ARE YOU IN YOUR EYES FOR GOD?

(Preached on Sunday, April 10, 2005)

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and  he vanished from their sight.                                                   -Luke 24:31

 

It was near the end of the day, at the time when most of us feel tired and when (if events have gone miserably wrong) we feel flat and discouraged.

Two travelers plodded along the road exchanging disappointments and unanswerable questions.

They were joined by a third traveler who at first seemed just another ordinary person; another run-of-the-mill human being traveling the dusty road of life.

They did not recognize this stranger.

Yet, as they were to discover later in a moment of utter surprise, this common traveler was the risen Jesus.

How did they not know him?

They had traveled with him, listened to him teach, saw him heal people, restore sight to the blind, calm the storm, feed the thousands.

It had only been three days since they had shared the passover meal with him in Jerusalem.

Now, on Sunday afternoon, they didn’t know him?

 

But that is so often the case, isn’t it?

The with-us-love of God, the death-transcending love of God, the One who was raised up, joins us incognito on life’s journey more often than making a big splash of an entrance.

We tend to miss him, though, because that is not what we are looking for from God.

We don’t look for God in the ordinary moments of life.

We prefer our God to be dramatic.

 

In Superman: The Movie, Superman first reveals his powers to the world with a dramatic rescue of Lois Lane.

Lois is dangling from a cable high above the Daily Planet building.  She is screaming at the top of her lungs.  Just as she begins her long fall toward earth, Superman changes into his power suit and swoops up to catch her in midair.  “Don’t worry, Miss,” he says.  “I’ve got you.”

“Thanks,” says Lois.  “But who’s got you?”

Just then a helicopter that has been parked on the edge of the building starts to fall straight toward them and the crowd below.  But Superman simply grabs it with his one free arm and gently sets both it and Lois safely back on the landing pad.  When he turns to leave, Lois stammers out the words, “Who are you?”  Superman says, “A friend” and flies off just before Lois faints into a heap.

That’s more the way we would like God to come to us.

And that’s why we often aren’t paying attention when God comes in the more ordinary ways.

 

But I truly believe that the most frequent way God approaches us is in ordinary people, in ordinary situations.

God is not a publicity seeker; not noted for a high public profile.

Easter was a wonderful day, with all the Easter lilies and glorious music; the shouts of “Alleluia!  Christ is risen!”; with the Sunrise by the bay and the crowds in worship; with pancakes and Easter egg hunts; it was truly marvelous.

By comparison, this worship today may seem low-key, nowhere near as stirring or inspiring or emotional.

But if you think God is any less present, you are in grave error.  Those who only identify God with the dramatic moments are sadly insensitive to the ways of God and abysmally ignorant of the Biblical revelation of God.

 

This story of the travelers on the Emmaus road is a clear example of that Biblical revelation.

It is story about Easter among us.

At the same time it is the most ordinary of stories, one which we all know by heart, even if we don’t know Luke’s version of it.

It is a story about ordinary despair, and ordinary, Monday-morning drudgery.

It is a story about a journey, about meeting a stranger, about sitting down at a table and sharing an ordinary meal.

There is nothing spectacular about breaking a loaf of bread and sharing a cup of wine.

Everything about this story is ordinary.

In fact, not only is Jesus unrecognizable as an ordinary traveler, but the two disciples he joins on the road are extremely ordinary.

One, we do not even get a name for, and the other, Cleopas, is only mentioned in this one story.

These are ordinary, run-of-the-mill disciples; they are not among the “12"; they are not listed as apostles; they are not among the women; we have not heard of them before and we do not hear of them again in the scriptures.

Their mention in this story reminds us that Jesus had other followers than the famous 12 and he appeared to those other followers as well as to the 12.

And they are the most ordinary of people.

 

One author was reminded of this one morning when he found himself running through the Newark, New Jersey train station, trying to make a connection to New York, dodging frantically through the crowd as complex scenarios of missed appointments flashed through his mind.  He reached the steep stairway to the platform and ran up, two steps at a time.  Blocking his path at the top was a heavy swinging door with a large grimy window set into it; on the other side an old man in faded work clothes was washing the glass with a spray bottle and rag.  Out of the middle of the rime he had just wiped a clean circle about a foot across, through which, their noses inches apart, the two men now faced each other.  Suddenly all the worry and hurry in which the commuter had been caught up seemed to be illuminated in the morning light breaking through the circle, and then to drop away.  It was as if the window were his clouded mind and the old man with his rag had made a clear space for him to see, once again, that everything was light, everything was find, and it always would be.

Was he making too much of a simple encounter?

Maybe... But what the commuter related in his story is that the old man smiled broadly, and in that moment he could has sworn that the old man knew exactly what he had done.  Then he opened the door for the commuter and stepped aside as the train pulled into the station.

 

Ordinary moments; ordinary situations; ordinary people fill our days and surround us, and God uses them to be present to us, to care for us, to break through to us with love, with hope, with encouragement.

We can see them if we are looking for them.

Scientists did a study in which they showed people a deck of playing cards.  On each of these cards, however, something was wrong, something differed from the usual.  The four of clubs was red, the five of diamonds had six diamonds.  People were shown the cards and asked what they saw.

Were people surprised to see these obviously error-filled cards?  They were not, because they didn’t notice.  When asked to describe the cards they were looking at, people answered they were looking at the five of diamonds or the four of clubs.  They didn’t mention that the cards were mismarked.

Why did this happen?  Because what we see is a function not only of what is really there, but also of what we are looking for — our expectations, our assumptions.

 

It matters whether we are present to the moment and whether we are expecting to see God.

A little girl was trying excitedly to say something, but her mother was distracted, he mind elsewhere as the young child talked.