INTRODUCTION: Life is Full of Transitions
Transition times. Life is full of them . . . times of transition.
As Eve allegedly said to Adam as they were leaving the Garden of Eden, "We are living in a time of great transition."
Transition times. No times are more filled with possibility and promise. No times are more filled with peril and despair. In transition times, everything is possible, and everything could fall flat and fail.
Think about every time you started a new school.
Think about the first time you moved out of your parent's home.
Think about the SECOND time you moved out of your parent's home.
(Maybe DON"T think about the third time you moved out!)
Think about when you graduated from high school or college.
Think about when you got married.
Think about when your first child was born.
Think about when your first child got married.
Think about the first day you were officially "retired."
Think about the first day that is tomorrow.
"All beginnings are hard." It is hard to be a new baby. It is hard to start a new school. It is hard to move to a new home. It is hard to be a new teenager. It is hard to be a new husband or wife. It is hard to be a new parent. It is hard to be a new widow or widower. It is even hard to be a new convert, a new disciple, even of Jesus the Christ.
The truth of our text this morning is this: these two disciples traveling to the village of Emmaus were basically rats fleeing a sinking ship. The tumult and tragedy of that transition week in Jerusalem had deeply traumatized them.
Talk about "difficult." Jesus had been arrested, convicted, condemned, tortured, crucified, and entombed. Adding insult to injury was the disturbing report they had received from some women in their group, a report that Jesus' body was no longer in its tomb. Here was a transition had left the disciples in the throes of Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder.
It was then they admitted their own faithlessness. "Some women of our company have astounded us: they went early to the tomb this morning and failed to find his body." They were neither cheered nor bewildered by this account. Nor had they gone to the tomb themselves to find out if it was true, They had simply and sadly tramped home. What, we might ask, had they been doing in Jerusalem all day? The women had gone to the tomb at break of day and now it was late evening. It was about seven miles from the city to their village, about a two-hour walk. Probably they had lain low until it began to get dark, scared of being picked up by the police.
But as darkness began to fall in earnest, these two slithering disciples invite a stranger to stay with them, a companion who had been offering them surprising solace on their journey. In their honesty about their confusion and depression, their "slow hearts" (v.25) began to beat faster with a cadence of hope. They began to hear a song of divine possibilities and dreams. As they walked and talked with the unrecognized resurrected Jesus, they received their own personal (remedial?) instruction. They began a new way of understanding Scripture, a new way of understanding the Messiah, a new way of understanding suffering love, a new way of understanding true redemption. The Emmaus Walk is the journey that walked the disciple-community into its new identity as the Body of Christ.
It is hard to be a "new" anything. Including being a new, or I should say, an "always new" disciple of Jesus.
PARTICIPATION: Experiencing Fellowship
Yet as we go along in life, even new beginnings take on a rich association from our past. After two years we do understand gravity. After five or six years we do know how to read. After a few more years we do figure out a few things about interacting with other human beings. The most basic skills for dealing with these new beginnings are part of our childhoods.
In the nineteen-twenties a wannabe poet/writer decided to put down a few stories about his young son, a four year old named Christopher Robin. Like all four-year-olds, Christopher Robin doted on a large collection of stuffed animals. You now know the rest of the story... A.A. Milne's remarkable collection of novels known as "Winnie the Pooh." In the final chapter of "The House at Pooh Corner," Christopher Robin is preparing for a transition: he is being sent away to school. It will be an ending, and it will be a whole new beginning.
Christopher Robin understands this; his simple stuffed animal friends, not so much. But as the one who knows, and the ones who don't know walk forward towards this new future, they find their feet guided by four simple steps of transition: Participate, Anticipate, Relate, and Liberate. These four steps are the same four stages outlined in the Emmaus Road encounter of Jesus and his disciples.
When the stuffed animals sense that their beloved Christopher Robin is going away, they felt compelled to show their appreciation and express their emotions. So Eeyore wrote a bad poem. They all signed it and presented it to him: Pooh, Piglet, Owl ("Wol"), Eeyore ("Eor"), Rabbit, Kanga, Tigger (Blot), and Roo (Smudge"). All of them.
