Pastor Darren: How often are you surprised?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: I mean, it it it doesn't happen often, I imagine, right?
Pastor Darren: Because it's sort of in the definition of it.
Pastor Darren: If it's happening every day, it's not a surprise anymore, right?
Pastor Darren: It's just a Thursday or whatever it is.
Pastor Darren: But in our story today, these disciples, they get surprised four different times.
Pastor Darren: At least they're referred to four different times.
Pastor Darren: Firstly, they meet this stranger.
Pastor Darren: Later we find out it's Jesus, but they don't recognize that.
Pastor Darren: But they meet him and they're so surprised because this guy, he doesn't know anything about this massive event that's happened.
Pastor Darren: Jesus was crucified, and now it looks like he's been resurrected, although we're not so sure at this point, but just such a big event.
Pastor Darren: So they're surprised.
Pastor Darren: This is here's a guy who doesn't even know it happened.
Pastor Darren: Then they talk about being astounded at the story of the women who went to the tomb, found it empty, and then came back and told them.
Pastor Darren: So now there's another sort of surprise.
Pastor Darren: Like I said, that's when they use the word astounded.
Pastor Darren: Huge surprise.
Pastor Darren: Then they refer to their surprise when they actually go to the tomb and find it that uh it's empty, and they have that shocker themselves.
Pastor Darren: And then the final surprise comes at the end of our passage as they realize it was Jesus all along who was there with them, breaking the bread with them.
Pastor Darren: It's an interesting story, and our theme for this season of Easter, this whole season that leads us to Pentecost is stories that matter.
Pastor Darren: So we ask ourselves the question: all right, well, why does this story matter?
Pastor Darren: You know, what is Luke trying to get across about the life of Christ?
Pastor Darren: Or, or maybe even more importantly, what is Luke trying to encourage us to do in response?
Pastor Darren: You know, how is Luke trying to get us to change our lives for the better?
Pastor Darren: So that's where we'll dig in.
Pastor Darren: But first, I'm gonna deal with our scripture heads out there, the guys who like their exegesis, the gals who really like to dig in, like Steve here.
Pastor Darren: I know Laura's one of those.
Pastor Darren: We have other scripture heads.
Pastor Darren: I'd like to dig in Mark up here.
Pastor Darren: All right, all right.
Pastor Darren: I bet you, I bet you we have more.
Pastor Darren: You guys are just like kind of chill, right?
Pastor Darren: Yeah, I'm digging into Malachi, but I don't need you to know it.
Pastor Darren: All right, scripture heads right here.
Pastor Darren: First of all, this is the only one of our four gospels that has this story.
Pastor Darren: So it's probably really, really interesting to Luke, so important that he includes it, and all the others don't include it.
Pastor Darren: In fact, a fun project, if you are into it, might be to go look and see what are the stories that are only in Luke, because you'd really get a sense of who Luke is and Luke's perception of who Jesus is.
Pastor Darren: Also important, it comes right after this the discovery of the empty tomb.
Pastor Darren: This is an important moment, the big part of the whole story.
Pastor Darren: It builds towards this, so we know it's a big thing, the resurrection.
Pastor Darren: He's not just gonna throw any story out there.
Pastor Darren: It's big, it's it's a worth it story.
Pastor Darren: We should dig into it.
Pastor Darren: It functions as a reinforcement of the significance of the resurrection, why it means what it means and its intended effect on us.
Pastor Darren: But here's what's interesting: it doesn't really stop there.
Pastor Darren: There's what you might call like an extension or or an add-on of Jesus appearing yet once again with the disciples.
Pastor Darren: In fact, as he vanishes after serving the bread or breaking the bread, then as it reads, he kind of comes back to them and starts talking again and then leaves yet again.
Pastor Darren: Finally, Luke ends with the ascension of Christ up to heaven.
Pastor Darren: So I'm gonna jump back to that second uh uh appearance of Jesus to the disciples because it's a little bit awkward.
Pastor Darren: Again, this is for the scripture heads here.
Pastor Darren: If we were New Testament scholars, we might assume that Luke had a few different parts of the story of Jesus or different moments that Jesus came to visit these disciples after being crucified, and he wanted to get them in there.
Pastor Darren: He wanted them because of the significance of not just one appearance, but two appearances, or maybe somebody writing later with Luke's gospel, added it in there.
Pastor Darren: Um what we can tell too is high priority wasn't necessarily to have a smooth thing.
Pastor Darren: You wouldn't necessarily have Jesus vanish after his big moment and then come back again and say, oh, and here's a few more things, very similar to what I just said.
Pastor Darren: So it's more likely these are stories, add-ons that people had.
Pastor Darren: And for Luke, that added to the credence.
Pastor Darren: That was the value that they had.
Pastor Darren: The ideas were supposed to be bringing people to Christ, and if there's more of these stories, then people will be more convinced, and that was probably the higher priority of our writers.
