Easter 3A
Text: Luke 24:13-35
Sermon by Rev. Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
April 26, 2020
The Lesson of the Corona Crisis Walk
This sermon is about the lesson of the corona crisis walk. The lesson, of the corona crisis walk.
Now I want you to imagine if you yourself were the Lord Jesus Christ – I want you to walk in his sandals for a moment – and on Easter Day you had indeed been raised that morning from the dead into resurrected new life … well, how would you have chosen to spend the rest of the day?
OR, put it this way: You’ve seen the little inspirational saying that people sometimes tack to the wall of their work station: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life!” That was certainly true of Jesus on Easter Day, right? The first day of resurrected new life?! And how does Jesus choose to spend it?
According to the Gospel lesson we get this morning, Jesus on the afternoon of Easter Day … decided to go for a walk! Jesus heads out from Jerusalem on the road to Emmaus, no doubt looking for some fresh air, and enjoying the spring day and apparently looking to connect with people out on the road.
As pedestrian as that sounds – sorry about that! – it shouldn’t surprise us. After all, Jesus had been sheltering-in-place for three whole days with no social contact in that tomb, hadn’t seen a soul, and I’m sure you’ve noticed that after two or three days of shelter-in-place, you’ve just got to get out of the house! Going for a walk has become a new art form! I’m on the phone with people all the time these days and what I get is: “Hey, I’m out at Izaak Walton right now.” “I’ve got the kids and we’re going around the block.” “I’m walking the dog down to the park and back. Third walk today for the dog; I’m wearin’ him out!”
But there are other reasons it should not surprise us that Jesus chooses on Easter Day to do something that is just so ordinary. For in the Gospels, Jesus seems to be as interested in savoring ordinary life as he is in passing out the extraordinary life. Consider:
• He’s so curious about life that as a boy he hangs back in Jerusalem to learn more.
• His very first public appearance comes when he is socializing and enjoying a normal, everyday wedding reception.
• The Pharisees criticize him because he and his disciples like to eat and drink so much.
• He’s so interested in people that are hurting that he becomes a healer;
• so interested in the nature around us that he uses sparrows and lilies to illustrate the extraordinary;
• so interested in friendship that he raises Lazarus from the dead;
• so interested in keeping in touch that he offers a lasting meal of bread and wine, his body and blood.
Jesus, in the end, is so taken with the everyday beauty of being alive, that he refuses to remain dead.
And on Easter Day, the day of salvation, Jesus goes out for a walk. Birds and trees. Checking out the neighbors’ yards. Catching a little of the sun. Watching the kids at play. Everything about Jesus in the Gospels suggest that the saving of life – salvation, that is – is the same as the savoring of life.
When that word – savoring – came to me for the sermon this week I decided to spend a little time in word study. See?; this is what happens when we are sheltering in place and your preacher has too much time on his hands. But this is good stuff, worth it, you’ll see, so don’t hit that fast forward button on your YouTube video!
“To savor,” I discovered, comes from the Latin word sapere, which means both “to taste,” and “to be wise.” Now isn’t that a great juxtaposition? When you savor something out on your walk, you are both tasting of it, and you appreciate it with real wisdom.
When you savor life you are relishing it, I thought, so I looked up that word, too! To relish also comes from the Latin; in fact our words relax, release, and relish all derive from relaxare, “to loosen.” That’s the attraction of going for a walk in the middle of the corona crisis. Your walk gives you a chance at the healing of savoring, and relishing life.
On the day of his resurrection Jesus chose to take a comfortable walk with a couple of the disciples and simply enjoy the conversation. You get the sense there’s even an easy-going puckishness about him, like he’s got time to play with them when they don’t recognize him and start lecturing him about the “events in Jerusalem” as if he’s missed out on everything. Seems like Jesus is just happy to be breathing and moving about again, savoring and relishing this world that he so loved. If it had been you or I in that situation, probably there would have to be some more important message-giving and miracle-making involved. Not for Jesus – for him the sensational of the morning, gives way in the afternoon to mere seeing, smelling, hearing, touching; walking along. Big doings, give way to simply being.
There is no saving life, without savoring life. There’s a lot of talk going on right now about what the corona lockdown life is teaching us, what lessons do we need to take forward. One of the lessons I want to take with me is the saving effect of savor and relish. When I choose to live overloaded and in a hurry, I lose the gift of noticing that comes to me so much easier when I am slow. When this is all over, I want to keep on taking more walks in life, literally, yes, but figuratively too – the kind of slower walk through life that helps me appreciate and – dare I say it? – find God in the things and the people around me that all too often I think of as just ordinary.
That was the experience of the two disciples with Jesus that day. There is that moment of glad astonishment at the end of the walk to Emmaus. Spending some time in something as ordinary as conversation, they notice that their hearts are burning within them. On just a short walk, with just a few steps, they have felt more alive than ever before. Walking together, and savoring and relishing together alongside Jesus, has fed them the bread of life.
When I was a seminary student I did my field work, and preached my very first sermons, in a congregation in the Englewood neighborhood of Chicago. As you can imagine, for those first few preaching opportunities I was wound up awfully tight, talking a mile a minute, trying, as one patient lady on my student committee said to me, trying to cram everything I ever knew down the throats of my unfortunate listeners.
In the tradition of the African-American Christian church, the listeners to a sermon will sometimes tell their preacher, “Take your time! Take your time, now, preacher!” In that congregation in which I first preached that was a very popular response to me, as my listeners tried to slow me down. “Take your time, Bob. Take your time.”
In the flush and excitement of that very first Easter Day, Jesus chose to spend the rest of the day, going for a walk. Because there is no saving life, without savoring life. Going at it at an easy, walking pace gave the two disciples the space and the time they needed to see – savor; relish! – just who it was, walking beside them the whole time. In these days of hyperventilating newscasts and the rush of worry and fear, do not forget the lesson of that easy walk you’re doing every day. Take your time, preacher. Look around you and savor, relish, and know that your salvation, our Lord Jesus Christ no less, is right there next to you, after all.