Sermon preached Sunday, August 8, 2021 at Ypsilanti Free Methodist Church
Audio recording available here
We are in the middle of a fantastic series called The Table, where we’ve been exploring how to follow in the way of Jesus by practicing hospitality. This is one of my absolute favorite topics to learn and read about, to teach and to practice. In my graduate program I took a course called “Creating Lives and Communities of Hospitality” and I have never been the same since.
And I’m getting the sense that the people known as YpsiFree are feeling the same way. You have been leaning into this conversation around The Table. You are using your Connect Card to tell us how you’re going to be stepping out and practicing hospitality in super practical ways. You are picking up a copy of the BLESS book in the lobby and actually reading it. Pastor Steve and I are encouraged by your engagement around this topic and this super practical book. And even more than that we are praying…we are expecting the Holy Spirit to transform us as we live out love by putting these lessons into practice. “Do not merely listen to the word, James says, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.” We’re looking forward to having a BLESS book discussion on the 29th where we can circle up and share how we’re going to live out what we’ve been reading.
In last week’s message covering the wedding at Cana, we encountered Jesus as a lover of parties. Which, as an Enneagram 7, is so fun! Jesus invites us to practice the discipline of celebration, to feast and rejoice elbow to elbow with one another. Do you remember what word you chose back in January to be your focus for 2021? My word of the year is JOY and in the past few years Jesus has been inviting me to be “in charge of celebrations” – to be the one who has a pocket full of metaphorical confetti ready to toss in the air in celebration of the little victories I notice in our everyday lives.
Now, this week we’re going to the other end of the spectrum, equally difficult but very different. I invite you this morning to put on your walking shoes and join me on the way to Emmaus.
Reading from Luke 24:13-35
So we’re going to back up in the story just a bit to get a better context for where we are and where we’re heading.
The disciples and Jesus had just endured one of the most traumatic roller-coasters of a week. We know it as Holy Week. It started with Palm Sunday, Jesus entering into Jerusalem to fanfare and celebration, but it very quickly turned dark. The local pastors and teachers had been threatened by the authority with which Jesus taught and by the devoted following he was developing. Jesus was taking people away from their churches and with it their prestige and their source of income. They wanted to overthrow his unofficial kingdom.
And we know what transpired. Jesus shares a meal with his 12 closest friends and tries to prepare them for what is to come. They don’t understand. How could they? That night Jesus goes off to the garden to pray. And not just a church-prayer but a gut-wrenching prayer pleading with his Father to come up with any other option than the torture he would endure. At that moment, one of his dear friends, Judas, betrays him and hands him over to be arrested.
Over the next few hours, Jesus’ 12 apostles, his family, and dozens of his faithful disciples watch in horror as he is humiliated, beaten, and finally put to death on a cross.
Now it’s Sunday morning and a few of the female disciples had gone to the tomb to mourn and to honor Jesus. They had returned with a ludicrous story about an angel and the stone being rolled away and Jesus’ body nowhere to be found.
For some of the disciples, including Cleopas and an unnamed companion, it was necessary to get back home, to return to life as usual. Or at the very least to go through the motions of daily life even while their heads swirled with nightmares from the weekend and their hearts broke with despair.
So what does this journey have to do with hospitality? These disciples chose to walk together and share all about what they had seen and felt over the past few days. As one commentator (Shannon Michael Pater) described it,
“Their words and their hearts are heavier than any supplies they carry home from their annual Passover pilgrimage to their holy city, now a city of horrors.”
The disciples don’t recognize Jesus when he joins them on the way. Maybe it’s because their eyes were swollen with tears, or their minds were consumed with grief. But they welcome him on their way.
Cleopas and his companion show hospitality to this stranger, offering who they are in this exact moment. Marjorie Thompson, author of one of my favorite spiritual discipline books Soul Feast writes,
“Hospitality is the act of sharing who we are as well as what we have.”
