KEPT FROM RECOGNIZING
Sermontelling Luke 24:13-35 (NL 340)
BIBLETELLING
Below is the Narrative Lectionary passage for the coming week. It is followed by Bruce’s notes on the text which aim at a general understanding of the text and some notes on the structures and techniques used by the Biblical storytellers.
Now that same1 day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.2
He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?”3
They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”
“What things?” he asked.
“About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;4 but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel5. And what is more, it is the third day6 since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.”
He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.7
As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them.8
When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”9
They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.”10 Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread.
Luke 24:13-35
THREE STORIES
The following three stories pair well with the Narrative Lectionary passage for the coming week. They are followed by Danny’s sermontelling footnotes which explore the stories’ theological connection to the passage as well as insights into craft and performance. Our advice is to read the story first before digging into the footnotes.
A Tan Suit and Horn Rimmed Glasses
Though my denominational affiliation lies with Marvel Comics, I have always loved Superman.11 When I was a kid, I had Superman toys, Superman comics, Superman posters… I even stuck with Superman through the mullet years!12 I’m not ashamed to admit that I went as Superman for Halloween one year. And this was well after the age it was advisable to show up to school in bright red underwear.13 I love Superman! But not just any Superman, the Superman.
See, I have this theory that whoever your first Superman was as a child is the one you will always picture as Superman.14 That first Superman is the standard by which all future Supermen will be judged. And for me that was Christopher Reeves. Dean Cains and Henry Cavills15 will come and go, but Christopher Reeves will forever be my Superman. He was the Superman I first watched outrun locomotives and jump tall buildings in a single bound. He was the one I imagined myself as when I would fly around the house in my Superman pajamas with the velcro cape. Christopher Reeves was the Superman I watched on VHS tapes while eating fruit loops. I saw him save Margot Kidder, fight Gene Hackman, and team up with Richard Pryor. If I close my eyes and you say, “Superman,” his face is the one that will instantly come to mind. Those broad shoulders, that chiseled jawline, the slick black hair with the unembarrassed curl. Christopher Reeves is Superman. I’d know him anywhere!
Unless, of course, he was wearing a tan suit and horn rimmed glasses. Then, he would be completely unrecognizable. Just some nameless four-eyed nerd in the crowd.16
I’m kidding, of course. This is the one part of the Superman mythos that has never made sense to me, even as a little kid. How could the Man of Steel simply put on a a pair glasses, call himself ‘Clark Kent’ and nobody recognizes him? He’s still Christopher Reeves! He still has the shoulders, the jawline, and the black hair! He’s clearly a jock masquerading as a nerd.
It makes no sense.
It would be one thing if he worked at the local widget factory, and people barely paid attention to him. But he works at the Daily Planet, for crying out loud. All his best friends are investigative reporters!17 You’re telling me Perry White never once noticed that one of his on-the-spot reporters is always conspicuously absent when Superman shows up to save the day? Or that Superman’s best friend, Jimmy Olsen, has never stood in the dark room developing a picture of Superman and said, “Hey, that looks like Clark!” Or Lois Lane, the woman who loves both Clark Kent and Superman, the woman who has been saved by him more times than she can count, who sits across from Clark every day— you’re telling me she can’t put two and two together? Lois! Look at that jaw. That hair. Those shoulders. Look into those eyes. It’s not a bird… it’s not a plane… it’s Superman!
It makes no sense.
The rest of the mythos I can get behind. Super strength and super speed? of course! X-ray vision and frost breath? yeah, sure. Flying around the earth backwards to turn back time? that’s just science. I’m on board for all of it. You tell me his only weakness is a piece of an asteroid from his home planet lightyears away that somehow made it to earth— I’m 100% with you. Just don’t tell me that Metropolis’ greatest reporters can stand next to Christopher Reeves and not know he’s Superman.
It makes no sense.
I don’t know about you. But I experience the same sort of disbelief when I read this morning’s passage from Luke. We’re told that two of the disciples were walking along the road and Jesus began walking with them, but somehow they didn’t recognize him. It defies explanation. It’s not like they didn’t have Jesus on the brain, either. According to Luke, they were actually discussing together Jesus’ death and the women’s report that he had risen. And Jesus sidles up next to them and they don’t even recognize him. They see the beard, the warm smile, the kind eyes, and they somehow don’t put it together. They somehow don’t see Jesus.
