Faithful Presence : Keep a Burning Heart

4th Sunday of Easter  April 21, 2024

The text for this sermon is Luke 24:13-35

Can you recall an incident in your life when you were breath-robbing surprised by something (or someone)?  The kind of surprise that left you frozen in body and mind for a few seconds?

If you have, then you are in a position to relate to the two disciples in the Emmaus story.

These two men, followers of Jesus, are reeling from a bottomless disappointment. This Jesus, whom they’d been following, had given all the signs that he was sent to be Israel’s redeemer. How can it be that someone who could multiply three loaves to feed 10,000, who could quiet the raging sea with a word and raise a man from the grave end up dead himself? How could this seemingly sure thing fall apart so completely and so fast?

All who followed Jesus, who believed in him, are confused, grief stricken to be sure, but maybe also angry? Angry with themselves for having been taken in? I don’t think it’s too hard to imagine the kind of conversation these two men are having: a post-mortem kind of conversation in which they are recalling this miracle and that teaching and wondering how they could have misunderstood so completely.

Where are they going? these two disciples? To Emmaus, yes, but why? to return to their old lives? What’s to be done now? except the same old, same old.

A stranger comes up beside them. He asks “What were you talking about? They stop walking, mouths agape, and stare at him; deep sadness written on their faces. “You’re coming from Jerusalem as are we and you have no idea? Could you not know what happened there?”

So they give their companion a quick summary. He listens, and then he begins to speak.

Jesus illuminates their scriptures: God creating life from chaos, Isaac born to elderly Sarah, freedom and homeland wrestled from slavery in Egypt, Samuel born to barren Hannah, renewed identity arising from the languish of Exile and Jerusalem rising from ashes, a Messiah who dies and then rises from the grave. He unfolds the epic of how life emerges from life-less places, even life from death.

What the two disciples didn’t know is that the Risen Christ was present with them, leading them into the great work of God. They didn’t comprehend until they were sitting at dinner and Jesus reached for the bread, broke and blessed it and gave it to them.

It is then they recognize Jesus and a whole lot more. Can you see them, reaching out to receive the bread then stopping, stunned, realizing for the first time since seeing him, who sits before them. 

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking on the road while he was opening the scriptures to us?” they say.

They couldn’t get back to Jerusalem fast enough, eager they were to share what they’d experienced and seen and realized. When they got there, they met up with an excited group of disciples who told these two that Jesus had appeared to Simon.

Can we imagine the energy and amazement that fired up from that group as Light and Life broke in upon them? 

And then Luke tells us Jesus appears to them all; he reviews what he’s already explained and then tells them and then said to them “You are witnesses of these things.” (14:48)
Witnesses to the resurrection, witnesses to the story of salvation, witnesses of the wonder of wonders. He tells them they are to share all of this. 

After Jesus ascends to heaven, these disciples and followers are enraptured with great joy and continual praise. (Luke24:53)

This story is on the Top Ten Chart in the minds of most Christians. But we would be wise to let it seep into our bones. For this is our story, not just theirs.

We’ve walked paths of dashed hopes and painful times of uncertainty and anxiety. And we Christians should have stories galore of God’s presence and agency on our behalf in such times, yes?  We Christians should have stories of epiphanies when a word from God broke in upon us and realigned us, yes? Well, we are commissioned to share our revelatory experiences so that those who are bewildered and discouraged and without comfort (even if they don’t appear to be) can take hold of the hope and rescue that is in Christ; when those struggling with doubt can be offered something to hold on to. 

But we’re hesitant, shy, reserved, nervous. Many of us don’t know HOW to start. We are not sure HOW to be that faithful witness.

This story can be instructive: Note how Jesus begins the conversation: He asks them “What were you talking about?”

What’s been most on your mind lately? we might ask. The point is to let ourselves enter into the experience of those who surround us, to begin with them. 

And then there’s the burning heart. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” the Emmaus pair asked. Did our hearts not burn as we started to realize in a new and deeper way all that God has done? How God has taken us to light and life over and over and over again; how God loves us and works on our behalf far beyond what we ever imagined.

The burning heart is what propelled those two to Jerusalem to share the glory of their experience with Jesus the risen Christ. The teller’s heart burns, as does the heart of the hearer.

But what is this burning heart? Does it mean we go about scorching folks? preaching from the street corners? No, consider what precipitated their burning heart? It ignited as Jesus explained to them the meaning of the scripture and helped them see the movement of God’s hand over the span of time; how God spoke life out of chaos, called forth life in dead and barren places, rescued and restored life when all seemed lost.

That’s what ignited their burning hearts. It wasn’t theology; It wasn’t doctrine. It’s the hand of God.  It’s God at work in our lives that brings to us an insight, an understanding, It’s that work of God that sets our feet on something solid and inviolable, unmovable giving rise to a deeply grounded confirmation that what we’ve just experienced or understood is True. 

This knowing isn’t the kind wherein we say to someone I know what’s what and you don’t. No, not that kind! It is a knowing that lives within us---that gives us wisdom. It helps us intuit the right thing to say, the right thing that needs to be done, the right commitments to make, the right kindness to offer, the right sacrifice we gladly embrace.

When we claim our baptism, that moment when we claim God and God, glory be, claims us. When we seriously journey with Jesus, then Jesus, through the Holy Spirit opens the eyes of our heart and molds us into people who know how to carry that same presence into the world.

A burning heart means we own the expansiveness of God’s great and profound, deep, burning heart for us. Might it not be the case that Jesus’ heart burned too? Burned to walk with those two beleaguered friends? To break bread and bless and reveal his great Truth? Then to see their response; the dawn of their understanding and subsequent fervor to share their story?

We simply share in natural, easy ways the source of our delight and hope, that we carry that delight and hope close to the surface, and let it radiate in how we work, how we play, how we respond to surprise and navigate through insult and difficulties.

Keep the passion for God alive in your life. That passion will be like an artesian well of Faithful Presence.

Pastor L Quanstrom