My
youth group at First Congregational Church of Crystal Lake was called PF, which
stood for Pilgrim Fellowship. That
wasn’t a very hip name for a youth group.
Or a very descriptive one, really.
There’s little indication from Pilgrim Fellowship that this is a fun
group of youth that focus on providing a warm and accepting space for kids to
be themselves and learn about God. But –
it did require an explanation, and that explanation has always stuck with me.
In the United Church of Christ, and indeed in
Congregational churches whose history stretches all the way back to the
Puritans and the Pilgrims who landed on this continent in the mid-1600’s, we
call ourselves Pilgrims. Pilgrims are defined as people on a journey to
a sacred place for religious reasons, and a pilgrimage is a journey undertaken
as a search for holy ground. People who
travel to Israel and Palestine – Jews, Christians and Muslims alike, are making
a pilgrimage.
Sometimes the search for Holy Ground doesn’t
work out as expected. When our class
was in Israel, we saw all varieties of pilgrims, especially at the holy sites
of Bethlehem and the cave; or the church of the Holy Sepulchre – the location
claimed for Golgotha, where Jesus was crucified, and the location of the tomb where he was laid. People exhibited a wide variety of reverence
at these sites. Some people would touch
the stones of the church and weep. Some
would get down on their knees and pray.
One of my classmates made a practice of making herself prostrate,
kneeling and touching her forehead to the ground, much like Muslims do in
prayer, at each holy site we went to.
Others, often including me, stood around curious, dazed, perhaps a
little skeptical. Wishing to feel the power of the place, but also intimidated
and distracted by others’ displays of faith.
At big ticket sites like these, I found myself mostly coming up empty,
confused and searching. Sometimes you don’t
find holiness at famous holy places. Sometimes ordinary places become holy
ground only because we meet God there.
In the UCC we consider ourselves people on a
journey. It is a journey of faith, and
one in which God is still speaking. There are some walks
that are longer than others -- not because of the miles or even because of the
landscape, but because of the burdens. Sometimes the real path we are walking
is vastly longer and more difficult than it looks.
What kind of journey are you on? Where have you been? Are you getting close to your
destination? What joy, or grief, or hope
are you carrying with you?
In our scripture today
we encounter two people on a journey. Only one is named, and the other is left
unidentified….perhaps so that we could think of
ourselves as that unidentified journeyer.
Do you ever wonder if
you lived in Jesus’ time, if you would be part of the 12? Sometimes I wonder that. Would I have had the devotion to walk away
from my home, my livelihood, my family, and everything I cared about –
everything that makes me, me – to dedicate my life to an amazing man?
If I’m honest, I can’t
be certain I would. But, in this story,
in these persons, I can find myself.
The people we meet
today are not part of the 12. But they
are obviously part of the Jesus movement. And we know, from Palm Sunday, that
there were crowds who were for Jesus.
And, inside of the faceless crowds, eventually there will be 70 chosen
and sent. And within those 70 are the 12.
It may be confusing to
hear this morning, because we are 2 weeks past Easter and have been hearing
resurrection stories mixed in with Pentecost, the day that the 70 will be sent –
but this appearance of the Risen Christ, which begins with, ‘Later on that same
day,” occurs on Easter Day. And so, even
though we know Cleopas and his companion are not one of the 12, they are
connected enough to the Jesus movement (and an unconnected world without cell
phones or text message alerts) to know what the women discovered that very
morning – that Jesus was not in the tomb.
Why were they on this
journey? Perhaps these two were good
Jewish pilgrims. Remember, it was the
holiday of Passover, when the city swelled to 6 times it’s size. Perhaps these people were returning to home
after their holiday in the holy city.
Perhaps they were going back to work, back to their responsibilities,
back to their routine after what they had hoped would be a transformational
moment.
Or perhaps they were
fleeing in terror, in full retreat, trying to make sense of defeat, wondering
how their hopes had been dashed. How had
the one they thought would redeem Israel been lost to the conspiracy, violence
and overwhelming power of the establishment?
I suspect this was one
of the more difficult, long journeys. It was a seven-mile walk, a walk up and
down the rocky landscape of the holy land, a walk you would notice in your
ankles and calves. But it was also the walk of hopes in shambles. It was the
walk taken through the valley of disillusionment. It was a walk burdened with
despair, disappointment and shame.
“We had hoped…” they said.
That’s a deeply sad statement.
