Trusting On the Road
Luke 24:13-35

Eight year old Frank had looked forward for weeks to this particular Saturday because his father had promised to take him fishing if the weather was suitable. There hadn't been any rain for weeks and as Saturday approached, Frank was confident of the fishing trip. But wouldn't you know it, when Saturday morning dawned, it was raining heavily and it appeared that it would continue all day.

Frank wandered around the house, peering out the windows and grumbling more than a little. "Seems like the Lord would know that it would have been better to have the rain yesterday than today,"he complained to his father. His father tried to explain to Frank how badly the rain was needed, how it would make the flowers grow and bring much needed moisture to the farmers' crops. But Frank was adamant. "It just isn't right,"he said over and over.

Then, about 3:00, the rain stopped. Still time for some fishing. Quickly the gear was loaded and they were off to the lake. Whether it was the rain or some other reason, the fish were biting hungrily and father and son returned with a full string of fine, big fish.

At supper, when some of the fish were ready, Frank's mom asked him to say grace. Frank did -- and he concluded his prayer by saying, "And, Lord, if I sounded grumpy earlier today it was because I couldn't see far enough ahead."

We meet some disciples of Jesus today who had a problem similar to Frank's. Grumbling because they too "couldn't see far enough ahead." There they are, on the road together, commiserating. Explaining to a stranger their great disappointment over what happened with Jesus. "We had hoped... that Jesus was the one to redeem Israel. And our leaders handed him over to be condemned to death. He was crucified. And now there are some who are saying he's alive." Obviously these disciples couldn't see far enough ahead. They couldn't even see who this stranger was, walking right there with them on the road. But for some reason, they did begin to trust him. Later they would reflect on how their hearts burned as this stranger in their midst interpreted Scripture for them. And I'm sure this experience helped them trust him even more. And then finally, they trust him enough to invite him to stay with them. And there, at the table, in the breaking of the bread, they recognize the risen Jesus. Your church council just spent a day and a half exploring this text in all of its dimensions on a retreat this past Friday and Saturday. So they'll just have to bear with me.

It is absolutely no coincidence -- in other words, it is on purpose -- that this most beautiful of all the stories about the risen Christ appearing to the disciples, would reflect the pattern of early Christian worship. The risen Lord is made known through two events: the exposition of Scripture, and the breaking of the bread. Word and Sacrament, or Word and Meal, as we say in our bulletin. These two things took place in every liturgy in the early church. They were integral parts of a single coming of Christ to his own. They build upon one another. The burning of the heart as we are confronted and comforted with the Word. And the recognition of this risen Lord at the table, in the breaking of the bread.

More than fifty years ago the Protestant theologian Karl Barth lectured about worship in the church. "What we know today as the church service in the Roman Catholic Church and in Protestant churches is a torso,"he said. He meant a human body minus head and limbs. The Roman Catholic Church has a sacramental service without preaching. But he wished to speak at the time not for or against it, but about our own Protestant Church. "We have a service with a sermon but without communion. Both types of service are impossible,"he said.i

In the fifty years since Karl Barth made those remarks, an ecumenical liturgical renewal movement has swept Protestant and Roman Catholic churches. The liturgical renewal has been driven in part by an effort to rediscover the worship practices of the earliest Christians. And because we're all returning to the same source, our services are looking more alike. The Roman Catholic Church has restored the sermon, or the proclamation of the Word, and the Protestant church has restored and is increasing the frequency of the Sacrament of Holy Communion. When the Lutheran Book of Worship came out in 1979, celebrating communion weekly was presumed and to be encouraged as the norm. ELCA congregations that celebrate communion just once a month are clearly now in the minority. Many celebrate communion weekly or are moving toward that norm of the early church, with Word and Sacrament included at every weekly service. Even the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, in an African American hymnal published jointly with the ELCA, embraced the same outline for worship I've pointed out to you before. It appears on pages 8 and 9 of the blue hymnal, With One Voice.

