You have a Meeting with Jesus

Connection and Tension

‌Christ is risen!

I have a sad story this morning. When I was a little boy, Easter egg hunts were miserable. For those who may not know, I’m slightly color blind. Specifically red/green colorblindness. Before you ask, yes, I can tell the difference between a red light and green light. I can see those colors, but probably not as sharply as someone who isn’t colorblind. Easter eggs hunts were hell on me as a small child. A small red or orange egg hidden in a patch of green grass didn’t stand out to me. My older sister would lead little 4-year-old Kevin around saying, “look right there, no there, no...” crunch. I’d step on it. At the end of the hunt I’d have a basket of broken Easter eggs. Awwww. Were the eggs not there? They were there the whole time - my colorblindness made it where I couldn’t perceive them.

In the early 2000s, two researchers at Harvard University conducted a psychology experiment. They filmed students passing basketballs back and forth while moving in a circle. Then they asked people to view the 1-minute video with specific instructions to count the number of passes made by players with white shirts. When each participant in the study finished the video, however, they weren’t asked the number of passes they counted. They asked them if they saw the gorilla. During the video, a woman dressed in a gorilla suit walks into the frame, beats her chest, and then walks back out. She was on screen for nine seconds yet, amazingly, half of the participants in the study didn’t notice! Why? It’s because they didn’t expect to see a gorilla. They weren’t looking for one.

How often do we miss seeing things simply because we aren’t expecting to see them? What this experiment showed was that our brains are wired to only see what we expect to see. Something could be there but we don’t perceive it. We are effectively blind to it. One of the common frustrations I often hear from Christians is that God seems distant or I don’t hear God/see God in my life. The question this morning is, do we have an absence problem - i.e. God is absent - or do we have a perception problem? How often do we miss encounters with Jesus simply because we don’t perceive him? And is the reason we don’t see him is that we don’t expect to see him?

This is what is happening in the passage we will look at this morning. Two disciples are walking to a town outside Jerusalem called Emmaus. As they are walking along, the risen Jesus begins to walk with them, yet they don’t perceive it is him. They have this long, amazing encounter with the Lord, but they don’t know it’s him. In their mind, Jesus is dead. The end. But their expectation makes them almost miss one of the greatest encounters of their life.

We don’t see what we don’t expect to see. This morning Jesus wants to shift your expectations so that you become a person prepared for encounters with the Divine. You have a meeting with Jesus.

‌Text and Participation

Luke 24:13-27

I want to share three places where Jesus will meet you.

First, Jesus will meet you in the ordinary routines of life.

Two disciples are taking a walk to Emmaus. We don’t know why. We know one is named Cleopas. We know that his wife, Mary, was one of Jesus’ followers and even helped support his ministry. Maybe she is the other. We’re not sure.

What we can be sure about is that, while they are on this very ordinary journey, Jesus joins them. Yet, “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” Was this intentional, or was it something in their own heart that prevented it? Again, we can’t be sure. But the point is Jesus comes to them in the ordinary.

A few years ago an Anglican priest named Tish Harrison Warren wrote a book called The Liturgy of the Ordinary. The book covers a 24-hour period of her life as she goes about a regular day. Getting kids ready for school, losing her car keys, meeting a friend. As the book explains, all of these are places that can be alive with the presence of God, if we have eyes to see.

In the moments of our day where we go through the regular routines of fixing breakfast, driving to work, making beds, going to the store - these are all places that are pregnant with possibilities for a Divine encounter. But our eyes must be open to see him. Is God not there when we make the bed, or do we simply have no expectation for him to be there, and so our eyes remain blind? Jesus wants to meet you in the ordinary.

Next, Jesus will meet you at your point of crisis.

These disciples are walking along, obviously very sad that Jesus has been killed. They thought he was the guy. Here was the one God had promised to save Israel. But now he’s dead and their hopes are crushed.

There is almost a comedic twist to the story. Jesus asks them what they were discussing, and so they begin to recount to Jesus everything that happened to Jesus! I can almost see the Lord nodding his head and responding, “Oh, really” or “How terrible”.