We
had hoped that mom would get better…
I
had hoped for that job opportunity…
You
had hoped that a person wouldn’t disappoint you…
What kind of old hopes do you carry with you
on your journey? And what kind of
betrayal? For the pilgrims acknowledge,
‘our leaders did this. “Our chief
priests and leaders handed him over to be crucified…” Disappointment with a dash of betrayal is
often the most bitter pill to swallow. What do we do in our disappointment and
despair on our journeys? Sometimes, we
find God.
These two pilgrims find themselves at a crossroads
on the journey, when it’s hard to hope.
They are bewildered.
Despondent. Processing the turn
of events, when they meet a stranger with a strange energy. They could have ignored his question and kept
to themselves because it was the safer thing to do. But instead, they listen to the stranger
Jesus with his unpacking of scripture and prophesy.
At the second crossroads, they could have gone
their separate ways. Gave a cordial
goodbye and dismissed the conversation out of hand; but at the second crossroad
in their journey, they asked him to stay.
Hospitality is the foundation and the building block of the Christian
faith. Hospitality and openness
make transformation possible, especially when brought to us from the most
unexpected places by the most unlikely people. But it wasn’t just hospitality
shown, it was the request for company, for more time with the stranger
Jesus. They were hungry for his peaceful
company, his strange energy, his prophetic insight. Even in our darkest moments,
we often still reach out and
invite people to stay. Share their lives with us. Share their meal with us.
Holy ground, or a
holy interaction with God, is often found in a crisis. It is often when we feel most defeated that
we become most vulnerable to the in-breaking of God. It is in our brokenness that God can find a
way to break into our journeys, into our lives with the Holy Spirit. The road to Emmaus shows us that anywhere can
be holy ground if we meet God there.
We are looking for that revelatory moment –
that epiphany of experience. But that is
not when the two disciples recognized God.
It wasn’t in the approaching, or the teaching, or the prophesying when
they recognized him. It was only in the things that he had done with them every
day - our every day activity – that they realized he is with them.
Sometimes we return to the mundane to make
sense of our lives. Sometimes we have to
return to our routine, to our home, to our Emmaus, to help us process. But God still shows up in the mundane. In the blessing and breaking of the bread -
the act of service, hospitality, friendship, and relationship, their eyes are
opened. Their despair was getting in
the way. They thought the relationship
was over, but now they can see that it’s not.
It was in the mundane, not the sacred, where
they recognized God. It is in our every
day activities on the journey that may be our closest journey with God; in our
visits with people in the hospital, in the ride we provide to a friend, in
making coffee or in the caring and nurturing of our children, or in the tilling
and seeding and watering and weeding that God appears. It is in our sharing of food, or sharing of
meals with each other that we offer the blessings of God.
You can watch and wait for an epiphany, a
revelation, but sometimes God’s in the action rather than the revelation. At the crossroads in our journeys, sometimes
revelation comes to us based on small decisions that seem non-descript. Small
decisions, like entering into conversation or inviting someone to dinner, that
changes our lives.
One of the things I get to learn from you all
when I sit down and listen to your stories is about your pivot points in life,
your crossroads. About the small
decisions that turned into life decisions. About the times when you were
processing your grief and discovered wisdom, discovered love, or discovered
God. About the times you invited someone
to share a meal with you, and it turned into sharing your lives with each
other. Our crossroads in our journeys
tend to define our journeys.
At the end of this revelation, when the
disciples recognize themselves in the company of the Risen Christ, they
run. Once their eyes were open, they ran
back to the disciples “right
then”. Even though the day was almost over. Even though
they had taken care to have stranger Jesus stay with them because it was
getting late. Even though it was the
middle of the night. Even though it was
dangerous. They ran, because they had to
tell about their experience. They had to
tell about what happened to them on the road.
They had to tell the full story of what happened, not just that the
Risen Christ appeared to them. but about how it affected them. They told how they had been walking on Holy
Ground without knowing it.
Sometimes your crossroads are complete
180-degree pivots, sometimes they are small decisions. But our pivots define our lives. And when we do recognize holy ground, we often
want to camp out there, like Peter after the Transfiguration. But God doesn't
meet us just so we can have an experience; there is always a call and a job to
do.
The
UCC is the church where God is still speaking; meeting us on our journeys with
a few words and a blessing that helps open our eyes. We are with each other on the journey. God continues to abide with us in our routine
responsibilities. It is in our actions
that we realize Jesus stays with us, that God’s spirit abides with us
throughout our journey, because we are pilgrims in fellowship with each other
and with God’s love.
Amen.
