Road Trips

 Acts 2: 36-41               Road Trips            Easter 3, May 4, 2014
Luke 24: 13 -35                          The Rev. Dr. George Hermanson
Dominion Chalmers United Church, Ottawa

Ever so often Suzanne and I feel the  need for a road trip.  We need to explore and have an adventure.  As we drive out of our driveway we put on road music, beginning with the Guess Who.  We off,  looking for adventure and new vistas, to be changed by new realities and situations.

Road trips transform us by movement. We tell about road trips through movies, books, or tv.  As a teenager, I read On the Road by Jack Kerouac.  It was one of those mind expanding readings, moving my boundary of reality into a wider world of experience.  I lived on route 66, which is an iconic road in American history, in TV and in Music. There are many types of road trips: a walk in the woods, exploring our neighbourhood, stopping to see it with new eyes, listening to sounds we had not be aware of.  Road trips take us into new territories, encountering a people that refresh us, push us, change our perspective.  Roads less traveled inform our imaginations.

We find the Risen Christ in moments of spiritual movement and growth, adventures in ideas, novel behaviours, and in pilgrimages by foot, automobile, or airplane. We are transformed by our moving. God’s Easter Spirit is found most significantly in process, rather than stability. To experience God’s inspiration more fully, we have to be on the move, because God is on the move! 

Our Gospel is about a road trip.  Two people walking a road with some sense of loss, depressed because of what has happened to them.  Then a stranger joins them.  He seems to be unaware of what has happened.  The first thing they do is to explain, to recite an early statement of faith.  It is interesting that does not open their eyes to see the stranger as Jesus.  The familiar way of affirming faith does not work.  So they keep moving until the evening is almost on them. They stop, and here is the important point in the story — they invite the stranger to stay with them and share food.

It is in the welcome of the stranger that they begin to leave behind their loss and fear.  Then, in the breaking of bread, and the sharing of the table their eyes are opened.   They  recognize that their road trip was one of transformation, their hearts were being warmed, and in the sharing of what they had they experienced the risen Christ.

God’s resurrection power is found when we let go of familiar landmarks and ways of understanding. It is to let go of comfort zones of old ways of understanding God in order to discover God’s lively, creative, and novel spirit-movements in the now. Resurrection transforms the known world and opens us to adventures we have yet to dream.  Resurrection life is filled with abundant surprise and unexpected adventure. A living faith does not cling to the certainty of the “old time religion”.

Here is the important point the story they were not conscious that this trip was calling them to a new reality

In our living we often miss the hints of possibilities that are around us.  We often close ourselves off from novel understandings,   God works with the world as it is to offer visions and possibilities, guidance so we work for the healing of our world.  The problem is we are not always attuned to these hints.  We are busy, overwhelmed by events of our life, the stresses of our reality.  It is hard to hear the hints for wholeness.  That is why taking a road trip works.  It changes our routine. It places us in strange contexts.  New understandings come because we have changed our normal ways of being. The resurrection is a road trip into a new way of understanding our reality and ourselves.  We see ourselves as claimed by love, sent by love to share that love with all.

This road trip with the stranger asked the travellers to let go of the past. The Emmaus encounter creates an expanded vision of possibilities.

In this encounter on the road, they were not told what to. They improvise and immediately and excitedly return to Jerusalem. Tasting the bread of the Eucharist, fed by the Spirit of God, they now have courage and energy.  They have new life to share.  What the experience tells us is that the Aim of God is specific to each of us, crafted to each person’s need, it is intimate.  And that intimacy is also for the whole world, for the universal reality of God is found in many guises and ways.  Inspiration is global as well as specific.

This  road trip is a moment of transformation, “Turn around and take another path”.  In the turning, new life is experienced.  This is a whole earth promise and is for everyone.  This story tells us that the Spirit of God is found in ways we have not expected nor do we have exclusive claims on that Spirit. Our road trips into new locations show us that God is already there.  God is at work and we join that work, with others who care for the lost and lonely, care for an earth that needs protection, where the poor are fed.  Road trips are taking paths that open our eyes to the work of God in our world, and an invitation to join in that work.

Resurrection is a road trip to new surprises. Our boundaries are expanded, We see in new ways what is being asked of us.  In the welcome of the stranger the travellers on the road give us a metaphor for our time. How are the strangers being taken care of in our world?  We are asked about the inclusion of those who are not like us.  What kind of society is called for when we see the sharing of our goods is demanded of us?  In the breaking and sharing of our resources we experience the novelty of resurrection.

How do we respond to resurrection in all its surprise and novelty in our personal and congregational lives? What new thing will we do in response to divine inspiration as persons and congregations?