Easter 3A     Luke 24:13-35

Two weeks ago here at church and throughout the earth, it was Easter Sunday and Easter Sunday was really great. We all loved the fanfare of Easter: with the trumpets, the choirs, the Easter lilies. The whole worship service shouted with a clear voice that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the power of God. It was a great day.

But how about if you were five years old? If you were a five year old, what would have been the best thing about Easter? The coloring of the Easter eggs on the Saturday afternoon before Easter? Dipping the hard boiled eggs into cups filled with colored dye?

Putting intricate decals on the eggs or drawing pictures on the hard boiled eggs with wax and then dipping the egg into the colored dye in the cup? Was that the best part of Easter if you were a five year old? … Or maybe it was the Easter service, with all the people and all the trumpets and all the Easter lilies and a good Easter sermon that you really enjoyed. Would that be your attitude if you were a five year old? I think not. … Or, thinking like a five year old, perhaps the best part of Easter was the Easter dinner with your favorite ham, your favorite jello, your favorite potatoes, and your favorite people around the table. Was that the favorite part of Easter for a five year old? I think not.

The most favorite part of Easter for a five year old is the Easter egg hunt. Any red blooded, true blue, five year old will tell you that. On Easter, nothing compares with the Easter egg hunt. Imagine the following scene with me. The good mother gets busy after church on Easter Sunday and hides all the Easter eggs in the back yard. Bright colored plastic Easter eggs with chocolate in them. With nickels, dimes or quarters in them. With chocolate covered coconut eggs in them. These brightly colored Easter eggs are all faithfully hidden in the back yard. The Easter dinner is now finished, and it is time for the age-old Easter egg hunt. The kids get their brown bags and they are ready. Someone says go and all the kids rush out the front door and begin looking feverously in the front yard. There are no Easter eggs in the front yard but the kids don’t know it. So the adults begin to give them clues, using the “clue” game. You kids are getting warmer, warmer, hotter, hotter, you are boiling hot. And slowly the kids are led by the clues around the house and into the back yard and they begin to find the Easter eggs. Now, the children could have thought while they were looking in the front yard: “There are no Easter eggs here. Our mother is a mean meanie and didn’t put out any Easter eggs here.”  The problem was this: there were Easter eggs all right, but the kids were looking in the wrong place, and when you are looking in the wrong place, you often don’t find what you are looking for. … And when Jesus finished the parable, he said, “The person who has ears to hear, let that person figure out the meaning of the riddles about the kingdom of God.”

Second story. Second parable. My wife got a little testy with me this past week. An incident occurred which has happened more than once in our relationship. I borrow her car the other night, and borrowing your wife’s car is not a sin. I got permission from her to borrow her car. The next day, I received a somewhat hostile telephone call from her that her car keys were missing and where did I put them.  I kindly, from my point of view, explained to her that I borrowed her car but not her car keys. Did she look for her car keys in her black purse? “Yes,” she replied.  “How about the red purse?” “I’ll look.” She soon was back onto the telephone and said, “I found them. I have to go now.” This story illustrates that we often look for things in the wrong place and the reason we don’t find what we are looking for is not that the keys are not there, but we are looking for them in the wrong place. By the way, my wife mentioned that I could share that story with you only if I told you that I have misplaced the tape measure, the flash light, the duct tape and many other things that I have momentarily lost around the house. We don’t find them because we are looking in the wrong places. And Jesus said, “He or she who has ears to hear, let them hear the riddles, the parables, about the kingdom of God.”

Third story. If you are an avid fisherman, shrimper or crabber, chances are that you a “charter.” That is, many good fishermen chart their fishing habits for salmon, shrimp or crab. They chart the date, the tides, the time, the depth.  One day, a good shrimper from our parish was going for shrimp out in Hood Canal. He wasn’t catching any or several days. He could have concluded: There are no shrimp here in this canal at this time, but he was smarter than that. So the fisherman from our parish went to an old salt, who charted his habits on Hood Canal, and asked where the shrimp were. The reply: “Four miles north and in eighty feet of water.” Sure enough, there were all kinds of shrimp to be found there. Sometimes, a person can conclude, “There are no shrimp here,” but the problem is that the fisherman is looking in the wrong place. If you are looking in the wrong place, you will not find what you are looking for. And Jesus concluded the parable with the statement, “He or she who has ears to hear, let him or her understand about the riddles of the kingdom of God.”

