SUNSET, SUNRISE
Psalm 116
Luke 24:13-35
If you are traveling facing the sun, and the sun is nearly blinding you so you are having great difficulty seeing, which direction are you traveling, east or west? It depends on whether it is early morning or late afternoon. If it is early morning, you are traveling east. If it is late afternoon, you are traveling west. And pray tell, what difference does it make? Why it makes all the difference in the world because east and west are opposite directions. It also makes a tremendous difference in our lives whether we are traveling toward the sunrise or the sunset. What a terrible mistake it is to conclude that we are arriving at the sunset of life when we are actually at the sunrise! It seems to me this is what our text from Luke is about and our exploration of it is appropriate for us in this Easter season of our lives.
Luke tells about two of Jesus' disciples traveling from Jerusalem to Emmaus on Easter Sunday. It was a seven mile hike. I wonder why they waited until Sunday afternoon to go for a walk. Apparently, they lived in Emmaus. Perhaps they had gone to Jerusalem for Passover and got trapped there by the events that transpired. They shared the Passover meal on Thursday evening. Then, things happened quickly. Jesus was arrested soon after the meal and tried before sunrise. He was convicted and crucified Friday morning. The trauma and tragedy of it all immobilized them until late Friday afternoon. By then it was sundown, the beginning of the Sabbath. They could not walk more than a mile on the Sabbath so they were trapped in Jerusalem. They were up early Sunday morning to begin their journey when word came to them that Jesus' tomb was open and the body was gone. So these two headed for home. I don't blame them. I'd want to get somewhere where there was some semblance of order, somewhere away from the tragedy and the trauma.
As they walked along they talked about the events that had transpired. I guess so! What else could they talk about! What else was on their minds! They had had enough trauma in twenty-four hours to last a lifetime. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that traumatic, tragic events stir more conversation, observation, and commentary than do events of great accomplishment and excitement. What do you think? The traumatic and tragic seem to shake the foundations of our lives more than events of great joy and excitement.
The way Luke weaves the story I get the impression that these two are troubled rather than excited about what has happened. There is nothing about resurrection in the conversation. It is more like the empty tomb was the "last straw". Why? Well, to them the empty tomb only meant the body was gone. They weren't thinking about resurrection. And why should they? That was not a usual occurrence. Grave robbery did occur occasionally. Resurrection? Who had ever heard of such a thing? And even if the thought of resurrection crossed their minds, they weren't willing for it to be more than a passing thought. There already had been too many disappointments. Too many times in their association with Jesus they had expected events to go a certain way and they had gone just the opposite. The events of the last couple of days were the worst examples of all.
As they are walking along, Jesus joins them. In a matter of fact, nonchalant way Luke simply writes Jesus into the journey. Now you don't see him, now you do. And the two men traveling together show no surprise that suddenly a third person is walking with them. How can that happen? It's happened to you and me. We've been walking in the mall or along the street in the neighborhood and someone overtakes us from behind and joins us, walks along with us. And that person joins in the conversation because it is someone we know. But in Luke's story, the two men didn't recognize who had joined them. Not only did he join them in the walk, but also he engaged in the conversation immediately by asking, "What are you guys talking about?"
What made Jesus interested in the conversation? Was it the intensity with which the two were conversing? Did he hear enough to know the subject matter and that piqued his interest? Maybe it was both. Maybe it was neither.
In any case, the two men who were talking were baffled by Jesus' question. They wondered if he were the only visitor in Jerusalem who didn't know what had taken place over the last couple of days. Notice their assumption was that anyone who knew what had happened would be talking about it and would know that that was what everyone was talking about. Has it ever happened to you that you were so preoccupied with something that you assumed everybody else was also as intensely interested in the same subject as you were? This seems to have been the attitude of these two disciples.
I know this will come as a surprise and shock to many of you, but I have discovered that after a Bears game not everyone is talking about the game. Actually, there are some people in Glenview who are not interested at all in football. I know that is surprising to those of us who are football fans, but it is an illustration of something that many of us might be talking about and assuming that every conversation is about the same thing, but it is not.