These two friends have no happy-clappy welcome to offer. They can’t even muster small talk. They share who they are and what they have with Jesus – they share their story, their grief, their hopelessness.
Now what about you and me – where can we find ourselves on the way to Emmaus? Let’s each consider where we’ve experienced a sort of disrupting event in our lives – maybe something as traumatic as the death of a loved one or that medical diagnosis. Maybe it’s the loss of a job or the starting of a new one. Maybe it’s a new season as an empty-nester or as an independent college student. Or maybe it’s more subtle like the sense that something needs to change and we’re not sure what. Or maybe we feel stuck in our spiritual life and we don’t know how to get unstuck. Whatever it is, we can all find ourselves on this road in-between two places – we’ve left the place that is known, and familiar and we don’t yet know what our new normal will look like.
This difficult in-between-ness has a fancy name called liminal space. Liminal space is the road between the now and the not yet. Liminal comes from the Latin word “Limen” which literally means “threshold.” As Ruth Haley Barton says, this
“threshold is referring to that needed transition when we are moving from one place to another or from one state-of-being to another. Liminal space usually induces some sort of inner crises: you have left the tried and true (or it has left you), and you have not yet been able to replace it with anything else.”
One great example of Liminal Space is the Wardrobe in the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. How many of you have read this book? It’s the second book in a fictional children’s series called The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. I don’t care how old you are, if you haven’t read these books you need to. I re-read them every couple years and inevitably some new aspect of the allegory strikes my imagination and my spirit in a fresh way. And don’t just say, “I’ve watched the movie.” It doesn’t count. You’ve got to read the books. (Ok I’ll get off that soapbox now)
Anyways, in this book, 4 young children are sent to live with their elderly relative in rural England during World War 2. During a rainy-day game of Hide and Seek, the youngest of them, Lucy, finds a great hiding place in the spare room. She climbs into this wardrobe and presses herself back past the fur coats and moth balls. Suddenly she realizes she’s in a snow-covered forest and finds herself making a new friend called Mr. Tumnus. When she returns home, Lucy’s older siblings think she’s crazy when she tells them about her adventure in another world called Narnia. (Much like the disciples disbelieving the women’s report of Jesus’ resurrection.) The wardrobe – this in-between place between the real world and Narnia – is a great picture of this threshold-space we’re talking about.
All throughout Scripture, we find stories of God’s people in this liminal space, the road between the now and the not-yet. There’s Abraham on his way to the land God will show him; the Israelites wandering in the desert for 40 years; Mary weeping at the tomb; the disciples waiting for the Holy Spirit to come at Pentecost. The place of unknowing is where Cleopas and his friend find themselves on the way to Emmaus.
So what about you?
Where do you find yourself in this in-between time, this liminal space? This has been my reality for the past many months. I was discerning all the way back in the fall of 2019 that something was changing, that our lives were needing to shift in some way. The discernment came in pieces, little by little over the next YEAR until we found ourselves interviewing for pastoral positions in conferences all over the US. And even until we moved to Ypsi just a few weeks ago, my life has felt a bit lost on the cloudy liminal road. Living there and working here. Wondering if and when and how things would work together. The in-between is a painful place to be.
So again, where do you find yourself on the way to? Think about it. Write it down. Tell the person next to you. I’ll wait.
Now that we’ve all got a specific example how we’re on the way, what are so super practical lessons we can learn from the disciples on their way to Emmaus?
First of all, we have to choose to walk together.
This is the key moment in the story – when the risen Jesus joins the two disciples and walks with them.
Ruth Haley Barton in her book LIfe Together in Christ, writes
While it may feel that whatever precipitated our Emmaus Road experience is beyond our control, we do have control over one thing: whether we will walk the road alone or choose to walk it with others.”
