Slow to See
Slow to See by Rev. L. John Gable
May 4, 2020
Have you ever had the experience of seeing someone you think you should know, but then not quite being able to come up with their name or even from where you know them? I know all of us have, and many of us are starting to chalk that up to aging, but we tend to look for people in the places we expect to see them and then fail to recognize them when we see them out of place.
One of my very favorite stories is of some friends of my parents who years ago took a trip around the world. Leaving St. Louis the husband felt certain that somewhere along the line he was going to run in to someone that he knew. Three weeks in to the trip they were in Rome and they still hadn’t seen a familiar face until he was walking down a crowded street and spotted a man he recognized. He knew that he knew this fellow; in fact, he felt like he knew him really well, that he had even been in their home, but in his excitement he couldn’t come up with the man’s name. Not wanting to miss this opportunity he decided he would swallow his pride and boldly re-introduce himself. So, he approached this familiar stranger and said, “Hello, I’m Ed Mangelsdorf from St. Louis.” The gentleman turned and said, “Nice to meet you, Ed. I’m Walter Cronkite from New York.” Of course he knew him. Walter had been in the Mangeldorf’s home many times, Ed just didn’t recognize him on the streets of Rome.
I cannot read the road to Emmaus story without thinking of that story! This passage from Luke’s Gospel is one of the great short stories in Scripture, perhaps in all of literature. Two of Jesus’ followers are walking from Jerusalem to the little community of Emmaus, seven miles west of the city. It is Sunday, the first day of the week, “that very day” meaning the Easter day, and as they walked they spoke of their sadness, for the One they had hoped would redeem Israel had been arrested and crucified only three days before. Their hopes that He was the Promised Messiah were dashed and hopelessness pervaded their journey home. (Some of our walks and talks have been similarly clouded with a sense of sadness and hopelessness or at least helplessness recently as well, haven’t they? So we get some sense of what they were feeling.) Yet as they walked a stranger came alongside them; a most unusual man, for He too had been in Jerusalem but professed to knowing nothing about this man Jesus or the events that had taken place there that week. However, as the disciples told their story (which by the way is a wonderful summary of the Gospel message), this stranger in turn completed their telling by explaining how all of these events, including Jesus’ suffering and death and resurrection, fulfilled all of the promises of Scripture.
What a strange conversation with a strange fellow who suggested He knew nothing, yet seemed to know everything. The disciples were looking for answers to help them make sense out of their senseless worlds and this fellow seemed to have them all. Admittedly there was something familiar about Him; He was revealing truths to them in a manner they had heard before, but they simply didn’t recognize Him for who He was. You see, they didn’t expect to see Him there; they didn’t and they couldn’t until He sat with them and broke bread, and it was then that “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him.”
We can almost hear them saying, “Of course we should have recognized Him on the road. I knew there was something familiar about Him. Didn’t our hearts burn within us as He spoke?” That was the moment of recognition, the “aha” moment when we find the answer, or better, when the answer is revealed to us; the moment when our hearts are opened and we are given eyes to see what we hadn’t seen before. This is the moment of faith when we realize that Jesus is alive and present with us still.
Years ago I heard a lecture by an associate of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the woman who did so much pioneering work on death and dying. His name was Dr, Imara and he spoke about his experiences with the terminally ill. He told one particular story that I have never forgotten. He was visiting with a woman in her final stages of cancer. The woman, named Anna, told him she desperately needed to see Dr. Kubler-Ross, but before he was able to convey the message Anna died. Several days later as Dr. Imara was walking down the halls of the hospital a woman whom he did not know approached him, addressed him by name and asked him to deliver a letter to Dr. Kubler-Ross for her. As he looked at the woman he recognized something very familiar about her, as if he had known her from somewhere before, but he couldn’t place her. After she left he remembered, her eyes reminded him of Anna’s, the woman who had recently died. She didn’t look like Anna, but something told him it really was her. He said he frantically searched the hospital trying to find her to no avail, but when they opened the letter it was a hand-written note of appreciation for the good care she had been given and it was signed, Anna.
