Walking with Jesus (sermon 4/6/08)

I understand that there’s a whole new crop of automobile drivers sprouting in our youth group. How many of you just started driving or will get a permit soon? And that’s a good thing. Well, maybe not for your parents—who will have to add you to their insurance (ouch!). And maybe not for your older brothers and sisters—who will now have to vie with you for the keys to mom or dad’s ride. Definitely not a good thing for the rest of us drivers who will have to dodge your driving skills (or lack thereof) while you learn things such as not to text as you drive.

But it is definitely a good thing for you. Because it means a certain amount of independence. Here in New Hampshire where everything is so far apart from everything else, you gotta drive just about anyplace you want to go. It’s too hilly for bicycles, for the most part. And walking just isn’t practical.

Back where I came from—Long Island, NY, where the houses were about 20 feet apart and the stores were all nearby, we walked a lot. It was the major method of transportation for kids. We even walked to school! Uphill—both ways! But even so, once we got to the age when driving was a possibility—we just totally ditched walking. It was go in the car or stay home. The highway or no way. I can even remember begging my dad for the car keys one day, and him asking me, “What do you think God gave you two feet for anyway?” And I said, “One for the gas and one for the brake!” Walking was not cool.

And that’s not a good thing. Not only because walking is good exercise—take it from one who doesn’t do it—walking’s great for your health. No. It’s a bad thing that walking is so ignored and avoided thee days because walking really gives you the opportunity to think things over, or if you’re with someone, to talk things over. To discuss problems, make plans, or to swap stories.

I don’t know what it is about walking. It may be the unique ratio of physical activity to mental activity required for walking. I mean—other kinds of exercise or activity require coordination, or strategy, or at the very least counting. But walking doesn’t require any brain work at all. You don’t have to think, “Okay, right foot, left foot, right foot, right fo—no, no left foot “ You just do it—thereby freeing up your mind for hashing things over. Walking is a good excuse for putting your brain in idle and reviewing recent happenings.

And that’s a good thing. Walking clears your head, calms you down, perks you up, blows off steam, and recharges your batteries. It’s amazing what this simple activity can do. It’s therapeutic. And it can be spiritually uplifting as well. One thing it can’t do though—walking can’t reveal the fact that Jesus is walking right there alongside of us.

At least it couldn’t for the two followers of Jesus who found themselves walking down the seven mile long road to Emmaus that first Easter day. They were walking along, and as they walked, they were giving their brains time to process what they had seen and heard over the last week—especially these last three days. They were talking as well as they were walking—discussing and analyzing, dissembling and reassembling, opinionizing and conjecturing what had really gone down with Jesus’ death and the subsequent disappearance of his body. It was all very confusing and very disheartening.

And then Jesus was walking with them, explaining it all to them. Opening the scriptures and interpreting what they said about the one who was to come—the Messiah—how he was to die, and how he was to be raised to life eternal. Jesus joined them on their journey, walking with them step by step towards revelation and understanding, talking over the events of the day which they struggled to put into perspective. Pointing out the overarching meaning for what seemed on the surface to be a horrendous defeat. How it was instead a glorious victory over death and sin!

It was perhaps the very first Adult Forum! And all possible because people walked back then. Would have been a short lesson in a car. Seven miles is only about ten minutes drive time (30 minutes on 101A). In a car, they wouldn’t have gotten past the ice-breakers before they were at pulling into Emmaus. Not to mention, Jesus would have had to have been a hitchhiker then—and who would pick up a long-haired, bearded man alongside a road in Palestine? Risky!

Yes, thank goodness, Cleopas and his partner were walking that first Easter. It gave them the chance to invite the stranger they met on the road in for the night. And to break bread with him. And to discover in that breaking of the bread that the man who had made their hearts burn with the holy word of God was the Holy Word of God—Jesus, risen and alive again!

So, what is the point of connection here? The point of connection between first century Israel and twenty-first century New Hampshire. It’s not the walking, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s not that walking is a good spiritual exercise. (Although it is, and you should try it sometime—just taking a walk and trying to think theologically about the events of the day. It’s very helpful and good for you to boot!)