Very often in life, we don’t find what we are looking for because we are looking in the wrong places. For example, for every man and woman who is married, all of them are looking for a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with their spouse. That’s the way it is with marriage: you want to find that marriage relationship with a person that is deep, intimate, loving, caring and long term. But sometimes this quality of relationship is not found? Why? Often because the man and woman are looking in the wrong place.  Let me explain. Too often in marriage, a couple loses focus and gradually begins to think that the quality of their relationship is to be found in the accumulation of things. It happens so slowly you don’t even notice. A couple moves into their first one bedroom apartment and soon they need a two bedroom apartment which soon is filled with things and then a small two bedroom house and then a three bedroom house. The years go by and this couple puts time and energy into accumulating more things, and one day they sit across the kitchen table from each other and discover that they don’t like each other any more. They have drifted in different directions. … Or ever so slowly with no one saying anything about it, the couple focuses on their respective careers. He climbs the ladder a step and she climbs a step; he the second step; she the second step. Both higher and higher on their respective career ladders, and one day while sitting across the kitchen table they discover that they don’t love each other any more. “What happened to us?” they ask. … Or ever so slowly, their focus of attention is on the kids. First one child, then two, maybe three, maybe four. But their primary focus becomes on the children and before you know it, the kids have grown and left the house and the couple looks across the kitchen table and says, “When did we fall out of love?”

If a couple is searching for a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship, they often can look in the wrong places and not find it. It would be like children at an Easter egg hunt, looking for the Easter eggs out in the front yard but the Easter eggs are in the back yard. A couple can look in the wrong places to find that deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship such as in the accumulation of things, their jobs, their children. And they do not find what they are looking for because they are looking in the wrong places.

And what is the right place where a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship is to be found? In their relationship. Yes. So obvious. Right there between the two of them with Christ living in the middle, like the space between my index finger and my middle finger. There, right between the two of them, in that relationship between the two with Christ in the middle. Couples can slowly turn their focus on the accumulation of things, their jobs, their children, and lose the focus on and the care for their actual relationship between the two. It happens all the time, when couples look for a happy relationship but look for it in the wrong places.

The same kind of logic applies to our relationship with God and Christ. We, too, want a deep, intimate, loving, caring and long term relationship with God in God. We look for it; we want it; we wouldn’t be here today if we did not want that. But sometimes we do not find that deep, intimate, loving, caring long term relationship with Christ because we look in the wrong places. Like the children on the Easter egg hunt, we look for the eggs in the front yard but the eggs are in the back yard. 

Where is the wrong place to look for a deep, intimate, loving caring, long term relationship with God? In the programs of the church. Yes, many people become immersed in the programs of a congregation, so much so that they loose their focus on Jesus Christ. We enroll our children in kindergarten, preschool, Sunday School, fifth grade communion class, confirmation, retreats, mission trips and their lives and our lives are totally saturated with church activities. In fact, those church activities become a kind of religious entertainment that are to entice interest. And after all those years of belonging to a “hot dog” church with “hot dog” programs, one day we wake up to discover that we do not necessarily love God in Christ. We have enjoyed the programs and membership of the church but are not really disciples of Jesus Christ. We don’t love Christ and walk in his ways. What happened in the heart? The programs fade or we grow too old for the programs, and where is that deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ? 

Another wrong place to look for a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ is in the pastors and our friendship with the pastors. We can become fascinated with the preaching and teaching of the pastor. We can become enticed by the compassion of the pastor. We may slowly set the pastor onto a moral pedestal. We, as a couple or family, may become pleased that the pastor is our friend. And sometimes, without saying anything, we discover that our focus has become on the pastor, his or her preaching, teaching, compassion, leadership. We then discover that the pastor is as fully human as is anybody else in the congregation. Or we discover that the pastor has moved away and we become disillusion with the new leadership. And we finally discover that we have become more enamored with the pastor than with Jesus Christ.

