Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 10, 2005

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

We all have our favorite bible stories, even our favorite Bible books. Many of my favorite Bible stories are in my favorite Gospel, the Gospel of Luke. Among a great many other wonderful stories and parables, like the perennial favorites The Good Samaritan and The Prodigal Son, Luke has my favorite Resurrection story too. That’s the story of the Walk to Emmaus that we just heard. Every time I preside at Communion the Invitation to the Table that I use refers to that story, saying that on the day of Resurrection the risen Christ "sat at table with two disciples, and was made known to them in the breaking of the bread." If I could keep just one Resurrection story, that would be it.

That being said, there is one thing about this story that has always puzzled me. The two disciples at first do not recognize Jesus when He joins them on the road; but then they recognize Him in the breaking of the bread. This is a powerful Eucharistic moment that speaks to us of our own knowing the presence of Christ in the Sacrament. That’s wonderful stuff, but as Luke tells the story as soon as the disciples recognized Him, "he vanished from their sight." I’ve never understood that. Why should Christ vanish the minute we recognize His presence among us? Why does Luke tell the story that way? I’ve never been able to answer those questions. So when the Walk to Emmaus story appeared in the lectionary for today, I decided that that was what I needed to preach on.

Why does Luke have the risen Christ vanish as soon as the disciples recognize Him? One answer to that question might be that that’s how it actually happened, and maybe it did. But I’ve said here before and I’ll say here now that the Gospel writers usually had some theological point in mind when they told a story a certain way. Beyond that, if the only explanation here is the literalistic "it happened that way," then frankly I don’t see much meaning in the story for us. So we need to ask: What theological point was Luke making here? One possibility is that he was telling us that while the risen Christ really is Jesus, Resurrection is something different from the resuscitation of a corpse. This Jesus can control who sees Him and who recognizes Him. He can simply vanish. A normal human can’t do that, so one point of the story of the vanishing Christ is that Jesus has been raised bodily into a new order of being.

Well, OK. That’s nice, I guess, although since neither I nor any of you has ever actually seen the risen Christ, what sort of being He rose into is, frankly, only of theoretical interest to me. It doesn’t have much to do with life or my spiritual journey. If this story is going to have any real meaning for me, there has to be more here; and fortunately I think there is. I think the main point is this: Luke’s vanishing Christ accurately reflects our own, or at least my own, experience of the presence of Christ in my life. He’s always there, but usually I don’t recognize Him. I don’t know that He’s there. Then, at times, He appears. I recognize Him. It’s wonderful, but then just as suddenly He’s gone again. He doesn’t stick around. Or rather, He does; but I lose sight of Him. After all, Luke says He vanished "from their sight," not that He vanished altogether. I think Luke told the story this way reassure his readers, and us, that our experience of Christ appearing and vanishing is normal, that that’s how it works.

Luke sets this point in a Eucharistic context, and in that context I’ve had an experience much like that of Cleopas and the other, unnamed disciple. I vividly remember one time taking Communion when I was in the choir at University Congregational UCC. We were doing Communion by intinction. As I took the bread, dipped it in the cup, and ate it I was filled with an inner warmth and a sense of peace unlike any I’d felt before or have felt since. It was the presence of Christ in the breaking of the bread. It was wonderful, and by the time I got back to my seat in the choir space it was gone. He was made known to me in the breaking of the bread, and then He vanished from my sight. Well, not from my sight exactly since I didn’t perceive His presence with my eyes, but certainly from my perception.

I don’t know of anyone who lives continually in that more or less immediate awareness of the presence of God. Jesus apparently did, but then I’m hardly Jesus, and neither is anyone else I know. So I guess we just have to accept the fact that those peak experiences, when the presence of God seems extraordinarily vivid and real, will have to remain just that, rare, remarkable peak experiences and not our every day reality.