Since the two disciples conclude that this stranger is the only visitor who didn't know what had happened, they interpret for him. Earlier in Luke's gospel we have been given the announcement of the empty tomb and the statement that no one believed the women when they reported what they had seen or not seen. Now we are being given an interpretation. They said these are the things that happened to Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet and by the way they tell this they still consider him a prophet. He was powerful in everything he said and did. He was sentenced to death and crucified and they were disappointed. They had understood him to be the Messiah but had been disappointed because Israel was still under the rule of Rome. Their understanding of what a Messiah was to do was to free Israel from the oppression of Rome. So they had experienced a double loss--they had lost a dream and a friend at the same time. The disciples said that some of the women had gone to the tomb at daybreak and found it empty and then some of the men had confirmed what the women said, but no one had seen Jesus.
Now it is Jesus' turn to be surprised. He cannot believe how slow they are to believe everything the prophets had said. Remember now a prophet was not one who forecast or foretold the future. A prophet was an advocate, one who presented God's case to the people and the people's case to God. Jesus points out that suffering goes with the territory of being the Messiah. Notice in this situation and many others throughout history that much of the suffering that comes to those who are living out their faith commitments come from religious people who claim to be doing the work of God. It is startling what people will do when they are convinced that what they want to do is what God wants them to do. It is amazing what horrible things have been done in the name of God. Once an enemy has been identified as an enemy of God as well, then any means is justified. Turning dogs and fire hoses on demonstrators were justified actions because the demonstrators were portrayed as evil. Killing people who perform abortions is justified because they are portrayed as evil. Killing Prime Minister Rabin was justified because he was portrayed as evil. Killing Saddam Hussein was justified because he was portrayed as evil. Identifying nations as Axis of Evil demonizes them and justifies any action that anyone should take against them. We forget that we were once considered a rogue nation by Great Britain and perhaps looked upon as evil because the colonists were resisting what the British had planned for them.
Jesus said that suffering would accompany the Messiah. He also explained that what was said about him was said in the law and the prophets. Here is what is revealed about God through the law and the prophets.
When life sets its stubborn front against God, there are two courses of action which God never takes, and we almost always do. God never asserts thrusting forward into the center brushing everything else aside; God never crowds up against anything or anybody; God is immeasurably silent in every company, keeping out of sight, forever reluctant to bring any pressure to bear.
When Adam fell, God could have cancelled Adam. And when Abraham lied, and Sarah laughed, and Jacob stole, and David committed adultery, and Jonah hated the Ninevites, God could have cancelled each of them. But God knew that "getting things done" that way is nothing but a futile expedient way when we can't think of anything else, an idiotic stopgap that never touches the bottom of any difficulty. God said to us, "Very well, if you will not listen, I shall not make you. I shall not use my power but I will put myself into your power. I shall stand in front of all your Pilates, as helpless as can be, as poor and as friendless. And we shall see."
Nor does God ever take a short cut. God never seems to think as we do that what fails to get done now will not get done. God will not wipe out at a single stroke all the gains with all the losses of a century or two.
God is not all self-restraint and patience. God is not just trying to contain evil. God is creating something. It is compassion that life needs and not censure. Compassion that costs and thinks nothing of the scars. A passion that trudges its way up a steep hill and gets itself face to face with the worst that can be done to it. This, Jesus said, is what the law and prophets said about God and what God does in the world.
Then, Luke says when the disciples got to where they were going, it seemed as if Jesus were going to go on farther. Why would he go on farther? Why would he not tell them who he was? Why wouldn't he straighten them out about some things? Maybe there were other lonely, despairing people who needed to see him. Or is it that when Jesus seems to be on the point of withdrawing, his business always somewhere farther along, farther along in life than we have traveled, he wishes to be invited in? He wants to be invited in not by readying the house for his coming, because wherever Christ enters, he takes things as he finds them, but he takes them in his creative hands.
