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"Walking with the Lord of the Scriptures"
Theme: The Bible is sometimes called the greatest story every told. But, how much do we know about really enjoying the Bible? Many of us grew up seeing the Bible as a stern book difficult to understand and often scary. Actually, the Bible can be a great friend — a trusted advisor. We can get actively involved in the loving and creative support that the scriptures offer to each of us.

“That very same day two of them were on their way to a village called Emmaus. Now as they walked and talked over these things, Jesus himself came up and walked by their side.”

I don’t know about you, but on Sundays as I listen to the scriptures, as we did a few minutes ago, it seems that somehow they don’t touch us. As I prayed earlier that God would touch us sometime in the service tonight, my guess is that he did not touch you in the reading of the scripture. Why? Because you know the story. As soon as it begins by saying that the very same two men were on their way to a village called Emmaus, you know what is going to happen. I have a tendency to block it out. The scriptures just don’t touch me.

In order to try to help myself and maybe I can share this with you — it’s a very personal thing with me — not in any way wanting to do any irreverence to the gospel, but it’s sort of like if you buy a cheaper Bible and you take a yellow pen and you start writing and underlining and maybe printing things on the side lines. Not like your good Bible, but it’s a study Bible.

Well, if we can use a yellow pencil to do that, certainly we can use our imagination, our creativity, to somehow make the Bible, make the story, make the Sunday gospel become alive in our lives.

First of all we have to use our five senses. Why? It is because the story of Jesus in the gospel is the enfleshment of Jesus. If it only touches our heads and we have nice thoughts and nice feelings about it, but it doesn’t get into our senses, it doesn’t really touch us. If we never sweat or laugh or feel excited reading scriptures, it’s not somehow getting to our bodies.

When you go to a movie this happens, or you read a book it happens. You can hardly go to a cinema and not somewhere along the line in the story forget where you are in the audience, and suddenly you’re crying and you’re laughing, or you’re very tense or very scared. What happened there? Somehow you left the chair, the pew, and you got into the story and you were part of it.

How do we do this with scripture? There are two ways I’m going to talk about tonight. And that is — how to touch Jesus in the scripture and how can scripture touch me where I am in my life.

The story of Emmaus is a good story of those two men. If you close your eyes when you hear the gospel, if you just hear that first line, whatever it might be, the first line usually tells you what is going to happen. You can almost close your eyes and with your five senses jump with your imagination into that picture.

In this case we could come into the picture and we see it’s Easter Sunday afternoon. It’s a beautiful day. It’s spring near Jerusalem on a dusty road. We see these two men walking along. As long as you see them, it’s not going to work. You somehow have to get into one of those objects, a tree, or a bird in the tree, or a cloud, or maybe one of the people. Get inside the story and listen to the gospel from that particular viewpoint.

For example, this is what I did today with the gospel. As we were listening to it, I put myself into the man whose name we do not know. So I just kind of felt him walking along, and even though it was a nice day, he didn’t see anything because he was into grief. He was utterly shocked. And what people do when they get in shock, much like we have recently felt in the disaster in our space program, we just keep talking about what happened over and over again. So that’s what we find these two men doing. And I could feel this man just simply going over and over again all of the details. And maybe the details were something like this he was saying to his friend, Cleopas, “Just think it was just a week ago that we were walking down this same road going towards Jerusalem for the Passover. And you were saying that perhaps we would get to meet Jesus — and how we never ever believed that not only would we get to meet him, but we were able to be with him on Tuesday and Wednesday and be invited to that Upper Room.” Perhaps something like this was said.

And they talked about what happened there and I, who was kind of a doubter, with Cleopas who really believed, I was convinced that Yahweh was present, that God was there. And somehow that man touched me, and in the breaking of the bread it was like he really gave me himself. It was just an experience, and this is what we were sharing as we were walking along.

And then, of course, the disaster. The shock of his being arrested while at prayer, and then being taken on trial, and that there were no witnesses in his favor, and the whole tragedy — it was like we couldn’t believe what was happening all day Friday. And then he was hung on a cross and died. We just kept repeating all this. And then Saturday being Shabat (the Sabbath) — we were not able to leave the town so we stayed together with the disciples and kept repeating about all this that had happened. And just this morning when the women came and they said that the body was gone and somebody said that an angel said that he had risen, we didn’t know what was happening. Some of our fellowmen went out and saw that it was true that the body was gone, but we left town because we were scared, probably of being arrested.

