“And they recounted how he was made known to them
in the breaking of the bread.”
There are times in our lives when things happen
either to us or to others we love;
and we get frustrated and disappointed in God;
maybe even we get mad at God.
We certainly do not understand God’s ways.
It happens to all of us who have lived long enough.
In those moments of suffering,
our frustrated response can be explicit or implicit.
Explicit is when we just turn around
and say “I don’t want anything to do with God.”
When God’s name comes up, we just don’t want to talk about it;
we actively avoid talking to God or God being talked about in our presence.
There are also implicit ways that we do it.
We don’t do anything necessarily bad;
we just stop doing things.
We get busy doing other things.
We sort of ignore God by default more than
explicitly wanting to have nothing to do with God.
The seeds of either are the same: we ignore God.
The question is what does God do in those moments with us?
How does God minister to us; or how is he present to us?
Today’s scripture tells us exactly what happens.
Remember these are the disciples who walked with Jesus.
They knew Jesus personally.
They were his closest allies.
They were not one of the twelve apostles
but they would have been part of the group that was around him.
When Jesus was crucified, they all absconded.
They all abandoned him lest we think it was the other way around.
They abandoned him and then they got mad at him.
They got mad that he wasn’t the messiah.
And you could see the frustration in today’s reading.
There is powerful symbolism in Luke’s gospel
that gives us to key to unlock the meaning of this gospel.
Jerusalem is the City of God
and Emmaus is considered like Sin City; think Las Vegas.
They are walking away from the Holy City of God
and walking toward Emmaus,
which means that they are walking away from the Church.
What does Jesus do?
Remember this is the post-Resurrection Jesus.
He has risen from the dead. He is glorified.
He doesn’t stop them and say,
“Hey. Stop. You’re going the wrong way.
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. No.
Listen. Look. It’s me. Look. Look. It’s me.”
No. He didn’t do any of that.
He just walks with them as they walk away.
He walks with them as they walk away
and listens to their story the whole time.
He doesn’t scold them.
He doesn’t stop them.
He doesn’t challenge them.
And as soon as they were done telling their story,
only then, did he break open what he had heard them say;
and related himself to the scriptures and says:
“Oh, how foolish you were; you didn’t see.”
And he helps them to focus once again,
to look again at what they have seen with a different eyes.
And once they see with different eyes,
they start to experience it first;
their hearts were burning within them
but they didn’t recognize him at first.
It was only in the breaking of the bread.
And then, what it says, “and he vanished from their sight.”
So, where did he go?
We see in the breaking of the bread,
which we will do in just a few moments,
we believe that in the receiving of the bread they became him.
It isn’t that he vanished.
They became the living Body of Christ for others.
What did they do after that?
They didn’t just go back to Jerusalem;
they ran back to Jerusalem.
Their conversion was immediate and urgent.
This is what God does to us; Jesus accompanies us.
He will walk with us as we walk away from Church or faith.
We are all here. Right?
But there are others who are not here.
And Jesus is walking with those
as they walk to the periphery of their lives.
The question is how does that happen?
What does that look like?
It is usually in the form of one of us.
It is usually in the form of somebody else.
We need to be willing to walk with them to the periphery.
Ministry just doesn’t only happen at the center of a life;
it happens also at the periphery of our life.
Barbara Taylor Brown is a great episcopal priest
who writes beautiful poetry and books.
She talks about the map of the journey of faith.
There is a center and there are edges to that map.
Ministry happens in both places.
While Mother Church focuses most of its attention at the center;
the greatest stories of conversion happen at the edges
and then the center becomes the custodians of those stories.
Our role as disciples is to go to the edges.
Our role is to attend to those who are struggling with their faith;
who have gone to the edges of their own lives.
This is all great theology but how does that happen in our own lives?
What does that look like?
Let me give you just one example:
There was a time I walked away explicitly from God in anger.
My best friend was killed in a plane crash.
I was 24 years old, and we were inseparable friends.
I was so mad at God, once the funeral was over, I was done.
I didn’t want to go back to Church.
I would not talk to God.
I would not listen.
And I most certainly would not come to a Church.
I was furiously mad at God.
Then I immigrated to America, and I lived with my brother, Paul.
Every single Sunday, my brother Paul
would go to 7pm Mass down at Queen of Apostles.
I used to live in Sunnyvale.
And every single Sunday before he’d ask,
“Do you want to come to Church?”
And I’d go “grrrrrrrrrrr”
All sorts of stuff would come out of my mouth
and generally it would be a no in so many words!
And he would go off to Mass.
Then he would come back and never say anything.
Every Sunday, he would ask, “Do you want to go to Mass?”
He would brace himself for the answer.
He kept on doing it. Kept on doing it.
Until, one Sunday, I was so frustrated in my own life
and lonely, realizing that I really needed God
and I was starving myself pointlessly.
He said, “Do you want to go to Church?”
I said, “Yeah. Sure.”
And I’ve been going to Church every Sunday ever since.
God was present in my life through Paul.
He kept on gently asking.
He was present every single day of my life.
All that time, he was loving me
even though I was wounded and hurt, broken, angry and frustrated.
But he kept on showing up and kept on inviting me.
No guilt. Just love.
Just a tender, caring love of showing up every single week.
Every single day of my life.
There are people in our lives who have lost faith with God.
They have lost a relationship with God.
They got angry and frustrated like the disciples on the way to Emmaus
and like me in my younger years.
There are two things that we need to do:
Our role is to be on the periphery,
on the edge of the map at the journey of life.
It is to minister to them.
We come back to the center on Sunday
to be filled at the table of the Lord;
to receive Christ in the breaking of the bread.
Yes. That is our privilege.
That is our grace.
But we must go to feed those on the periphery,
on the edge and we must go gently and kindly.
We must be willing to just love them where they are at;
and gently invite them week after week;
knowing that we are the risen Christ to them, listening to their story.
Don’t judge.
Just listen to their story and love them.
And when given the opportunity, invite.
For those who are maybe online who are not here in person
and maybe feel like they are on the edge,
I ask you to be open to somebody in your life who is loving you;
who is the presence of Christ now;
who is loving you where you are on the periphery of your life.
Allow them to be Christ to you
and maybe accept the offer or the invitation to come to Church;
or to pray a little bit more with the Lord;
to be present to him; to listen and to accept that invitation.
Whatever is our response, we are called to be both
open to the Risen Lord in our own life
when we get to the periphery and get angry at God;
and also are called to be the Risen Christ to others.
Gently. Kindly. Ever so lovingly being present to them.
Loving them where they are at the edge of their life.
So that they can know that God loves them.
That God is there for them in the breaking of the bread.