But no, I’m not going to confiscate your car keys and send you all out to walk home—hoping you’ll encounter Christ on your journey. Because that would be doing it backwards wouldn’t it? The two disciples only recognized that the stranger who had walked and talked with them was Jesus, after he had broken the bread. So it stands to reason that, in a like manner, we, having had Christ revealed to us in bread and wine, might also recognize how Jesus walked with us in our life, through the past week—in ways we might not have identified him as doing so before.

So, instead of sending you out to walk and meet Jesus, instead I invite you to look back on your week and think of where the risen Christ was walking along side of you—where Jesus met you in your walk of life. Where you realize now your heart burned with the understanding of the scripture, with the guidance or comfort of the Holy Spirit, with the love of Christ overflowing through you. Think about this past week and turn to your neighbor and tell them, briefly, where Jesus met you. Go ahead, I’ll call you back in about a minute or two….

For me, it was not where you’d expect. You’d expect that I’d recognize Jesus as being present in Theil Fest—Ryan’s benefit concert that was so successful and so uplifting. Not that Christ wasn’t there—to the contrary, the entire project was infused with the presence of Christ, so saturated with Jesus that he leaked out into the community—but that was what I expected, knowing Ryan and Messiah Lutheran Church. I expected to meet Jesus in rehearsals, meetings, and the concert itself. And Christ was there—alleluia!

Where I didn’t expect to be walking with Jesus was in our guest bedroom at the parsonage. Long story short-Lisa and I got a new bed, and wanted to put our old bed in the guest room (or “yellow room” as it is called by us), replacing the captain style twin bed that was in there when we moved in. Lisa listed that bed on “freecycle,” a computer bulletin board where people can list items they want to give away, or find an item you want, for free. (My favorite price!)

The first three respondents changed their minds after they saw a picture of it, but the fourth agreed to come pick up the bed after my cooking duties at Anne Marie House Monday night. I pulled into the driveway at about 10 to 8 that night and he was already there.

He was a heavy-set man in his fifties who was interested in Lisa’s quilting business, since he was on disability and painted as a hobby and means of some income. He was very excited and appreciative about the bed—naming it the “best bed I’ve ever had,” without so much as lying down on it. But all of that was lost on me. I was focused on the fact that he had come alone. The bed had to be disassembled and carried down the stairs and out to his truck, and it was certain he could not do that himself—he was disabled in that he got very short of breath just climbing the stairs. He had breeched Freecycle protocol, we were forced to help him. And that didn’t set well with Pastor Tom!

Until I began writing this sermon and thinking about the breaking of the bread and about how Jesus may have walked with me and burnt my heart with the scriptures. On the road to Emmaus, Jesus shone a light on Moses and all the prophets and what they revealed about the promised Messiah versus the “expected” Messiah. “Was it not necessary that the Messiah suffer and die before being glorified?” he asks them, shattering their misconceptions.

On the stairway of the parsonage with a heavy bed straining my back, Jesus was challenging my misconception of the scriptures that talk about the care of the poor and downtrodden. Sure it was easy to preach about giving to the poor and it’s wonderful to volunteer at Anne Marie House, or cook a meal for Ash Street, or donate the little soaps you didn’t use from your hotel room last vacation. But it’s a whole other thing to have someone right there in your house, wheezing and sweating—just trying to get my cast off bed. Jesus was walking with me that night to give me the opportunity to make a difference –not in that man’s life—but in my own life.

And it’s not even throwing in the sheets to go with the bed, or giving him some money or food, or even offering to go to his house and help him with that heavy load before the rains ruined it—though they are all things I could have, should have done. No, it’s the way I viewed this human being as lower than myself, as not worthy of my help, as the defective component of an internet deal gone bad. I was condescending, patronizing, and downright rude to that man. This I confess. This I repent of. Father, forgive me.

Now. Jesus has promised that the one place you can be sure he is present is in the breaking of the bread—the Eucharist. But that sacrament, especially in its use of earthly elements of bread and wine to bear God to us, also reveals that Jesus is not restricted to that bread and wine, he’s not cooped up in the church. He’s out there. Walking. Ready to set our hearts on fire with his love for us and for the world.

I don’t know about you—but I want Jesus to walk with me. Amen.