Resurrection: Beyond Codes and Bone Boxes
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
Easter Sunday – April 8, 2007
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[Texts: Acts 10: 34-43/1 Corinthians 15:19-26/ Luke 24:13-43]

“That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus. . .”

I doubt if they were discussing Dan Brown’s best-selling The DaVinci Code or having just watched Simcha Jacobovici’s The Jesus Family Tomb on cable, but these two works do have something in common: they both opine that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross and thus didn’t really rise from the dead. Brown’s fictional piece was received like fact and, thankfully, Jacobovici’s attempt at scholarship – heavily promoted by film maker James Cameron – has simply not been received. Having taken a look at both of them – in fact having taken apart The DaVinci Code and now publicly admitting my wife was right, I should have written up and published my notes – I think that both of them remind us of the powerful claim of the Christian faith, otherwise why would so many work so hard to discredit it? Our proclamation of Christ’s Resurrection goes well beyond codes and bone boxes and speaks directly to the longing I hear in one writer’s analysis of the bone box. This was in a recent issue of The New Yorker, “What was moving about the so-called Jesus tomb, whoever is in it, is that here was a family . . . We know their names and can test, for whatever reasons, their DNA. Even if this is the only kind of immortality they have, it’s enough; it’s all we’ll get too.” [Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker March 12, 2007, p. 26] I would say to him, “No, there’s more.”

Let’s stick to codes and the like for a moment and I’ll try to explain. The Romans were very ingenious in developing the means to hold their vast empire together. One method involved communication; a system of towers was built connecting all the provinces. These towers served as relays, using either signal flags or great bonfires – thus even darkness or bad weather was dealt with. As an emissary or enemy approached, the fires were lit or flags raised and lowered in proper coded fashion so that proper preparations could be made to receive either friend or foe. These towers insured a "blaze of recognition," as it were. We have our own blazes of recognition: events, images, places, all of which set off something in us so that we recognize – literally 'to bring to mind again' – that person, event, or situation.

Cleopas and his nameless friend were on the road to Emmaus. This village was only a short distance from Jerusalem, "a Sabbath day's walk". Those two followers of Jesus walking on the road had a blaze of recognition. However, the recognition did not happen until they had been with Jesus for some time. What kept them from recognizing him and how did the blaze finally start? Perhaps you and I could be walking along our own Emmaus roads – maybe ours lead out to Elm Grove, or perhaps Brookfield and the mall, or downtown Milwaukee, or just down the road to the village – walking those roads everyday without realizing who's walking with us?
Their walk was taking them from the scene of Good Friday's heartbreak and sorrow. It had been three days and there were strange rumors of an empty tomb and the Master's rising. These followers of Jesus were disappointed, discouraged, defeated, and bewildered. They had placed all their hopes in this gentle teacher and healer, only to have them dashed against the hard wood of the cross. Did they dare to have any hope that the rumors could be true?So they journeyed along, consoling each other in their disappointment when a stranger joined them and entered into conversation with them. He seemed pleasant enough company, but they were shocked at his lack of knowledge of current events. To add to it, they're hurt that he didn't seem to share their own feelings of dejection and loss as they recounted their sad, strange story.
All the while they talked with the Risen Lord, but Scripture said they were "kept from recognizing him." One writer has suggested that, perhaps, it was because they were walking into the sunset. The angle of the light was such that they couldn't see quite clearly. Others have noted that grief can make one become so self-focused that it is difficult to see who is really with you. My own thought is that it was a combination of things which kept them from a truth that was so very close to them and yet, so very far away.
I think we can safely say there were four things that combined to keep Cleopas and companion from recognizing the Lord. First, these disciples, as we've learned, were discouraged. They suffered from having their hopes pulled away and now they lacked the courage, the heart, to continue in the way they had followed. This led them to the second problem: self-centeredness. They began to get into the "woe is me….woe is us" syndrome. They wondered why they had to go through the situation they were in – I think all of us can identify with this, I know I certainly can. Discouraged, self-centered, they were ripe for the third obstacle: lack of trust. Cleopas told the stranger, "But we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel." Here he had placed his trust in Jesus of Nazareth, "a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people," who had not fulfilled his expectation and now trust was in short supply. Finally, these three "blinders" lead to the fourth: lack of vision. What is implied in the conversation with the stranger is, "All this stuff has happened to us. There's no Jesus anymore – so what do we do now? Where do we go from here?"
If this passage is beloved, and I know it's my favorite Gospel story, I don't think it's because of the sentimental paintings it has inspired. It is beloved because, like all of the Scriptures, it speaks to the heart of the human condition, because it goes beyond the codes that we fabricate, beyond the conspiracies that tickle our fancies and the bone boxes, the dead ends, we construct. There are people this very day – some very likely sitting right here or people we know – who are suffering from the same thing as Cleopas and his friend. They've been through difficult times, they've been disappointed by someone, and everything else follows. The result is that they choose to walk the journey, carry their burden, all alone – they fail to recognize Christ walking alongside them.