Admittedly, the questions that story raises are many, yet the experience so closely resembles that of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. Dr. Imara never expected to see Anna again; she had died. The disciples never expected to see Jesus again either, they were too busy grieving the fact that He too was dead. They weren’t looking for Him and they never expected to see Him, but their blindness was not a disease of the eyes but of the heart. They didn’t yet have eyes of faith yet to recognize Him as the Risen Lord and they couldn’t until He revealed Himself to them in the common act of breaking a piece of bread.
Friends, this is more than a beautifully told story about something that happened a long time ago, somewhere else, to someone else. This is our story, yours and mine, and it happens again and again as we too are slow to see the Risen Christ in our midst today. Like the disciples of yesterday, we walk our own Emmaus road with heads down, shoulders slumped, carrying at times what seems to be the weight of the world, particularly in this season of pandemic when we are concerned about our own health and that of our kids and grandkids, our neighbors, people we don’t even know, as well as our nation and the world. We ask questions to which there seems to be no answers and all the while we fail to recognize that there is One who is walking alongside us; yet we hardly notice Him at all.
But then, in a moment of grace, not even of our own doing, our eyes are opened and we realize who this Stranger is, it is Christ Himself. He has been traveling with us all along and we never even realized it was Him. This is the “aha” moment of faith when we get a glimpse that we are in the very presence of God through a stranger’s smile or laugh or act of unexpected kindness. And what is most surprising to us is that it doesn’t necessarily happen to us “in here” where we might expect it to happen – in fact, very little is happening “in here” right now. No, our encounters with Jesus are happening “out there” on the dusty road of our daily lives and labors. This is the transforming moment that changes everything for us and it always catches us by surprise. Oh, we can look for it and hope for it and pray for it, but it is always beyond our doing. We can’t control it or induce it. It is an act of God, a gift of God, that comes at the most unexpected times in the most unexpected places. Something happens to us or within us and suddenly we realize we are not alone; that God is present, revealing Himself to us in some extraordinary way, even in its subtleness, and all we can do is gasp at the wonder of it all and say “Thank you, Lord.”
This is the experience of faith, the moment when by no effort of our own, our eyes are opened to the beauty and glory of the eternal all around us and we recognize Jesus’ presence with us. Admittedly, these are the experiences we want to capture and preserve, but we can’t any more than could the disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration or these two on the road to Emmaus, because as soon as we recognize Him He is gone again; yet still we know, without a shadow of a doubt, that it really is Him, that He has risen from the dead, that He is alive and walking with us still, and in those God-given instances our faith is nurtured and confirmed.
Friends, we are Easter people. We proclaim Jesus Christ, not only risen from the dead, but alive in the world. So the question is, do we have eyes of faith to see Him as we search for life’s answers? Do we even bother to look for Him in the day to day of our lives? Like the disciples once they arrived in Emmaus, do we invite Jesus into our homes and into our lives or simply allow Him to pass on by? He is not going to force Himself on any of us, but He does wait to be welcomed by each of us. This is the decision we each must ask and answer for ourselves today. T.S. Eliot encourages our asking in this way.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count there are only you and I together,
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another walking beside you,
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded,
I do not know whether a man or a woman,
But who is that on the other side of you?
Whether we recognize Him or not, our traveling companion is Jesus and He is always with us, He always has been and He always will be. When we recognize Him, when we welcome Him to our hearts, He promises to come and dwell with us, to make His home with us and within us, to make Himself known to us, even in the everyday of our lives, such as He does in this ordinary meal, this ordinary cup of juice, this ordinary loaf of bread, just as He did in an ordinary home long ago in Emmaus, just as He does in our ordinary homes today. He was present with them there just as He is present with us here and now; in that sense, every table is the Lord’s table and every meal the Lord’s Supper whenever He is welcomed in. He is the Host as we celebrate this meal, but in every home, as in every heart, He is also the honored guest wherever He is invited in.
May this be our prayer today that we will have eyes open to recognize Him and hearts open to welcome Him.