Preaching text: Luke 24:13-35
When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.
Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.
Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.
While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.
These four verses that I just read illustrate a common theme in Jesus’ post- resurrection appearances. Despite the disciples’ intimate knowledge of their master, despite all the months and years they’ve spent together, when he appears to them, they almost invariably fail to recognize him.
It’s almost as if Jesus shows up where you never expect him.
Many years ago, I knew this guy named Richard. He and I had met when we were staffing Japanese anime fan conventions together in the 90s. He lived in the Washington DC area and the only place I ever saw him were those one or two times a year when we’d work the cons together.
I took a trip to NYC, and as was fitting for a fine nerdy anime fan like myself, I stopped by a Japanese bookstore to see what anime they might have. I turn the corner of one of the stacks and there’s this guy standing there. Something familiar about him, but...wait a minute. It was Richard. In NYC. In one of the largest cities in the world. In the exact same bookstore. Both of us hundreds of miles from our homes.
Talk about showing up where you never expect. The likelihood of that coincidence boggles the mind. I haven’t seen Richard in well over 15 years, but I’ll always remember that story.
God likes to do that to us too. He pops up where you least expect him to be. The Old Testament is full of stories where God surprises the daylights out of people. Abraham hosts three travellers, bringing them from out of the hot noontime sun, never suspecting that God had come to visit. Elijah is told that God will pass by his cave, but when the thunder roars and the whirlwind blows by, God isn’t there. It’s only when the silence comes that God arrives. King Nebuchadnezzar looks into the fiery furnace and sees not the three men he just condemned to death, but also a fourth in their midst.
God showing up where he’s least expected.
Today’s lesson is no different. Two disciples on the Emmaus road on the afternoon of the first Easter. They are joined by a stranger, but he’s not a stranger. He’s simply Jesus in the last place they expected him.
Another tale in the great list of God’s Holy Surprises.
In one sense, we make it too easy for God to surprise us. There’s a big reason for that. In our arrogance, we keep thinking that we know what God will do. If he showed up today, we’d know what he’d look like. We’ve got him all figured out.
If God came into our midst right now, right here, he’d appear as a column of blinding light or as an angelic figure so powerful none of us could bear to look at him. His voice would deafen in its power and we’d be paralyzed with fear. Now God has shown up in the Scriptures that way before, when it suits his purpose, but those stories are in the minority. More often, when God appears, we don’t even realize it.
In many ways, the fact that we make these assumptions says more about us than it does about God. We Americans idolize strength and abhor weakness, so our image of God is almost always one of strength and power. Our civil religion speaks of God invariably alongside either our money (meaning our economic power) or our military (meaning our physical power.) A certain public figure recently claimed that God baptizes terrorists through waterboarding, a statement that puts proof to the idea that God is only present when there is strength and power being exercised, usually violently.
But that’s not the story we see in his Holy Word. We know God best through Jesus Christ, a humble ordinary Middle Eastern man. A man who was taken prisoner, beaten half to death, and nailed to a cross to finish him off. What strength is there in that image? What power? What might? God beaten. God broken. God hanging on a cross. God dying in the last place anyone expects.
We blind ourselves to God’s presence because we want to him to play by our rules and be the sort of deity we claim him to be. But that’s not how it works. Our salvation does not come through strength. It comes through weakness. It does not come through violence. It comes through sacrifice. We want to see a God of power, but what God wants us to see instead is a God of love, one willing to go to any length, even death, for our sake.
No wonder he keeps surprising us.
I’ll let you in on a little secret though. It’s not really that much of a surprise. You see, God tells us openly where we can see him. And while it’s not in the places we might expect, if we take him at his word (and we should), he gives us all kinds of places to find him.
His Holy Spirit comes into us through baptism. God is in each one of us, so if you want to see him, look around you at the faces of your brothers and sisters in these pews.
Jesus taught us that whenever we do acts of kindness and love towards the least of our brethren, we find we’ve done it to him. So we find God in the needy, the poor, the hungry, the sick, and naked of our world, the people who need what we are called to offer.
And I would be remiss if I did not mention that we also find him in the same place that those disciples did in Emmaus, in the breaking of bread and the pouring of wine. This is my body. This is my blood, given and shed for you and for all. He comes to us in the sacrament.
God is present in all these places because he said he’d be there. Not quite what we expect, but the Christian life is full of paradoxes. Strength comes out of weakness. Life eternal comes from death. Victory comes from defeat. And the extraordinary is found in the most ordinary of places: bread, wine, water, and the people who share them. Amen.
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