The Seven Next Words of Christ: What Are You So Concerned About Luke 24: 13-34

For years the United Methodist Church through the Upper Room Ministries has offered a three day retreat called Walk to Emmaus. I have both attended this walk as a participant and have served on the leadership team as an assistant spiritual director, as well as encouraged folks to attend. The mission of this retreat is to “offer an opportunity to meet Jesus in a new way as God’s grace and love is revealed to you.” 

I love that purpose statement for the Emmus experience because it so clearly captures the spirit of what happened on that road to Emmaus so long ago. When Jesus comes across two people along the road who were discussing what had happened over the last several days. They were in deep discussion of the death of this man called Jesus, the one who they had put their hope into as the political messiah - the one who could and overthrow Roman occupation. Then a man came near them and started to walk with them, but they were so lost in their conversation that they didn’t recognize him there. Finally he asked them what they were discussing and they told him the story of Jesus, assuming that he was from out of town and didn’t know what was going on.

If I had to describe this moment I would summarize it as awkward. Have you ever came across people who were talking and as you got closer you realized that they were talking about you? Even when they are saying good things it can be such an uncomfortable situation, yet that is exactly what Jesus walked into. Or have you ever had the experience of being deep in conversation, so deep that you seem to forget your surroundings, only to find that someone else has been standing next to you for a while, trying to be part of the conversation. That would have been the men.

Yet, for all of its awkwardness, Cleopas continues to tell this “stranger” about Jesus who was a mighty prophet in all he said and did, yet the chief priests handed him over to die. Its been three days since it took place, yet it seemed to be all people could think and talk about up to this point, including the women who said they had went and found an empty tomb and that Jesus was alive. 

Jesus then called them out for not knowing what it meant to truly be the Messiah. Could you imagine just sharing the most gut wrenching story with a stranger only to have them tell you how you missed the point? And the awkwardness continues. Yet, as they entered into the village and Jesus starts to veer off to part ways, the men invited him to stay. And as he responded to their hospitality and stayed, he took bread, blessed it and broke it, and they finally recognized Jesus!

Friends, these disciples of Jesus, followers of his, almost missed the point. They had become so blinded by their grief and expectations that they could hardly recognize who was right in front of them the entire time. In fact they were blinded several times in this story. First, they nearly missed the person joining them on the road because they were so engrossed in their own concerns. Have you been there, brothers and sisters? Have you become so engrossed in what is going on in your life that you miss what’s going on in the lives of others? 

  Sometimes as a pastor I think we miss the point of weekly worship gatherings. Recently I was at a youth retreat called “Recharge”, where the speaker made a great point. As Christians we move from one “recharging” experience to the next - whether it be a high moment in our faith life, or Sunday morning worship, or a conference. But really the point of our faith life, and especially Sunday morning worship experiences when we are walking with Christ is not to continually be needing to be recharged, but instead to care for one another. To be able to go to the person who sits next to us in the pew and ask how they are truly doing. Or to see if someone in the congregation is in need of prayer. Or to offer to babysit for the new mom or bring a meal to the widower. But all to often that isn’t what we use Sunday morning worship for - we don’t make it into a time to encourage our brothers and sisters in the faith, because we are so blinded by our own wants and needs.

Then the disciples became blind to what it means to be the Messiah. Some translations put it as “we thought he was the Messiah” or “we hoped he would have been the Messiah” or in our case “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel”. They had let their own expectations get in the way of seeing that Jesus was the Messiah, just not the conquering, political King that people had expected. 

Friends, we let our own expectations get in the way of our faith walks all too often. First, we have expectations about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. We want to pick and choose how our God should be. There is a saying that goes something like if your God hates who you hate and loves only who you love, it probably isn’t truly God, yet that is exactly how we can act from time to time. Instead of reading scripture to see who God truly is, we make God in our image. Especially looking for a God who can give us what we want, when we want it. We let what who we want God to be block us from seeing who God is.

We also can let our expectations of ourselves get in the way of what it means to be a disciple of Christ. In the gospel of John, as Jesus is preparing to die, we find him telling his disciples that they are going to experience difficulties and persecution. Friends, somehow we have tried to make our discipleship about what we want to receive and miss the point that following Jesus requires real sacrifice. We miss the point that discipleship changes us. In fact, its life changing, continually, because Jesus doesn’t let us settle for the expectations of ourselves but instead pushes us beyond our comfort zones for the sake of the Kingdom. 

Third, the disciples almost completely missed the fact the one that they had been traveling and talking with was in fact Jesus. They had been focusing on other things until Jesus stood before them and blessed and broke the bread for them to share. Haven’t we been there, brothers and sisters? Where we have been like animals with blinders on - only seeing a small part of the picture, thinking that Jesus has abandoned us or hasn’t been preset in the midst of our circumstances, only to have the blinders removed by the grace of God and we come to realize that Jesus was with us the whole time?

What about us friends? What have we been focusing on instead of Jesus? And how have our distractions almost made us miss what is right in front of us? For some it may be their grief. For others politics. For still others situations at work or at home. It wasn’t until the distractions were out of the way, that the disciples remembered how their hearts were warmed along the road.  Friends, we need to set our distractions aside so we can see Christ anew. We need to get out of our own way so that Christ can fill us and send us out. May God gives us ears to hear, eyes to see and hearts to respond so that we can go out and share the greatest story ever told - of how Christ met us along the road and changed our very lives. Amen.