Pastor Darren: So, now, again, what do we do with this story?
Pastor Darren: How is it a story that matters?
Pastor Darren: The easy first inclination is to say to ourselves, all right, further evidence of the resurrection.
Pastor Darren: He came back two times, right?
Pastor Darren: And added on to you know, a few others with Thomas and things like that.
Pastor Darren: Oh, this is just evidence.
Pastor Darren: This now we know it really, really happened, right?
Pastor Darren: For some, that's an assurance they really, really appreciate and like having those stories as proof.
Pastor Darren: But for a lot of us, it doesn't fill all that we need.
Pastor Darren: We're looking for that invitation, that guidance.
Pastor Darren: How are we supposed to be affected by this, other than to just believe it?
Pastor Darren: We want some answer to the question of how does this speak into our lives?
Pastor Darren: So, something I identified with as I was working my way into the story.
Pastor Darren: These disciples who were uh walking and talking about their uh disappointment on the journey, after all, Jesus had been crucified.
Pastor Darren: Yes, they saw an empty tomb, but they're still in that place of, okay, what uh what's this about?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: They say the words, we thought he was the one to redeem Israel.
Pastor Darren: I think we can identify with that.
Pastor Darren: I think anyone who has said, why doesn't God just whatever, fill in the blank?
Pastor Darren: Anybody who has said that can identify with these disciples on this journey.
Pastor Darren: We thought Jesus was gonna redeem all of Israel, right?
Pastor Darren: What was this?
Pastor Darren: I thought, I thought this was it.
Pastor Darren: What happened?
Pastor Darren: Do you ever feel like you found that person or or that program that was gonna do that amazing, that was gonna change the world for the better?
Pastor Darren: And you got behind it and you got yourself excited about it, and then it didn't really come to pass.
Pastor Darren: Maybe it fell apart by personal failings of that person we were hoped for, hoping for, or for that program we were hoping for.
Pastor Darren: Maybe the world didn't create the space for that thing to happen, for that change that we really believed in, that we were excited about.
Pastor Darren: We the world just didn't let it happen.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: We can identify with those disciples in that way.
Pastor Darren: Those disciples who really thought this was it.
Pastor Darren: And then it felt like it wasn't.
Pastor Darren: Because we've been there.
Pastor Darren: We've all been in those places where we had lots of hope that something good was going to happen, and then it just didn't happen like we had hoped.
Pastor Darren: And we land in these spaces like these disciples, wondering not only whether it happened or not, but whether it was even worth it, whether it was true and even worth all the energy that we put into it.
Pastor Darren: And here in Easter season, when we're supposed to be feasting on all the blessings that God has given to us, and we get into this place again, like those disciples.
Pastor Darren: You really died, Jesus?
Pastor Darren: But the job's not done.
Pastor Darren: What about it, God?
Pastor Darren: Are you are you gonna fix this or not?
Pastor Darren: It's enough to make you feel that when you're in that space here post-Easter, all of a sudden we can feel let loose again, detached again, disenchanted, unmoored again.
Pastor Darren: Just like those disciples on that walk.
Pastor Darren: But I found some grounding, I found some stabilizing in the words and the actions of Jesus in this story.
Pastor Darren: First, he does two main things.
Pastor Darren: First, he reminds them that this is what was foretold in the Old Testament.
Pastor Darren: It happened like we anticipated it would happen.
Pastor Darren: It happened like they anticipated it would happen hundreds of years before that.
Pastor Darren: We would do well also to remember the significance of sacrifice in that whole event.
Pastor Darren: Not just Jesus' sacrifice, but our invitation to sacrifice, to giving up of ourselves for others, for the world around us, for God, as part of that journey of faith.
Pastor Darren: And then the second thing he did was share the bread.
Pastor Darren: He broke the bread with these disciples.
Pastor Darren: He blesses it and he breaks it, and then they recognize him and he vanishes.
Pastor Darren: The breaking of the bread.
Pastor Darren: That's our thing, right?
Pastor Darren: And when we're talking about a behavior, an act, a ritual that is Christian, it is that the ultimate act that identifies us, it's who we are.
Pastor Darren: This is what Jesus does.
Pastor Darren: Some of you are reading the daily devotion from Richard Rohr, right?
Pastor Darren: From from the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Pastor Darren: I don't know if you caught the one for last Sunday.
Pastor Darren: But Rohr, he was talking about social transformation.
Pastor Darren: He was talking about changing the world, presumably for the better.
Pastor Darren: I'm gonna assume that because I like Richard Rohr.
Pastor Darren: That's just a little joke.
Pastor Darren: Thank you, Boyd.
Pastor Darren: He's my guy, he's my go-to over here.
Pastor Darren: We have a signal, I give him.
Pastor Darren: No, he uh I was talking about changing the world for the good, and he uses Archimedes.
