Sermon Title: "Be Known to Us in Breaking Bread"
Date: April 6, 2008
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Luke 24:13-35

This is a significant day.  It is a Sunday I have awaited for several years.  For all the times that the story of the road to Emmaus falls on the third Sunday of Easter, it is rarely on a communion Sunday.  Wouldn’t it be nice if… I always thought.  Well, due to Easter being much earlier than usual this year, the journey on the road to Emmaus and what was revealed there falls in 2008 on this April communion Sunday.

The actual event took place on the afternoon of Easter day, so I suppose it would be a wonderful lesson for an Easter evening service; but, so far, I haven’t been able to convince anyone, including myself, that we need to gather here again for a third service late on Easter afternoon.

It seems Cleopas and an unnamed companion were walking the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  Depending on the terrain, how well-traveled the path was, the heat of the day, I would imagine it took two hours or more to make that walk.  As they talked and walked, the risen Christ himself joined them, “but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  Jesus asked what they were discussing.  They thought he must be the only stranger not to know about the empty tomb and the missing body of Jesus, so they filled him in on the events of the past several days.

Why did they not recognize him?  If they were close followers of Jesus, surely they would have known how he walked and talked, even the noises he made at night as he slept.  Maybe they were only around the outer edges of the chosen twelve, and were never that close.  Maybe the afternoon sun was in their eyes as they journeyed west.  Or, just maybe, Jesus appeared differently in a risen state.

As they arrived in the village, the stranger who had accompanied them was set to walk on, but Cleopas and friend urged him to stay on with them.  This is not as unusual as it may sound to us, for Middle East hospitality is well-known and very accommodating.  “When Jesus was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him…”  After Jesus vanished from their sight, they jumped to their feet and returned to Jerusalem—in less than two hours, I would imagine, and they told the disciples “how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”

Much has been made known in the newscasts in recent weeks over endless video clips of sermons from the now-retired pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.  Now, before anyone’s blood pressure rises, I want you to know that I, with a lot of other clergy and other UCC members across the country, do not agree with the incendiary sound bites we heard.  But I do know this, from comments made by the presidential candidate who is a member of Trinity UCC.  Of his pastor, he said, “He performed our marriage.  He baptized our daughters.”  And our interim Conference Minister, also a member of Trinity, wrote, “Our church family has prayed for us when our granddaughter was ill and Rev. Wright has pastored me through some personally challenging times.”  At the last Board of Stewards meeting when I was talking about this, one of our long-time members and officers said to me, “That’s okay, Charlie.  I don’t always agree with you either, but you’re still my pastor!”

This all gives me pause to reflect on what people really need, or really remember, about their spiritual leader.  I have long-believed significant birthdays, like 16, 21, or any one ending in zero, are milestones at which time one can reflect on the past.  I really feel only one day older today than yesterday.  Yet I do know that turning 60 today, I have entered the decade in which I will retire.  That sounds a long way from when I began ministry at age 25, some 35 years ago!  In that time, I have preached 1372 sermons.  How many of them do you remember?  I look back over the titles in my record book, and many times they give me no clue.

Rather, I believe it is in the little acts of ministry that occur out of the pulpit by which many clergy of any religion or denomination are remembered.  I know how meaningful it is for me to marry couples, and then see some of them continue in this church.  I baptize some of their children.  Increasingly, I find I have baptized the teenagers I am now confirming.  This year, it will be twelve out of fourteen confirmands.

People tell me they remember when I prayed at their hospital bedsides, or just before or just after a loved one died.  They remember talking to me in my office over some issue that troubles them; most of the time it is not of a religious nature.  Some say the Maundy Thursday communion service is the most meaningful one of the entire year for them.  Last Sunday, a woman told me she had been listening to Easter sermons for over sixty years, but has never felt Easter as she has here the past three Sundays, starting with Palm Sunday.  People want someone they know to officiate at a loved one’s funeral or memorial service, even if I did not know the deceased.  They want a familiar person to minister to them.

Both Thursday night and Friday afternoon last week I put people up in local motels—folks who were stranded while traveling through, or folks who have lost their home and are now living day-to-day in a motel.  I am sure none of them could remember my name, and that doesn’t matter.  They may remember that some pastor, some caring Christian somewhere helped them out in their time of need.

Believe it or not, all of this reflection on my part is triggered by today’s Gospel lesson.  We all know that many words of Jesus are recorded in four Gospels.  Yet how many of those teachings could you remember right now?  In spite of all the comforting, challenging, educational and moral lessons he imparted, one of the most tangible ways in which we remember him, his words, and his sacrifice is when we meet him in breaking bread.  On the night before he died, what we now call the Last Supper, Communion, the Eucharist was the last known meal he shared with his disciples.  And on the afternoon of the very same day he was raised from the dead, the next meal came when he broke bread with two hitherto unknown persons in the Bible, and “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.”

Two followers of Jesus trudged along the dusty road from Jerusalem to Emmaus when suddenly the risen Christ joins them incognito on their journey.  He is to them, at that point, a mere stranger.  By the time they reach the end of their journey, they have moved from discouragement and despair to hope and faith. 

That’s the road each of us gets to walk.  The church, when it is half true to its promise, is a group of people where, wonder of wonders, the risen Christ meets us.  Sometimes he is known to us in breaking bread.