Or will they? I don’t know that we can make an experience like that of the disciples at Emmaus, or even like the one I had that one Sunday taking Community at UCong, everyday experiences; but the Christian tradition has within it learning about practices that can, if we follow them intentionally and consistently make the presence of God more real for us more of the time. I want today to focus on two of those practices in hopes that looking at them will encourage all of us to be more regular in our use of them to the end that Christ may be more real in our lives.

The primary spiritual practice of the Christian tradition is prayer. Prayer is an opening of our hearts to the presence of God. There are lots of ways of doing it. We usually think of prayer as talking to God, and that is one important type of prayer. It is appropriate for us to tell God about our hopes and fears, our needs and our failings, our joys and our sorrows; and to tell God about the needs, joys, and sorrows of others. We don’t do that to try to manipulate God to do what we want. Rather, we do it to put ourselves in touch with God, not to open God to us and our desires but to open ourselves to God and to God’s will. We do it to remind ourselves at a deep level that the world is God’s and not ours.

Spoken prayer is a powerful spiritual practice, but if anything silent prayer is even more powerful. Silent, meditative prayer is not just an exotic practice from Asia, although of course they do it there too. It is a well-established part of the Christian tradition. There are various ways of doing it. Some forms involve the steady repetition of a mantra. Some don’t. One prominent form in Orthodox Christianity is called the Jesus Prayer, in which the praying person repeats silently to himself or herself the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me." That could also be spoken prayer, of course, but here it functions more as a mantra than as a petition. I know that it changes us because on rare occasions since I learned of this practice back in the days when I was studying Russian history I have practiced it myself. I have felt the peace and the transformation that being put in closer communion with God through the Jesus Prayer brings. Prayer can indeed make the vanishing Christ reappear.

The other major spiritual practice that can keep Christ from vanishing from our lives quite so often that I want to highlight this morning is corporate worship and the Sacraments. Faith community strengthens faith. Speaking specifically of our own Christian tradition, good liturgy has the purpose precisely of making Christ present to and for the worshippers. Prayer plays a prominent role. These spiritual practices are not, after all, mutually exclusive. We believe that the Spirit of Christ is present wherever two or more are gather in His name. Coming regularly into that presence makes the presence more real. Coming regularly into that presence in worship makes God more present to us and for us. It can, if we will open our hearts to it, provide us access to that spiritual warmth and peace that I felt during that one special Communion I told you about. You have to be careful of course. That present Christ may transform you, may make you a new person. But that’s another reason we come, isn’t it. We come to open ourselves to the will of God and to seek to discern what that will is. For me and perhaps for many of you, corporate worship is our primary spiritual practice.

Good Christian corporate worship includes sacraments, it includes the Eucharist. Our tradition teaches us that it is in that sacrament most especially that Christ becomes present to us and for us. What happened to me that day at UCong is precisely what the tradition knows can happen and hopes will happen every time we partake of the sacrament. These days I preside at the sacrament more than I participate in it as a member of a congregation, but I’ll tell you that presiding at the sacrament is for me right now the most powerful spiritual experience of my life. I know that Christ is present with us when we come to His table. Celebrating Communion makes our worship complete and can, again if we are open to it, make that vanishing Christ reappear. We can indeed know Him in the Breaking of the bread.

There are of course other spiritual practices that can be important for people. Fasting is a spiritual practice in all the major spiritual traditions, as are prayer and corporate worship. So is retreat. Bible study is a key spiritual practice in our Protestant tradition. Study of other religious writings, of the history of the faith, and of theology can also be profound spiritual experiences for some of us. Maybe you have other practices that have spiritual significance for you. If you do, good. Keep at them. The point is not that any one spiritual practice is required but that there are lots of ways that we can make the vanishing Christ vanish a bit less, and with regular practice those wonderful peak experiences of the presence of Christ can become less rare. Those peak experiences don’t just happen. They come when we’re prepared for them and open to them. More importantly, regular spiritual practice, especially prayer and communal worship with the Eucharist, can and does make the presence of God a more regular part of our lives. It makes the vanishing Christ the present Christ, and that is a very good thing indeed. Thanks be to God. Amen.