It makes no sense.
Not only that, but as they walk along, Jesus begins to teach them. He discusses with them what the scriptures say about a dying and resurrected Messiah. Now how many times do you think these disciples have heard Jesus teach? On the mountain, the plain, by the sea, on the road— how many times? How many times have they heard his parables, his instructions, his admonitions? And here he is in the same familiar mode, sharing the things of the Kingdom with them, and they can’t even distinguish the sound of his unmistakable voice!
It makes no sense.
How can they not see that they are in the presence of their Lord Jesus Christ? Is his visage so totally transformed by resurrection? Are they walking in some kind of divine trance? Is he wearing a tan suit and horn rimmed glasses?
It makes no sense.
But then I think of all the times when I have missed the presence of Jesus. I think of how many times I’ve driven right by him in the parking lot where he was sitting in a wheel chair with a US ARMY cap and a cardboard sign. I think of how I’ve missed her at the grocery store with sunglasses and makeup hiding her swollen black eyes. I think of how I’ve mistaken his voice when it was shouted in Spanish by the man hunched over his smoking carburetor at the gas station. How could I not slow down? How could I not ask her if she’s safe? How could I have not said, ‘Ayudo, amigo?’ What keeps me from recognizing Jesus until he has vanished?18
It makes no sense.
When evening approaches and the two disciples reach their destination, Jesus makes like he’s going to keep on walking. The two disciples tell him, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” It’s a simple act of kindness to a stranger. They offer him a bed for the night and a place at their table. Not because they know he is the risen Christ, but because they believe he will be vulnerable out in the dark by himself and their rabbi once taught them to go the extra mile.
They invite Jesus in and he sits at their table and when he blesses the bread, breaks it, and gives it to them, suddenly their eyes are opened. And then Jesus vanishes. The disciples say, “Were not our hearts burning within us when he was talking to us on the road? How could we not have recognized him? We heard his voice! We saw his eyes! How did we not put two and two together? It makes no sense!”
There’s a detail I never noticed until this week. The very next line in the passage says, “That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem…” That same hour was after dinner. The disciples didn’t sleep on their discovery. They didn’t wait until it was morning. They walked seven miles, through the night, all the way back to Jerusalem, just to tell the eleven what had happened on the road and how Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of bread. Such is the joy of coming face to face with Jesus!19
But it begins with an act of kindness. It begins with opening the door to a stranger and insisting that they share a meal with you and use your bed. There’s no way to know before that. God never reveals the true identities of the strangers he puts beside us on this road of life. In hindsight, it may seem so obvious but, in the moment, we are kept from seeing. I think because we have to make the decision ourselves. We have to decide whether to open the door or let the stranger keep on walking into the night.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been guilty of the later far more times that I care to admit. But occasionally, I have opened the door. Occasionally, I have listened to the still small voice within me and spoken up. Occasionally, I have gone the extra mile. And in those times when I have broken bread with strangers, Jesus has appeared to me. I have seen his face and recognized his voice and I have known indescribable joy. I have known what it is to be caught up in the eternal sacrament of Christ’s self-giving love and I have known peace beyond understanding. And in these fleeting moments, just before he once again vanishes into a world of tan suits and horn rimmed glasses, everything makes perfect sense.
The Blind Women of Cambodia
During the early eighties, the United States received a surge of Cambodian refugees fleeing the killing fields of the dictator Pol-Pot.20 As part of the asylum process, the refugees received routine medical examinations. The doctors who were examining these refugees noticed that a higher than average percentage of the women were blind.
What was more striking, was that when the doctors examined the blind women of Cambodia, they could find no damage to their eyes. There were no signs of deterioration. What’s more, their pupils seemed responsive to light. Their eyes should have been able to see and yet these women were walking in total darkness. The doctors couldn’t make any sense of it until they began to listen to their stories.
One woman described seeing so many deaths in her village that she was crying constantly. She said that she had cried and cried for days until the tears had destroyed her vision.
Another woman described seeing her husband disemboweled in front of her. The soldiers told her that her husband was a traitor commanded her not to cry for him or she would die too. She said that as she held her tears in, silently watching the man she loved be tortured, it was like something snapped inside of her and she couldn’t see.
