David A. Renwick
Second Presbyterian Church
Sermons: May 7, 2006

Meeting the Risen Christ: II.
"Asking Jesus to Stay"

It’s a few Sundays, now, since we celebrated Easter together but we are still officially in the liturgical season of Easter, and last Sunday and this Sunday, we’re looking together at two of the great Easter stories remembered by Jesus’ followers. Stories about meeting Jesus alive again after his awful death and after his resurrection on that first Easter Sunday morning.

Last Sunday, we were with the disciples as they gathered beside the Sea of Galilee, about seventy miles north of Jerusalem, when Jesus appeared to them. Out of the blue, Jesus appeared to them and spoke with them. He spoke with Simon Peter, who had denied Jesus three times. Jesus spoke with Simon Peter directly. He asked Simon Peter three times if he loved him. Simon Peter replied three times, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you," and three times Jesus summons this Peter who had denied him, – summons him into his service. If Jesus could call such a one as Peter, who denied him like this, surely he might call you and me as well?

This Sunday, we move down south from Galilee. We move back into the region of the city of Jerusalem, just outside the city of Jerusalem, where we meet two of Jesus’ followers. They are not in the inner circle of Jesus’ followers. They’re not members of "the twelve" (which now gets called "the eleven" with Judas the betrayer not numbered among them any more). Two of Jesus’ followers – there was a larger group around that inner circle of the twelve – walking from the city of Jerusalem to a village not far from Jerusalem – maybe about seven miles away or so – a village called Emmaus. They are on the move from one world to another. Not just from the world of the big city to the world of the small village, but they’re on the move from a world in which Jesus was as good as dead, into a world into which Jesus is very, very, much, inescapably, in fact, inescapably, alive.

Often in life, I think, we find ourselves caught between two worlds. Isn’t that your experience? Caught between one world and another. Sometimes between many worlds. But at least between two worlds which are frequently competing with and in conflict with each other. Sometimes it’s hard to know which one is the real world, or the most real world: the most important world, the most critical world, the world which we really belong to, the world which is our true home. And this is particularly true, this living between different worlds, I think it’s particularly true of our young people – for some of our youth. They may know more about this than we who are adults. They’re caught, almost every day between two worlds: the world of home and the world of school. And these are, at times, vastly, vastly different worlds, which they move into and out of, again and again.

I remember one occasion a few years ago now, a conversation between my wife Currie and our older daughter Lalla about alcohol and drugs at high school. And Currie asked her, "Who do you know who is involved with alcohol and drugs?" Well, you know, when you ask a teenager that question, generally, there’s no answer at all. She actually answered this question and answered it fairly quickly. She said, "Who do I know? It’s easier to tell you who do I not know! There are so few that I know who are not involved, it’s easier to tell you that.

And for us, it was a wake up call as parents. We had no clue. Well, we thought we did, you remember back to your high school days. You think you know what’s going on. You hear this or you hear that, but then all of the sudden you receive a piece of information and you realize you know nothing really about that world at all. The pressures of drugs and alcohol and parties and all kinds of other things. The pressures to be someone you’re not, when you’re not even sure who you’re supposed to be.

e. e. cummings wrote a very short verse which sums some of this up.

To be nobody but yourself
in a world which is doing its best
night and day
to make you everyone else,
means to fight the hardest battle
which any human can fight
and never stop fighting.

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everyone else." Another world. Pulling us, pushing up, twisting us, calling us. Caught between one world and another. Often at war with each other. Being pushed and pulled from one side to the other.

It could be the world of home and the world of school. Or it could be the world of home and the world of work. The world of work is the world of success. The world of work may be the world of reward. It may be the world of accomplishment, and the world of home may be something else. Caught between those two worlds or it could be the other way around. Where home is everything we want it to be and we hate to leave that world and move into another world. Which is the most real world? Which is the most critical world? Which is the one which is most important? Which is the world to which we truly belong and it is our home?

Let’s think of another kind of comparison. A different set of worlds which at time are at conflict within our lives and summon us to belong to one world or the other. We think of our nation and within our own nation, there are different worlds within which we move or perhaps we only move in one part of that world. There is the world of the inner city and poverty and there is the world of the suburbs and wealth and success, where things, at least on the surface, seem to be all okay. Which one is the real one? Which is the one that calls us, summons us, pushes us, pulls us, challenges us? Where do we belong? Where should we belong?

Or we might think of the world within our nation as a whole and the world outside our nation. Now, there’s a contrast! – between our nation and other nations. The world of the United States and the world of Darfur. All kinds of suffering and horror. The world of Iraq and the world of the United States. Terror at every turn. Uncertainty about the future. Terror whenever you walk of our your house, if you dare, day after day.

