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The Rev. Richard Floyd Ridgefield-Crystal Lake Presbyterian Church Easter B Luke 24:13-35 (off-lectionary) April 16, 2006 I wonder: what’s your favorite part of Easter? Of course we’re all going to say it’s coming to worship on Easter morning and listening to spellbinding sermons, so let’s take that off the table and talk about our next favorite part of Easter. Is it the promise of spring that Easter brings, you know, with the eggs and flowers and bunnies and all that— all symbols of new life and fertility? Is it all the sugary, chocolaty, marshmallowy goo we consume? Maybe it’s Easter dinner with family and friends, eating and drinking and laughing and loving all around the table together. When I was kid, the best part of Easter wasn’t really the coming of spring— I lived in Florida where spring doesn’t exist. It wasn’t the family dinner or the sugary, chocolaty, marshmellowy goo or even dressing up in hot, scratchy clothes and sitting through long, boring sermons. No, the best part of Easter for me was the Easter egg hunt. Did any of you do an Easter egg hunt this year? Probably most of us don’t actually hunt anymore. Instead we hide the eggs as diabolically as we can (or maybe the Easter bunny hides them) and then we watch the kids hunt for them. My previous church in Atlanta used to have a huge Easter egg hunt with like 60 or 70 kids. They would all be huddled together in the fellowship hall, a huge mass of pastels and bunny ears and baskets and fake grass, all chattering and twitching with anticipation. When the signal was given, they’d pour out the doors and swarm over the entire church property like a plague of locusts. Because of the way the church was set up, when they first burst out of the fellowship hall they would run immediately into the parking lot and start frantically looking for eggs under cars or in trash bins. The parents would run along behind them, trying to redirect them up toward the lawn where the eggs were actually hidden. You know they could have searched that parking lot for hours, days. They wouldn’t have found a single egg. It doesn’t matter how hard you look, if you’re looking in the wrong place. I don’t know what you’re looking for today. Maybe you don’t even know. I think deep down we’re all looking for something, something more. And we probably didn’t find it in our Easter baskets this morning. Maybe it’s God we’re looking for. Maybe it’s new life, resurrection. Maybe it’s more peace, more hope, more joy in our lives. So where do we find it, this something more, this new life, this resurrection, this peace, hope, joy? It doesn’t matter how hard we look, if we’re looking in the wrong place. The story from Luke wants to give us a hint where to look. This is often called the “road to Emmaus” story, And the great thing about Emmaus is, we have no idea where it was. We don’t have any reliable evidence that the city even existed. You could say Emmaus is nowhere. You could also say Emmaus is everywhere. Because the road to Emmaus is the road we all walk when life takes a turn for the worse, when all our opportunities and possibilities start to evaporate, when hope begins to fade. There were two disciples walking the road that day. One was named Cleopas. The other isn’t named, probably because we’re meant to fill in our names. They were walking the road to Emmaus because they had been followers of Jesus. And they had hoped he might be the one to set the people free. But then they had seen him arrested and convicted and executed. And their hopes had died with him. Sure, there were wild rumors swirling around. Someone had had an angelic vision; someone had found an empty tomb. But the rumors weren’t enough to hold on to, so they started down the road to Emmaus, the road of broken dreams. We start down the road to Emmaus for different reasons. Maybe it’s disappointment at the life we’ve been given, or disappointment over what we’ve made of it. Maybe it’s too long letting other people define us, telling us who we must be and what we must do. Maybe it’s our weariness, letting life run us down and stretch us out, until we don’t have enough strength left for peace, for hope, for joy. Maybe it’s grief for our first Easter without a loved one. Maybe it’s that depressing feeling that, despite all our rosy words and songs, today’s just like yesterday and tomorrow will be the same and the sun will never really shine again. Of course if you’re feeling that way, you’re probably not here. Many of us, when we’re walking the road to Emmaus, try to stay away from church, especially on Easter when everyone’s so stinking joyful. I understand that, but it misses the point. The good news of Easter is not that life is wonderful and everything is beautiful and happy and joyful and, oh by the way, Christ is risen, so it gets even better! The good news of Easter is that no matter how disappointed or doubtful or depressed we may be, no matter how many times we may give up or walk away, no matter how lost we get, no matter how deep the darkness in our lives and our world, even the deepest darkness of death itself— God will find us, Easter will find us, even when we can’t find it. That’s what happened to those two disciples walking along the road. They couldn’t find Easter, so Easter found them. They thought they had left it all behind them, but they were being stalked by the heart of the universe. Of course they didn’t see it at first. All they saw was a stranger, a fellow traveler. But when they arrived at their destination, and invited the stranger to stay for dinner, he took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to them, and their eyes were opened, and they saw him. It’s curious—comforting, really— that, in the end, they didn’t find Easter because they knew right where to look or because they believed all the right things or said all the right words or were super-holy or had faith that could move mountains or anything like that. They found it, or it found them, simply by walking along the road and sharing a meal with a stranger. We’re going to re-enact that scene in just a few minutes. We’re going to come to this table, walking whatever road we’re on. We’ll gather with lots of family and friends, and lots of strangers, too. We trust there’s another stranger here as well, a fellow traveler who walks the road with us. Will we find what we’re looking for, right here, today? Will we find new life, resurrection? Is this where the big Easter egg is hidden? Maybe. But whether or not we find what we’re looking for, the good news of Easter is: we have been found. We have been found by the heart of the universe, and there is peace, and there is hope, and there is joy, beyond our wildest imaginations. |