Yet another woman recounted how she had run from her village as it was being burned down. As she was fleeing from the soldiers, she heard the loud gunfires, and the screams of people being caught and killed. She kept running and not looking back as people she’d known all her life were murdered behind her. She said that by the time she got to the refugee camp, her vision was gone.21
The doctors concluded that the women had functional blindness. Even though their eyes were perfectly healthy, their brains had cut off communication with them in order to survive the trauma. At some point they had seen so many horrors and atrocities that something deep within them simply said, “no more” and they were kept from seeing.22
When We Walked With God
Once upon a time, we human beings walked with God.23 In fact one of our first memories is waking up in the garden and walking with him in the cool of the day. But even after we were cast out, God walked with us from time to time. Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac— they all walked with God.
In those days, God was frighteningly near. Just on the other side of the curtain of reality. You never knew when he might show up. Our tattered scrolls preserve long forgotten memories of what it was like. It would happen when you least expected it. In fact you usually wouldn’t even know it was happening. You’d be going about the day and you’d end up in a trance-like state, unaware that you had wandered into the thin space between the human and divine realms.24
You might find yourself speaking to a group of strangers, or a general with an unsheathed sword, or wrestling with a roadside bandit, and something would keep you from realizing until it was over that you were in the presence of the God. You would leave the encounter with a promise, an assurance of victory, or a blessing and limp, and then you would know: And you’d set up a stone or something to mark the place so you could show it to your children and your grandchildren and say, “This is where I walked and talked with God.”
But those days didn’t last forever. Walking with God got to be too dangerous for us. We feared his power and his wrath. We feared that looking into his face might be like looking into the blazing hot desert sun, and so we asked others to walk with God for us. We told our prophets to walk with God on the mountains and then come down and tell us what it was that he demanded of us.
But even this was too dangerous. Knowing that God was out there somewhere, just walking around, going back and forth on a ladder between heaven and earth, made us uneasy. What if we did the wrong thing and he came to get punish us? Or worse, what if he decided he wanted us to be a prophet and just showed up one day unannounced!
So we made God a house— a big house called a temple.25 And we provided God with a staff of servants called priests. We would gather outside the doors of the house and offer sacrifices and sing psalms, and we would send the priests into the sanctuary to deal with God. But even for them, God was safely behind a curtain. No one had to risk seeing him except for the high priest once a year at a predetermined time. It was perfect. No one had to worry about God showing up spontaneously in their homes. He had people to serve him and soothe his anger and none of us had to walk with him. Life could be orderly and predictable. We had books to tell us what God wanted and animals to give him when we disobeyed the books. No one had to walk or talk with him.
But God being on earth with us was even too dangerous. After all, what if the priests angered God? What was to keep him from walking right out of the Temple and doing something unpredictable. We needed God further away. Much further away. So we convinced God to live in heaven permanently. We told him we would still worship him at his house and that his name could dwell there but he would remain safely behind three heavens. If he needed to speak to us he could send angels and if he wanted to walk with us he could do it in our dreams.
While this was much safer, it was also sad. We liked the idea that he was up there somewhere doing big picture planning, leaving the day- to-day logistics to middle management, but there was a part of us that missed the old days. The days when God was loose in the world and you never knew where he might turn up. When heaven wasn’t hidden by three layers meteorological clockwork and a thousand angels, but was just on the other side of a thin veil. We missed the days when we walked and talked with God.
Then one day a baby was born. This was a big event but few of us recognized it. The whole world was in a trance-like state. When the child grew up, he said and did the most incredible things. He claimed that he had walked with God and that if we walked with him we could walk with God too. So some of us did. We followed him everywhere he went. To be with him was to be in that thin space between the divine and human realm, where anything was possible. Where a couple fish and loaves could feed a thousand people. Where the blind could see and the deaf could hear. Where sickness, demons, and weather had no power. Many of us began to believe that to walk with this man was to walk with God.
Then suddenly it was all over.
They put the man to death. They crucified him on the outskirts of town and we woke up. We snapped out of our momentary confusion. The trance was broken. We were back in the real world where the powerful always win and death has the final word. Back where a disinterested God stays in his place a zillion trillion lightyears away. We were heartbroken.
