The Scripture Reading this week is Luke 24:13-36
The Sermon title is God Revealed in Bread Broken
Early Thoughts: The Risen Christ is sometimes hard to recognize. It is sometime hard to see that God is walking along side us.
One of the markers of the appearance stories is that people never seem to know who they are talking to. It isn't until something happens that suddenly people realize what is happening. This story is no different.
Strangers on the road. Chatting with a fellow traveler. And then at the end of the day God is revealed. One part of me thinks back to the old show Touched by an Angel. As the bread was broken and Christ revealed did he start to glow like a cheap lighting effect?
More seriously though....
It is my belief that Easter was not a one-time event. I think that Easter was and is an on-going event. Easter is that moment where we realize that Christ is among us, not as a memory but as an active "thing" (person, presence, life-force). And I think this realization comes to people in a variety of ways.
For the early faith community it appears that one way was through the shared meal. In Paul's letter to the Corinthian church it appears that the shared meal was an actual meal, not just the symbolic bread and cup that it has become in our worship services. Something in that meal made the presence of Christ real. Was it the memory of the Last Supper? Plausibly that was part of it. Was it the memory of Jesus' practice of being willing to eat with anybody? Plausibly. But for whatever reason the shared meal was and is one of the ways the church has celebrated the presence of the Risen Christ.
And notice what happens after Christ is revealed to the travelers. They look back over the day and ask "how could we not know?". Is that our reaction to realizing God has been present and we were clueless? What is it that reveals God in our midst? What do we do after that?
--Gord
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