That kind of conversation was going on.

And then all of a sudden, coming up behind, is Jesus; but, of course, my friend doesn't know it’s Jesus. He’s too blind into his grief. In fact, irritated. In fact, it was Cleopas who spoke to the man when he said, “What are you talking about?”

And Cleopas just kind of looked at him and said, “Where have you been, man? You must know everything that has been happening, these last few days, about Jesus, the Messiah — we thought he was the Messiah — and how he went to this trial and all of these things ...” and Cleopas just tells him all of this.

And the man listened. It was interesting he just listened. When it was all finished, he looked up. He looked over at me and we were walking along, and he said, “What could possibly be wrong with you two?”

It says in the Bible, “... you foolish men,” and the shock of being called a fool after kind of telling the man what was going on, it really woke us both up so we could listen to him. And we really heard what he said because he got our attention. And then what did he do? He started going through the scriptures. He said, “You foolish men, look what your Bible tells you. Look what the Jewish scriptures say.”

The scriptures just unfold in such a way that beginning with Moses and the Psalms, it just says — look at the bigger picture in the light of scripture — it all makes sense.

And the man could feel something changing from being depressed, like someone wiped it away, and he could begin to hear the birds sing and smell the flowers of spring. And life became different. Then an interesting thing happened. He poked his friend and said, “We need to invite him in. He’s going to go on.” So he was invited in.

As we sat at the table and had time just to be with the stranger and look at his eyes, and as he broke the bread, I remembered last Thursday when he did that. And I remembered what had happened, and I began to recognize who it was. No sooner had I turned to our friend to say something to him, the man was gone.

Then the two of us ran, practically ran, the seven miles back to Jerusalem. And the neat thing about it was that when we got there, instead of busting in and telling them what happened to us, we went in and listened to what they had to say like Jesus had listened to us.

And then we shared our story.

It won’t always happen that easily. Sometimes it’s harder to get into scriptures. But it’s always different when you take your senses and do that. The five senses can somehow feel and experience that. At least it’s been very, very helpful for me. And in some way, just like in this story, when Jesus whom we don’t even recognize in the first part — he doesn’t even touch our lives — that somehow Jesus can touch us in a special way if we use our active imagination and look at the scriptures in that way. That we too can be touched on a Sunday evening like these men were by the scriptures if we only somehow get into them. Just like we do a movie.

Now, that’s one way I get into the scriptures but that isn’t enough. You know, we can have a nice thought like that and feel good about a scripture, but if nothing happens more than that, like most of our thoughts, they’re nice but they just sort of float away after a while. Something else happens and maybe later in the day I don’t even remember what the gospel was about any more. I don’t know if that happens to you — it happens to me. When you have to preach on Sunday, it helps you remember it a little bit longer. But ask your friends tomorrow morning what they heard in church yesterday when the gospel was being read. The odds are that it just fades away.

When I was in the eighth grade, the sister who taught me in school, made us write out every Monday morning the sermon from the day before, and we all remembered it. Isn’t that amazing? That year I remembered all the sermons because I had to write them down.

It might be better if after the gospel was read on Sunday that the preacher would simply say to us, “Whoever out there listened to this gospel, we need to have you come up and tell us what you felt as you heard it,” I’m sure you would pay more attention to the gospel. Or else there would be fewer people in church the following week. That would be the trouble. That’s one way. But how do I get in scripture and not just remain out there?

Well, if you look at the gospel, it is usually different acts or different stages, I use the word called “verbing”. That’s what I name it. How do I “verb” the gospel?

A little while ago when Sister Maureen was giving her story, remember how she said in the story of the woman touching the garment of Jesus, and then she said, “Where am I like that woman? Where am I touching Jesus by faith?”

That’s verbing. Taking the gospel and seeing what verb is in it. The gospel is a noun but it needs to be a verb — what’s going on in that scripture and what’s going on in my life? Or how can I do that in my own story? That’s what I call verbing.