The next day we didn’t know what to do with ourselves and so we stayed inside. Then the following day, one of us said, “let’s go for a walk.”
And we did. We walked and we walked and we walked. We walked single-mindedly, one foot before the other, in a dull rhythm. Not caring where we were going or much seeing anything that was happening around us. We just walked and walked and walked.26
And as we were walking, a stranger came and walked beside us. He saw our tears and asked us why we were sad. We told the stranger all that had happened. The stranger tried to comfort us with scripture but we were too focused on walking. Our minds were in a fog. We just kept walking and talking with the stranger until twilight. Then, as the day was fading, we came to the place we were going and the stranger started to walk on. But we invited him to come in and eat with us. And the stranger did. And he sat at the head of the table and presided over the meal.
I cannot tell you why this did not seem strange to us. Why our eyes were kept from seeing. I can only tell you that we didn’t know until he broke the bread. Then our eyes were opened and as soon as we recognized him, he was gone. We said, “Did our hearts not burn within us while he was talking to us on the road?”
Then we got up from the table and walked. We walked and walked and walked, all through the night, to go tell the others, “God is back! And he walks with us, and he talks with us!”
And so we keep on walking and walking and walking with God.
~ My own parable
SERMONTELLING NOTES:
“That same day” was Easter Sunday, the day the women had reported the empty tomb to the disciples who found their story ridiculous.
The storyteller lets the listeners in on a secret of which the disciples remain temporarily unaware. Gospel readers are often struck by how clueless Jesus’ disciples seem to be. From time to time, one of the gospel storytellers suggests that God is clouding the judgement of Jesus’ followers until an opportune moment.
Jesus, of course, is well aware what the disciples are talking about. His questions are steering the conversation towards a teachable moment.
The role of the Romans in Jesus’ death is downplayed here. The primary culprits are the Temple elite and “our leaders.” Passages of this sort have occasionally been used to promote antisemitism. In context, however, this is a Jewish critique from within. These are Jews recognizing the culpability of their own leaders.
“We had hoped” places the disciples’ hope in the past tense. They cannot fathom that the Jesus whom they saw crucified could still be the long awaited redeemer.
It is often pointed out that the “three days” of the Easter story is actually only about 36 hours. We can make the math work by acknowledging that these thirty six hours actually contained all of Saturday, part of Friday, and part of Sunday… three different days of the week.
However, this creative timekeeping may miss the point. Biblical storytellers often use numbers in a far different way than modern readers are accustomed. Throughout the Hebrew scriptures, auspicious events are said to happen on “the third day.” Abraham reach Mount Moriah, where he will offer up Isaac on an altar “on the third day” (Genesis 22:4). The Lord descends to speak to Moses at Sinai “on the third day” (Exodus 19:11). By the time the gospel stories are told, the phrase “on the third day” elicits a Pavlovian expectation for a miracle to occur.
I would pay almost anything to have been there to here Jesus explain all of this to his followers!
The disciples act out radical hospitality toward this stranger (still unaware that he is Jesus.)
Jesus is recognized in the breaking of the bread, coupled with the open hospitality of the disciples. These two things will become benchmark practices of the early church.
The testimony of the women has been completely ignored. It is unclear what reception the testimony of these two men might have had. “While they were still speaking,” Jesus appears to the entire group. (Luke 24:36)
A Tan Suit and Horn Rimmed Glasses
Some of the best feedback I’ve gotten this year has been for my stories connecting pop culture and the Biblical story. Even though these treatments are more of a devotional than a pure story, my hope is that they demonstrate how our sermons can interact with stories that are so familiar to the folk in the pews. Superman, is one of those near universal characters in pop culture that most everyone knows something about. That means he takes less explanation and set up that another pop culture reference might,
This is my way in to the story. I’ve always found that it’s great to start with some kind of personal connection to the pop culture being discussed. I’m clearly coming at this as someone with a deep and abiding love for Superman and Christopher Reeves. That is true to me. Your way in might be different. I could imagine a fun way in might be from a point of ambivalence. Something like:
My (grand)kids have been talking about the new Superman movie. They really want to see it. I don’t know. I’ve never really liked Super Heroes. All those tights and capes and ridiculous powers. It’s all just seems silly to me. Especially the secret identities. I remember watching the movie with Christopher Reeves. He’s this handsome quarterback with a square jaw and broad shoulders. Then he puts those glasses on and suddenly no one recognizes him?