Or the world, in quite different terms, the world of China. This huge ‘world’ on the other side of the earth, changing day by day, becoming a massive economic power before our eyes. It’s almost inconceivable – the rate that it’s changing. These worlds outside our world at times seem so unreal, so unbelievable, that we don’t quite know what to do with them. They’re so far away from our daily reality. Sometimes we want to say they’ve got nothing to do with us as if all that exists is what we see on the television and we just, well, we’re so overpowered by it, we want to turn it off or change the channel, as if we can make those worlds go away: "Just leave me in my world. It’s all I can cope with. It’s all I can handle."

But we can’t turn them off, can we? Because they are real and if we don’t deal with them, in some way or another, they will come back to haunt us. What’s real? What’s critical? What’s important? Where do we belong?

In one way, shape or form, all of us are caught between one world or another. Between two different worlds so frequently competing with each other, pushed and pulled, making demands on us. Asking is this real? Is this not real? Is this important? Is this not important? Is this critical? Is it not critical? Where do I place these things within my life? Torn, pulled, in one direction or another. Just like those disciples of Jesus, caught between two worlds on that first Easter Sunday morning.

• The world in which Jesus was as good as dead. Oh, great teacher, we had quite a ride with him, those three years. Wow, he changed my life. The things that we saw during that period of time. Never forget that.
• Caught between a world in which Jesus for all the past was as good as dead and a world in which Jesus was very much alive. Quite different, really, not just about teaching and what we ought to do but about a relationship which pushes us and pulls us, which influences our lives, in which love and care are there as well as those things which impact the mind. A relationship with a living, human being. Two different worlds really.

The sense of those two different worlds came quite unexpectedly to the disciples walking that day from Jerusalem to Emmaus. When they began their walk, really, there was only one world that engrossed their lives, that overwhelmed their lives, that seemed so real, so critical, truly important – and that was the world in which Jesus was in fact dead. A grim reality which had stared them in the face for the last forty-eight hours – he was dead! And it impacted everything. The world of his death. It seemed to be the only world . . . except for a little glimmer of hope. A little of flash of light from what to them was probably deemed a very unreliable source – the women. The women who had followed Jesus. The first witnesses of the empty tomb and of the risen Christ.

So there they are. They’re walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus and a stranger comes up to them. We know it’s Jesus but they don’t know it’s Jesus. He’s dead. So this is just a stranger who comes up to them and asks them about their conversation. And they say, "Well, 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 they indeed had seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. And 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."

All it was was a simple witness. Not quite convincing yet, but intriguing. Intriguing enough to raise a flicker of hope and a ray of light.

I remember at graduate school, talking with a fellow doctoral student many years ago now about what we believed and why we believed it. My reasons for faith were pretty rational. Many of you know I have a math background, and I needed these solid reasons for believing.

— So, you look at the universe and you see that behind everything that we see that there is a mathematical formula. ("Hey, God is a math guy. Sounds good to me. There must be God. Math is real!") And how is it that this happens like this? Maybe there’s a God.

— Or you look at the resurrection. Those disciples of Jesus, they were down to earth types. Not spiritual types. They were fishermen. They were tax collectors. Show us the fish. Show us the profit. Show us the body! For me, it was the only way that I could see that would ever change their lives, if they had seen this one who they thought was dead with their eyes. Otherwise, they really would have gone back fishing and stayed there. That’s who they were.

I was pretty rationalistic! But as I talked to my friend, he spoke of a different way of coming to faith entirely. He spoke of a community. He spoke of growing up in the church as I had grown up in the church. He spoke of coming back to the church, into a particular congregation, to a particular group of people because within that group of people he had seen love as he had not seen it before. This is a very bright person, but what touched his life was reason first, but love. He saw within this community the life of Christ. He heard them speak. And he said to himself, "I want to enter into that world in which Christ is very much alive."

It was a simple witness and he received it. It changed his world. Opened up a whole new dimension that he had not seen before.

And it was that kind of simple witness that began to change the world of those two disciples walking on their way to Emmaus, opening their eyes to the possibility that another world existed. A simple witness that spoke against the world of death within which they lived and gave rise to a dim ray of light, a sense that there might be another world in which Jesus was alive. And all this was reinforced for the two disciples as this stranger began to speak to them from the scripture.

The Scripture. The living Jesus moves up alongside of them. Engages them in conversation and begins to share with them what was written in the book. "Oh, how foolish you are." (The nerve he had, this stranger to speak to them like this, to speak to them and say),

"How foolish you are. How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had declared. Is it not necessary that the Messiah suffer these things and then enter into his glory and then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted the things about himself in all the scriptures."

