The Third Sunday of
Easter
Transcribed from a
sermon given
May 8, 2011 -
Mother’s Day
at
St. Barnabas
Episcopal Church
By Rev. Valerie Hart
Once upon a time there was a king
and the king decided that he wanted to honor the greatest citizen of his country.
He wanted to give an award to that one person who best manifested all that was
good. So he sent out his advisors to scour through the country, talk to people,
ask and find out who it is deserving of that honor. A few months later they
came back to the king and they had four nominees. It was up to the king to
choose which one of these four would get this great honor. The first on came
in. He was a successful business man who had made a fortune but who continued
to live quite simply and gave his money away. He was a wonderful philanthropist
who had helped thousands of people by sharing all of his resources. Ah, indeed,
someone worthy of the award.
They brought in the next person.
The next person was a doctor. He had spent his life serving the poor. He would
share his gifts of healing with anyone, regardless of whether they could pay.
And while he had been doing that he had also been studying and learning and
finding new ways to heal people. He had touched thousands of lives. Ah, indeed,
someone worthy of the award.
The third one was brought in, and
this was the main judge of the country. This was a judge that was respected by
all. Anyone who came before him knew that they would receive justice, that they
would be listened to, that they would be heard. He had a wisdom and dignity and
integrity that everyone respected. Some people compared him to Solomon, which
he, of course, in his humility, said that was not at all true. Ah, indeed,
another worthy person.
And then the king said, would you
bring me the fourth. They brought in the fourth. This was an older woman,
dressed simply, humble but carrying herself with dignity. He had never seen her
before and he asked, “What is it about her that you would think that she would
be deserving of this reward?” Then his advisors said to him, “Well, sir, she
was the teacher of the other three.”
Sometimes we don’t recognize
Christ when Christ is with us. That’s the message of the journey to Emmaus. And
sometimes we don’t recognize greatness when it stands among us, especially,
when it comes in the form of someone who nurtures, like a mother, or a teacher,
or a Sunday School teacher, or a nurse, or a friend or a sponsor, or someone
else who helps us, who teaches us, opens up the world to us in ways we couldn’t
have imagined. We sometimes don’t notice them, don’t acknowledge them, don’t
realize how incredibly important they are in the world. Sometimes we don’t
recognize Christ in other people.
The story of the journey to
Emmaus is one of my favorites and it is the favorite of many people. And the
reason it stands out so strongly is because it is really the story of all
Christians. It is our story, not just those two disciples.
Those two disciples were leaving
Jerusalem. Jerusalem was seen as the place you encountered God. They were
walking away from God. And they were unhappy. The were going through a dark
time. They had seen someone that they had hoped was going to be the salvation
of their country arrested and crucified. They had lost hope. They were grieving.
They were confused. You might have said they had bottomed out.
It is those times when we are
broken and grieving and hurting and confused that we are most likely to be open
to hearing about hope and love. So as they walked along suddenly there was a
stranger with them. Now the stranger doesn’t preach at them, didn’t tell them
what they were supposed to believe, instead it says that he opened up the
scriptures to them. He spoke to them in a way that they began to understand for
themselves another truth. They began to suspect, to realize, that there was
much more going on then they had every imagined.
That’s what happens on our
spiritual journey. Someone, something, comes into our lives and we begin to
say, “Maybe things aren’t exactly the way we thought they were.” Maybe there is
hope. Maybe God is real. Maybe there is something more.
They demonstrated their hunger
for more by inviting the stranger to stay with them when he went to leave. They
wanted to learn more. What they got was the next step on the spiritual journey.
That is when we open up to the possibility that there is hope, to the
possibility that God works in amazing ways. Then we have that moment when our
eyes are opened and we experience the presence of the risen Christ.
It can happen in a lot of
different ways. We can experience the presence of the risen Christ when we are
reading scripture, or when we are on a mountain top, or when we are deep in
loss and praying at the hospital. But one of the ways that the church has
constantly remembered and reflected on the presence of the risen Christ in the
breaking of the bread.
That’s how I came to know. That’s
how I came to have no doubt. When I went to college I got away from the church
for about 15 years. I was just beginning to start to go back a little bit, exploring,
you know, tentatively putting my toe in but not committing kind of thing. Then
one day at church, when it got to the Eucharist and priest broke the bread, all
of a sudden I was surrounded by love and the love was profound and around me, and
in me, and through me. It was one of those mystical experiences that I will
never forget. I knew the presence of the risen Christ. No one will ever
convince me that Christ is not with us, because of that one experience in the
breaking of the bread.
The church every week gathers
together to open up the possibility for people to experience the risen Christ
in the community of the believers, the risen Christ in scripture, and the risen
Christ in the breaking of the bread. And that makes all the difference. As the
letter from Peter says that once you’ve decided that there is a reality there,
once you have committed to God the father of Jesus, once you have come into
that community, then you have a responsibility. You have a responsibility to
love one another to love as Christ loves. To love and be an instrument of the
risen Christ. To be Christ for one another. Christ comes to us in many
different forms. Most of the time we don’t recognize him, but every now and
then our eyes are opened. Sometimes we experience Christ through nature,
sometimes we experience Christ through a book, or a movie. Sometimes our eyes
are opened by a song or a friend, or a teacher, or a mother.
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