Sermon — April 23, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:32)

I don’t know whether it’s because the weather’s been so nice or because the T has been so slow, but recently I’ve found myself mostly traveling on foot. Now, because I live and work in Charlestown, this is pretty easy. But in just the last few weeks, I’ve walked over to meetings at the Cathedral and City Hall and Old North Church, all reasonable walks from here. And just this Tuesday I had a lovely walk across the city to South Station, thinking that rather than walking to Community College, taking the Orange line at a snail’s pace to Downtown Crossing, and then probably walking some more anyway rather than waiting for a second train to go one stop on the Red Line, it would be faster and much more pleasant just to walk. And it was great.

But on the way home, something really awful happened. After my meeting, as I was headed back to church, I pulled out my wireless headphones and realized that the batteries were dead. And so I was left, to my horror, to walk the several beautiful miles back to Charlestown alone with my thoughts. And I couldn’t help but notice how long it really takes to travel somewhere on foot. In terms of minutes, it wasn’t much slower than it would have been to take the T these days. But when there are no distractions, no headphones in the ears or staring down at the phone—I’m much too clumsy to do that and not trip—the time really stretches out. You hear the traffic and the birds. You see the architecture and the limping runners seeing the sights on the day after the Marathon. If you’re like me, maybe you say a little prayer for all the twenty-somethings who look like they’re gearing up for a day in the mines as they rush toward their Financial-District jobs. When you travel somewhere by foot, at a leisurely pace, you start to notice things.

Unless you’re Cleopas or the other, unnamed disciple, who walked most of seven miles with Jesus and didn’t seem to realize it was him.

Maybe they’re caught up, the two of them, discussing the incredible things that have come to pass, the trial and death and supposed resurrection of their Lord. And a man joins them on the road, and starts talking with them, as they all walk along. And they speak at great length. Luke doesn’t tell us when exactly on the seven-mile walk Jesus joins them, but their conversation clearly lasts a while. They think that he’s a traveler from abroad, and they fill Jesus in on the events of the last few days, and he replies, beginning with Moses and all the prophets and explaining to them how all of this makes sense, re-telling the whole story of the Bible until they understand that when they heard that the Messiah had come, this was exactly what they should’ve expected.

But looking at him, they don’t see that it’s Jesus walking with them. Hearing him, they don’t hear that it’s Jesus talking to them. They don’t recognize that this is a classic sermon from the man they’d been following around now for months.

And after a long walk, seven miles down the road, they reach Emmaus, and the disciples invite him in. “Come, stay with us. Have something to eat.” And he sits with them, and he takes bread, and blesses it, and breaks it, and gives it to them. And then they recognize him, and he vanishes from their sight.

And it’s only then, in retrospect, that they begin to understand. It’s only then, when Jesus has appeared to them and disappeared again, that they recognize that he was there with them along the way. It’s only then that they look back on the experience of spiritual fulfillment that they’d had, at this sense that their hearts had been strangely warmed, that they recognize it as a sign that Jesus was walking with them.

Their inability to recognize Jesus is not because they were looking down at their phones, or had their headphones in. It’s because Jesus has been transformed. The Jesus who appears to us now, on this side of the Resurrection, doesn’t look or sound quite the same. Jesus appears to us in many different ways, and we don’t always recognize him. These disciples don’t recognize him in the man who’s walking with them along the road. They don’t recognize him in the stories Scripture tells, or in the sermons that Jesus gives. They don’t recognize him when they invite this stranger to come in and eat. Jesus is present in all of those things, for those ancient disciples and for us. And sometimes we meet him there. But in this story, they recognize him in the breaking of the bread, in that first true Eucharistic meal, when he is suddenly revealed before their eyes, and then he disappears, vanishing from their sight. And they’re left to reflect on that long walk, and to realize that he was with them all the way.

Now, some of you heard me say this on Maundy Thursday, and I’m sorry to repeat myself, but I’ve been noticing more and more, recently, that huge parts of my life only make sense in retrospect, especially in my spiritual life. Does that ring true for any of you? It’s hard to know, in the moment, that God is close at hand. Most of us are, most of the time, head down in our phones, literal or metaphorical; we’re distracted by the regrets of the past and the worries of the future. And even when we’re not, even when we’re undistracted for miles along the road, Jesus doesn’t necessarily choose to be revealed. Even when we’re fully present, we don’t always recognize that God is present with us as we walk along the road on the long, slow journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus.

But then there may come a time, when God’s grace and mercy are revealed—when, even if it’s just for an instant, Jesus is revealed, and a whole long section of the journey suddenly makes sense.

“Ohhhhh,” we think to ourselves. “Okay.” That random guy on the road did seem to know a lot about Messianic prophecies in the Bible. I guess it makes sense, if he was really Jesus after all. Ohhhh. That burning in my heart? That wasn’t just that second helpful of extra spicy baba ghanoush. That was the presence of the risen Lord. That makes more sense.

