April 6, 2008

Easter 3A
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Luke 24:13-35

"On the Way"

Welcome home, many of you, from spring vacations to warm places. While you were away, here at church we held down the fort, re-telling the stories from John's gospel about the first day of resurrection: that Sunday morning when Mary Magdalene bumped into Jesus the gardener in the damp darkness, and later that day when Thomas demanded and received tangible proof that Jesus was really alive. But we saved a good story to share this weekend.

Now that we're all back home from our travels, this broad roof gathering us together once again, we listen in on Luke's unique contribution to the collection of first-day resurrection stories: the story commonly called "The Road to Emmaus." It's a compelling drama, the well-told story of a journey that sweeps the listener up and carries us along on a wave of shifting emotions: sorrow, suspense, puzzlement, gradual dawning of light, irony, astonished recognition, a flurry of excitement and activity. The cast includes two of Jesus' disciples - a man named Cleopas and possibly his wife, Mary - who have fled the gore and shame of their teacher's crucifixion outside the walls of Jerusalem to nurse their grief in private. They've hit the highway that leads away from their dashed dreams, their disillusionment, and they're heading up to the lake, so to speak, to get away from it all and re-group. After three years of Jesus' great sermons and amazing signs and wonders, they weren't the only ones who had pinned their hopes on a triumphant Messiah riding in on a white stallion to scatter the Roman occupiers. His surrender to death was the first shock. And now they don't know what to make either of the claims made by their own friends that Jesus had been resurrected. That wasn't how they were expecting the story to end...or to begin again, either.

This story of death and disappointed human hopes, of turning to someone who might or might not help, of discovering answers to the mysteries of life in scripture, of truth waiting at the end of a long, winding road, the sudden realization that Jesus himself is present with us, warming our hearts with his truth, showing us himself as bread is broken...The script of this story in Luke channels the experience of countless Christians of a life of faith, of relationship with the living God - if not in the precise detail, then certainly in the experience of being grasped and held onto.

During the season of Easter, we learn again to recognize the risen Jesus where he is to be found - wherever there is living and dying, laughing and crying, around our tables at home and work, in our study of scripture, in the breaking of the bread of Holy Communion, in our stories of hurting and helping. We encounter Christ in surprising ways when we create welcoming space, share food, or simply offer the generosity that Jesus expects from his followers. At those times, in those places we discover Easter joy. Like Cleopas and his companion, we don't always notice a new companion on the trail, but that doesn't keep Christ from stepping onto our path...Never forcing himself on us, but always available when we invite him to stay, transforming the ordinary into something sacred...

The sacred actions of warm welcome and open-hearted generosity -- turning strangers into friends and responding to the needs of neighbors near and far - have been hallmarks of this congregation throughout its 28 years. Today we celebrate God's faithfulness and the blessings that flow from this practice of resurrection here at FOC. We pause to lift up the work we've done together - God-breathed and God-powered, embodied and promoted by our Christians in Action task force)...work to bring the kingdom of God near, by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, binding up the broken hearted. As Jesus did at the table when he took bread and blessed it before giving it to his friends, we pause to offer our thanks for the opportunities God has granted us to be bread broken for this world of great beauty and great need.

I have a couple of stories to share this evening/morning. They are stories of resurrection. We all have them. But we don't often tell them. There's no better time than Easter to tell these stories to one another, to take a second look at the footsteps in the sand in front of our own and see the Risen Christ leading the way. Practicing resurrection by sharing life-from-death stories is about seeing our own paths intersecting the paths of others, intersecting the Way of the Lord...And very often we are surprised.

By long tradition, the loose offering on Christmas Eve here at Family of Christ is designated by Christians in Action for a special purpose. In 2007 the Christmas Eve loose gifts were set aside to build a sick room at a children's home in South India. That offering - which many of you were a part of - totaled over $3,000, enough to complete the project that the home had needed for several years.

Just this week, we received photos and a letter of thanks from the director of Bethania Kids Home in the city of Nagercoil. Miss Grace writes in a distinctively Indian style of English. Here is an excerpt from her letter:

"Dear Pastors Rev. Nate Castens, Rev. Kristie Hennig Mr. Bob Erickson and Co-believers of the family of Christ Lutheran Church,

I Greet you all in the matchless name of the Risen lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. The Staff and Children of the Bethania Kids Home Nagercoil are very much moved to hear that you all have much burden and concern towards the welfare of our kids...

There are 119 children and 10 staff in our home at present...Most of the children are orphans, semi orphans and destitutes from very poor families. When they become sick or affected by contagious diseases like mumps, measles, sore eyes and chickenpox, we found it difficult to keep them separate and there was no facility to put them in...to protect the other children... The building work of this sick room started in December 2007 and [was] completed only now due to unpredicted monsoon...[At the dedication of the room], the inmates of the whole Bethania Home praised our Lord, for His wonderful guidance and Mercy. I thank you all for your financial help to us to have a Sick-Room for our children at Nagercoil. We will be ever grateful to you. Herewith I have sent a few photos. [sermon photos 1, 2 and 3 here]

My regards and well Wishes to each one of you.

