Sermon Title: "Meeting Jesus Face-to-Face"
Date: February 7, 2010
Minister:  Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson:  1 Corinthians 15:1-11

The first two churches I served during the '70s and '80s were in the middle of Upstate New York, hundreds of miles from New York City.  The first was in a little hamlet of 400, and the church was located several miles from the highway that led to Cornell University and Ithaca College.  In my five years there, I cannot recall one person coming by the church or parsonage to ask for help, so far off the beaten path were we.

The second church was a corporate town in the Southern Tier of New York, just above the Pennsylvania state line.  Because we were just a few blocks from the major highway that ran west toward Lake Erie and Ohio, it was more common for unknown persons to stop by from time to time to ask for help.  I vividly remember the first person to do so.

It was a weekday afternoon.  I was at church alone, just coming out of the kitchen with a cup of tea when a young man, about college age, entered through the door.  I distinctly remember he had on jeans, a sweat shirt, and had a backpack slung over his shoulder.  His hair was tousled, as if he had slept outside overnight.  He asked me if I could give him some money.  I had to say no.  We kept no money, not even petty cash at the church.  I knew my own wallet was empty.  I said I was sorry.  He turned with a downcast look and slowly walked out the door.

That episode occurred a good thirty years ago.  And I remember it to this day as if it were yesterday.  And I have often wondered if it was Christ I was turning away.

Fast forward to last Sunday afternoon.  I was driving a couple of our teen boys home from our Sky Forest confirmation retreat.  We stopped for lunch in Claremont, at a McDonalds adjacent to a gas station.  No sooner had I exited the car when a middle-aged fellow came up to me.  He said he was out of gas and had a job on Monday in Norco.  Could I spare some money for gas?  A woman and a teenage boy stood nearby.  This time I knew I had enough money in my wallet, and I also had the eyes of two teenage boys from our church upon me.  We had just spent the weekend talking about faith, about the same themes you covered here last Sunday:  seeking justice, loving mercy, walking humbly with our God.  I pulled out my wallet and gave the man six dollars.  “That’s two gallons!” he exclaimed.  “Thanks a lot.”  When we left McDonalds later, I saw his car was gone . . . off to Norco, I hope.

People have different notions of what heaven will be like.  Some expect to have a grand reunion with their loved ones.  For others, it may be the image Anne Sebold painted in her book, and now a movie, entitled “The Lovely Bones.”  There, each person has a heaven with the things that meant the most to them in life.  For me, I always wonder if I will meet Jesus face-to-face, and what will that face look like?  Will it be the face of the young man whom I could not help in New York 30 years ago?  Was that Christ coming to me, asking for help?  Will it be the unshaven face of the man in Claremont last Sunday?  Will it be the face of Denise, whom I’ve run into two summers in a row on the streets of Ashland, Oregon, who also sleeps on the porch outside my office off and on for the past three years?

All of these experiences, all of these people’s faces flooded my mind as I studied today’s passage from the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, written about 53-54 A.D.  It was he who converted them in the first place.  The Gospels as we know them were still in oral form.  Mark’s, the earliest, was not put into written form until some 10-15 years later.  So in the absence of the yet-to-be written Gospels, it was Paul, both by word and by letter, affirming for them the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the basis for their faith.

His confession in verses 3-5, printed under my sermon title in the bulletin, repeats what was surely an already established tradition of the early church, passed down in the 20-plus years since Christ’s death and resurrection.  Paul reminds them that the risen Christ appeared to Cephas—another name for Simon Peter—then to the other disciples.  Then Christ “appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time…  Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

Then Paul’s confession and affirmation reaches a most personal note.  “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”  This is a great revelation, considering who Paul was at the time of Christ’s appearance, around 34 A.D., about three years after his resurrection.

Paul was then known as Saul, a zealous persecutor of those who followed Christ’s way, a painful memory from which he suffered to the end of his ministry.  One day, on his way to the high priests in the synagogue, he sought permission that if he found any followers of Christ’s Way, he could bring them bound to Jerusalem.  As he approached Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.  The voice of Jesus said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”  Saul was struck blind for three days, until Ananias, instructed by the voice of the Lord, went to Saul and said that the Lord Jesus had instructed him to restore his sight.  It was restored, Saul was baptized and became Paul, and immediately began to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God.  (Acts 9:1-22) 

John’s Gospel, which contains my favorite Easter story, was not yet written, so perhaps Paul had not heard of the first appearance of the risen Christ to Mary Magdalene in the cemetery garden on Easter morning.  Because of his appearances, next to the disciples, then to the five hundred, to the new apostles, and finally to the irascible Paul himself, the process continues to this day as Christ appears to each of us in our own experiences with the risen Lord.  We may sense his presence physically, walking with us through the deep dark valley.  We may sense him psychologically, taking to heart his parting words, “Lo, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:20)  We may sense his presence in our miraculous healing, just as he touched and healed the lives of the sick and maimed he encountered in his ministry. 

How does the risen Christ appear to you?  And if Christ hasn’t appeared to you lately—why not?  If you think God only visits on Sundays when you’re here in church, maybe you need to look at different parts of your life, different places, different days in your week, in order to rediscover Christ’s presence right around you.

One reason we may not experience more appearances of Jesus in our life is because we train ourselves only to know people for their reputation, not for their presence.  Go to the downtown of any busy city and try smiling to strangers on the street.  Try getting them to acknowledge your presence, or try acknowledging their presence.  You can smile all you like, but they will likely not acknowledge your smile because they’ll never see your smile.  We know and respond to each other by reputation, by prior knowledge of them, rather than by their mere presence.

Two weeks ago, in Berkeley for a clergy conference, I was walking back to the hotel about 8:15 in the morning after going down the street to get Peggy and myself a breakfast bagel.  As I approached the hotel, I could see a man shuffling down the street toward me.  He looked disheveled, as if he had just awakened from sleeping under a bush.  I saw him coming toward me, and just before I reached the hotel entrance, we passed.  Instead of looking ahead or down, I looked him in the face, smiled and nodded to acknowledge his presence.  “Hey, man,” he said, “could you spare some change so I could get a donut?  I haven’t had anything to eat yet.”  Standing there with two warm bagels in a bag and a cup of tea in my hand, I reached in my pocket and gave him my change.  “Thanks, man, thanks a lot,” he smiled.

Did I meet Jesus face-to-face that Monday morning?  Maybe someday I’ll find out.