I’m being facetious, but not really. I was walking down to South Station to talk with someone about the ordination process, and I love having conversations like this, because they give me a chance to reflect back on the last decade of my own life while I’m talking with someone about their own journey into ministry.

And like I said, over the last few months I’ve started looking back over the last few years, and everything’s started to make more sense. It turns out, strangely enough, that moving from full-time ministry out in Lincoln to part-time ministry here actually turned out to be the best possible decision for my family, before I knew I would need it to be. It turns out that, ten years ago, when I was feeling torn between two very different callings to ordained priesthood and software engineering, and I decided to answer the call to ordination—that I was really saying yes to both. (I don’t know how many of you know that in the other part of my time I maintain daily prayer applications for Episcopalians and Anglicans in the US, Canada, and Singapore, with three or four thousand users a day.)

More and more often, during this particular season, I’ve been looking back over the last seven miles of my life, as it were, and realizing that it’s almost as if Jesus had been walking with me along the way. Imagine that. It’s almost as if the Holy Spirit is actually real, as if God does in fact lead us and guide us without our knowing it, as we stumble and trip our way through life; as if, maybe, just maybe, I can give up some of my over-anxious need to be in control and trust that, come what may, God will be there with me.

And that’s a very scary thought, for someone like me. I’ll be honest with you. It’s very scary for an anxious know-it-all like me to admit that I might not be able to control it all, or even understand or recognize what’s happening in the moment. But it’s such good news, too. Because God is here, with you, whatever road you’re walking right now.

And so I close with the prayer with which this service began: “O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”

Sermon — April 16, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Reading

“Although you have not seen God, you love God; and even though you do not see God now, you believe and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:8-9)

There’s a popular cliché that’s infuriating because it is, on the one hand, an insulting affront to everything our culture likes to believe about itself and, on the other, probably true. “It’s not what you know,” the saying goes, “it’s who you know.” In other words, what matters the most in getting a job or making a sale or closing a deal isn’t your skill or knowledge or qualifications, but your social network. And in a way this seems to go against our meritocratic culture, with all its ideas about hard work and raw talent winning out in the end. But time and again, anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s true.

And in fact it works out well, in a slightly different sense, for most of the disciples. Mary went early on Easter morning and saw the empty tomb. And she went and called Simon Peter and John the Beloved Disciple, and they came, and saw the empty tomb. So they all know the truth of the Resurrection for themselves. But the other disciples have no idea. They don’t get anything out of “what they know” about the Resurrection. But they’re very lucky in “who they know.” Because they spend the evening of that Easter Day together, Jesus appears and shows them his wounds.

But for Thomas, it’s different. This story is not about what he knows, and it’s not about who he knows. It’s about the idea that each half of the proverb can be inverted or reversed: In this story, “it’s not what you don’t know, it’s who knows you.”

We often talk about the story of “Doubting Thomas” as a parable of faith and doubt, of the difference between trusting what you’ve been told and needing it to be proved, and as a story in which all of us—who have not witnessed the Resurrection first hand, but merely been told about it—find ourselves in Thomas’s blessed shoes. And all of this is true. But I can’t help but pick apart the plot today, and wonder how exactly it is that Jesus knows that Thomas has his doubts.

Think about the story as it’s written. On Easter Evening, Jesus appears to the disciples in his resurrected body, one which still bears his wounds—which is itself a compelling image, for another sermon. He greets them with a sign of peace, he gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit, and he disappears. Later, the disciples who were there tell Thomas that they had seen the Lord. And he says that unless he sees Jesus for himself, he will not believe.

A week later, they’re all together again. And again, Jesus appears, and immediately he says to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” (20:27) And I find myself asking the question— How on earth did Jesus know? He wasn’t there to hear Thomas express his doubts last Sunday. If he’d been there when Thomas had arrived, Thomas wouldn’t have had the doubts to begin with. Do we think he was eavesdropping nearby? Do we think that Simon Peter called him on the phone? Is this just another instance of the Son of God knowing all things?

Or could it be something else? Is it less that Jesus knows what Thomas has said, and more that Jesus simply knows Thomas? Does he show up, and see him, and instantly know what he needs, and offer it freely, without Thomas even having to ask? Is this story really, in other words, less about what Thomas doesn’t know, and more about the one by whom he’s known?

I think part of the appeal of the story of “Doubting Thomas” is that we all wrestle with doubt, from time to time. We all find ourselves, maybe more often than not, in the position of that disciple who is not sure that he believes—who is not convinced that he can accept all the claims that other Christians make to him—who struggles with doubt and faith, but who shows up nevertheless to be with them in community on the Lord’s Day, and who finds himself meeting Jesus there.

And it’s easy to take up Jesus’ words and pat ourselves on the back: “Have you believed because you have seen me?” he says to Thomas. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” (John 20:29) Good for all of us two thousand years later who have not seen, and yet have come to believe.