Put yourself in their sandals – how many of us want to practice hospitality when we’re grieving or struggling? How many of us find it easy to talk about the things we’ve seen and felt, to let the emotions bubble to the surface without reservation – IN FRONT OF ANOTHER HUMAN BEING?! That is exactly what these two are doing. They aren’t just talking bout the facts of what happened on holy weekend. They are having a real and vulnerable conversation. And Ruth thinks that’s exactly why Jesus drew near. He joins them on the way because they are together and sharing what they had to offer with one another.
Practicing hospitality is hard, friends. Not because it requires culinary expertise, but because hospitality requires deep vulnerability. And that’s something most of us don’t do very well. We like to keep ourselves together. We like to be independent. We are experts at protecting ourselves and our image. We like to pull in our garages, close the door, shut the windows, and turn on the air so when we’re arguing with our spouse or sobbing on the couch, our neighbors won’t hear. We are so good at self-protection that we often keep the vulnerable parts hidden even from ourselves.
As Molly Marshall says –
“The hospitality of the traveling companions becomes the doorway to grace… Actions more than words, welcome more than self-protection provides the space where others might fearlessly enter and find themselves at home.”
That’s it. That’s the heart of hospitality – of this whole series we’re exploring at YpsiFree – to be a people who extend welcome to others and let down our guard. When we have hearts of hospitality, others feel safe to enter and find themselves at home.
And the second lesson we learn from the disciples on the way to Emmaus is this –
Choose to open yourself to others in your grief.
Yeah that’s heavy isn’t it. It’s hard. But this is the kind of thing that will open us to the presence of Jesus, open us to becoming transformed together.
I want to share an example of this from my own life. This is back in April 2018 and I had just had another monthly session with my spiritual director. Sister Carol was a Catholic nun at the IHM in Monroe and the first time I sat down across from her it was like she could see into my soul. Her presence was disarming, so welcoming. And we had been meeting monthly for spiritual direction for the past few years. She became like a spiritual grandmother to me. Her love extended beyond our sessions and she made a house call after Junia was born.
On this particular day, I had spent my time off walking miles around Monroe with my dear friend, Rachel and our three little girls. It was nearing evening and we returned home hot and happy. I had left my phone at home all day and when I checked it, I saw I had a message to call Kevin right away. He was working in the office at LaZBoy and they weren’t permitted to use their phones during the work day so I knew this must be some sort of emergency. As soon as he picked up he told me the news – “Mel, Sister Carol died.” What? I choked and tears and groans came immediately as I literally collapsed onto the floor. I had been in the middle of getting dinner for baby Junia and 3 year old Kirsten and suddenly I wasn’t sure how I could go on. I had never experienced such a deep and shocking loss before.
The next moment I called Rachel to tell her. “I’m coming,” she said, and she immediately loaded her baby back into the car and headed to my house. I couldn’t stop the tears even for a moment. After she hugged me she fed the girls and gave them a warm bath and got them ready for bed.
I didn’t have to call her. She didn’t have to come. But we chose to walk the road together.
So what about you?
Where are you on the way in between to places? Maybe you didn’t know at the beginning but you do now. Oh THAT’S where I am in the story.
Are you traveling alone? Have you chosen to walk with others? Walking this life with companions is crucial. Who are your people? Who do you call when you’re having a bad day? Who sits with you when you’re embarrassed to share you are still dealing with that issue, that struggle, that grief? This is why we believe so strongly in Small Groups here at YpsiFree. It’s about choosing to walk together.
So what is Jesus inviting you to do today? I can give you a few next steps – like telling someone where you’re at today, like opening yourself to others in your grief, like choosing to be part of a small group when you’d rather just “go it alone.” But Jesus’ invitation is the one that matters most. What stuck out to you today? What’s stirring in your heart? Do you need to confess? Confess your pride at thinking you can deal with it on your own? Confess your unwillingness to open yourself to others?
BENEDICTION*
Elusive God,
companion on the way,
you walk behind, beside, beyond;
you catch us unawares.
Break through the disillusionment and despair
clouding our vision,
that, with wide-eyed wonder,
we may find our way and journey on
as messengers of your good news. Amen.