Pastor Darren: Archimedes to talk about the effectiveness of a fulcrum.
Pastor Darren: So I think I did you get my pictures?
Pastor Darren: Yeah.
Pastor Darren: So this is Archimedes, right?
Pastor Darren: It's a Greek philosopher, mathematician in the third century BCE, right?
Pastor Darren: So before Christ.
Pastor Darren: And what he figures out is that wait, engineers in the house?
Pastor Darren: Raise your pencil.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, we got a few, and then a couple of you too cowardly to put your hands up.
Pastor Darren: This is what I know.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: I like you engineers.
Pastor Darren: I know just enough to understand why you guys get so frustrated.
Pastor Darren: Right.
Pastor Darren: So he's uh that that kind of thinker, right?
Pastor Darren: And he develops this understanding of a fulcrum.
Pastor Darren: So I found a picture too that gives sort of a basic understanding.
Pastor Darren: We kind of know that just in doing different things in our lives, but he came to understand, or the first to sort of formally describe this idea that when we find that right spot, we can actually increase our strength and move things that we wouldn't normally be able to move.
Pastor Darren: Here, I have a summary here of it.
Pastor Darren: Archimedes, a third century BCE Greek philosopher and mathematician, noticed that a lever balanced in the correct place on the correct fulcrum could move proportionally much greater weights than the force actually applied.
Pastor Darren: He calculated that if the lever switched far enough and the fulcrum point remained fixed close to Earth, even a small weight at one end would be able to move the world at the other.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: A fulcrum.
Pastor Darren: So you can see maybe some of you have moved things doing that.
Pastor Darren: You put the little rock in the middle and then you wedge it up and lift it, or a smaller version.
Pastor Darren: If you've used a nutcracker, it's the same principle.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: If you're cracking that nut and your nutcracker, the the uh legs or the arms of the nutcracker aren't long enough, you can't get the force.
Pastor Darren: But once they get to that really great length, then you can squeeze and get you that walnut you've been dying to eat.
Pastor Darren: Am I right?
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: So that I mean that's the principle, right?
Pastor Darren: We with uh we need uh leverage and gravity, and when we find just the right place, we can increase our capacity for uh for strength, for moving things.
Pastor Darren: And Archimedes felt that we could actually move the world given the right fixed position and some counterweight in the mix of that.
Pastor Darren: So Richard Rohr, he starts using that principle to talk about social transformation.
Pastor Darren: Talk about a big rock to move, talking about changing the world.
Pastor Darren: And he writes, and I think I got this up there, the fixed point is our place to stand, right?
Pastor Darren: The fulcrum relies on that sense of a fixed point, and if you get just the right point, you can maximize your capacity to move a big weight.
Pastor Darren: It is a contemplative stance for Richard Rohr, steady, centered, poised, and rooted.
Pastor Darren: To be contemplative, we have to have a slight distance from the world to allow time for withdrawal from business as usual, for contemplation, for going into what Jesus calls our private room.
Pastor Darren: However, we have to remain quite close to the world at the same time, loving it, feeling its pain and its joy as our pain and our joy, otherwise, our distance can become a form of escapeism.
Pastor Darren: For Roar, he's trying to describe how that fixed point, that perfect place for that fulcrum is between contemplation and action, that we need to find that spot, that's where our spirit really wants to dwell, somewhere between the spiritual world of God's reality and then the reality we're living in, the physical reality that we are living in.
Pastor Darren: But for me, in terms of our own passage, isn't Jesus telling us, with this short message after having been crucified and resurrected, isn't he telling us that uh making the point that the fulcrum for us is located in our sense of who Christ is and what Christ stood for?
Pastor Darren: We should probably add to who we are trying to be in relationship to Christ.
Pastor Darren: Isn't that our fixed spot?
Pastor Darren: Isn't that our ideal space?
Pastor Darren: Isn't that the point from when we're able to make the most significant difference in the world?
Pastor Darren: Maybe it's not coincidental that when the disciples were at their lowest, Jesus returns to remind them of who they are supposed to be.
Pastor Darren: We hit our lows in this world, right?
Pastor Darren: When our faith seems uh uh least relevant, least worthwhile, least effective, times when the temptation is to abandon the behaviors of faith.
Pastor Darren: After all, they aren't doing it.
Pastor Darren: They've abandoned all sense of decency.
Pastor Darren: Never mind faith.
Pastor Darren: Why should I stick with this?
Pastor Darren: And Jesus answers because it's your identity, it's your fixed point for the fulcrum where you are able to make the changes in the world that you believe in.
Pastor Darren: It's from there that you're able to be who you are called to be, to be the change, to be the justice, to be the hope, to be the love you intend to be.
Pastor Darren: And the cool part is, as Archimedes learned, from that point you can move way more than you think.
Pastor Darren: It might even surprise you.
Pastor Darren: Amen.