"In the Breaking of Bread"
April 6, 2008: Third Sunday of Easter, Year A
The Rev. Caroline K. Murphy, interim senior minister
United Church on the Green, UCC: New Haven, CT
www.UnitedChurchontheGreen.org

Scripture:

"May God take these words and make from them a holy word for us today."

Luke 24:13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

And he said to them, "What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?" They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?" He asked them, "What things?" They replied, "The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him."

Then he said to them, "Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?" Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, "Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

"Friends, God is still speaking to the world. May our hearts be open to listen and respond. Amen."

Sermon

It was an ordinary weekday, shortly after Easter. The little group of us was sitting around the lunch table, as we have been doing monthly for the past seven years now, filling each other in on our ministries and our lives. A lot has happened in the years that this small group of clergy colleagues has been meeting together: moments of deep crisis and intense joy, shifts both subtle and profound in the nature of our callings, marriages and deaths in our families. By the grace of God, our monthly gatherings are a place where we can speak honestly with one another about it all — about the ups and downs of our ministries, about our hopes and fears for our congregations and our world, about the joys and sorrows and challenges of our own lives. To be able to speak with such honesty and openness, to listen to the insights and struggles of trusted friends, to receive both support and, at times, gently challenging feedback — all this is a gift that I cherish more with each passing year.

On the surface of it, there was nothing extraordinary about this most recent gathering of ours. It was, as I say, a rather ordinary weekday. We were all a bit tired in the wake of Easter, but mostly in a good way. Holy Week and Easter had brought meaningful moments for each of us. Perhaps it had also opened us — in the way that it is intended to open all who observe it — to some of the deeper questions of our faith. Some of the encounters of our day-to-day ministries had had the same effect.

And so, as we sat together, sharing a meal of quiche and bread, salad and fruit and chunks of a wonderful 70% bittersweet chocolate bar shot through with delectable chocolate nibs — as we lingered together over this tasty, nourishing food, we began to wrestle with some of those deeper questions. One member of our group talked about a recent Sunday morning when, in the few minutes right before church was to start, two different individuals shared devastating news with her. One had just experienced the sudden loss of a loved one; the other, who had not been in church for well over a year, burst into tears when she greeted him, and began telling her about his teenaged son's mental health struggles. Another member of our group, who works as a chaplain in a large urban hospital, talked about a series of conversations she has been having with a 28-year-old mother of two very small children, who has been in the hospital repeatedly over the past several months for treatments of her malignant cancer.

For individuals such as these, the questions that all of us ask from time to time have taken on an acute urgency. Is this all part of God's plan? Does God hear my desperate prayers — for a loved one, or for myself, so that I might live long enough for my young children to know and remember their mother? And if my prayers for healing seem to going unanswered, does that mean that I'm doing something wrong? Could it mean that God is not really there? Or, if I dare let such a thought even cross my mind, will that put me completely at odds with the God who is my only hope for salvation?

As our conversation continued, we shared our sorrow over the pain — both physical and spiritual — that these individuals, along with so many others, are enduring. We also acknowledged our own all-too-frequent sense of inadequacy in providing meaningful solace. We expressed our frustration with the theological resources people in such circumstances may find to try to make sense of their pain — with the kind of theology that imagines God as a cosmic puppeteer, pulling the strings of people's lives, in ways that appear random or even cruel, simply to fulfill some obscure divine plan; or with a theology that imagines God as a divine taskmaster who will listen to prayers only if they are formulated in just the right way. And yet we also talked about the perils of challenging such views when they may be the one thing that someone has found to hold onto in a time of distress. If a piece of driftwood is keeping you afloat in the midst of a stormy sea, it is probably not the right time to suggest that your driftwood may be inherently flimsy! We talked, too, about our own questions, especially this one: If God truly is in the midst of the deepest human tragedies, as all of us sitting around the lunch table that day strongly want to affirm, then why is it often so hard to discern the signs of God's presence?

