition. A surgeon walked into the boy’s room, took one look and said, “I can’t operate on this child. He’s my son.” So who’s the doctor?
I don’t remember how quickly I solved this riddle when I first heard it back in high school, but I do recall asking, along with my high school classmates: Was the doctor his adopted father? An uncle? A grandfather? Some kind of surrogate? Was it a case of mistaken identity?… Of course, it’s none of these. The answer is: The doctor is his mother. That riddle confounds us, to the extent that we expect surgeons to be men. In my favorite reversal of this story: a clergy colleague once told me about a conversation she had with her young son. In it, she mentioned a new, male pastor who was moving to town, only to have her son interject: “Mom, that’s silly! Boys can’t be ministers!”
That’s cute and funny, and yes: gratifying; but it’s far less funny when a police officer approaches an African-American man shoveling in front of his own home in Hartford, and asks, “You trying to make a few extra bucks, shoveling people’s driveways around here?” That’s what happened to former pro-league baseball player Doug Glanville earlier this winter. The police officer, from neighboring West Hartford, was searching for an African-American man who’d reportedly been offering to shovel driveways in West Hartford, where there’s an ordinance against soliciting. While trying to find the individual, this police officer had crossed over into Hartford, spotted Mr. Glanville on his own property and saw, not a homeowner, but a potential suspect.
To which the risen Christ says – to him, to us, “Oh, how foolish you are. How thick-headed. How slow-hearted.” We all suffer blind spots – no matter how well-intentioned or open-minded we are. Like Cleopas and his companion, we fail to see what’s right in front of us, because it doesn’t occur to us to look. Racism, in particular, has a way of coloring our experience, whether we realize it or not. As observed by the Rev. Arnold Thomas, during our discussion of the film 12 Years a Slave last December: We are all inheritors of the legacy of racism; we walk a track that was trod by our ancestors. So all of us, black, brown and white, have inherited ways of seeing – and not seeing. It’s not just the glaring bigotry put on display this week by Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who was caught on tape reprimanding a girlfriend for being seen in public with men of color. His remarks, and the attitudes that spawned them, are appalling – and relatively easy to call out, as the NBA did, to its credit. But there is a more subtle blindness, one that may be harder to name, unless you are the one being rendered invisible or less than human. It’s the feeling of discomfort – even fear – that a white person may express when a person of color walks through an otherwise all-white community. It’s that pernicious question that emerges almost unbidden, “Why is he here? What is she up to?” It’s our assumptions about beauty – what it looks like, and the images that may pop into our head when we hear words like “crack addict,” “convict,” “pan handler,” or “drop out.” It’s the assumptions we may make about the person who sports a tattoo or wears a hoody.
Most of us don’t want prejudice to mar our relationships. Words like racism and bigotry are ugly words, profoundly disconcerting and uncomfortable to confront. And many of us – individually and collectively – have worked diligently to diminish our own blind spots and build bonds across gender, race and culture. I was deeply moved when I first learned from Saugatuck member Pat Doolittle that the Saugatuck Nursery School, a Saugatuck Church partner and tenant since its inception – was founded in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., specifically to create space for children of diverse racial ethnic backgrounds to connect with and befriend one another. That is part of our legacy, about which we can be both proud and thankful. But we’re not done.
Unmasking and dismantling racism – along with all the other ‘isms that deny the full, God-crafted-beauty and goodness of all God’s people – this is difficult, demanding, life-long work. And we can’t do it at all, if we can’t see it. So perhaps we should begin here: by giving our full, open-eyed attention to those we encounter along the road, believing that every sojourner has something to teach us, another piece to add to the puzzle, may even be Christ himself.
One afternoon, back while I lived in Chicago, I was stopped at a red light when a man approached my car. He appeared to be homeless, and he asked if I could spare some change. I gave him something – I don’t remember how much, or what prompted me to say yes on that particular day. But I do remember how our conversation ended. Just before he walked away, the man looked me in the eye and said, “By the way, I’m Jesus.” And my eyes were open and I recognized him… “Why not?” I thought. “Why couldn’t that man – drug addict or hard luck case, PhD or high school dropout, engineer or poet or home-grown pastor – I had no way of knowing… Why couldn’t he be the face of the risen Christ?” It’s not a bad starting place, an exercise in dislodging our expectations, step one in overcoming the near-sightedness that plagues us all: consider that the person in front of you may be the risen Christ.
