Sunday: 3rd Sunday of Easter A
Reading: Luke 24:13-35
Preacher: Peter C. Lane

My grandfather was baptized an Episcopalian but soon followed his family and became a Plymouth Brethren. His father, my great-grandfather cofounded the Plymouth Brethren meeting in Wheaton, IL, a meeting that would nurture Billy Graham during his years at Wheaton College. Now some of you know that when the Plymouth Brethrens broke off from the Church of England, they were really ticked about the clergy. Those rotten Anglican priests had lost all credibility in their eyes and they didn't see a biblical warrant for these fancy dressed church power mongers. So, they got rid of clergy. What's interesting is what they didn't get rid of, the Eucharist. Every single week, someone in the gathered community would break bread and offer wine and my grandfather and his family would share the Eucharist-no clergy necessary. As a kid, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time at a Plymouth Brethren camp. We would be hiking or canoeing and sometimes we would just have the Eucharist, get some graham crackers and some bug juice and offer each other the body and blood of Christ.

Let me tell you another story. When I was a chaplain at this Psychiatric Hospital in New Jersey, we would celebrate the Eucharist each week. The image that stays with me from that experience is rather unpleasant. Many of the patients, because of their medication (or over-medication) would gain considerable weight and the women would grow facial hair. Now, as you know from my first story, I didn't grow up catholic and so I had never seen anyone come up for communion and just stick their tongue out. One particular woman, bless her heart, hugely overweight, bearded, slobber coming out of her mouth, came up and gave me one of these. I am embarrassed to say that I kind of Frisbee-d the host into her mouth.

One more story. Do you know how wonderful our children are? Watch them as they come up for Eucharist today. I'll tell you what. They understand. Better than some of you. Watch them hold their hands out gently and take the bread. They know that although it is a tiny amount of bread (sometimes not tiny enough for their tiny mouths!) they are being nourished.

I am spending a lot of time telling stories because our gospel from Luke today highlights the importance of story. Luke's topic is resurrection; his approach is story. The suggestion is that resurrection is best understood in story. If you look at our gospel passage today, actually why don't you pick up your bibles and turn with me to the 24th chapter of Luke. Wait, wrong church, we don't have any bibles in here. I'll just tell you. The 23rd chapter of Luke ends with Jesus in the tomb. The 24th chapter, our chapter, follows this sequence: there is an announcement of resurrection, teaching from the scriptures, breaking of the bread, giving of the peace, blessing and departure. And if you studied your bulletin, you would see that that is precisely our pattern of worship. We begin with "Alleluia. Christ is risen," move to readings and preaching from scriptures, passing of the peace, breaking of bread, a blessing and a dismissal. The author of Luke wrote about Jesus' resurrection appearances for a worshipping community. Resurrection is experienced in story and the story of resurrection is best experienced in the worshipping community. [1] So each week we tell the story: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We own the truth of the resurrection by telling, participating...
But is story enough to carry the freight of biblical and theological content? Is the structure of our worship service enough to hold the truth of the resurrection? Ya, it is. The theologian Craig Dykstra wrote about story this way: "Without a narrative that sustains us, the world-and we ourselves- are virtually phantom. But the issue is not just whether one has a narrative or not. The issue is whether we have one that is true and genuine, one that can sustain us in reality, one that, having been given and committed to memory, frees us from desperately having to make one up." [2] We have that narrative; we have that story. The truth of our convictions is bound up in it.

Let me remind you how Luke, alone among the gospels, declared the resurrection through the story of two non-famous disciples walking to a non-important town. Cleopas and someone else, maybe his wife, are bummed out that the guy they thought would be "the one to redeem Israel" is a goner. Even though Cleopas has been told by the women that Jesus' body is missing and that angels reported a resurrection, he doesn't believe. Forget doubting Thomas, how about doubting Cleopas? Fortuitously our travelers bump into an interesting fellow who rivets them with his tales. He calls them foolish and then explains the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. Being taken by this excellent storyteller, the disciples extend their hospitality and convince him to come for a meal. You know the ending: when Jesus breaks bread and blesses wine in front of them, their eyes are opened and they know the resurrected Jesus.

Luke communicates confusion, disturbance and doubt among the followers of Jesus after his death. They were awaiting confirmation. Cleopas and his companion received the confirmation in two ways: they were told a story and they broke bread. Cleopas had heard that the tomb was empty, he didn't believe in the resurrection until it confronted him.

Is it different from us? The story will get you. I doubt you showed up here for the first time because you were surfing the World Wide Web and came across a story of some guy who was raised from the dead and you believed he was God. My guess is you show up here because the St. Nicholas choir was good for your kids or you wanted a place of social connection, but then found yourself wrapped up in the story. Because we're in the story, we're not just reading it. When I was a kid, there were these storybooks called "Choose your own adventure?" You remember these? That's what we are doing, choosing our own adventure. We are not secondhand Christians, hearsay Christians trying to believe a few reports from 2000 years ago. Luke understood that just a couple generations after Jesus death. He wasn't just reporting facts, he was crafting a narrative to be acted out in worship. When we chose this adventure, when we find ourselves as characters in the story of resurrection, the sometimes inscrutable scriptures can make sense in the light of Jesus. When we choose this adventure of resurrection, when Luke's story becomes our story, the risen Jesus is present to us in the breaking of the bread.

Those three stories of communion I told at the beginning, those are my stories of knowing the risen Christ-in my Plymouth Brethren buddies out on the trail, in the face of the overmedicated women, in the tiny hands of our children. Christ is Risen. Amen.

[1]Fred Craddock, Luke, (Louisville, John Knox Press, 1990) 280.

[2]As quoted in Peter Marty, “Burning Hearts” in The Christian Century 1996.