Sermon for Friends Congregational Church

On the occasion of United Campus Ministry Sunday

Delivered by Stephen Loonam

“Jesus is Always with Us”

April 6, 2008

Luke 24:13-35

            So, I’m a huge basketball fan. I really love the pros, but the college game is really cool too. The final four was yesterday, and, after two good games, Memphis and Kansas will meet in championship, but the most interesting part of the final four this year was the fact that this was the first year that all four top ranked teams from each region made it. That had never happened before; I really didn’t think that it would happen this time. Even though just about every source I read, nearly every sports writer on the internet, in the newspaper, or on TV, told me that this could be the year that all four number ones made it, I stubbornly refused to put them all there in my bracket (which doesn’t look all that good anymore)… I just couldn’t believe.

            Well, our two friends on the road to Emmaus didn’t believe it either. They had given up hope even though they had been told many times how things were going to happen. They knew the scriptures, and they had listened to Jesus, but they still could not believe, even when the women came back from the tomb on the morning of the third day bringing the great news that Jesus was alive again, just like he had told them he would be. Now matter how many times they were told, now matter how many people told them, they were not going to believe it until it actually happened.

            I can relate. So many times in life, things just seem so unlikely. Even when people assure us over and over again that something is going to be a certain way, we don’t always let ourselves believe them. Maybe it’s some kind of defense mechanism; maybe we just don’t want to get our hopes up by clinging to something that seems so unlikely… At least, that’s the situation that these two disciples found themselves in on the road to Emmaus. Despite all the promises that they had been given, death just seemed so final. In their minds, Jesus was dead, and it was all over. They were going home to continue their normal lives with their world and their hopes crushed. It is times like these where we need to hold onto hope the most, where we need to look for the good things in our lives and in the world.

            But that’s not what we do. That doesn’t seem to be the natural way that we think. When things start going badly, we dwell on the negatives, big and small, and we start to miss things that would normally put a smile on our faces and brighten our days; we start to overlook the positives in our lives, unable to get over the things that just aren’t going quite right… I know I find myself doing that every now and then; sometimes it’s hard to look on the bright side of things; sometimes it just seems like the world is out to get us… And that seems to be where these two men are.

            In their minds, Jesus is dead, the world is out to get them, and they have nothing left to hope for. And that is where Jesus finds them, walking home sadly, lost in their own conversation, reliving all the terrible things that had happened in Jerusalem. They are so lost in that world that they do not even recognize Jesus, the man for whom they are mourning, when he joins them on their journey, and they cannot understand why he, too, is not sad, why he does not seem to know about what has happened in the city over the last few days. Once they look back on their walk, they remember how their hearts burned (in a good way) when Jesus was explaining the scripture to them, but somehow, they had failed to acknowledge that warmth that Jesus gave to them until after he had revealed himself, until after they believed again. Until after he had explained to them the meanings of the scriptures again, until after he had instilled hope back into their hearts, until after he had opened their eyes…

            That makes me wonder… When we dwell on the bad things, when we lose sight of the good things and that hope that Jesus gives us, how much do we miss? How many opportunities to smile pass us by? How many chances to spread God’s love do we pass up because we are too busy thinking about how badly things are going, how much we feel like the world hates us? I don’t know the answers to those questions… It’s just something for us to think about the next time things aren’t quite going our way.

            The phrase “their eyes were opened…” that’s the key for those two disciples. That’s the turning point in their story. It is the moment that they realize that Jesus is still with them. It seemed so important and so familiar that I started to wonder where else I heard those words, where else they appeared in the Bible. I didn’t have to look very far. “Then their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked…” (Genesis 3:7a). Adam and Eve had their eyes opened in the Garden of Eden. It represented the entrance of knowledge into the human race. They realized that they were naked, and set out to change that.

            The two men in Emmaus were naked too. They had been stripped of their hope. There was nothing left to protect them from the cruelties and harshness of a world that seemed, to them, so devoid of love and joy. But when their eyes were opened, they realized that they were naked, and Jesus once again gave them the hope that they needed to protect themselves, the hope that would enable them to go on and leave the world of misery that they had let themselves drift into by forgetting that Jesus would never abandon them. That’s all they needed, that little reminder that we still participate in now that comes with sharing bread at Jesus’ table.

            There is another aspect to the Adam and Eve story that we need to take notice of though… The new knowledge that they possessed brought greater responsibility for them. No longer could they live forever and care-free in an earthly paradise. Now, they had to work; they would have to endure pain, and eventually, they would have to die.

            The gift that the two disciples were given came with some responsibility as well. These were not the only two men in the world who had lost all sense of hope when Jesus had died. That event had crushed the spirits of so many people; it had left them all feeling abandoned and alone. Now, these two men had to spread the good news. They had to go out and do for all of their other friends what Jesus had just done for them. They had to open the eyes of others and remind them of all the things that Jesus had always taught them. They had to inspire hope and spread God’s love. They had to proclaim that Jesus lives. They rushed back to Jerusalem, eager to relate the story of what had just happened and share with all the others the good news that they had just experienced, passing along that renewed hope, but they had to know that that was not always going to be easy.

            They themselves had experienced what it felt like to lose hope. They knew how difficult it could be to renew that hope and bring back that faith. On top of that, after they managed to bring hope back into the ranks of Jesus’ disciples, the road to bringing the good news to the world, sharing it with those who needed it most, was going to be riddled with pain and persecution. But they did it anyway because that is what the power of hope from God’s love does for us, it gives us courage and the strength to keep going, even when things seem to be getting to be more than we can handle.

            That is the challenge for all of us… to go out into the world and share God’s love, no matter how hard that may be at times. Our eyes have been opened, and it is our responsibility to share that hope that we find in Jesus with the world. It may not be an easy thing to do, but it is something that will warm our hearts, make them burn with love.

            On that journey of sharing God’s love, the road will not always be easy. The world is not always a pleasant place. So often, it is filled with pain and hate. So often, suffering happens where maybe it shouldn’t. Life is not always easy. Sometimes things are not going to go quite right. Sometimes it is going to seem like the whole world is out to get us and that there is nothing left to hold onto, like it did for the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. It is in those moments where we most need to hold on to the hope that we have found in Jesus, the love that nourishes our souls if we remember to let it.

            We can learn something from what transpired on the road to Emmaus. We don’t have to lose ourselves in despair because our eyes have been opened. We can have faith in knowing that even when it doesn’t seem like it, even in those times when we just can’t bring ourselves to believe it, Jesus is with us. Jesus is always with us.

Benediction:

Our eyes have been opened. Go now and share that hope and that love that we find in Jesus, knowing that even in the worst of times, he is always with us.