In the Breaking of the Bread
In the Breaking of the Bread
Luke 24:13-35
Ever since Easter, I’ve been working on the notion of thinking of God as an unconditionally loving parent. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he answered, “You shall love…” You shall love God. You shall love your neighbor. You shall love yourself. Jesus insisted that the whole law was summed up in these words. To me, there is no higher expression of love than the unconditional love that we catch glimpses of every now and then, often with an unconditionally loving parent. If you happen to be a parent, when you catch that glimpse inside of yourself, you know that this is you at your very best, right? So, if God is going to be a loving God, it just makes sense that God is going to be the very best version of what it means to love.
What is the goal of an unconditionally loving parent? It is to raise your child to become an unconditionally loving person, him or herself. So, from an early age, we see their altogether normal selfishness or self-centeredness and we challenge them to be better than that. We teach them to share and to care and to defer their own needs for the sake of others. We tell them how proud we are when they do the right thing, especially when it is going to cost them and especially when no one is watching. Mostly, though, through all the ups and downs, what we tell them is: “I love you, no matter what happens, no matter how much you’ve messed up. I love you…end of discussion.”
Of course, having a conditionally loving parent is an entirely different story. The world is full of people who do what they do and then hold what they’ve done up for the other to see and say, “Now can you love me? Please?” Maybe the other doesn’t know how to love unconditionally because they never were loved that way. Maybe they don’t want to offer that love because the conditional love gives them a lot of power. You can get a lot of people to do a lot of things if you can convince them that they have to earn your love. Sadly, the church across the centuries has spent a lot of time saying to folks, “God will love you if…”
The reverse situation happens, as well. Someone is loved unconditionally but they can’t accept it. They keep trying to win the love that they already have. If you are the one who loves them unconditionally, this is extraordinarily painful. Is there anything more painful than watching someone work so hard to do all the right things for all the wrong reasons? “You just did a great thing but you know, it’s not about you, right?” You say to this person, “God already loves you…no matter what…and they answer, ‘That just can’t be…”
If you are lucky enough to have had an unconditionally loving person in your life, then you are going to understand what I’m going to point to next. Think about the day that you went to college and were finally on your own. Think about the day when what started to blossom was a new chapter of your life: a marriage or the arrival of your first child or something equally transformational. Think about the day when that person who loved you unconditionally was no longer with you because of distance or because they had died. If you have been loved unconditionally and then life changes, what did you discover? You learned that even though that person wasn’t physically present, they were with you, right inside your heart and your mind.
Think carefully. In that loving person’s absence, you had a moment when you realized that what you just said to someone was exactly the kind of thing that this person would have said. You begin to realize that you have incorporated them so deeply that their voice has become your own. Or, faced with some crisis, the internal conversation inside your head and your heart contains some of the soothing messages that this person said so many times to you. Or, in a moment of anxiety, you suddenly started baking because they liked to bake and the smell in the kitchen comforted you because you could feel their presence. Or, staring at some person in need and faced with a choice, you made a decision and you realized that they would have said, “That’s the kind of people we are!”
Being loved unconditionally shapes us so powerfully that long after that person is physically with us, they are inside us and reminders of them are all around us. Eventually, we realize that they have been incorporated into us. They not only shaped us over the course of a period of time, they are woven into the very fabric of who we are. It’s not that we don’t miss concretely being with them. Yet, we realize that they are with us…always.
(Of course, on the human side of this equation, we should acknowledge that even the best of parents also leave some of our less than stellar aspects of who we are inside of our children, too. We don’t just inherit the best of those who loves us. Sometimes we inherit and incorporate what’s problematic, too. That’s what keeps the therapists in business.)
All of this is to say that what we are seeing in the time between Easter and Pentecost is the way in which people who have been fully loved and who have experienced terrible loss can come to realize that all is not lost. All of these stories tell us that this is not obvious at first glance when we are blinded by the loss, itself. No one recognizes the risen Christ when they first meet him. Mary is blinded by sadness and despair. Like Mary, we have to keep feeling what is there to feel and we have to keep challenging our worst assumptions. Like the disciples, we have to learn that real love includes being forgiven even when we think we’re unforgivable and then it includes actually forgiving others. The world can be so full of horror and despair or we can be so horrified at what we’ve done that we think all bets are off, all love is over and done. Those horrors, though very real, are not the last word, though. Remember, if God is a loving God, then love wins.
