On the Road with Cleopas

Luke 24:13-35

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.

Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him saying, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

“Moreover, some women from our group astounded us. They went to 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.”

Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?

That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

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I love the Jesus we meet on the road to Emmaus, because he seems kind of strange … mysterious, for sure … and – I think – a little bit punchy after a couple of days in the grave. I figure he must be as surprised as you and me to realize that these two guys on the road don’t recognize him right away – even after walking and talking with him for quite a while, as the story goes. But I like that he’s patient and maybe even a little bit playful about that.

Like when Cleopas seems to get an attitude and asks Jesus, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who doesn’t know about the things that have taken place there in these days?” And Jesus is like, “What things?” You can almost see the smirk on his face, right? “Tell me what you know, Mr. Smarty Pants.” And I like to think my savior has a sense of humor – I’m kind of banking on it, actually.

But, I think there’s more to it than Jesus just being funny and playing games.

For me, this story of the walk to Emmaus is a microcosm of our faith’s journey as individuals and as the people of God, collectively. And, I’ve had a handful of conversations lately about looking for, and finding, and recognizing God in the world around us – and about how hard that can be sometimes. And what I find is that many of us – myself included – are inclined to the same kind of cynicism that Cleopas and his friend seem to hold onto.

Jesus calls them “foolish and slow of heart to believe,” after all, because when they’re confronted with the resurrected Christ – in the flesh – they don’t recognize him and they neglect to connect the dots between all they’d learned about him, and they recount for Jesus all the reasons why God’s Easter Good news wasn’t true. (“our chief priests handed him over… he was crucified… it’s been three days… some women said they talked to angels… some men confirmed he wasn’t there… he’s dead and gone and nowhere to be found… he was supposed to redeem Israel … and so on.)

And I don’t blame them, because I’m a lot like Cleopas and his friend more often than I’d like to admit. Standing still, I mean. Looking and feeling and being sad so much of the time … about the state of things and the way of the world around us.

To be honest, if Jesus approached me on the road – most days – I’m afraid I wouldn’t even stop to chat, let alone invite him over for dinner. Because I’m too busy… because I have more important places to be… because he won’t look like I expect him to look, I’m guessing.

But assuming I was having a good day and did at least stop for a chat, I’m afraid I’d sound a lot like Cleopas. I’m afraid my first inclination would be to rain on Jesus’ resurrection parade. “Are you the only stranger in town who doesn’t know?” “Have you not been paying attention?” “Do you not see or understand what the hell is been going on around here?” And I’d be happy to cite some examples that would be no surprise to Jesus:

We’ve all heard about the spate of innocent people being shot in the last week or so … that Black boy who rang the wrong white man’s doorbell in Missouri; those cheerleaders who opened the wrong car door at the grocery store in Texas; that other young woman who pulled into the wrong driveway in New York.

6 people were shot in Indianapolis in just 11 hours on Wednesday. And three of them didn’t survive.

There have been something like 75 tornado-related deaths in the world this spring and 64 of those people died in the United States. There were only 32 deaths worldwide, and just 23 in the U.S. in all of 2022 – which means those numbers have more than doubled already. It seems like there might be something to this whole “Climate Change” thing, after all.

I saw a public service announcement yesterday that said the phrase “Hitler was right” was posted on social media platforms more than 70,000 times last year.

And of course, there’s Russia, Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, Israel, Palestine, and Haiti – war and death and despair on top of war and death and despair on top of war and death and despair.

And the list goes on. Our parents are dying or in the hospital. Our kids are struggling in ways we can’t fix. Not everyone got invited to the prom. Jobs have been lost. The tumors aren’t shrinking. Relationships are falling apart.

So it’s a short walk for me, from the empty tomb of Easter’s joy to the real world of that Emmaus Road, where all of that Good News turns into something hard to swallow, and even harder to celebrate a lot of the time. Like I said, just like Cleopas, I’d probably look Jesus in the eye and ask, “Are you the only one around here who doesn’t know about the things that have taken place here in these days?”

But the beautiful thing about Jesus on the road with Cleopas and his friend – and the beautiful thing about Jesus on the road with the likes of you and me – is that he is no stranger to any of it. He just keeps showing up – walking… and listening… and patiently waiting for us to do the same…walking and listening and paying attention, I mean, until we see what has been and what continues to be revealed in our midst, in spite of whatever struggle and sadness and suffering finds us along the way.

See, I think Jesus shows up in surprising ways and through the love and lives of surprising people a lot of the time, if we would just open our eyes to recognize him among us.