It makes no sense…
I call it Kal-El Cognition Theory.
Or is it Deans Cain and Henries Cavill? I’m never sure…
In the past, I have done this illustration with a powerpoint. I would show a close up of Christopher Reeves as Superman and then switch to Clark Kent in almost the same pose. First, I’d say something like, “Where’d he go!?!? What did you do with Superman, four eyes?” And then I would switch back and forth between the pictures quickly and ask, “Are you telling me no one can tell the difference between these two people?”
You can have a lot of fun with the absurdity. Now this stands in contrast to my usual advice to not use props and slides that are going to break the story spell and pull people out of your message. But at this point (probably early in the sermon) we really aren’t telling a story, we’re commenting. Because, in this mode, the communicator is front and center, props and slides actually keep the hearer engaged. The trick to sermontelling is to be aware of when you are in story mode and when you are in presenting mode. When you are in story mode you don’t want to do anything that will picture the hearer’s work of visualizing the story. When you are in presenting mode, the focus is on you and you may resort to gimmicks to keep the audience engaged.
I like to think of the hearer’s attention like a camera that is either pointed at the story or the teller.
Slow down and hit this line with incredulity! They’re basically detectives and they can’t figure this out?
Here I have related quickly three examples from my own experience. In a sermon context, each of these might be fleshed out more. You might relay your own experiences.
I love these little moments of discovery when we can point out to our congregation details that we all normally walk right past. Fred Craddock talks about not just telling the congregation what we saw but bringing them along for the ride. In other words, we often have these moments of wondering and wrestling followed by discovery in our study throughout the week, but then we simply report the product of all that work on Sunday morning. What if we bring them on the journey? I really struggled with this part… it made no sense… then I thought about it this way… and suddenly…
The Blind Women of Cambodia
My Dad and I keep our plagiarism in the family. I heard him tell this story many times in sermons growing up. The first time I thought to tell it myself, I emailed him and asked him for the details. I was actually surprised by how many details I had twisted in my memory over the years. I pictured the story happening in Africa and for some reason thought all the women in one village were blind and it was missionaries who were trying to work out what happened.
This was despite hearing the actual account on numerous occasions. Our stories have a habit of bending stories and supplying forgotten details. That’s why when you are telling life stories, it’s always good to go back to the source, when possible, to make sure you are telling the most accurate version you can tell.
Per the rule of threes, I chose three anecdotes from this story about the blind women. This is a good way to bring real life accounts into ‘story form.’
The phrase ‘they were kept from seeing’ echoes the scripture passage. This story can be a way into talking about spiritual blindness. We are sometimes kept from recognizing Jesus because of the heartbreak and trauma we’ve experienced. We close off that part of ourselves to protect our hearts from pain and disappointment.
When We Walked With God
This is a theological story. Sometimes, we zoom in on the Biblical story and go very deep into the feelings and experiences of the people living in the moment of the story. Another strategy is to zoom out and tell the whole story of the Bible in light of an image from the story. The Robe is an example of this. I call this a theological story. In this case, I am tracing the idea of walking with God through the Bible.
In James Kugel’s book THE GOD OF OLD, there is a chapter called The Moment of Confusion which discusses this phenomenon. by James Kugel. Kugel observes that in the Yahwistic source, God and his messengers tend to bleed into one another and that the figure receiving the theophany/visitation often doesn’t know it until it is over. He proposes that this preserves a very old way of thinking of the presence of God. I was struck in reading this chapter how much this pattern parallels the Emmaus story. It is almost as if Luke is telling us that God has gone back to the old freewheeling way of relating to humanity in the resurrected Christ. Exploring that idea was the birth of this parable.
In the world of this parable, the temple was our idea to keep God at arms length. Or course the Biblical record is very different. Here, prophets and temples function as a metaphor for the ways we keep God at arms length. We make relating to God other people’s job and we simply show up to church and follow the rules.
The point of this paragraph is to show that the walkers are in a trance-like state but they are unaware of it. For that reason, I never say they are in a trance.