So, we end up this morning on the road to Emmaus, some hick town outside of Jerusalem. We’re in the middle of nowhere, folks! And, we are walking with two “nobodies.” These are not people from Jesus’ inner circle of followers like Mary Magdalene and the disciples. These are two guys who heard stories about this Jesus of Nazareth guy and how he might be the Messiah and how he might just restore Israel to its previous glory. To tell the truth, they didn’t have much planned for Passover that year, so they headed to Jerusalem to see how this would all come down.
Here’s a warning: one of the main ways that God works in this world—at least in my life—is by gently whispering things that sound like this: “You should go!” You should check and see how so an so is. You should write that person a card. You should go see what’s happening in town for yourself. It sounds for all the world like my voice but in retrospect some of the most powerful moments that I’ve been a part of have unfolded because I’ve listened to the, “You should go!” that I’m pretty sure was God planting a seed. So, I show up and the person says, “How did you know?” And all I can say is, “It’s complicated…”
The men go to Jerusalem. They witness the same devastation that everyone else saw: the arrest and torture and trial and crucifixion. They see power exercised in its cruelest forms. Then, they head home. To their credit, they talk to each other as they walk and they actually talk about what’s gone on. Men, let’s be honest here. The much more likely outcome with two men passing time together might well be either talking about some distraction like the Cubs or if there’s no Cubs, like “The Last Dance,” right? Or most likely, the men wouldn’t be talking at all because, well…they’re men! But, these men, against all the odds, are pouring out their hearts to each other because they realized that what died in Jerusalem wasn’t just Jesus of Nazareth but their dreamsSo, they are walking along and talking and they run into a stranger. Again, here is a warning. All indications are that the risen Jesus, during this brief period of time, loved being the stranger. Why would this be the case? Think of it this way. As a loving parent, don’t you love the times when you get to see who your child is and they have no idea that you’re watching! That’s how you discover who they really are! So, Jesus walks up on the two men and asks, “What are you talking about?” The men welcome the stranger into their conversation. Hmmm…welcoming a stranger. I think the risen Jesus is already smiling.
The men are incredulous. How could anyone not know what had happened? Again, here is another heads up. Loving people ask the kinds of open questions that allow us to pour out our hearts. Like Mary being asked, “Woman, why are you weeping,” the message is “Talk to me!” Tell me your story!” Then, the loving person listens. What if you need to forget everything you’ve ever thought about how you can’t pray very well and you just need to realize that all God is saying is “Talk to me! I’m right here. I’ll listen!”
Jesus does listen. Then, he presents Scripture to them. He tells them a larger story that puts their own story in a deeper context. He helps them to see what they may have missed or may have forgotten. There is a give and take that is possible because the men are open to telling their story honestly. Then they do a little listening themselves. Again, we should realize that this back and forth happens in lots of ways: in the loving truth that a caring friend may share with us; in the surprisingly powerful words that some stranger walks up to us and speaks or even…get ready to cringe here…or even in cracking open Scripture, ourselves. Like an unconditionally loving parent, God loves a good debate and can stand a little disagreement. It’s how we grow!
Still, though, having been in the presence of the risen Christ, having poured out their hearts to him, having had a Scripture lesson from the master himself, they still think they are just passing time with some stranger. This is what makes the next moment so powerful. In a moment that ought to remind us all of the feeding of the five thousand, these two men recognize that it’s getting dark and this stranger must be hungry. They have compassion for him…not for the risen Jesus but for this nobody who has temporarily entered their lives. They invite him home for dinner. Without knowing it, they invite the risen Jesus into their home!
This is what I’m about to ask you to do, too. How strange it will be to share communion as a church family but not be physically together. I’m going to ask you to take the bread and bless it and break it. I’m going to ask you to hold that cup and bless it as well. Then, you will share those elements with the people with whom you are navigating these tough times, the folks to whom you have poured out your hearts, with whom you have searched for the larger story to make sense of things.
Be very careful…Jesus took the bread and broke it. The moment he did, the men realized who he was. The moment he did, he vanished from their sight. The men looked at each other and said, “Were not our hearts burning the whole time!” It’s time to open our hearts and realize that God has been with us the whole time, too.