Jesus shows up in the first responders, the nurses, the doctors who tend to the sick and dying. Jesus shows up in the friends and family, through Stephen Ministers and by way of Partners in Mission who send cards, bring meals, run errands and otherwise care for those who need it. Jesus shows up in and through individuals and communities of faith, like ours, who love one another – and our enemies – or try to; and who strive to do justice and love kindness and walk humbly in the face of so many temptations to do otherwise. And Jesus shows up in the mirror, too, if we will open our hearts, our minds, and our lives to that possibility.

Because what happens on the Road to Emmaus, really, is that Jesus opens the eyes of Cleopas and his friend to see what they already knew. Through some “walking with,” some patient conversation and a little bit of bread-breaking, they’re reminded and inspired to hit the road again and get about the business of telling their people what they had wanted to believe ever since the Friday before:

That God is bigger than death. That hope is better than despair. That light shines in the darkness. That love always gets the last word. And that we have hard, holy work to do in order to reveal that and to make it real for the world around us, in the name of Jesus, crucified and risen for the sake of the world.

Amen

Wilderness: Addiction and Burning Bushes

Luke 13:6-9

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

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Hello, my name is Chris. My family and I are fairly new here. We attend second service and are just beginning to get involved. My wife, Mary, and I have been married for over 16 years. We have two amazing daughters, Elliott and Harper, and two spoiled dogs.

When the weather warms up, we can normally be found outside. We fill our weekends camping and enjoying nature. Woods and fields; oceans and mountains; waterfalls and caves; these are the things that fill my cup. These are my sacred and holy places, the places I most often encounter God.

To find places to explore and then make my way through them, I need a map. I need directions or a guide, otherwise I get lost. I have a pretty decent sense of direction on the trail or in the woods. But sometimes I get lost. Sometimes I get really lost.

A few years ago, my family and I were camping in North Carolina over fall break. It was my wife’s birthday and we decided to celebrate by hiking up a mountain to this—supposedly—beautiful waterfall. Except we kept climbing, switchback after switchback and, as the day got hotter and hotter, we could not find the turn off for the waterfall. We kept saying “just a little farther” to two very grumpy kids and then we’d get “just a little farther” and see nothing. We didn’t bring water or snacks or a map or anything you should take on a 3-hour hike on a hot day because we didn’t know it would take this long. Eventually, my family, on the brink of despair and starvation, turned around having never found this waterfall. If you think they have let me live that down, or not mentioned it every time we go on a hike even years later, you would be gravely mistaken.

A lot of the lessons I’ve learned in nature help me when I return to my everyday life. Getting lost can feel helpless and out of control. It can be scary. It can feel lonely.

I felt those things for years. For a long time, I felt out of control and alone.

I didn’t want to be an alcoholic, but I was. I had become one.

I didn’t want my dependence on alcohol to separate me from my wife and kids, but it did. And even in the middle of so much loss and hurt, I could not stop drinking. I was not done hurting myself or others, even though I desperately wanted to be.

I know God loved me in my addiction. God continued to love unconditionally even as I continued to hurt myself and those around me. But I also know God wanted better for me. God wanted me to feel less shame, less loneliness, less scared. God wanted to help me out of the wilderness I’d found myself in. But I didn’t know how to find the map. I had lost my sense of direction. I felt lost.

When you’re lost in the wilderness of it, it's easy to forget that addiction, of any kind, impacts other people and not just the addict. We can convince ourselves that “one more time” won’t hurt anyone. But that’s not the truth. Our decisions always have a ripple effect. We don’t drop a single stone into a pond without hundreds of ripples. It’s the same with addiction; we are not islands, our choices impact others.

In the summer of 2017, I was in a pit of despair. I could not control my drinking and the effect that had on my wife and on my children was hard to avoid. The tears. The anger. The sadness. The confusion. I wasn’t living in our home anymore; I had monitored visits with my kids. I had to prove I was sober and safe before I was allowed to be near them. I was sleeping on other peoples’ couches and guest beds. I was untethered. It was, in the truest sense, a wilderness.

I went to AA. I went to Celebrate Recovery. I spoke with drug counselors and therapists. And all I wanted to do was drink. Drinking was what made everything feel better. It helped me to forget the past. It helped me to forget the present. I was able to drown the world in alcohol. But now it was the drinking I could not forget; I had grown physically dependent on alcohol. I could no longer function without it. I couldn’t get out of bed without a drink.

I said foxhole prayers. “Oh God, get me out of this. Help me feel better. I’ll do anything! God, please!”

Alcohol ruled my life. It made all my decisions for me. Where I went. What I did. Who I spent my time with. In the end, it had secluded me, isolated me, separated me from the people I loved. My wife was at home wondering how long it would be until she had to tell my girls I was dead. I was in the wilderness, and so was my family.

