Anybody else ever had this experience? This phenomenon of suddenly becoming aware of something that has actually been there all along has a name.

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1 1 Easter 3, Year A April 30, 2017 Saint James, Wheat Ridge By the Rev. Becky Jones I was driving down Speer Boulevard the other day, headed into downtown. It s a route I estimate I ve driven no less than 22,000 times in the 32 years I ve lived in Denver. I used to drive it at least twice a day when I worked downtown. Nowadays my trips on Speer are less frequent, but still, it s not uncommon for me to drive it. Trust me when I tell you, I KNOW Speer Boulevard. So I m driving down Speer and suddenly I do a double-take. There, to my right, is a brand new building on the Auraria campus. A huge building, right along Speer Boulevard. And I think to myself: Now where did that come from? I could have sworn it wasn t there the last time I drove that road. I struggled to pinpoint when that last trip had been. I wasn t sure, but it had to have been within the week, surely no more than two weeks. Surely not time enough for them to have erected a huge new building without my knowledge. And yet, I couldn t believe that I hadn t noticed it before. How could I have driven past a huge new building going up without even being aware it was there? Anybody else ever had this experience? This phenomenon of suddenly becoming aware of something that has actually been there all along has a name.

2 2 Neuroscientists call it selectivity. There are at least a couple of theories about what causes it. One is the limited bandwidth theory. According to this theory, we constantly overlook much of the world around us. Our brains have only so much computing power, and zooming in on one thing necessarily means we re going to overlook something else. So if you re always in heavy traffic on Speer Boulevard, trying to pay attention to the cars around you, yes, there is a good chance you will completely miss the new building they re putting up a few hundred feet from the road. Another, more controversial explanation is the ships not seen theory. The name refers to the famous Christopher Columbus story of how, upon his arrival to the new world, the indigenous population if the story can be believed could not see the ships approach even though they were right there in the harbor. Supposedly this was because the native population simply didn t possess the needed mental constructs to make sense of what should have been in plain sight. Seeing enormous ships was something that was completely outside of their known reality, and thus lay hidden to them in a kind of perceptual blind spot. Now whether this is truly a verifiable phenomenon or just a bunch of nonsense, I can t say. In my own case, with the suddenly-appearing building on Speer Boulevard, I m inclined to think the first explanation

3 3 about limited bandwidth makes more sense. But as for our gospel story this morning, I m sort of leaning to the ships not seen theory to explain how two people could walk along a road talking with someone they thought was a stranger without recognizing him for who he was. I m guessing that seeing Jesus, alive and well, three days after they saw him die on a cross was completely outside their known reality. The risen Christ must ve been in their perceptual blind spot too. This story about the disciples meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus is one of the most developed and most beautiful appearance stories in the New Testament. There is so much material here for theological reflection, it s hard to know where to start. But I m going to start with their destination itself, Emmaus. Scholars aren t quite sure where Emmaus is. There s a discrepancy among the oldest preserved versions of the Gospel of Luke. One of them doesn t say Emmaus, it says Oulammaus, which was the place where Jacob was visited by God, in the Old Testament. So some believe that this Gospel story is really symbolic, drawing a parallel between Jacob being visited by God and the disciples being visited by Jesus. Again, I confess I don t know if that s a good theory or not. But theologian Frederick Buechner argues that it doesn t matter where Emmaus is or was. What matters is what it represents to us.

4 4 And he interprets Emmaus as anyplace we go in order to escape. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go in order to forget for awhile just how cruel the world can be, to get away from those things that frighten us or cause us to despair. For us, Emmaus could be the mountains, or a movie theater, or a good book, or a bar. It s wherever we go when life proves too much for us. The good news is, that s just the place where Jesus meets us. He meets us in the ordinary places and experiences of our lives, and especially in the places where we retreat to when times get hard. But this story also challenges us to remember that Christ comes to us in unexpected guises, at unexpected times. And the question is, do we recognize him? I think one of the most poignant scenes in this gospel story is where the two disciples tell this seeming stranger about their hopes and expectations of this Jesus fellow, and how disillusioned they had become. We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel, they said. You can hear the despair in their words. They had just watched their leader die a violent death. That whole week hadn t turned out at all like they thought it would. Surely grief and despair played a part in their blindness to who the person walking beside them actually was.

5 5 Maybe it WAS a lack of bandwidth. Maybe they were so focused on their disappointment, they couldn t see what should have been apparent to them. Or maybe they simply weren t equipped to see the miracle before them. Their brains just weren t wired to see something that far outside the limits of their known world. I believe that this story reflects to us our own struggle to recognize where our redemption comes from and how close it can be to us. We don t have to go looking for redemption in some far-off place, or some exotic experience. I had a seminary professor who tells the story of seeking God in other religions, something other than the mainline Protestant faith she was brought up in. She vividly recalled sitting cross-legged on a zafu, a Buddhist meditation cushion, enjoying the quiet, and thinking how lovely this spiritual practice was. And then she heard a voice inside her head say, Yes. It is very lovely. And it s not yours. We don t have to obtain something we don t already have or become something that we re not already in order to find redemption. The message of Emmaus is that our redemption is walking alongside us, just waiting to be recognized, waiting to be claimed. Ultimately, the two disciples did recognize Jesus as he broke bread with them at the evening meal.

6 6 Jesus takes the bread, blesses it, breaks it, and gives it to them. You know that s Jesus s signature move, his calling card, as it were. Maybe it was the scent of the freshly baked bread wafting over them that did it. Or maybe it was seeing those scarred hands holding the bread. We don t know why, at that moment, they finally got it. But they got it. And in that comforting, familiar ritual, that everyday act of breaking bread, at last they recognized Christ. So why is it that when they finally recognized him, he disappeared? Again, I m going to confess my own ignorance. I don t know. Why is it so hard to hold onto the experience of Jesus in our lives? Why does it seem so fleeting? Remember, Mary Magdalene couldn t hold onto him either. I don t understand. But as John Calvin once said, I would rather experience the presence of Christ than to understand it. That s what happened to those two disciples. At last they experienced the presence of Christ. And that s the invitation to us: We don t have to worry so much about understanding all these different theories about what did or didn t happen. We just need to open ourselves up enough to experience it for ourselves. It may happen to you when you re breaking bread with friends.

7 7 It may happen to you in a garden. It may happen when you re worried or frightened and looking for refuge. It may happen when you re in your car on a road you ve driven 22,000 times. It may happen when you least expect it. But at some point, the holy breaks in, and we see Christ in front of us, maybe wearing the guise of a stranger, maybe wearing the guise of a friend. It is as the Muslim poet Rumi wrote, Something opens our wings. Something makes boredom and hurt disappear. Someone fills the cup in front of us. We taste only sacredness. Amen.