getting headed in the right direction

3rd Sunday of Easter

            I didn’t know my way around.  Bev and I were visiting in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch area, because I was interviewing with the Pastor Nominating Committee of what is now my previous church.  This visit included a preaching engagement at St. Barnabas Presbyterian Church in Richardson.  We don’t like to call this an audition in Presbyterian circles, but that’s what it was.  During this weekend, Bev and I were staying with a church family in Carrollton.  I got up early on Sunday morning.  I had my directions to the church.  I left for the church before the rest.  I found my way to Belt Line Road and I turned west.  That was my problem.  To get to St. Barnabas Presbyterian Church from Carrollton, you have to go east.  I was headed in the wrong direction.

            Now look at our gospel lesson.  You see two disciples, Cleopas and another.  The first half sentence of our gospel lesson for today reveals in what direction these two disciples are headed.  “Now on that same day”—that is, Easter.  These two disciples are walking on Easter Day.  “Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.”  It is Easter Day, the day the women went to Jesus’ tomb only to find it empty, the day they were told by two men in dazzling clothes, “Why do you look for the living among the dead?  He is not here, but has risen.”  This is the day of great joy.  Or so it would seem.  But not for Cleopas and the other disciple.  They’re walking toward Emmaus.  In other words, they are headed away from Jerusalem, away from the location where Jesus rose from the dead, away from the community of faith, away from the joyful good news of Jesus’ resurrection.  They are going away from all of this.  They are headed in the wrong direction.

            That’s what happens to people who lose their way.  Those who don’t know what direction in which to go fill find themselves headed in the wrong direction.  Just as I was disoriented on Belt Line Road and headed in the wrong direction, so those who have lost their spiritual bearings are headed in the wrong direction.  I recently read an article in The Presbyterian Outlook that disclosed what was for me an alarming shift in people’s religious identity here in America.  Years ago, you received your spiritual bearings from your parents.  If your parents were Presbyterians, it was because so were their parents and grandparents.  “Our family has been Presbyterians for generations,” people would tell one another.  Parents would take their children to worship and Sunday school.  In the middle of the last century, it seemed to be the zenith of religion in America, especially for what were called the “mainline Protestants,” including Presbyterians.  We can point to when the churches were packed.  Churches grew if only by sending their kids to confirmation classes and bringing them to the point where they declared their faith in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.  In smaller communities—in my experience, at least—losses were primarily due to deaths, gains by confirmation.  Few moved away, few moved in.  But the churches in small communities flourished because of the stability of religious identity in those communities.  Now, according to Leslie Scanlon’s article in The Presbyterian Outlook, all this is up for grabs.  I could sum up Scanlon’s article by saying that people are moving around.  They are leaving their old faith communities and joining new ones.  In the 1980s, Protestants in America were about two-thirds of the population.  These days, the survey shows Protestants are barely over half of the adult population.  People are moving out of the Catholic Church as well.  Says Scanlon, “Nearly a quarter of adult Americans (23.9 percent) currently identify themselves as Catholic—but nearly one in three (31 percent), were raised as children in the Catholic faith, which means that many have left.”  “About a third of those who were raised Catholic said in this survey they are no longer Catholic,” Scanlon writes, “which means about one in ten Americans is a former Catholic.”  In short, Scanlon says, “The survey found ‘a very competitive religious marketplace’ characterized by ‘constant movement,’ in which ‘every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents.’”  Another way to say that is many today have lost their spiritual bearings and, I think it is safe to say, some are headed in the wrong direction.

