Our Power to Break the Bread. . .God's Power to Break Open our Hearts
Luke 24:13-35 The Road to Emmaus
When you are on a long journey, hospitality matters. In the Middle East, where it is hot, dry, and rugged, hospitality really matters.A number of years ago, I went on a 28 day pilgrimage to the Holy Land with a group from Virginia Seminary. Over that time, I experienced deep and radical hospitality. The first followed a two-hour hike out of Jerusalem to the Greek Orthodox St. George’s Monastery. St. George’s is perched on the side of a steep cliff, and within the complex is a cave. This is the cave to which the Old Testament prophet Elijah is said to have fled, where he experienced earthquake, wind, fire, then finally, the still small voice of God. As we wandered around the exterior courtyards of this ancient place, we saw no one. Suddenly, a young monk appeared. Bearing a silver tray with glasses and cold water, he welcomed us all to St. George’s. Here, in an ancient place, a total stranger greeted us with radical welcome and generous hospitality.Another day, after exploring some ruins in Samaria, our group stopped for lunch in a small local family restaurant. First, they brought us fresh, cold water. Then they served what had now become a familiar salad plate: a row of tiny, sliced cucumbers, quartered fresh tomatoes, sliced green peppers, purple cabbage, slivers of carrots and green cabbage. Bowls of green olives.
Next, they served the main part of our lunch: meat (probably lamb), potatoes, chunks of carrots and tomatoes, cooked over a fire and served on a skewer. Accompanying that was a zucchini squash, hollowed out, stuffed with aromatic rice and a little bit more meat. And the bread. Oh, the bread. Fresh, homemade flat bread that had been grilled over a hot fire, then piled high and presented to their guests. Lunch was topped off by fresh watermelon and very strong coffee in very small cups. As we sat on a shaded porch, shielded from hot desert sun, we learned that the restaurant owner’s wife had grown the grain from which she then baked our bread. All these years later, I remember that bread. I tell you, when you held that bread up and looked around at your friends, then pulled it apart, you knew you were welcomed into a place. Still on the journey, but for the moment, not thirsty. Not hungry. Full, satisfied. Content. Wrapped in the arms of radical, deep hospitality offered by total strangers. Hospitality enjoyed with friends.[1]From the twentieth century, I now invite you back to the first century. In Luke’s version of the resurrection, it is the late afternoon of the resurrection. We are only four days removed from what was another special meal, the Passover meal that Jesus shared with his disciples shared. It was the last meal he would eat with them—or so they thought. A lot has happened in four days. Jesus has been betrayed, taunted, whipped, crucified. His broken body was taken down from the cross, wrapped in linen, taken to a nearby burial cave.Now, sometime later, on Sunday afternoon, we find ourselves walking away from Jerusalem with two disciples. One is Cleopas. The other is unnamed.Please keep in mind that Jerusalem is, literally, a “city on a hill.” Once you leave Jerusalem, you are on a road with “a series of ups and downs, steep climbs and quick descents.”[2]Once you reach Bethany—about a mile and a half from Jerusalem, and over the hill from the Mount of Olives, “the hills of Judea then [decline] toward the coast.”[3]Perhaps this terrain is a significant metaphor. These disciples have been part of the height of Jesus’s ministry. Now, he is gone. The miracles, the teachings, the shared meals. . .all have been swallowed up by these four dark days.Now, emotionally drained, two people trudge sadly along a hilly road in the wilderness, headed back to the life they used to know. “From the holy heights to the plain of the ordinary.”[4]
Cleopas and his companion—who may be his wife, although we are never told—have heard the amazing story of Jesus’ resurrection. Yet they simply cannot wrap their human minds around this mystery. A dead man rises from the grave? That is impossible. Then a stranger appears and joins them on the journey. He asks, “What were you talking about?” Cleopas is amazed. How can you have been in Jerusalem the past several days and not known about Jesus’ death? They had hoped that this rabbi from Nazareth would be the one to redeem Israel. But no. The Church officials had turned Jesus over to Rome, and Rome had crucified him.Yet there had been this astounding story that some women told this morning. They’d found the tomb empty. Some angels there said Jesus is alive. So Cleopas and his companion just don’t understand. They are overcome with doubt, confusion, grief. They know that something momentous has happened, they just don’t understand what or how.Jesus calls them foolish. Now we must remember that “this remark, in the first-century world, would have been considered an insult.”[5]Yet these two not only listen intently to Jesus, but when they arrive at their village, they ask him to stay with them. Jesus declines, as is part of the mid-eastern customs of hospitality. They repeat their invitation. This time, Jesus relents and enters their home. So these two people participate fully in an ancient hospitality ethic, which is that true “hospitality [is] never about entertaining family and friends. Hospitality [is] always about dealing with strangers.”[6] In the biblical world, when you sit down at table together, you are acknowledging a deep bond and an unspoken sense of trust. In other words, you trust a complete stranger to bring blessing to your home just by sitting with you at your table, by sharing the dishes in which you put food, by engaging in conversation over candlelight.