It is a common experience when we go through moments of loss or sadness for God to feel very distant and silent. Yet, as this story shows, it is actually the opposite. The author of Psalm 34 writes, Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” God comes near in our heartbreak, our fear, our worry. While our emotions my cause us to feel like God is absent, the truth is that he is never more near to you than when you suffer. Pain may temporarily blind us. Jesus wants to meet you in the crisis.

Finally, Jesus will meet you in his word.

I know that on the surface this may seem like one of those churchy kind of statements: we talk to God in prayer and Got talks to us in his word. Yet, for all of its corny-ness, it’s true!

Having shared the story of Jesus to Jesus, and then expressed their doubts that some of the other disciples had supposedly seen Jesus alive, Jesus now begins to speak to them. And what does he say? He shares the scripture with them. Luke 24:27 “Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” I would give anything to listen in on that Bible study!

Friends, God has given us many avenues by which we can know him. We can know him through what he has created. We can experience him in beauty like art. I know many Christians have their deepest sense of his presence as they listen to worship music. All of these are graces God has given by which we may come to know him more.

But nothing substitutes for his word. This may sound old school, and for those who don’t like school or reading, this may seem like bad news. But Jesus is the full revelation of who God is, and one of the primary ways we meet Jesus is through scripture. Learning about God in scripture is part of how we love God. This is why regular Bible reading or attending things like Building 412 are so important.

Immersion in scripture is a discipline we must not give up on - even when it is difficult for us or confusing. There are more ways than ever to engage with scripture if reading is difficult - listening to it read through an app, watching it being taught and coming alive through The Bible Project videos, and probably many I don’t know about. There is nothing wrong with hearing others sing about God, but it will never be as good as hearing God speak to you directly. Jesus wants to meet you in his word.

Gospel and Invitation

For those who are color blind new technologies have recently been developed to, not cure colorblindness, but to help eyes better distinguish colors that are already present. Maybe you’ve seen some of the commercials of color blind people opening a gift for their birthday of a special pair of glasses. And their reactions are filmed as they put them on. All of the sudden the world takes on a new intensity of color. Often tears roll down their face as they see how things are supposed to look. For color blind people, these glasses allow them to perceive what was always there.

What blindness keeps us from seeing the God who is always there? Maybe for some of you, you’ve just never really been introduced. But today you feel something happening inside you that is new. You know God is real. You feel ready to take the next step. Jesus wants to meet you right now. By his death and resurrection he has put away our sin and shame. He invites you into a new kind of life where you can thrive as the person you’ve always wanted to be. If you’d like to make that decision today I invite you to reach out to me. Come forward during Communion, meet with me following the service, or fill out the information from the link on the screen. (next steps slide)

I think for most of us, and I include me in this, our blindness is our lack of expectation. We don’t see Jesus because, like the disciples in our story, we don’t expect to see him. I don’t know about you, but I am ready to have a shift in my expectations. I want to see a change in my perceptions. I’d like my blindness lifted. I believe Jesus is here to do this today.

We can leave here today with a renewed vision, with a renewed expectation for Divine encounter. Friends, Jesus wants to meet with you. Let’s get our self in a place to be able to see the unexpected. Let’s invite Jesus to come right now and open our eyes. If you’d like your eyes to be more open, would you just raise your hand.

Ministry time...

Communion

The story of these disciples continues. At the end of their journey they turn into the house where they’ll be staying the night. They press Jesus to join them. As they sit down to eat, Jesus takes the initiative to take a piece of bread, bless and break it, and give it to them. Jesus is simply repeating the same pattern he used at the last supper two evenings previously. But in that moment their eyes were finally opened and they saw Jesus, and then he vanished.

Here is one definite place Jesus will meet us. At the Table he reveals himself to us in the ordinary elements of bread and wine. This at least should be a place every week where we encounter the Divine. Jesus gave us this meal, and then promised to be with us as we gather around it. Let us come to this table with eyes wide open to see our risen Christ...