EMMAUS John M. Buchanan
Luke 24: 13-31 Broad Street Presbyterian Church
April 14, 1985 Columbus, Ohio

This is my favorite Sundey. Now that may seem a peculiar choice at first.
in fact, the mythology about us religious professionals is that this is our
least favorite day. What, after all, do you do for an encore to three full
services on Easter morning, truckloads of lilies, baptisms, brass choirs,
absolutely gorgeous music, and everybody here together? Even the culture
senses that Easter is the ecclesiastical equivalent of Academy Awards night.
Religion made the front page and the evening news last Sunday. There was no
‘marathon down Broad Street, no grand prix road race up and dewn the streets
and avenues of the city to interfer with the religious public’s agenda.

In the trade this is known as "low Sunday" and the professionals often use
that as an excuse to take the day off, to rest our weary bodies and cool down
our own over-heated spirits. It remains my favorite day, however. Please do

not misunderstand. I love Easter. I love the joy and hope and every custom
with which we struggle to express it. I dissent from that body of prevailing
opinion which berates the souls who come to church only on Easter. If you

don’t worship regularly, by all means, Easter is the day to do it. and I
positively find offensive the well-meaning ribbing that calls attention to the
ence a year attender and adds self consciousness and guilt te ai spirit that
has decided to expose itself to a little delight, a bit of serendipitous joy.

I love Easter, but this is my favorite, and © aw delighted with our
decision to celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper on this day, because
if there is ever an occasion to observe the presence of the Holy in our sridst
it is in the season of the resurrection. I would argue that this Sunday is
the most significant observance in the Christian year, theologically.

The accumulated effect of all the celebrating we did last Sunday morning
is to leave the impression that Easter is about an event that happened two
theusand yeara ago, period: akin to the Trojan Wars, the assagination of
Julius Caesar, the campaigns of Alexander the Grest, Easter is about history.
That is theological heresy, of course. But by focusing on the event of
resurrection alone, by pondering the historicity of the accounts and puzzling
over the biological improbabilities we miss, altogether, the Good News of
Easter, and the theological genius of Christianity.

The Easter Gospel is the stunning announcement that the love of God Lives
among us: that the risen Christ is the power and love and justice of God
alive, active, at work in the Life of the world. That's what all the shouting
was about last week. It is so important, even as we are searching for sone
proof, some verifiable evidence, to recall thet the only thing remotely
resembling evidence didn’t convince anybody at the time. The only data the
New Teslament presents on Easter is an empty tomb. And that didn’t convince
anybody of anything. The people who stumbled on to it were scared to death.
Whet made them Christians: what transformed frightened fishermen into
courageous heralds of e new kingdom; whet brought Simon Peter from the
courtyard where he denied knowing Jesus to martyrdom, volunteering to he
crucified upside down out of love of Christ, was not a ten second look into an
empty hole in the side of a hill, but the experience of the power of the risen
Christ is the world.

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That, it seems to me, is what those of us who come to church on the Sunday
after Easter are left with. And that is why it is my favorite Sunday. The
text for the day is that wonderfully human story of Emmaus, in the Gospel of
Luke.

Two of the friends of Jesus on the first day of the week after the

crucifixion headed cut for Emmaus, a town several miles from Jerusalem. They

had been hiding since the terrible events of Friday. Now the holiday weekend
was over; the new week was beginning; life was resuming. Jesus was dead. It
was that simple. Several of their number had reported that the tomb was
empty. Too bad. And so two headed out of town, for a walk perhaps. As they
walked they were joined by a third man with whom they talked about the events
of the past few days. They did not know him, but they persuaded him to eat
the evening meal with them at Emmaus. There, at table, breaking bread
together, in an act reminiscent of a supper they had shared several nights
before, they recognized him.

Please notice the peculiar fact that two people who knew him before failed
to recognize him now. And notice that part of the reason they didn’t
recognize him was that they weren’t expecting to encounter him there. In
fact, at least part of the reason they were in Emmaus was to get away from the

memory, the place, from him, even. Nt - wags An A pews \w rm doh d Rew
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On this day the word is that the power of chit stand ty is not in the
celebration of an event that happened two thousand years ago, regardless of
how glorious it was last Sunday. The essence of it ig not history, but
experience; not then, but now. The ultimate homiletical criteria for any
sermon, any religious gesture, any belief is the blunt question “so what?"
Does it matter? Does it make any difference? Does it have anything to do
with the life of the world, with the ambiguity and injustice and suffering of
the world we encounter in the paper? Oces it have to do with our humanness:
our striving and hoping and working and loving. Dees it have to do with
beauty, and our deepest affections and grandest passions and profoundest joys?

On this day the word is yes, God’s love lives among us. beath itself does
not defeat it. The world is full of God’s love and hopeful potential, and
heart filling beauty, and blood stirring passion.

To a class of graduating seminary seniors about te become ministers,
Frederick Buechner said: “

“Again and again Christ is present not where, as priests,

you would be apt to look for him but precisely where you
would not have thought to look for him in a thousand years.
The great preacher, the sunset, the Mogart Requiem can leave
you cold, but the child in the doorway, the rain on the roof,
the half-remembered dream, can speak of him and for him with
an eloquence that turns your knees to water. "|

(A_Room Called Remember, p. 149) / =!

This is my favorite Sunday because it gathers up the beauty and humanity
and power of the whole Biblical witness. It affirms that there is holiness in
ordinariness: that the common, simple life you and I are given to live is in
fact sacred. It affirms that the power of resurrection is on the side of life
~ our common life: our relationships.

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It reminds me that the love of God is out there on the dusty roads, the
streets, and dirty alleys of the city: that God’s risen Christ is in the
person of every individual who comes through the doors of this church because
he’s heard a rumor that love is alive and well.

it reminds me that you and I may expect fo encounter the healing, life
giving love of Ged in the very place the risen Christ came to the two - at
table: that he is present when love is affirmed and shared; that God's love
/ for us lives in the people with whom we are privileged toa break bread; our
children, our spouses, our dearest friends.

That's what this Sunday is about. It is easily missed actueliy. The two
who walked to Emmaus with him almost didn’t realize it. {ft was at table - to
which he bids us and to which we come,

“When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke
it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him."
(Luke 24:30) Amen.

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