This all builds on the heritage of previous generations of Lutheran practice, especially at the time of Luther and the Reformation.ii One of the key principles of our "Renewing Worship"initiative in the ELCA is the effort to lift up that which is central in our worship life. To "put first things first",or to "make the main thing the main thing". The shape of the ordo, as this four fold pattern is called, gathering, word, meal, sending, is more than just a way to keep things organized. It reflects earliest Christian practice as we witness it in today's Gospel reading. It helps us to discern what parts of our liturgy are really at the core. "The baptized gather to hear the word, to pray for those in need, to offer thanks to God for the gift of salvation, to receive the bread of life and the cup of blessing, and to be renewed for the daily witness of faith, hope, and love."iii

Our Bishop once spoke of the risen Jesus this way: "Jesus did not revive like Lazarus to return to his past. Jesus was raised up and exalted at God's right hand. Jesus broke through death's bonds to an astonishingly and unexpected new life, a life so charged and changed, so radically different from the past that even his closest friends -- Mary Magdalene, the Eleven, the disciples on the way together to Emmaus -- they all had trouble recognizing him. Dying and rising, Jesus had become a stranger."

And then, Bishop Rimbo said, "It can be said that, dying and rising, Jesus became a people. We Christians are not simply people who believe or remember what a great prophet taught. We are the living body of that prophet, the mystical body of Christ. To borrow a phrase that St. Augustine used of the Eucharist, "It is your own mystery"that is celebrated during Lent and Eastertide. During these days we rehearse not only what happened to Jesus, but what happened to us as well. We who are baptized are plunged into Christ's death, buried with him, so that "just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:4)iv

And so here can be -- when we invite him by celebrating Holy Communion -- the risen Christ, PRESENT in the midst of us! Your council spent the last two days re-enacting the many themes of this story. And that is exactly what we do when we participate in the full liturgy of Word and Sacrament. We mourn our losses and lament what was. We open ourselves to trust what or who initially may seem strange to us. Our hearts burn as we hear the Word proclaimed and explained. The risen Lord reveals himself to us in the breaking of the bread as we celebrate his holy supper. And as He is present among us, so we BECOME him. Dying and rising, Jesus became a people. We are that people. And we are sent on a mission to share that news.

One of the things we did together on retreat was to explore those things that keep us from seeing far enough ahead. Things that might make us strangers to one another. If you're having trouble recognizing this risen body of Christ, it may be there's a stranger on the road whom you need to trust first. Macrina Wiederkehr says "the stranger you look to recognize as Christ might have to be trusted in some other form before this deeper recognition can take place. She says:

The road of Emmaus is not a road of the past. It is an every day road. Someone is still walking along beside us explaining the scriptures to us, breaking bread with us and then vanishing from our sight. And we are still rather slow about recognizing what's happening in the breaking of the bread and that's because we are slow about trusting.

It takes so long to be a Church. We seem unable to trust the struggle as divine and even in the struggle to cry out: "It is the Lord!" We long to recognize Christ before we trust the stranger he sends down our road. And so often we miss the blessing. It is not that we're on the wrong road. It is rather that we fail to trust and recognize strangers. The road we walk each day is the road to Emmaus.v And trusting is what we do when we're like 8 year old Frank and we can't see far enough ahead.

Pastor Dana Runestad
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
Livonia MI
Third Sunday of Easter, 2005


i I apologize that I cannot find the exact citation for this quote.
ii Philip H. Pfatteicher and Carlos R. Messerli, Manual on the Liturgy Lutheran Book of Worship, Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1979: "In the celebration of Sunday, especially when the ancient joining of the Lord's Day and the Lord's Supper is experienced, the Christian, in company with other renewed people, finds contact with the risen Christ... The fullness of the church and the union of Christ with his people at no other time and in no other way become so real and so dynamic as in the celebration of the Holy Communion. It is there that the church really becomes the church, the body of Christ, and that Christ and his people are joined together. Easter thus becomes a continuing experience. Sunday is not just a commemoration of a historical event but a realization (both an awareness and a making real) of union with the risen and reigning Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit."(p. 14)
iii According to the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Article XXIV, Luthrean congregations celebrate the Holy Communion every Sunday and festival. The 1997 ELCA document, The Use of the Means of Grace, makes it clear on page 39 that all of our congregations are encouraged to celebrate the Lord's Supper weekly, but not every service need be a Eucharist.
iv "Worship Matters"in Sundays and Seasons, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2004, p. 181.
v Robert A. Rimbo, Bishop's Letter, Southeast Michigan Synod, April 1999.

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