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Sermon |
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April 10, 2005 |
A Sermon Preached at
A Hispanic student at
It is not, as the student who passed on this story notes, such a strange mistake to make. The Resurrection experience—and so the whole church—is about recognizing the stranger in our midst to be the Christ. The resurrection appearances all have this in common. Mary goes to the tomb and meets a man she thinks is a gardener, but then recognizes him as the risen Christ. Later in the day, some of the disciples have gone back to work as fishermen and while they are out in their boats they carry on a conversation with a stranger on the shore. Only when they share a meal with the stranger do they realize that he is the risen Christ. And in today’s Gospel, some of the disciples are on the road to Emmaus and fall into step with a stranger who teaches them about the scriptures. Again they finally recognize that they have been in the presence of the risen Christ only when they sit down to share a meal with him.
These are not just cases of mistaken identity. In each case, the one who will later be recognized as the risen Christ is at first seen as a complete stranger. The Greek texts use the word ‘paroikos’ which means ‘alien’ to describe these people. They are not just strangers, they are totally foreign, people who don’t belong. It is interesting that the word paroikos is also the origin of our words “parish” and “parochial.” It seems that our churches are intended to be bands of aliens who somehow become family.
I think this process of recognizing the stranger as the risen Christ is central to what we are about as Christians. All of us need to know that we have a place to belong, of course. One of my favorite literary scenes is from John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany. Owen is tiny enough even as a ten-year-old to be cast as the baby Jesus in the local church Christmas pageant. His parents are not church-goers or believers, but they love their child and want to support his acting debut, so they attend the pageant. When Owen notices that they have come to this church event when they wouldn’t dream of coming to church normally, he is struck with their hypocrisy and stands up in the middle of the pageant, in his swaddling clothes, and points at them, “You,” he challenges, “What are you doing here?” Now the delicious thing about this scene is that it is not just Owen’s parents, but half of the congregation who get up at this point and slink out of the church.
If the truth were known, most of us wonder if we really belong here. For all of us it is important to remember that parishes are made up of aliens who are blended into a family by this characteristic Christian action of breaking bread together.
It is possible, of course, to get too smug and complacent about being a part of the parish family. All of us also need to remember that our belonging isn’t automatic, but a gift of grace. All of us need to remember that we are all aliens. Our history is that of an alien people. Our Jewish roots ask us to remember that our ancestors were strangers wandering in a strange land, and so tell us that we must always care for the strangers in our midst. We worship a savior who reminded his friends that unlike even the animals of the fields, he had no fixed address, no home in which to lay his head. In the deepest sense, this world is not our home, so we are all aliens. The strangers in that border town who thought baptismal certificates were green cards were right in an important sense: our membership in the church is both a reminder that we belong and a reminder that we—like every person who ever walks through our doors—that we are also strangers.
The image of the stranger who is finally recognized in the breaking of the bread as the risen Christ is one that ought to haunt us and ought to call us to examine and reexamine everything we do. It is worth remembering that Easter happened on the first day of the Jewish work week—what would be Monday to us. Most of our welcoming of the stranger happens where we live and work. How we deal with our co-workers and customers, students and clients says a lot about whether we are really willing to welcome strangers and come to know them well enough to break bread with them.
And of course, this gathering is a kind of dress rehearsal for the rest of life. I ask you each week to introduce yourself to those you don’t know—or worse yet, to reintroduce yourself to those whose names you’ve forgotten. Every time I discuss this request seriously with any of you, I am reminded that this is a hard thing I’m asking you to do. It feels awkward and embarrassing. It raises feelings of insecurity. Makes you wonder if anybody else really wants to get to know you; makes you wonder what people think of you. I understand all those feelings because I feel them myself. I think it is worth going through those awkward feelings because the process of aliens becoming family around a common table is central to our lives as Christians, and greeting each other by name is just the beginning of this sacred process. I think it helps to remember that we are all strangers here, all aliens. It also helps to remember that we also all belong. And most of all, it helps to remember that in the most unlikely people—the graveyard gardener, the stranger on the beach, or the chance companion on the road—in the most unlikely people we may yet meet the risen Christ. AMEN