Road to Emmaus

Road to Emmaus

April 26, 2020

I’ve been on the road to Emmaus. Not the geographic one. The metaphorical one. I’ve been there. Some days, I’m still there.

Faith is not a destination. It’s a journey. A journey of the body, mind, and spirit. It’s nothing you can see or verify objectively or measure. Faith, not sight. As theologian and philosopher Blaise Pascal once said, “We are embarked.” Embarked on a journey of faith. Our destination? As Jesus prayed, “On earth as it is in heaven.” Heaven is the destination. Not in the dark of buildings confining. Not in some heaven light years away. In the here. In the now. In the moments that take your breath away. I’ve been on the road to Emmaus.

I started on this road in high school when I left church. I thought I was done with religion. Maybe you have had a time in your life where you felt like this. It’s okay if you haven’t. I don’t wish it upon anyone. I’m trying to find a community of faith where my children never have to be adrift on the road to Emmaus. Like those first disciples. They left. Things went down. Their teacher died. They were adrift. And they were on the road to Emmaus, about 7 miles from Jerusalem.

Why were they walking to Emmaus? The scripture doesn’t say. Disappointment. Shock. Grief. Something drove them to be on that road to Emmaus. Maybe they thought they’d never see Jerusalem again. Maybe they were done with the hypocrisy, false piety, and dead institutionalism they found there. They were walking away from religion. Just like I did. Just like so many in our culture have. For one reason or another. It could be the church cover ups and scandals. It could be how they were tricked by someone who used God to get into their pocketbooks. It could be all the lives sacrificed on the altar of doctrine: don’t be too strange, weird, gay, butch, feminine, other…

I know the road to Emmaus for I walked it. I lived on it for 4 years. I thought I was done with religion. I turned by back on it, even though I had longed for it to go another way.

Kate wanted to go back. She was raised in a positive faith environment. But I knew I had to protect myself. So I came up with rules. If this new faith community couldn’t follow these four rules, then we wouldn’t be there.

My community of worship would have to:

  1. Embrace science. Evolution, standard model of physics, the whole shebang.
  2. Not automatically and immediately condemn other faiths to hell.
  3. Not focus only on the blood as how Jesus saved us, but have a more nuanced approach.
  4. And this was the deal-breaker: Not just tolerate but celebrate LGBTQ+ folk.

Those were my rules and, in many ways, still are. I strive to make space and live these values out.

We were searching for a group of people who didn’t have all the answers. People who would love who I am, faults and all. A people who wouldn’t try to change me without first knowing who I am. People who would share these values…

And we found it. I found it. I met Jesus again for the first time through the good people at Emmaus United Church of Christ in Vienna, Virginia. My first UCC church is named Emmaus. After this story. And this story changed everything.

The disciples meet the risen Christ in the breaking of the bread. They rush back to Jerusalem and find the rest of the disciples and verify everything the women told them! What the men thought was an “idle tale” is proved to be true. And Jesus appears again to them after the story. I know these two disciples on the road to Emmaus because for a time Kate and I were those disciples. And the good folks at Emmaus UCC showed us the Risen Christ through not just the breaking of the bread and sharing of meals, but by their walking with us and sharing their interpretations of our sacred stories. Providing us with new scholars to read. Sharing their lives through small groups and book studies and even through our committee work. We shared life together. And in that sharing, our lives were broken open and resurrected and expanded and new gifts and frontiers discovered. I was going to give it all up.

Faith is not a destination. It’s a journey. I learned that on the Road to Emmaus. And while at Emmaus UCC I learned to look for those small, often unnoticed moments when heaven kisses earth and all is right with the world.

I found a group of people who became the body of Christ to me. And who invited me to join. And it has made all the difference. I hope, for those watching this, that it affirms your journey of faith. Whether you’ve been on the Road to Emmaus or if you’ve always had a positive church experience. Whether you’re currently waiting to see Jesus in the breaking of the bread and meet a community that affirms you and blesses your journey… I hope to be that place here at Medina UCC, Congregational… but here’s the truth. We all need a community. A community to love us into being. To welcome us, even the hard-to-love parts of our personalities. A community to serve alongside and help bend the world to blessing.

May you find your people. And if you have found them, may you connect with them in this time. No matter where you are on your journey of faith, may you meet the risen Christ and find yourself blessed and filled with so much joy and energy that you run to your people and tell of all the things you have experienced. For it is good news for the healing of ourselves, and the healing of our world. Amen.

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