You might be lucky enough to not have had to deal with addiction. But I can guess, you’ve experienced loneliness, fear, and anxiety. We all, at times, feel unlovable, lost, or helpless.

I felt those things and blamed God for all of them. I was in the wilderness of my own making and begged for a map, for a way out. If God would just give me a map, this would all be over. I was sure of it.

In September 2017, I woke up in a hospital. My wife had made the hard decision to call the police as I was driving drunk the night before. I vaguely remembered a police officer telling me I could take a ride to a detox facility or get into the car with my very angry wife. I chose the hospital. It was the less scary choice.

But it was still scary, waking up in a hospital gown in an unfamiliar room. I knew this was it. Nothing else had worked, and this was the end for me. This was not the end I had envisioned. It felt like God had left me; I had not been rescued from myself. I did not plan to live much longer and now I was naked except for a very airy hospital gown in a locked medical facility. As I walked to breakfast surrounded by people in real clothes, I knew this was it. I had reached my bottom. I was emotionally, mentally, and spiritually broken. I had no job. No home. No family. My wife was talking with a lawyer to end our marriage. I had nothing left.

I spent a week in the medical facility detoxing. I wanted that to be the end of it, but my wife said no, you can’t come home. My friends said no, you can’t come back. I was out of options. I checked myself into a residential rehab facility. You have a lot of free time in rehab but no access to your normal vices. I did what I was told to do because what else was there to do? I was a whole other kind of wilderness.

Sometimes the map out of the wilderness is other people and routine. It’s trusting those ahead of you on the journey. I didn’t feel like this was the way out of the wilderness, but I didn’t have any other ideas or options, either.

In Exodus, Moses encounters a burning bush. I’ve heard the story of this strange event my whole life. This burning bush phenomenon has always fascinated me. God speaking to Moses from a fire in a bush. Holy ground. I can’t help but imagine Moses being at his rock bottom during this time. Here was a prince of Egypt wandering the wilderness tending his father-in-law’s flock. He was running for his life, in hiding because he’d just killed a man. He didn’t even have his own sheep. And now he was talking to a bush?

I could relate to Moses. I had hit my own kind of rock bottom, and I liked the biblical company.

A few weeks into my rehab stay, I began to walk around the grounds. Behind the house was a small-wooded area. On this day, I had just learned that my insurance company was ending my treatment and wanted to discharge me. I was scared. It was the longest I had been sober in years. I wasn’t ready. I still needed constant supervision. I still had so much work to do. While wandering around the woods, I came upon a downed tree. The tree was covered in a bright orange-red fungus. It consumed the tree, giving it the appearance of being on fire.

It felt like my own burning bush. I could feel God—in the midst of all my worries and hurts and fears—say, “I will be with you.” Just like God did for Moses. The ground I was standing on felt holy.

I had been pleading, begging, and calling out to God for years asking to take this addiction away from me. I didn’t want to be an alcoholic like my dad. I had seen the destruction it had caused. Addiction ruins marriages and families and lives. It steals so much. In this moment, when I had finally gotten quiet enough to listen, God reminded me that He was with me. God had never left me, but I had forgotten what it felt like to not be alone. And I wasn’t alone. God was with me.

Things did not get magically better. But God used people to help guide me out of the wilderness I had ended up in. Sober people who knew how it felt to be so lost. Counselors who helped me address the reasons I drank. Guides showed up along the path and led me when I was too tired and scared to do it alone. I did in-patient programs, out-patient programs, AA meetings, and lived in a halfway house with supervision. I stopped hiding, I showed up, I was held accountable. I was given directions and I followed them even if it was painful. (And it was painful; recovery is hard and painful.) But it was worth it.

I had been in the wilderness alone for so long that I forgot how much I needed other people. I forgot that hiding and shame alienated; that the map I was begging God for was always going to be other people and honesty. I was demanding something God had already provided, but I wasn’t ready to show up for or receive it yet.

Isaiah 41:10 says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” God is with us, always. And when we don’t feel it or believe it or see it, there are people who come alongside us and reflect God’s love, mercy, grace, and peace for Him. For me, those people were my wife, my girls, my fellow addicts and alcoholics, the friends and family who showed up again when I was ready to show up again, too.

Like I said before, your wilderness might not be addiction. Your wilderness might look different than mine, but the feelings are often the same: loneliness, fear, shame, or anxiety. We feel lost and out of control and forgotten. We feel unloved and sad. Often the answer God is giving us, when we care to look around, is the people who surround us. People are the map to higher ground. People are the support when we feel tired. People are the guides that reflect God back to us. We just have to be willing to pay attention. I’m glad that I finally did and grateful for the chance to try again each day.

Amen