Theresa of Avilla once wrote, “Christ has no hands on earth now but ours.” I believe that dismantling racism and building beloved community is the sacred labor we inherit from the man named Jesus – a powerful prophet blessed by God and the people, who walked among us to show us how to live as though God’s spark burned within each of us – because it does. To do that work, we need companions for the journey, to help us see, to call us out, to add to and sift through the pieces with us, to love and challenge us along the way.
In the words of a prayer read by our Jewish sisters and brothers, during Friday night’s Shabbat here in this very sanctuary:
Standing on the parted shores of history
We still believe what we were taught
Before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot:
That wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt
That there is a better place, a promised land;
That the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness.
That there is no way to get from here to there
Except by joining hands, marching together.1
The truth is, we live our whole lives in between – between Egypt and the Promised Land, between Jerusalem and Emmaus, between grief and healing, fracture and wholeness, disappointment and hope. We walk a road that was laid by our ancestors, where there is always more to learn, deeper connections to make, and lessons to unpack.
Because we are still learning, we will falter; sometimes we will fail to see. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus isn’t somewhere nearby, even in our midst, nudging us toward a fuller understanding of God’s love for all God’s people. Once in a while, I believe we are gifted by glimpses, moments of clear-eyed encounter – in a stranger’s smile, an act of kindness, a prophetic witness or a simple meal. So we sit across the table from someone; we lock eyes, give thanks, break bread, and suddenly the pieces drop into place. “Wait,” we think, “I know that voice, that face. Of course! Of course it’s you. Who else could it have been?” Christ in the surgeon. Christ in the beggar. Christ in the black man, the brown woman; the laughing child. Christ in the boardroom. Christ in the prison cell. Christ: everywhere we look. If only we have eyes to see.
Resurrection God: open our eyes; set our hearts on fire; help us to see that you walk with us and give us the clear-sighted courage to do the challenging, life-renewing, community-restoring work you set before us. Amen.
Scripture Texts
Luke 24:13-35
13 That same day two of them were walking to the village Emmaus, about seven miles out of Jerusalem. 14 They were deep in conversation, going over all these things that had happened. 15 In the middle of their talk and questions, Jesus came up and walked along with them. 16 But they were not able to recognize who he was. 17 He asked, “What’s this you’re discussing so intently as you walk along?” 18 Then one of them, his name was Cleopas, said, “Are you the only one in Jerusalem who hasn’t heard what’s happened during the last few days?” 19 He said, “What has happened?” 20 They said, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene. He was a man of God, a prophet, dynamic in work and word, blessed by both God and all the people. Then our high priests and leaders betrayed him, got him sentenced to death, and crucified him. 21 And we had our hopes up that he was the One, the One about to deliver Israel. And it is now the third day since it happened. 22 But now some of our women have completely confused us. Early this morning they were at the tomb 23 and couldn’t find his body. They came back with the story that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. 24 Some of our friends went off to the tomb to check and found it empty just as the women said, but they didn’t see Jesus.” 25 Then he said to them, “So thick-headed! So slow-hearted! Why can’t you simply believe all that the prophets said? 26 Don’t you see that these things had to happen, that the Messiah had to suffer and only then enter into his glory?” 27 Then he started at the beginning, with the Books of Moses, and went on through all the Prophets, pointing out everything in the Scriptures that referred to him. 28 They came to the edge of the village where they were headed. He acted as if he were going on 29 but they pressed him: “Stay and have supper with us. It’s nearly evening; the day is done.” So he went in with them. 30 And here is what happened: He sat down at the table with them. Taking the bread, he blessed and broke and gave it to them. 31 At that moment, open-eyed, wide-eyed, they recognized him. And then he disappeared. 32 Back and forth they talked. “Didn’t we feel on fire as he conversed with us on the road, as he opened up the Scriptures for us?” 33 They didn’t waste a minute. They were up and on their way back to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and their friends gathered together, 34 talking away: “It’s really happened! The Master has been raised up – Simon saw him!” 35 Then the two went over everything that happened on the road and how they recognized him when he broke the bread.