Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
April 6, 2008

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.

Some Bible passages are just plain puzzling. There’s just no getting around it. They’re simply odd, or mysterious, or flat incomprehensible. Luke’s much loved story of Cleopas and the unnamed disciple encountering the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus has always been one of those puzzling stories for me; or at least it has a detail that is very puzzling, that has never made much sense to me. That puzzling detail is the vanishing of Christ. We just heard the story. Jesus, newly risen from the grave, joins two disciples on the road to Emmaus. Only they don’t recognize him. They think he’s some stranger, and a pretty dense one at that, one who has been in Jerusalem but hasn’t been paying attention. He doesn’t know about Jesus and how the authorities had crucified him. As they come near the village the stranger makes to go on even though it is getting dark, but the two disciples prevail on him to stay with them.

The three of them sit down for the evening meal. Although he was the guest here, the mysterious stranger assumes the role of host. Luke relates: “He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him.” Luke 24:30-31 NRSV So far so good. In a scene that obviously recalls the Last Supper from just a few days earlier, where Jesus also blessed bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, they recognized their companion as the risen Christ.

This would be a great story if it ended right here. It would connect the risen Christ to the Eucharist and be a powerful story of Christ’s continuing presence with his disciples. But Luke didn’t end it here. He added that puzzling, enigmatic detail of Christ vanishing. As soon as the two disciples recognized him, Luke says, “he vanished from their sight.” Luke 24:31 NRSV Why? Why does Luke have the risen Christ vanish as soon as his disciples recognize him? I’ve never understood it. As I reread this story in preparation for today’s service, I tried once more to puzzle it out; and I’ve come up with an understanding that I think makes sense to me. Let’s see if it makes sense to you.

As we’ve already seen, the setting here is Eucharistic. Luke’s use of the phrase “he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them” cannot be coincidental. We expect the next line to be “this is my body broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” It isn’t, but surely Luke intends us to fill it in here. We are clearly at the Lord’s Table, celebrating the sacrament Jesus had instituted only three days earlier, by our way of counting. The bread here is the Body of Christ from the holy sacrament.

Yet as soon as we are placed in that setting, the risen Christ vanishes. Or at least Luke says he vanishes. But does he? Maybe not. Luke very intentionally says he vanished “from their sight,” not that he vanished altogether. I think this language makes a difference. I understand Luke to be saying that Jesus didn’t really vanish. When Jesus, either before his death or as the risen Christ, isn’t visible in human form to us, he really hasn’t vanished at all. He may have vanished from our ordinary sense perceptions. Our eyes can’t see him. Our ears can’t hear him. But he isn’t gone. Our ordinary senses can’t perceive him, but our spiritual awareness can still discern him in the sacrament he gave us. He is still there in the bread of Communion. He is still present in that bread in which the disciples recognized him. Luke tells this story the way he does, I think, to say that Jesus could vanish from our sight because the Communion bread takes his place. It becomes the way in which he is present to us when he has vanished from our sight.

He is present in the sacrament; but I must admit that sometimes that seems like a poor substitute for the real thing to me, and I imagine it probably does to you too. Yet I am convinced that the reason the sacrament seems like a poor substitute for the real thing is that we don’t, most of the time, actually perceive Christ as present in the bread and in the wine. He can seem as absent as we celebrate the sacrament as he does so much of the rest of the time. Yet the Christian tradition has always maintained that Christ really is present in the elements of Communion; and I know that he is, because I have, on occasion, really experienced his holy presence in the sacrament and with God’s people as we celebrate the sacrament.

How is he really present? I don’t know. I can’t explain it. Every attempt I’ve heard to explain it falls short—way short. The how of it remains a mystery, as mysterious as the risen Christ suddenly disappearing from the sight of the disciples in Emmaus. But the how of it doesn’t matter. What matters is the truth of it; and to those of us with the spiritual sensitivity to perceive him, Christ is truly present indeed in the breaking of the bread.

Which, my friends, is very good news indeed. He is with us even today. He is with us always and everywhere through the Holy Spirit, but he is with us especially and most powerfully in the sacrament of Communion. That is Luke’s message for us today in his story of the vanishing Christ who doesn’t really vanish. So as you come to the table this morning, know that you really are coming to Christ. Know that at that table you can connect with him in a real and powerful way. Open your hearts to his presence and give thanks. Thanks that our Saviour is here with us, really here with us, extending God’s grace and welcoming us home. Amen.