Two of Jesus' disciples were walking along together one day, their hearts filled with sadness. They were on the road leading away from Jerusalem, away from the memory of a painful death, away from the broken shards of their dashed hopes and dreams, away from the shadow of their own failures and fears. They were walking along together, the two of them, hoping to put as many miles as they could between themselves and the scene of so much anguish. And yet that anguish was with them, of course, and they could do no other than continue to talk about it, even as a stranger joined them and began to walk along beside them. The stranger listened carefully to their story, asked them questions, and reminded them of the promises of scripture. As the afternoon sun began to fade, the two friends decided to stop at a roadside inn. Seeing that their newfound companion was inclined, perhaps, to continue on his way, they urged him to stay with them for a while and join them for a bite of supper. That's when it happens, of course. Their simple gesture of hospitality leads them all to a table where the stranger takes bread, blesses and breaks it, gives it to them, and is a stranger no more. In that moment, their eyes are opened and they recognize the risen Christ who has been with them all along. After he has left, they ask one another with amazement, "Were are our hearts not burning within us, while he was talking with us on the road?" The encounter sends them back onto the road, heading in a new direction, ready to proclaim the resurrection with energy and conviction.

Sometimes people wonder why some of us bother coming to church every Sunday, why it matters so much to us to engage in these rituals of listening to scripture and singing hymns together, sharing prayers and breaking bread around a communion table. "Can't I attend to my spiritual life simply by praying on my own," people sometimes ask, "or by watching the sunrise at the beach, or by taking a walk in the woods?" And of course such experiences can be powerful and nourishing in their own right. But I am convinced that there is nothing quite like the experience of coming together in community — walking along a stretch of road together; sharing conversation about the whole jumble of hopes and dreams, questions and doubts that make up the fabric of life and faith; listening together for the words of promise in the pages of scripture; breaking bread together around a common table.

This is why I set aside time every month to share conversation and a meal with a group of trusted colleagues. It's why keep I keep coming back to church, and to life in a congregation, with all its challenges and occasionally rough edges. It's why, especially, I am drawn to the sacrament of communion. For in the midst of it all, sometimes quite unexpectedly, we may discover the presence of the risen Christ.

Communion of this sort may happen around a lunch table where a group of friends find the grace to talk freely about the deep questions of their faith. I've seen it happen around a table at coffee hour, where new connections are forged or honest conversation takes place about a person's struggles or dreams, or around a table where a monthly potluck supper is shared. I suspect it happens many Friday evenings around a table in the Great Hall of our Parish House, where people share a supper cooked by college students under the auspices of the Downtown Evening Soup Kitchen. It may happen around a communion table where we gather on a seemingly ordinary day in the early spring, hoping to receive a taste of Eastertide hope, an intimation of new life to carry into our lives and into the life of the world.

Dorothy Day, a powerful force for social justice in the twentieth century, reflects in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness, about just such an experience of communion. As she tells the story, she and a few others were sitting together discussing the problems of hunger when lines of people began to form, looking for bread. There was always bread, they realized, even if it was just a few loaves to be shared among many. And so they broke bread together, and the Catholic Worker Movement was born, with its embrace of nonviolence and its commitment to hospitality to those on the margins of society. Looking back on the experience, Dorothy Day writes: "We cannot love God, unless we love each other, and to love we must know each other. We know God in the breaking of bread, and we know each other in the breaking of bread, and we are not alone any more. Heaven is a banquet and life is a banquet, too, even with a crust, where there is companionship."

Two forlorn disciples pause in the midst of their journey to break bread with one another and with a stranger, with an unknown companion. Out of that moment comes companionship and understanding and the energy and hope to set out on the road again, heading in a new and life-giving direction. Beloved in Christ, the story of those two disciples is our own. As we often say in this place: Whoever you are, wherever you are on life's journey, whatever road you find yourself on this day, whatever joys or sorrows you may carry with you, the risen Christ is here, eager to encounter you and to break bread with you. Let us invite Christ to stay with us, to dine with us, and to set our feet onto the path of life. Amen.