Immediate Word

It was in "the breaking of the bread" that the two disciples who had walked with Jesus to Emmaus that first Easter evening realized who he was. A contemporary poet has written:

The Breaking of the Bread

As they walked the road to Emmaus on that day,
Jesus walked with them --
and they asked him in to stay.
When he blessed the bread
and he broke it, then they knew
that the word they'd heard
of his rising must be true.

He was known to them in the breaking of the bread,
risen from the dead,
risen as he'd said.
He is known to us
as the firstborn from the dead
in the breaking of the bread.
Barbara Jurgensen, Following You (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1990) p. 32

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Luke tells us that the two people walking to Emmaus that evening were "looking sad" when Jesus met them. One of them told him, "We had hoped that he (Jesus) was the one to redeem Israel" (vv. 18, 21). Their hopes had been dashed, and now they were making their way, gloomily, back to Emmaus.

It's easy to be dejected when things don't go the way we hoped they would. We have a definite idea of how things should move along, and if they don't, well, we can feel crushed.

We need to remember that the Lord God might have a different idea of how things should work out. And, like the old Ford ad, God might have a better idea. Oswald Chambers reminds us:

Anything that savours of dejection spiritually is always wrong. If depression and oppression visit me, I am to blame; God is not, nor is anyone else. Dejection springs from one of two sources -- I have either satisfied a [desire] or I have not. [Desire] means -- I must have it at once. Spiritual [desire] makes me demand an answer from God, instead of seeking God who gives the answer

What have I been trusting God would do? And today -- the immediate present -- is the third day, and He has not done it; therefore I imagine I am justified in being dejected and in blaming God... The meaning of prayer is that we get hold of God, not of the answer.

-- Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest (Uhrichsville, Ohio: Barbour, 2000) p. 38

* * *

One of the religious pictures we see frequently in churches and homes shows Jesus walking with two followers, their long robes flowing, on the road to Emmaus.

Aside from the fact that there are many more trees in the picture than you'd see in that part of the Holy Land today, the picture always reminds me that the two followers who didn't realize that it was Jesus walking with them -- nor did they recognize him when he sat down to share supper with them -- were a lot like us.

Think about what we do. Before we eat we pray, "Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest," then we go ahead and enjoy our meal, probably not thinking any more about the fact that he might actually be present with us. Yet he promised, "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20).

You and I are always on the road to Emmaus, with Jesus, though unrecognized by us, walking beside us.

* * *

After September 11th, I heard from a number of friends that I hadn't heard from in a very long time. One of them was a friend I had known in college. He lived in Canada, I lived in West Virginia at the time. We made the effort to meet in Toronto. We went to dinner. We remembered so many things that we had forgotten. It was as though we came to "recognize" each other all over again. It was a special and holy moment.

* * *

I always loved Thanksgiving dinner. All the cousins and uncles were there. Somehow my grandmother prevailed and, against the better judgment and willful objections of some of the more difficult personalities, she became the glue that held our family together. Jesus did that for us in the eucharist. He held us together. It was in the eucharist that we "recognized" him in his risen power. Many Christians still do!

* * *

We feed about 100 people a day at our soup kitchen. It is a daily miracle. There is a church, a fraternal organization, or a wedding party that will have leftovers and bring them by and somehow our cook will find a way to throw a meal together for all 100 people. We don't usually have a lot left over as Jesus did when he fed the 5,000... but we are nonetheless amazed at the miracle of the presence of Christ in the goodness and generosity of God's people.

* * *

Making bread is great fun. First get the yeast the sugar and the salt going in some warm water and let it sit for a bit. Then add some flour, about 3 cups. Mix the ingredients well together and keep adding flour until you form a lump. Now keep adding flour and begin to knead that lump with the palms of your hands on a butcher-block breadboard. At first, it is just a lump. However, in about 5 to 10 minutes, a remarkable thing will happen. The lump will come to life in your own hands. It will develop a spring to it as the gluten develops a hold on the entire loaf. The ingredients have now become one. Let it sit now and cover it with a moist towel. In about an hour it will double in size. Bake it on a baking stone... and breathe in the aromas of the staff of life... and then let it cool. Take a serrated knife; cut it and break off a piece. Taste and see... it will satisfy you unlike any other food on earth. "Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread!"

* * *

Notice if you will that Jesus breaks the break and gives it to his friends. It is no mistake to be broken...it is like the brokenness of our lives, the brokenness of our feelings... like life itself. Jesus knew what he was doing. Herman Melville summed it us succinctly: "I feel that the Godhead is broken up like the bread at the Supper, and that we are the pieces. Hence this infinite fraternity of feeling."

-- Herman Melville in a letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, November, 1851 (http://www.melville.org/letter7.htm)

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Painting, writing, sculpting, architecture, even my grandmother's knitting transcend life and even death. Good art (sometimes, even bad art) lives beyond us. As W. H. Auden put it; "Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead."

-- W.H. Auden, New York Times (August 7, 1971)