The simple witness of a friend or a vibrant, living community.
The simple hearing of scripture which, all of the sudden, becomes to us a word from God.

Each of these can be tools in the hand of God to move us from a world in which death reigns to a world in which Christ is very much alive.

Some of you may remember Dr. Andrew Purves, professor at Pittsburgh Seminary, who was our Pace Warren speaker a number of years ago. Back in 2002 and 2003, he struggled for many months with cancer and I understand it’s now in remission. At the time of that struggle, he wrote of a very dark night in the middle of chemotherapy following surgery when he could not sleep. He began to read the scripture. Now, he knew the scripture back to front and upside down but a particular passage of scripture from the third chapter of Ephesians grasped him. And as he read it, he says, not only the scripture, but Christ’s life became alive to him. The passage was from the third chapter of Ephesians which speaks of God’s power at work within us, "which can do infinitely more than we ask or imagine." Christ’s power at work within us, doing infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. This is how he writes about that experience (Presbyterian Outlook):

"One night, unable to sleep, fitfully running through in my memory the dark days of diagnosis, post-surgery and the present cycles of chemotherapy, I began silently to recite these verses and then to reflect, word by word, upon them. God whose power at work within us can do infinitely more than we ask or imagine. Slowly my depression lifted as I allowed, or better, God enabled the power and the reality of which they speak to soak into my being. Thought and prayer merge. The meaning descended from my mind into my heart. Words can hardly capture the hope and the expectation it created for me. When I reflect upon these verses (about God’s power working with me), they’re no longer an abstraction or some vague cosmic thing. It is Jesus Christ in his spirit who is closer to me than I am to myself. Christ closer to me than I am to myself. Christ here in power. Christ alive.

A new world. The world of death was the world he faced. But a whole new world, was now calling him, opening up. Through the scripture, so simple, something happens. God at work. Through simple personal witness. It may not seem convincing at first, but a flicker comes through that life of another.

And then for those two on their way to Emmaus, finally, with their eyes now fully opened, this new world came through a simple request from them: "Stay with us, stranger." Stay with us. And through a simple meal, bread broken together, and they see what they never saw before.

"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’s 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 and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him. He vanished from their sight. At once, they returned to Jerusalem to tell their story to the others." Luke 24

Their world now had changed and changed forever. There was no going back, though the struggle as to which world to live in would always be with them. The world of Christ’s death or the world of his life?

Here at the table in which we will share in just a few moments, the living Christ wants to change our lives. He wants to change our view of the world. He wants to change what we see about life. Just as he changed the view of the world for those two disciples on that first Easter day. Here at the table, through the simple witness of those around about us, the love that is here in this room, the love that is represented by the saints in the stained glass windows; through the communion of saints, those who have gone before us from the time of Jesus until our present time, through their simple witness, through the witness of the scriptures that are spoken, through the witness of the bread and the wine in which our Lord Jesus Christ shared, here at this table, our Lord Jesus invites us to move from a world in which he is for us effectively dead into a world in which he is constantly alive and interacting with our lives. As he did with those disciples so long ago. Here at the table, he urges us to ask him to stay. Stay with us. Stay with us. So that he can empower us to carry his life and his love and his living presence into all the conflicting worlds into which God summons us as ambassadors of Christ. Bringing his living presence into all these worlds to which we belong and which tear at our souls.

There are so many of these worlds. They claim us, the tempt us, the push us, they pull us. Each one screaming out that they are more real, more important, more critical than all the others: "Give me yourself. This is where you belong," they say. But in the end, important and critical and real as some of them may be and I do not deny this for a moment, in the end, all of them are fruitless. All of them will do nothing but drain the life out of us, unless, ultimately, our world is one in which Christ is alive. Unless, ultimately, we bring the world of "Christ alive" into all the other worlds to which we have been called and summoned.

So, my friends, this day, may we know this world in which Christ is very much alive. And if we have not entered it, may we enter it boldly, saying, Jesus, stay with me. You who are a stranger, become my friend and my Lord. Stay with me! And may we, with joy, live and stay in this world with Christ, now and always. Amen.

Let’s pray.

Lord Jesus, you came to those who are blind and you gave them sight. We know that we will blind until we see you face to face in heaven. But lift us the shades from our eyes so that we may see more than we have seen before -- seeing you and seeing your world as we have never seen it before. And in giving us sight, give us a sense of your presence and your calling. May we live in a world in which you are very much alive. Amen.