If you are looking for church membership, join the church which has the right programs and right pastor for you. If you are looking for a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ, it is not to be found in the programs or the pastor. If you expect to find it in the programs and the pastor, perhaps you are looking in the front yard and you won’t find what you are looking for.

The gospel story for today is a clue to where find Christ. The gospel story for today is where we are to find that deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ. It like being given clues when you are looking for Easter eggs and the mother says you are getting warmer and warmer, hotter and hotter. The gospel story for today is a clue where to find this deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ.

The gospel story is this. Two followers were walking along the road one day near the village of Emmaus, some seven miles outside of the capital city of Jerusalem.  The two friends, one named Cleopas, were down in the mouth. They were feeling down in the dumps because Jesus had been crucified, the disciples had run away, a hysterical and hallucinating woman named Mary claimed she saw the Risen Christ, somebody had broken into the tomb and stolen the body, and the Jesus movement was over and dead. They were in a funk, because their Lord and master, Jesus of Nazareth, was killed and it was all over.

As they walked along the road in a funk, a stranger was soon walking with them. The two friends told the stranger about why they were in a funk and how Jesus had been killed. The stranger then started to teach them the Scriptures; he opened up their eyes that the Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament to suffer and die on the cross and the two friend, their hearts started to burn with amazement. The two friends invited the stranger to go with them that night and have dinner. At the meal, the stranger spoke and made gestures: he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to them. In that sacramental moment, the two friends realized that this stranger was Jesus, the Risen Christ. Later they said to each other, “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened up the Scriptures to us?” They also said, “As he took the bread, offer thanks, broke the bread and gave it to them, he made himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.”

I am suggesting to you this morning that this story offers us clues as to where to find the Risen Christ, as to where to find a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Christ. In the Word. In the Sacrament. In the conversation between friends that Jesus has transformed. Not so much in the programs nor the pastor, but in the Word, the Sacraments, the friendship that Christ transforms. Let me explain.

Christ come to us most clearly in the Word. Knowing that Christ comes to us in and through the Word, you and I are students of the Word, disciple of the Word. When Christ is with us, the Word of God, the Bible, is opened to us and our hearts burn within. Therefore we study the Bible, learn the Bible, memorize the Bible, learn to know the Bible. We know that Christ lives in the Bible and so we spend time in the Bible to know a deep, intimate, loving, caring, long term relationship with Jesus Christ.

We are to read the Bible daily. We can use this analogy. How many of you brush your teeth each day? How many twice a day? Yes, most of us bush our teeth twice a day, perhaps two minutes in the morning and two minutes before we go to bed. That is, we brush for four minutes a day and twenty-eight minutes a week. But let’s suppose we brush our teeth one time for twenty-eight minutes every week. That is silly.  We know we are to brush our teeth every day. Likewise, we are to read the Bible every day.  It is a daily habit. Social researchers tell us that people read the Bible daily or almost never. There is no in between. It is one or the other. We need to daily read the Scriptures to meet and converse with Jesus Christ.

I like the following quotations. Abraham Lincoln, the best President of the United States according to almost all researchers, said that “the greatest gift that God gave to human beings is the Bible.” The best gift that God could give you today is the Bible. … Another President of the United States, John Quincy Adams, who at one time was the best educated citizen in the United States, said that it was a principle of his to read the Bible through each and every year. I wonder why? Except that what is inside the Bible is very sacred and valuable.  … Another great President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, said, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.” He did not say, “The Bible is worth more than a college education.” Nor did he say, “A little knowledge of the Bible is worth more a college education.”  He said, “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.” We, as Christian disciples, learn to daily live in the Bible, so we develop a working and thorough knowledge of the Bible. Goethe, the great German philosopher, said that the beauty of the Bible grows as we grow in our understanding of it. More understanding, more beauty.  Spurgeon, the great theologian of the last century, said that people will outgrow the clothing they wore when they were ten years old, but they will never outgrow the Scriptures. We outgrow pants of a little child, but we never outgrow the Bible. Martin Luther said that the Bible is alive; that it has feet and hands. The Bible has feet and so the Bible chases after us. It has hands and so the Bible grabs us. All of these people quoted above have a deep and abiding appreciation of the Bible.

