a Homily for Easter 3A
Text: Luke 24:13-35

 

The Walk and Talk

When Aaron Sorkin’s show, The West Wing debuted in 1999, it pioneered a technique dubbed “The Walk and Talk”.

Shows before The West Wing featured plenty of walking and plenty of talking and even plenty of people walking while talking. But no show found so much of its energy and sense of movement from this element: that people walking and talking would itself be generative. They found that a sense of action, drama, and even intrigue could come from the fusing of these two elements into a unified, demonstrable act: the Walk and Talk. The power of movement gave the words a new, different life, making a sum much more than its parts.

We were not passively watching characters talking, but people’s very interaction with the world and the unknown. We were involved in their grappling with the hardest issues of the day; decisions made in hallways and while boarding airplanes. Extraordinary decisions made in ordinary locations by people who wrestle with the hardest challenges life has to offer.

In this week’s gospel, these two followers that meet this stranger on the road have a Walk and Talk with Jesus. It is a popular story of not just Easter and the Resurrection, but of one’s personal faith experience. people speak of their own story: in the middle of something, like hardship, loss, overwhelming workloads: and then it changes. What they couldn’t see about GOD and the world is suddenly visible.

They walk with Him and of course they don’t know it’s Him. They tell this “stranger” about Jesus. The stranger tells them about Jesus. Still, they don’t recognize Him.

In the slapstick update of this scene, we’d see on the screen all the clues these two are missing. The actor playing Jesus would emphasize His own name, to help them see it — that Suffering Servant, that’s Jesus. Hear me? J-e-s-u-s. {cough} That’s my name. {cough}

Still these guys don’t get it.

The Stop

It isn’t until Jesus stops, sits down, and eats with them: doing with them what they were told to do with one another: that they come to understand.

All this Walk and Talk was critical to move the story but it is here, in the stopping, sharing, and eating that it comes together.

Sorkin used these moments masterfully on The West Wing. When the staff has been wrestling with issues, the energy swirling around them, they are ultimately forced to stop and share with the President or Chief of Staff their best understanding. To stop. Those moments were powerful on the show as it is powerful here. No more Walk and Talk: Now we stop and share.

Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.

Right when they get that Jesus is with them, He disappears. How confusing and counterintuitive. Imagine if “Footprints” had ended this way:

“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints, is when I carried you.”

Then Jesus disappeared and my butt landed in the sand.

The trouble we have with the Easter story is this: Jesus’s rising is eternal, but His earthly return is not. The questions and the speculations of GOD’s action are profoundly beside the point depicted in Scripture. In the Walking and Talking and Stopping. In a story that is much richer than a vehicle for personal salvation or evangelistic flag-waving. A story that is all about these followers telling their specific story and then revealing none of the specifics in Jesus’s story to them. A story that is very much about storytelling. And then, communing.

The Share

There is a more powerful insight in this story about a story. These two are called followers. When they return, they return to be with “the eleven and their companions gathered together.”

We had heard about the women’s proclaiming the risen Christ.

We hear that Simon (Peter) has seen Him.

Now these non-disciples tell of a Jesus experience.

We, all of us, have Jesus experiences to share. I’ve heard many of you try to tell me that your experiences don’t count because they don’t look or sound like this. Ridiculous! Three different experiences to three different groups in three different ways? It’s not just the disciples or the ordained. This speaks!

Not all the followers had the direct experience, either. How was He made known to the group? In Word and in the breaking of bread. In eating together. Not in the food itself, but in the communing as one people.

That’s what we’ll do today. We will pray together, with everything we are lifted toward GOD and we will together bless this food. And we, together, will eat it. It is there Jesus is known; there we know Jesus. It can’t be done alone. It can’t be done for you. It can’t be received in total isolation through an individual snack of a magic cookie.

We make this happen together. Through our prayer and our gathering together. Together we share and with us Jesus is present. It is our work. And it is my honor to invite you to join us. Come, know Jesus in the breaking of the bread.