But the good news Jesus has is even better than that. Because as John says somewhere else, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19) We love God because God first loved us. We seek God because God first sought us. We know God because God first knew us. It’s not our responsibility to know everything, to know who we are or who God is or where in the world this is all going to end up.

God knows what each one of us needs, and God seeks us out, and the God who loves us gives us what we need. And this story is not a story about how good we are because we believe in God, even though we haven’t seen the proof. It’s a story about how good the God is who God believes in us. It’s a story that’s not about what we know, or who we know or what we don’t know, but about the One who’s known us since before we were born, and guided us all the days of our lives.

And it’s this God—the one who seeks us, and knows us, and loves us—who has promised to save us. It’s this resurrected God, who has seen the worst humanity can do, who’s offered to rescue us. It’s this wounded God, who shows up among us still bearing the marks in his hands and in his side, who has promised to heal us. Whoever or whatever we believe or don’t believe, know or don’t know, God knows us as deeply as he knew Thomas.

Sermon — Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023

The Rev. Greg Johnston

Lectionary Readings

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!

Now, on any other day I would start with a cute story or an illuminating anecdote that perfectly fits the theme of the sermon. But it’s Easter Sunday. And some of our younger members, in particular, may be very wired or a little tired, and if I recall correctly I actually put a couple of them to sleep with my Easter homily last year.

So let me get straight to the point, just like Jesus would: The angel of the Lord who appears to Mary and Mary at the tomb is a liar. Or at least he fibs. In any case, the angel certainly doesn’t tell the whole truth. “Go and tell the disciples,” the angel says, “‘Jesus has been raised from the dead. He’s going on ahead of you to Galilee, and you will see him there.’” (Matthew 28:7)

Now you can imagine the women’s confusion and delight, as they hurry off to find the other disciples. It’s a three-day journey on foot from Jerusalem back to Galilee, but they can’t wait. And you can imagine the two Marys composing their thoughts as they go together to find the other disciples. You might sometimes find yourself rehearsing for a big conversation like this, too: “Now, I know it’s going to be hard to believe, but while you were sleeping in, we went down to the tomb, and Jesus’ body wasn’t there. And there was an angel, and the angel told us that we should all head back to Galilee, and Jesus would appear to us there. So pack your bags, and let’s go see him!”

And while Mary and Mary are on their way, while these two apostles to the apostles are rushing along the road to share the good news of the Resurrection with Peter, James, and John, to tell them that the sooner we get to Galilee, the sooner we’ll see Jesus again, a man appears along the road, and says, “Hello!” and I like to picture one of the Marys recognizing him first, and doing a double take: “Jesus Christ!” And I did not just take the Lord’s name in vain, because there he is, the Risen Lord himself. And she stops and walks toward the one she had been running to try to find.

“Jesus is risen,” the angel says. “Go to Galilee, and you’ll see him there.” And as they hurry on along the road—before they’ve arrived at their destination or even packed their bags—he appears. Not in the tomb where they expected to find him, not in Galilee where they were told he would appear, but here instead, exactly where they are, along the side of the road.

Most of us spend most of our lives thinking about points on a map. We spend years thinking about the next step, and then the next one, and then the next one; about an education, a career, maybe a family; about our personal growth or spiritual journey or physical fitness. And at a certain point, perhaps, we begin to fear the next step: the next joint to be replaced, the next sense to start to go, the next partner or friend who starts to fail. And perhaps, in moments of reflection or of hope, we think about our final destination, about the end of the road, the place where we will finally see God face to face, and be reunited with the people we’ve loved who have gone before us.

But God appears to us along the way. Not in the places we’ve been told to look. Not at the highest holy days or in the greatest milestones or at the most abrupt turning points of our lives. But halfway down the road, while we’re on the way to pack our bags, expecting to go and meet God somewhere else.

God shows up in quiet moments along the way. God shows up in small encounters that we sometimes miss. Again and again, God shows up in our lives, and says, “Hello!” And most of the time, we miss the signs, and don’t stop and turn aside, and then God shows up again a little further down the road.

This is the true power of the story of the Resurrection: Not that Jesus came back to life, two thousand years ago, simply to impress us or to prove a point. But that Jesus lives. That God still walks among us. That the Holy Spirit is, even now, moving among us, in small and sometimes very quiet ways, surprising us with moments of love and comfort and grace. And if we want to meet God face to face, we don’t need to make it all the way to wherever we’re hurrying off to be. We simply have to stop. And look. And see the one who stands along the road.

Because God is not waiting for you up in heaven. God is not stuck somewhere in a story of the past. God is not even trapped in this church, thank God. The God who died for you and rose again is all around you, everywhere, walking beside you and inviting you into a new and better life, not just in the world to come, but in this world, here and now.

Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!