Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
May 1, 2011

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.

They had been wrong. Obviously, they had been wrong. They said “we had hoped that we would be the one to redeem Israel,” but they were wrong. He’d lost. He hadn’t redeemed anybody, much less the whole nation. The authorities had crucified him as common criminal. They’d been wrong about him. They were disappointed. They were disillusioned. Their hopes had been dashed. They had been wrong, so they were going home. Back to Emmaus, back to the way their life had been before Jesus. He was supposed to be the Messiah, but they knew what a Messiah is, and the Messiah doesn’t get himself crucified by the Romans. The Messiah raises an army filled with righteous anger and drives the Roman occupiers into the sea. Jesus hadn’t done that. Worse, he hadn’t even tried to do that. He meekly let them arrest him. When his followers tried to use violence to defend him he wouldn’t let them. He went and got himself crucified, which is very un-Messiah-like behavior. So they’d been wrong, and now they were going home. Yes, there was that thing the women said about seeing angels who said that he was alive, but there was no way that could be true. Dead people are dead, not alive; and there was no doubt that Jesus was dead. They were done with him, about whom they had been so wrong.

It’s not too hard to understand these disillusioned disciples as they plod back home to Emmaus, is it? They had had expectations of the Messiah, which means that they had had expectations of God; and those expectations had not been met. The same thing is true for a lot of people today. We have our expectations of God. A great many Christians—and other people of faith—have the expectation that if their faith is strong enough and if they pray a lot, God will protect them from all harm. They expect that if their faith is strong enough and if they pray enough God will see to it that nothing bad happens to them or their loved ones. Beyond that, a lot of people, including a great many people who have given up faith altogether have the expectation of God that, if God is truly God, God will prevent all evil in the world, not just the bad things that happen to us and our loved ones. That’s how we want God to be: In control and stopping bad things from happening.

These expectations that we have of God are in the end never fully met. Bad things to happen to people of great faith who pray a great deal. That God does not prevent all evil in the world is obvious to anyone who isn’t comatose. So a great many people become disillusioned and disappointed with God, just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus were disillusioned and disappointed with Jesus. A lot of people give up on God the way the disciples on the road to Emmaus have given up on Jesus. Their expectations aren’t met, so there must be no God. God wasn’t God the way they wanted and expected God to be. So many people are like those disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus. Maybe sometimes you are like those disillusioned disciples. Maybe sometimes I am too.

Many people are like those disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus, yes; but of course the story of the disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus doesn’t end with their disillusioned cry of “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The story goes on. A stranger meets them, and when they express their disillusionment about Jesus to him he says to them: “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Luke 24:25-26 Then the stranger interprets all of Hebrew scripture as being about the coming of Jesus and just what sort of Messiah he would be. A very different sort of Messiah than they had expected. A Messiah who suffers and dies and then, as Luke has it here, enters into his glory.

Now, some of you know that I have quite a problem with the way Christianity has turned the Hebrew Scriptures into nothing but a prediction of the coming of Jesus and of his Passion. I don’t think the Hebrew Scriptures actually do that, and I think we need to let the Jewish Scriptures be Jewish and not force them into a Christian mold. Yet I think there is a lesson for us in the way Luke says Jesus taught the disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus a new way of thinking about the Messiah. The disciples were disillusioned because they expected the Messiah, which is to say they expected God, to conform to their small human notions of what a Messiah is, of Who God is. Jesus opened their minds to a new way of thinking about the Messiah. That I think is the important point, not how he did it using the Hebrew Scriptures. With their minds thus opened to a new way of thinking about the Messiah, of thinking about how God works with and through the Messiah not in triumph but in suffering, death, and resurrection, our disillusioned disciples at the end recognize the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread.

Notice how Eucharistic that part of the story sounds. “When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.” Luke 24:30 These are the words that we say over the bread every time we celebrate Communion. In Luke’s story, then, two things happen that enable the disciples to recognize Jesus for who he really is. First, their minds are opened to a new way of thinking about him. Then they partake of the sacrament of Communion, and in that sacrament, with their minds now opened to new possibilities, they recognize the risen Christ.

We are about to celebrate the sacrament of Communion, and so today I ask: How are we coming to the Lord’s table? Are we coming with our preconceived notions of what it means for Jesus to be the Christ, to be our Lord and Savior? Are we coming with our preconceived notions of what it means for God to be God? Are we coming to have our fixed ideas reinforced? Or are we coming with open minds? Are we ready to let Christ be Christ his way, to let God be God God’s way? Today I invite you to set your preconceived notions aside. I invite you to come to Christ’s table truly open to his being made known to you as he really is in the breaking of the bread. Come not expecting Christ to meet your expectations but expecting Christ to meet you, just as he is and just as you are. Come not expecting God to meet your expectations but expecting God to meet you, just as you are and just as God is. Come not expecting God to be in control and to prevent all bad things from happening but expecting to meet a God of love and grace who is present with you and with everyone in everything that happens, the good and the bad. If we can do that perhaps we can experience not the God of our expectations who makes everything right but the true God who is with us, loving us always and calling us, with God’s help, to make everything right. . If we can do that our sacrament of Communion can truly be a blessing to us and to the world. Amen.