Someone entered a store and asked for a compass. The clerk behind the counter said, "We have compasses for drawing circles, but none for going places. How often do we view our relationship with God as an experience that will confirm what we already believe? And if that is what we are going to do, Jesus will go farther on. But if we invite God into our lives, truly, we will have a guide for going places, one who will take us to depths and heights we have never gone before.
Notice that Jesus was going to go farther on until the disciples invited him to stay with them since the day was nearly over. Even though they did not recognize Jesus, even though they had missed the point and purpose of Jesus' life, Jesus was not going to coerce them or force himself on them. How remarkable! How unlike us! We are so involved in having people see and do things the way we see and do them that we buttonhole, arm twist, and badger people until they agree with us or do everything possible to avoid any contact with us whatsoever.
The writers of the New Testament say there is a loving, forgiving God in the world and they have met God in the eyes and will and being of a Nazarene. Whatever our word may be for what happens there, they call it freedom, and release, and power.
Frederick Buechner comments on how remarkable it is to him that when the Gospel writers come to the most important part of the story they have to tell, they tell it in whispers. “The part I mean,” Buechner says, “of course, is the part about the resurrection. The Jesus who was dead is not dead anymore. He has risen. He is here. According to the Gospels there was no choir of angels to proclaim it. There was no sudden explosion of light in the sky. Not a single soul was around to see it happen. When Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb afterward, she thought at first that it must be a gardener standing there in the shadows, and when she saw who it really was and tried to embrace him, he told her not to, as if for fear that once she had him in her arms she would never let him go, the way I suspect that if you and I were ever to have him in our arms, we would never let him go either. When the disciples heard he was alive again, they tended to dismiss it as too good to be true, and even when they finally saw him for themselves, Thomas still wasn’t convinced until Jesus let him touch his wounds with his own hands. Later on, when they were out fishing at daybreak, they saw him standing on the beach, and there again they failed to recognize him until he asked them to come join him at the charcoal fire he had started on the sand and cooked breakfast for them.
The way the Gospel writers tell it, in other words, Jesus came back from death not in a blaze of glory but more like a candle flame in the dark, flickering first in this place, then in that place, then in no place at all. If they had been making the whole thing up for the purpose of converting the world, presumably they would have described it more the way the book of Revelation describes how he will come back again at the end of time with “the armies of heaven arrayed in fine linen, white and pure,” as Revelation puts it, and his eyes “like a flame of fire, and on his head many diadems” (19:14, 12). But that is not the way the Gospels tell it. They are not trying to describe it as convincingly as they can. They are trying to describe it as truthfully as they can. (The Longing for Home, p. 142-143.)
As these disciples shared a meal with this stranger, something caused them to recognize who the stranger was. Even as they had walked into the sunset of that Sunday afternoon, they experienced the dawning of a new day in their lives. Often God's approach and presence in our lives seems strange, like a stranger, because we are called to look at life from a different perspective. Our refusal to look at life from that perspective makes God seem like a stranger. Once we invite God into our lives, the stranger becomes a friend. These two disciples discovered that the stranger indeed was a friend, the friend of all friends. And they went back to Jerusalem to tell the others what they had experienced. Although it was sunset, it was as if it were sunrise because they went immediately, apparently traveling after dark to get back to Jerusalem and to where the other disciples were. What they thought was the sunset of their lives and their experience with Jesus turned out to be the sunrise. It is just like Jesus to turn everything upside down which actually means to turn life right side up. What was true for those first disciples was that the message of Christ was never fully theirs until they shared it with someone else. They told what had happened. In a sense the secret of the entire Bible is wrapped in these five words, "They told what had happened."
That is true for us as well. We are to tell what has happened. We are not to coerce or force people to accept our view or understanding of God. We are only to bear witness to what we have seen and heard. We are to tell what has happened and leave it there. It may turn sunset into sunrise for someone else as it did for these two disciples from Emmaus as it has done for everyone who has experienced the love, grace, and forgiveness of God. That's what God's love does: it raises us from the dead; it turns sunset into sunrise.