One of the most famous Christian prayers is the Serenity Prayer which is said at all Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. It goes like this: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” I am suggesting to you today that you can change your pattern of not reading the Bible each day. The vast majority of American Christians do not read the Bible each day, and if you are one of those, I am suggesting to you that you have the courage to change your Biblical reading and devotional habits.

Where to find Christ? In the programs of the church? In the pastors of the church? I am suggesting to you that the Gospel story gives us a clue as to where to find Christ. In the Word.

In the gospel story for today, a second place to find Christ is in the Sacrament of Holy Communion. Let me explain. In the text for today, we hear the specific gestures from Holy Communion: He took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to them saying. We hear,  “Did we not see him in the breaking of the bread?”

When we kneel to receive the sacrament of the altar, we see and receive Christ. John 6 says, “Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood, all of their sins will be forgiven. Whoever eats my body and drinks my blood shall live with me eternally.” The Eucharist is soul food, the bread of life for eternity, to feed our spirit and spiritual needs.

It is important to kneel at the altar consistently, week after week, month after month, year after year. Pastor John O’Neal and I work with couples who are preparing for marriage. They are required to take the Prepare Inventory of Compatibility, to attend worship together, attend our membership class together. We have been doing this for many years now, and John and I both agree that the most important indicator of a couple’s marital future is their consistency at Holy Communion, kneeling in humble prayer before God, side by side, spirit by spirit, heart by heart. The two of them together, kneeling before God. This is the most important indicator of the couple’s future marital  harmony, from our point of view.

Also, sometimes we don’t realize what is happening during Holy Communion, the sacred banquet of all believers, on this side of the grave and the other side of the veil of death. That is, in this meal, I am in communion with Jesus Christ but also with my mother who has preceded me in death, my father, my grandparents, my cousins, my friends, all those who have gone before me are with me in this sacred meal called Holy Communion. It is not simply bread and wine but the banquet for all eternity.

Where to find Christ? Where to find a deep, intimate, loving, close, long term relationship with Christ? In the programs of the church which are often a form of religious entertainment? In the pastors of the church who are often a form of religious entertainment? The gospel story for today tells us that Christ revealed himself in the breaking of the bread.

Where to find Christ? In a conversation that Jesus transforms. Two friends were walking along the road and they were down in the dumps. Jesus became part of that conversation and revealed himself through that conversation. Christ can transform conversations so that the conversation reveals Christ. Let me explain. We all experience great conversations every now and then in life. Those great conversations are never planned; those great conversations are never programmed. They are almost always a surprise; they are serendipitous. I could give you a thousand examples but let’s chose the example from yesterday. I was involved with a small intimate wedding. Afterwards, the wedding party went out for lunch together, and my wife and I joined them.  My wife and I happened to sit by a young couple, with three children, and before you knew it, Christ was in and part of that conversation, and all of our hearts were “burning.” We all knew that a special moment was happening between us. Nothing contrived. Nothing planned. Nothing even expected. It just happened. Christ got into the words of the conversation, and the four of us knew that the conversation was bigger than ourselves. … So it is with Christ. If you are looking for Christ, he often reveals himself serendipitously in conversations.

Sometimes, we as human beings, don’t find what we are looking for because we are looking in the wrong places. We look in the front yard but what are looking for is to be found in the back yard. Amen.

CHILDREN’S SERMON:  Have a stack of various and old Bibles with me and illustrate the various Bibles that have been part of my life. During our lifetime, we may have several Bibles. I showed the little white leather New Testament and read the note in it from when I was fifteen. I showed them the water stained New Testament that I carried with me when I was a wilderness canoe guide in college. I showed them a Bible with the name, Edward F. Markquart on it, and it was my father’s, given to him when he was confirmed. I showed them the Living Bible that my mother often used for her devotions and how she loved the paraphrase Bible. I showed them the confirmation Bible which was so marked up and worn. I explained to them that during their lifetimes that may have several Bibles, and God speaks to us from each one. We can always find Christ in the Bible, no matter which Bible we may have.


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