Too good to be true

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Easter (April 14, 2024) at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, NY. View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day.

Duccio, di Buoninsegna, c. 1319. “Christ Appears to the Disciples at the Table after the Resurrection,” from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

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Jesus himself stood among the disciples and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Luke 24:35b

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Please be seated.

There is a line in today's Psalm (Psalm 4)that I have a very specific memory associated with. "Oh, that we might see better times."

In the first months of the pandemic, I started praying Compline on Facebook Live every night,. Compline is the last of the Church's daily services of prayer; it is our bedtime prayer. So as we prepare to lay down the day and take our rest, this is the prayer we pray every night. And Psalm 4 is one of the Psalms appointed for Compline.

And I remember how, during those first months of the pandemic, that line would resonate with us. Oh, that we might see better times. Sometimes just to say that line would bring tears to my eyes, because it felt so true. And it still feels true.

We are still saying, "Oh, that we might see better times." I mean, thousands and thousands of years ago, someone wrote this song and we are still singing it. Would that we would see better times. We either went to bed last night or woke up this morning to hear about a new escalation of war in the Holy Land.

This is the season of Easter. It's the season of the resurrection, but it's been a really difficult week for this community. We said goodbye or will be saying goodbye to three beloved members of our community, and it just feels like one after the other. I don't think you all liked receiving those three emails in a row any more than your priest wanted to send those three emails in a row!

So, whether it's looking around at the world or looking within our own community, our own body of Christ, we find ourselves saying, oh, that we might see better times. And then we find ourselves in this tension! Because we're also saying, Alleluia, Christ is risen. We're proclaiming the resurrection.

So as we so often do, we find ourselves stretched between seeing the suffering in the world, bearing the griefs of our own lives and our own communities, and proclaiming nonetheless that Jesus is present, that his being alive means something.

And we might take some comfort if we find this kind of stretch to be difficult—because it is difficult—we might take some comfort in looking back at how the disciples experienced very much what we experience now.

We heard Deacon Gail proclaim to us a part of Luke's resurrection story in the gospel of Luke. We heard the end of the 24th chapter, but the whole of the 24th chapter of Luke is a real good story. It's worth telling. So I'm going to tell it! The story of what resurrection looks like for the people who actually witnessed and touched the risen Christ is very illuminating for us.

So we're going to go back to where we were on Easter. On Easter morning, we were with those three women who go to the empty tomb. Do you remember? In Mark's Gospel, they go to the empty tomb, just as in Luke's Gospel. And there they find what? They find the stone has been rolled away. They peer into the tomb looking for the body of their beloved friend. And instead they see only the burial clothes, no body.

And someone is in there to say, Why are you looking for him here? He's not here. He is risen. And so they go and they go to run back to the disciples and they say, you will not believe what we just saw! But to the disciples, Luke tells us, "it seemed to them an idle tale." These crazy women stayed up too late. And now they're hallucinating God knows what, right?

But Peter says, well, I'm going to see for myself. So he goes back to the tomb, peeks in—where is Jesus?

And we cut to two others, two disciples walking along the road, maybe not walking, maybe running. They are fleeing from Jerusalem. They're on their way to Emmaus.

And as they're walking, they're talking about what just happened. They're in their grief. They're talking about how Jesus—who we thought was the one who would rescue us from this oppression and this suffering and this grief—he himself has become subject to oppression and grief! He's been crucified!

They're talking about this. They're trying to understand it, like we always do when something horrible happens. And someone else is walking on the road and joins them and says, Hey guys, do you mind if I walk with you. They say, okay. He asks, what are you guys talking about? And they tell him. Well, actually they're not very nice. They say, are you the last person in Jerusalem who has not heard what happened to Jesus? We thought he was the Messiah, but it turns out he was just as subject to death as us.

And the stranger says, Oh, that is bad. Sad story. But I've read the scriptures. You've read them too, right? They say, yeah, yeah. He said, well, I seem to remember that the Messiah was foretold to suffer and die.

So they keep walking. They get to the place where they're going to spend the night, and the stranger says, well, it's been nice chatting with you. I'll see you soon. And they say, Why don't you stay for dinner? So the stranger says, Sure I will. And they sit down at the table and the stranger takes bread and blesses it, and he breaks it to share with them. And their eyes are opened and he vanishes from their sight.

And they say, how didn't we see? We're not our hearts burning within us as he unfolded the scriptures to us? But even with our hearts on fire, somehow we didn't see it until he sat down to break the bread with us, until he sat down to feed us. And now he has vanished from our sight.

So they leave the table and they run back to Jerusalem, just like the women fleeing from the tomb. They run back and they say, you guys, you won't believe what just happened! And the disciples are like, actually... The same thing happened to Mary and Joanna this morning. And then Peter also saw him! (And Luke doesn't even tell us the story of Peter seeing him. We just hear that kind of secondhand from the disciples.)

And you can imagine they're all talking at once—and there he is.

And they're like, Ack!! And he says, I'm not a ghost, guys. I'm not a ghost. How do you not see this? I'm here. You were just talking about how I'm here, here I am. And he says, touch me. Look at these wounds. Do you think I'm a ghost? Do you see these? Do you see this? It is me. And it did happen. This is real.

And they're looking at each other and they are, Luke says, amazed, and they're wondering, and they're terrified. And Jesus says, oh, for heaven's sake. Does anyone have anything to eat? And he takes the fish that they give him and he eats it.

And then he does what he did for the disciples on the Emmaus road. He says, this was all foretold and it is happening. And you are seeing this. And I know it seems too good to be true. I know that in a world that is so broken, that is so full of grief and suffering, in a world where you just saw me crucified and buried, I know this is hard to believe, but I am here. See me.

You are my witnesses. He tells them.

So these people, they actually saw what we don't get to see, and they didn't believe what they were seeing. They saw it, and they didn't see it, because they couldn't believe something so good could be true.

And it is true. And Jesus sent them to be his witnesses from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. So now we are here.

And we live like they did in a world full of suffering and pain and grief and every kind of vileness that human beings can do to each other. And still, Christ is risen. Christ is present. Christ is here.

The prayer that we prayed this morning is "open the eyes of our faith." "God, open the eyes of our faith that we may see you in all your redeeming works," in all you are doing even now to bring us back, to mend what is broken, to reclaim what has been scattered and lost. Open the eyes of our faith.

And this is the prayer I want to invite us to pray this week in this Easter season. Because mostly we can't see Jesus, but we can ask God to open our eyes to see the love, the redemption that is here—sometimes right in front of us, sometimes making our hearts burn in ways that we can only see when we look back. And I think we've all had an experience like that where we realize God sent that person. I had that conversation. I heard that thing on the radio or read that book or saw that thing just when I needed it the most. Was not my heart, were not our hearts, burning within us?

And if God can open the eyes of our faith to see God here in all God's redeeming works, then we can see, like John says in his letter, "We are God's children now." Now, not some other time, not when we get it all right, not after we die, but now. Not after we die, but now.

Open our eyes that we may see your hand, all your redeeming works, God, where you are, present among us.

So the prayer of the Psalmist transforms right? From Oh, that we might see better times to Oh, that we might see you.

So in all your grief this season, I invite you just to pray that prayer. Open my eyes that I may see you and open our eyes together, that we may see: Christ is risen. Alleluia.

Christ is risen. Alleluia.

The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

And amen.