            We look at Cleopas and the other disciple and we see the reason for them heading in the wrong direction.  Luke tells us that the risen Jesus joined up with these two and talked to them on the way to Emmaus.  Luke also tells us that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”  So these two disciples and Jesus are walking and talking.  And Jesus says, “What are you two guys talking about?”  They stop.  Their faces reveal their depression.  Their speech reveals its cause.  Cleopas says to Jesus, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place in these days?”  “What things?” Jesus asks,  “The things about Jesus of Nazareth,” they answer.  They speak about how Jesus did a lot of mighty deeds, how he was handed over to the religious leaders to be condemned to death, how he had been crucified.  “But we had hoped,” they say to Jesus, “we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.  Yes, and besides all this,” they continue, “it is now the third day since these things took place.  Moreover, 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 that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.  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.”  Their depression is caused by the fact that they have lost their bearings.  Their faith is in the past tense.  They no longer hope in whom they once hoped.  Now, they are headed in the wrong direction.

            We look for a strategy to address this problem.  People are headed in every conceivable direction, surely some on the wrong direction.  We want to come up with a plan that can help them find their way.  We read books and attend workshops about how to reach younger people today.  We’re told that we need to tweak our worship services.  We need multimedia.  We need music in our services that younger people can relate to.  All of this makes our heads spin.  For one reason, it seems to me, our target is both widely diversified and constantly in motion.  How do we know how to speak to a generation that is constantly on the move spiritually and constantly on the move technologically?  One of my fears is that by the time we gear up for what the last book tells us, our efforts will already be passé.  But we look out into the community, we read surveys, and it becomes clear to us that some people are headed in the wrong direction, and we want to help them find their way.

            Now here comes Jesus.  The risen Lord comes to the faith community.  The risen Lord Jesus reminds the church that his life, death, and resurrection were all part of God’s plan to establish the kingdom of God among humanity.  Jesus reminds the church that his life, death, and resurrection were for the purpose of the forgiveness of human sin.  We are the ones who understand that language, for we are the church.  “The forgiveness of sin” means that God has acted to overcome our estrangement from God by graciously moving toward us in Jesus Christ.  Our inability to have a true relationship with God has a barrier, our own rebellion, our own estrangement from God.  But God has moved toward us in Jesus Christ to forgive our rebellion and to establish his rule right here and right now among us.  Jesus is the one who has given us the meal, which speaks about all of this.  Even now, we sit around the table where the risen Lord is host.  Following his own actions, I take the bread, give thanks for it, break it, and give it to the community of faith.  Then our eyes our opened, and we recognize the risen Lord, we recognize God’s reconciling purpose in him, we remember what our message to the world is.

            What happens when people recognize the risen Lord?  They start heading in the right direction.  Instead of walking away from the grace of God where it can be found, they start heading toward it.  The risen Lord joined Cleopas and the other disciple for a meal.  Notice:  The guest becomes the host!  The risen Lord Jesus presides at the table.  “When he was at table with them,” Luke says, “he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.”  Those are the actions of the Lord’s Supper:  took, blessed, broke, and gave.  By word and the Lord’s Supper, these two disciples recognized the risen Lord.  And then what did they do?  They headed in the right direction.  They headed toward Jerusalem.  They headed for the community of faith.  They heard the good news:  “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!”  They shared their own good news about their conversation with the risen Lord on the road, and how he had been made known to them at the Lord’s Supper.  What got these disciples to head in the right direction was how they were empowered by the risen Lord through word and the Lord’s Supper.  Remember.  Remember when you were headed in the wrong direction.  You were already a disciple of the risen Lord Jesus, but you were headed away from him.  His voice wasn’t directing your life at the time, or, at least, not as much as it once had.  Sometimes you thought about what you used to believe and how you used to be an active disciple of the risen Lord.  Then came the day when you returned to the church.  You listened to the word of God read and preached.  It seemed to be aimed right at you.  You ate the bread and drank the cup at the Lord’s table.  You recognized the risen Lord as your Lord.  You remembered, through word and sacrament, that God had moved toward you in Jesus Christ to reconcile you to God.  And then you remembered what your life purpose was.  It was about enjoying that relationship with God.  It was about telling the good news of that relationship to other people.  When you recognized the risen Lord, what happened?  You returned to heading in the right direction.