Let me give you an example. Maybe that would be the best way of going about it. Again the same story. There are several verbings that go in this story. There are about four acts that happen in this story.

The first thing that happens is that these two men are walking along, and they’re depressed and they just keep feeding each other’s depression as they go back and forth, grieving about something that happened. That’s the first verbing.

The second verbing I see happening there is Jesus comes on and listens to them. They are listened to by Jesus.

The third verbing that touches me is that after he listens to them, then he gets their attention and they listen to him.

And the fourth is — they do something about it. They feed him. And then they go listen to the disciples.

So, those are four verbings. I would like for you to kind of do this with me. I’ll use my own life as kind of an example and kind of show you how I did that.

For example, when we talked about the two people discussing a grievance. Just take a moment yourself and think what’s going on inside of you, what’s the grievance or what’s blocking your life at this time? What’s causing you a problem? If you can think of something, I’ll think of one too.

(PAUSE FOR REFLECTION)

The one that comes to my mind is next Thursday I have to talk to a group of priests. And no matter how many different people I talk to, when I talk to a group of priests, I get upset. It’s like the little kid inside of me is having an argument with me and he gets scared. I tell him it’s going to be OK, and they’ll like me, and it will come off well, but the little kid inside of me says, “Maybe they won’t.” That’s what’s going on inside of me. It’s a kind of a little blockage that came to my mind.

The second verbing was Jesus comes along and he listens. So why don’t you take whatever was going on inside of you, why don’t you just tell the same thing, but this time say instead of telling it to yourself, tell Jesus, “What happened? What’s going on?”

(JUST TAKE A MOMENT TO DO THAT AND I’LL DO THE SAME)

That’s a little different. Jesus listened better and as I tried to tell him what was wrong, I just had to tell him I was scared of making a mistake in front of them and that they would reject me in some way. That was the block and I think I see that clearer when I talk to him rather than when I was in a scared way talking to myself. So I tell Jesus my problem and it seems to shift a little bit. Something happened there. I felt a little braver or stronger for having done it.

The third verbing was after Jesus listened very well, he then started quoting scripture to them. Well, in this case what I would like for the Lord to do for you now is just to find a scripture that he might share with you. Maybe a part of his life. Maybe it’s between the lines. In the problem you’re thinking about, what scripture would he share with you? What story would he share with you? And how he handled a similar problem.

(TRY THAT AND SEE HOW THAT WORKS FOR YOU)

It always surprises me because I am amazed how many scriptures come to me with a problem like that. The scripture that came to me was when Jesus said he had to go home and talk to the local congregation in his synagogue on a Sabbath in Nazareth. He was going from one village to the next. He was going back home and somehow he almost put off going to Nazareth because he was wondering how he would be received. And he told of the fear and the anxiety and all that went on inside of him. And he said, remember the scripture at the end of the service where he unrolled the scroll and he read from Isaiah, that all went off so well, but after the sermon was over and he began to talk to some of the elders, that’s when the little kid inside of him became more upset. Almost in reaction to that, they began to push him out of town, to put him over the cliff. The way he handled it was, he said, just the simple fact that instead of leaning into his humanness and his fear, that he suddenly remembered that God was his father and the power of that, so that he was able somehow to walk through that crowd of angry men and simply face their anger and walk through it. That was kind of a neat story.

What about the last verbing? The last verbing was, “What am I going to do about it? How’s it going to enter my life?” Take a moment with yours. How are we going to take this gospel and put it out into our life in dealing with this problem?

(PAUSE FOR REFLECTION)

Maybe it’s because I’m in front of you that I’m a little nervous but I guess the neatest thing is that somehow when I go next week, I just keep saying to myself, “Father, I belong to you.” Maybe if I can just keep saying so I will have the experience that Jesus had — to be very calm and cool — and then give my message to those men.

Thanks for listening and for being aware of the scriptures with me today.

I would just like to end with a prayer: God, you walked in the garden with Adam and Eve, and every Sunday you send your Son to walk with us in the scriptures, help us to be touched by you and may you touch our lives so the word may become alive within us. Amen.     

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