Sermon for the 3rd Sunday in Easter

I thought I should tell you that my sermon is on the Road to Emmaus. Textweek.com gave me the wrong text but it all worked. I just took out some of the specifics and only preached on the broad areas of the text.

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So how do we see Jesus? How do know God’s Spirit? Why didn’t Jesus’ own disciples not even recognize him? What does Jesus look like? These are all real but difficult questions to answer. We are constantly worrying and wondering am I going to recognize Jesus? It has become such an issue that we even had an entire class session in my systematic class where we discussed this very issue of what we thought Jesus might look like. Keith Hayward, a AME pastor and student at LTSG, said something very profound. “I don’t know what Jesus looks like, but I do want to recognize him when he comes back.” I think one of the strangest mysteries we have in our faith is that we really do not know what Jesus looks like and when we hear stories like this, we continue to worry and ask the question “Am I going to recognize Jesus when he comes to me?”
There are many different theories out to why the disciples did not recognize Jesus at first. Some believe Jesus was in his divine/resurrected being. Frankly I do not buy into this. Some believe that the stress Jesus was put through on the cross and the days before distorted his appearance but after he was raised he was healed of this stress. Again a little hard for be to believe. Some believe that God held their eyes close from recognizing Jesus, like the text says, but the text really doesn’t say that God kept their eyes closed. We just assume that God is the one who is doing the action.

So I want to claim that this text is more than just a post-resurrected experience by Jesus. Rather this text should make us ask question, “Who do you say that Jesus is?” and not “what does Jesus look like?”.

I can remember leading a small group of 9th and 10th graders at our Synod’s high school youth gathering a few years ago. We were talking about who they thought Jesus was. I was the lucky guy who got the most hormonal 9th and 10th graders at the event. They were having a hard time concentrating on this passage and I was getting frustrated. I finally screamed at the top of my lungs, mainly because none of them would stop talking, and said “WHO DO YOU SAY THAT I AM?” One of the students replied, “You are Matt Day, the loud mouth Jesus freak.”

As much as I wanted to slap that kid, what he said was True, Jesus is represented by us. Now I wouldn’t claim that I’m a loud mouth Jesus freak in sense that I am a tele-evangelist but I would claim to be passionate my faith and passionate our Church’s mission in the world.

I believe that Worship is a wonderful way that we can reflect Jesus to others. If you haven’t notice, this text is where we got the order for our Liturgy. First we hear the word and Jesus preaches on the word and what everything had meant, then Jesus breaks the bread and he is revealed to the disciples. Word and Sacrament.

But this text goes far deeper than just our worship. This text reminds us that we see Jesus sometimes in very unique ways. Jesus decides when he will be revealed to others and how he is revealed can change constantly.

Throughout the ages, artists have tried to describe what Jesus looks like. From the traditional Jesus holding the baby sheep to a more modern day scientific picture of what Jesus looks like. None of these pictures are wrong. They all hold a particular meaning for certain individuals and all speak to how we have come know who Jesus is. But we must remember that we have no real description of what Jesus looks like. We see in this text that not even the disciples recognize Jesus at first. I believe the reason behind this is that Jesus needs no description.

While it is fascinating to see how the portrayals of Jesus have changed and stayed the same, we must remember that simple fact that we really do not know what Jesus looked like. We have ideas and such but no hard description. I have come to believe that the Gospel writers intended that we shouldn’t so much be looking for a particular man that fits the description of Jesus but rather we concentrate on the work, the teachings, and life Jesus and just let Jesus worry about doing the revealing.

Jesus appears to us when we need Jesus and that isn’t just when we are sad or upset but it is a 24/7 thing. Sometimes that might be in the way of another individual, a school, a government, a church, a pastor, a TV, a guitar, a song, even sometimes in a TV show. We are all apart of the Body of Christ. Jesus finds us when we are lost. Just like the wonderful song says, “I once was lost but now I am found” so does Jesus seek us out. We need no description of Jesus because Jesus is inside each of us, inside you and me. Jesus has the power to reveal himself in many different ways. We will see Jesus revealed today when we celebrate this wonderful meal but Jesus will continued to be revealed when we leave this place. So go from this place, and know the answer to the question “Who is Jesus?” Amen.