Christ is hidden from those two disciples because they haven’t opened their hearts to the possibility of the resurrection. Augustine preached this about them, “The Lord’s absence is not an absence. Have faith, and the one you cannot see is with you. Those two, even when the Lord was talking to them, did not have faith, because they didn’t believe he had risen. Nor did they have any hope that he could rise again. They had lost faith, lost hope. They were walking along, dead, with Christ alive. They were walking along, dead, with life itself. Life was walking along with them, but in their hearts life had not yet been restored.” [Sermon 23 in Ancient Christian Commentaries New Testament vol. III, p. 379] Their hearts needed to be opened so that their eyes could recognize the Lord. They needed to rise within themselves through faith.
Jesus, the stranger, intervened. I wish I could have seen their faces when he said, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!" He opened the Scripture to them and in doing so he expanded their sense of reality, along with their hearts and minds. He broke all of the codes and shattered the bone boxes. It's one thing, you see, to read the Bible. It's another thing to have it make a difference in one's life. We can read the Bible, as do some scholars, to mine it for research or to use it for critical study. We can read the Scripture; even use them, to accomplish our own ends. However, when the Spirit of Truth which springs from the lips of the Incarnate Word, Jesus the Christ, begins to work – life, perception, reality is changed. That's what happened on that dusty road so long ago. As they listened, really heard what was said, their minds and hearts expanded and, suddenly in the midst of an ordinary action, their eyes were opened. And as the eyes of their souls were opened to comprehend Jesus with them, their hearts exploded in a blaze of recognition, if you will. So, does it still happen? Yes. How do we have this blaze of recognition? Here's a thought or two that may help.
The hearts which "burned within" them are the key. The heart is the seat of our spiritual nature – what the ancient teachers of the church call "the metaphysical heart." One, Abba Pambo by name, said, "If you have a heart, you can be saved." So, to have a heart means to find one's heart, one’s center, within which one will be guided by God. Elsewhere in Luke's Gospel Jesus said, "The kingdom of God is within you." He was speaking of the heart.
The Scriptures are loaded with references to the heart, more numerous than can be offered here and now. The essence of what they say is this: we come to know God and ourselves through our hearts, our innermost selves. When the heart is disclosed, discovered, so is one's true personhood. At the moment of that disclosure, we come to understand how we are made in the image and likeness of God. At the moment of that disclosure we see the whole sweep of what God is about in the Scripture in a blaze of love and light. This is what the 20th century Russian émigré mystic, Father Sophrony wrote: “God reveals himself mainly through the heart, as Love and Light. In this light man contemplates the Gospel precepts as the reflection on earth of celestialEternity, and the glory of Christ as the only-begotten of the Father, the glorythe disciples saw on Mount Tabor. The personal revelation makes the generalrevelation of the New Testament spiritually familiar.” That which was hidden becomes remarkably visible and we see where we fit within the whole scope of God's revealed activity. "Did not our hearts burn?"
We are able to come to this experience of God as Love and Light when we imitate Jesus. He "emptied himself" so that he could become a transparent vessel of his Father's will and work. It's the same for us. When those two disciples were able to take their eyes off of themselves they discovered both Jesus and themselves. Their hearts burned not only because they realized they had been in the presence of the Risen Lord, but also because they came to a new and deeper sense of their own selves.
Their eyes were opened as Jesus sat at table and broke bread with them. What that teaches us is that common, everyday actions take on whole new meanings for the Christian. While the connection of this action to the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, is clear and ancient, I think it speaks of another mysterion or sacrament, if you will. An 18th century French writer, Jean-Pierre de Cassaude, spoke of the "sacrament of the present moment." In other words, we are to tune our hearts to perceive God present in every moment of every day wherever we may be walking.
When we allow the blaze of recognition to happen, to let our hearts burn, we can see God in the most basic activities. Every ordinary act – like breaking and sharing a piece of bread or sharing from a cup – can become a vehicle for God's presence. We can come to recognize Jesus in the ordinary, everyday events of life when we focus the eyes of our hearts to see beyond our own narrow concerns and encompass a greater reality. What is more, you and I can also become the means by which the sacrament of the present moment is accomplished. That is the goal of all of Christian life, to become Eucharist for each other in imitation of Jesus – broken, poured out, shared so that others might become whole.It was the commitment to loving community thatcaused the story to spread and so many witnesses to speak so freely and so powerfully, as we read in Acts.

So, as we walk along our roads to Emmaus we encounter this stranger who challenges us to think, to listen, to comprehend, and to live as we have never done before. He is going to show up in ways and through people we least expect. When we hear what he has to say, when our hearts erupt in a blaze of recognition, we will no longer run from the disappointments and difficulties of our lives because we will understand that resurrection is beyond what conspiracy theorists, fictional or otherwise, think it is. Rather, like Cleopas and his companion, we will be compelled to go to tell others what we've found. Perhaps, as we go back to the places of our difficulties and disappointments with our good news we will discover, as they did, a company of fellow travelers who have also encountered the Risen Lord. There is more to this than we can conceive, otherwise why has it continued in the face of so many competing claims? Perhaps it’s because there are still those who open themselves on the roads of life and experience a blaze of recognition? It is my earnest prayer that all of us may know this blaze. That all of us will understand resurrection beyond codes and bones boxes and thus be joined together in the company of the burning heart.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia! Amen!