Grace Subbiah, director."

Paths criss-cross. A need to give intersects with a need to receive. Resurrection! And God used Family of Christ to make it happen. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed - Alleluia!

Here's another story of resurrection:

Before we went to El Salvador last summer (the fifteen of us high school youth and adults from this congregation), I don't think I had ever thought about soccer and Jesus together. But I did in Guaycume late one Saturday afternoon.

It happened when Carmen and her youth group challenged the FOC teens to a match. By that time, we'd worked together for several hours in the heat, moving the sandy soil to clear the way for a new outdoor Sunday School room, and energy was flagging. So Carmen grabbed a ball and marched us all out several yards from the church property to a grassy open space flanked on all sides by green hills alternating with deeper valleys. Rocks were shoved into place to mark two goals, and approximate sidelines for the playing surface agreed upon. Then the two sides went at it. There was exertion, panting, sweating, playing for pride, admiration for the quick feet of opponents, a lot of laughter. The youngsters stopped playing only when it got too dark to see the ball.

That peaceful, Hollywood-worthy spot where I stood with Pastor Matias watching our youth groups enjoy a carefree game of soccer as the sun set, had been, only two decades before, the scene of a horrific massacre. During the Salvadoran civil war of the 1980's and '90's, it was a killing field...Out of nowhere and everywhere, the story goes, government helicopters crisscrossed the valley, their guns trained on anything that moved, mowing down the campesinos below, who had no place to hide. The soldiers' intention: to wipe out any rebel sympathizers. The makeshift soccer field the high schoolers had been playing on had been watered by human blood. I tried to imagine the terrified screams of the victims; all I could hear were the voices of delight and new friendship.

From death, new life. Out of the indiscriminate violence of war, a hard-fought peace. And now a place of recreation, re-creation. A need to give intersects with a need to receive.

Resurrection!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed - Alleluia!

And there are stories of resurrection closer to home, too.

Some of you know that Steve and Sharon Olson, longtime members of this congregation, suffered a serious house fire on Easter Monday. Steve came by to update Pastor Nate and me this morning/yesterday. He reports that they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of concern and support from their friends and neighbors, including their church family. "We aren't experiencing this as loss," Steve says. "We are full."

If you have shopped with your own kids to buy gifts for the FACIC children in foster care, or watched others come up to the basket here at the altar with their family's contribution to the local food shelf and caught the glint of their shining eyes, nourished by their own act of sharing...then you have been witness to resurrection.

And there are stories that only you know. There's no time like Easter to start sharing them.

John Shea tells the story of playing an age-old game with his grandfather when he was maybe 4 or 5. Grandpa would take a cookie in his hand and show it to the boy. He would put both hands behind his back and then bring them back in front. Both hands were closed into fists. "If you can guess what hand the cookie is in, you can have it," he would say. The boy would walk around the grandpa's hands, trying to catch a glimpse of cookie between the cracks of his fingers. But the hands were large and the cookie was well tucked inside. Finally, the boy would venture a guess and tap a hand. Both hands would turn over and open, flat as plates. On each hand was half a cookie. The scoundrel had broken the cookie in half behind his back. "Grandpa, you cheated!" the boy would protest. But by that time the grandpa had eaten one of the halves. And he would say to the boy, "You had better hurry."

Maybe, as Shea suggests, we break bread and life like that - half for ourselves and half for others. Maybe Jesus ate the bread he broke and fed himself on his own life. We know from our own experiences of practicing resurrection - of creating welcoming spaces and being generous with others - that often in the act of sharing we receive more than we give.

Serving others nourishes our own spirits. Love isn't divided; it's multiplied. In the world of the Spirit there is no scarcity. Only abundance.

As we celebrate what God has done through us in our ministries of serving here and beyond, we remember the disciples on the way to Emmaus who - recognizing the Risen Jesus as he thanked God and fed them with heavenly food for their spiritual journey - got up and did a U-turn...putting Emmaus in their rear-view mirror and returning to Jerusalem, where a world of hurt longed for good news.

Like Cleopas and his companion, we too are the people of the Way, called to walk untried paths on unsteady feet into places of death and crisis and vulnerability, places of thin hope. But, thanks be to God, we do not walk alone.

We are Easter people and ours is the news the world is waiting to hear: Christ is risen! He is risen indeed -Alleluia!

Kristie Hennig
Chanhassen, Minnesota

1 Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone, 293. 2 I found these two sentences in an online resource. 3 John Shea, On Earth As It Is in Heaven, 175-6.