Yet an amazing thing happens. The guest becomes the host. They hand Jesus some bread. He holds it up. He blesses the bread. He breaks the bread. He gives them the bread. Suddenly, Jesus vanishes from sight. Yet in that instant, the two know who it is who has walked along the road with them. They know Jesus, because they have walked with him. They have had a relationship with him. How many times have they have seen him take bread, hold it up, bless it, break it, and hand it to his disciples? There is no mistake. They compare notes, saying, in essence, “No wonder. No wonder my heart was pounding out of my chest today as the man talked to us about Moses, the prophets, about the things that we have heard Jesus talk about the past three years.” How could we have not recognized him?Death has broken the hearts of these people. Now, as Jesus takes bread, blesses it, breaks and gives it, God breaks open their hearts and transforms their lives. They begin to carry the gospel out to the world, to proclaim the love of the risen Lord. Broken bread, held high in candlelight, heals broken hearts. Seemingly human actions, but not really. More like God’s actions, writ with human hands.
Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash
Wine that is poured and shared connects people who love Jesus. That cup gets passed from one hand to another, from Jerusalem to Bethany, from Emmaus to the coast, to Asia and India and Europe and Africa, to every continent in the world. From one pair of hands to another, down through the generations from the first century until the twenty-first, tables are set. Bread is piled high. Wine is poured. Hospitality at a table with candles transforms strangers into friends.Thus is God’s great news of love and hospitality shared. Yet it is only through sharing of the message of Jesus’s sacrificial love that the disciples are truly transformed. As they gather to pray, to break bread, to hear the holy scriptures through this new lens of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, these men and women begin to understand the larger story of the Christ, contained in both the Old and the New Covenants.In other words, these disciples understand Jesus’s real message—one that is very counter-cultural. The hungry are filled. The rich go away empty in their souls, even if not in their bellies. The powerful are cast from their seats of privilege and power. Those who have held no power finally get to sit in the best seat in the house.The road may still seem too long. The “arc of the moral universe”[7]may seem to be too long in attaining justice for all of God’s children. We do not always know just where we are going. We do not always know how to get from here to there. Too often we are exhausted or frustrated or overwhelmed. We limp along, crippled by our doubts and our fears. Yet we still walk. We “walk together, children, don’t you get weary.”In some strange and inexplicable way, when we walk with the risen Christ, God breaks our hearts open and we know God’s power. Out of God’spower—not our own—our broken hearts are transform to serve God’s children.You will look around and think, “Oh my. There are too many needs. Too many people sleep on the streets. Too many people line up at Elizabeth House for dinner. Too many people sleep in their cars. Too many children in this community get their meals at school, but summer is coming, and then what? One meal a day? If they are lucky. Too many people of color have become slaves of our prison system—the new Jim Crow. Too many innocent people are victims of violence of all kinds.Yet we, in this historic space and place we call St. Philip’s, we might well ask how our hearts can break open so that we serve God’s children in deeper ways. How can we be the hands, the feet, the face of the Christ who is our host at God’s Table? How can we can become Christ’s hands to reach out to those whom we encounter—either inside these walls or out in the Laurel, the Ellicott City, the Columbia, the Silver Spring communities? Maybe with Jesus’ feet, we walk our neighborhoods, to pick up trash to clean up “this fragile earth, our island home.”[8]
We can participate in Side By Side’s “Ride and Stride,” either by riding a bike or walking on April 28thto benefit local families and their children’s education. (Note: go to https://sidebysidelaurel.org for more info.)
Or we could walk or run a 5K on May 5th in the LARS Annual Spring into Summer, to raise money for people who need our help in this community. (Note: go to http://laureladvocacy.org/spring-into-summer.html for more info)Two thousand years ago, three strangers walked together on a journey. Two shared their home and dinner table. Yet somehow the third person became the host. In one amazing moment, bread was broken, and hearts were broken open—transformed hearts that shared that holy bread with the world “with gladness and singleness of heart.”[9]Today, as you open your hands to receive the Body of Christ, the bread of heaven, do not eat it mindlessly. As St. Augustine said, in the fourth century, “Believe what you see, see what you believe and become what you are: the Body of Christ.” You. You are the body of Christ.
We do not have to understand intellectually what happens at the table of the Lord. These are matters of the heart. Matters of mystery. What we need to know is when we take God into ourselves, something happens that changes us. The bread taken, blessed, broken and given becomes bread for the world. So take it into yourself this day. Then go and share it with your brothers and sisters—some of whom you have not yet met. Only in sharing it will you truly know the deep, radical blessing of God’s hospitality. God’s unconditional, astounding love. Amen.© The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJilton[1]From notes in my personal journal, Monday, 25 May, 1998.[2]Marianne Race & Laurie Brink, In This Place: Reflections on the Land of the Gospels for the Liturgical Cycles, (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1998), 209.[3]Ibid., 209.[4]Ibid, 209.[5]Ibid., 209.[6]John J. Pilch & Bruch J. Malina, Biblical Social Values and their Meaning, (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 1993), 104 in Race & Brink’s In This Place. . .[7]Phrase used by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but Theodore Parker had used this metaphor of historical progress in a collection of sermons in 1853.[8]From Eucharistic Prayer C in The 1979 Book of Common Prayer.[9]From Acts 2:46Unless otherwise noted, images accessed at Google.com.