But the awkwardness of transitions is difficult. And they quickly slunk away. All except Pooh, that is. Needing to figure out for himself "what is going on?" Christopher Robin takes his beloved bear on a last walk, heading for "an enchanted place." They walk the road. They chat on the path. It is a moment not of road rage, but of pure communion and authentic communication. Christopher Robin and Pooh bear participate in the reality of this transition while enjoying the comfort of each other's company. They reflect together on what life has brought them. To understand what is going on now and in the future requires us to appreciate what went on before and participate in the challenge of what is before us.
The time for simple fellowship, and especially fellowship in which we participate, not just watch or observe, cannot be underestimated. We almost ruined it by giving it a proper name, "Quality Time." If you identify anything as "quality time" beforehand, it is doomed. Fellowship, or "koinonia," is a gift of the Spirit. Often fellowship alights unexpectedly and then lifts off. When we experience its presence, we must embrace it and participate in its revelation.
ANTICIPATION: When Eyes are Opened
Our participation in and of itself often ends in confusion. "We had hoped He was the One," these two disciples share with the One who was the One! Something is missing in making the transition through participation without the next step: Anticipation!
As they walk Christopher Robin uses this last little-boy conversation with Pooh to ask him what he likes doing best in the world. Pooh starts to say "Eating honey," but then he remembers how "there is a moment just before you begin to eat it which was even better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called".
Pooh is describing, of course, the joy of anticipation, the sweet taste of honey-yet-to-come. The Puritans called it the joy of "deferred gratifi-cation," though they tended to "defer" until their deathbeds. The Emmaus Road travelers felt "anticipation" only AFTER their eyes were opened to Jesus' presence at their table. They remembered how their hearts "were burning" while He spoke to them on the road.
We tend to remember more what we anticipate than what we actually experience. Childhood memories are not of the ripped-off wrapping paper or the too-stuffed belly. Childhood memories are of the pile of pristine packages awaiting Christmas morning, or of the heavy-laden table decked out with favorite foods and goodies. The Emmaus disciples-and all disciples since-recall best those moments just BEFORE our eyes and spirits are opened to the truth.
Anticipation is another name for "hope." And "hope" is another name for Christians. We are the people first known for our "great hopes."
RELATION: Where Jesus is Discovered
After Pooh recalls the anticipation of eating honey, he suddenly remembers something that ranks even higher on his "best in the world" list. Better even than the anticipation of eating honey is the delight he feels in eating honey with those he loves.
The very, very best thing in the world, he says, is "Me and Piglet going to see You, and You saying ‘What about a little something?' and Me saying' Well, I shouldn't mind a little something, should you Piglet,' and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing."
Pooh's insight is the greatest learning of the disciples from the Emmaus Road Seminar: life's ultimate delights are not delightful unless shared with those we love. Disciples of Jesus are people who relate, relate, relate.
A simple loaf of bread, broken at a roadside table after a dusty day on the road, becomes a miraculous feast when it is shared with the risen Christ. The Emmaus Road disciples were the first to experience the post-resurrection transformation of bread at the table to the Bread of Life.
But every time any disciple of the risen Lord breaks bread with loved ones, that same miracle occurs. "Where two or three are in relation with me, there am I also," Jesus promised. In fact, it is often that until we live out what we are talking about, we stumble through life in confusion and uncertainty. Until we live out of redemptive and reconciling relationships and not merely theorize about them, our eyes won't be open: "He was known to them in the breaking of the bread."
Jesus is discovered in acts of relationship and reconciliation. The resurrection gives us not so much new insights and a Christian "world view" as it does new relationships and a Christian "world life." Enacted truth through embodied relations are what give life and power to previous experiences of God. Note the disciples didn't say "Did not our hearts burn within us when He broke the bread and ate with us." Rather they said, "Did we not feel our heats on fire as He talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us?"
LIBERATION: Resurrection Energies Unleashed
Jesus leaves. The action is no longer around the table, but back in Jerusalem. But the action is not ours, but God's. The action is not initiating something for God, but becoming part of God's liberating initiatives.
As Christopher Robin prepares his beloved Pooh for his departure, the boy reveals what he likes doing best. Christopher Robin proclaims what he likes to do best is . . . nothing.
Pooh is puzzled, so the boy explains: "Well it's when people call out at you just as you are going off to do it, ‘What are you going to do, Christopher Robin?' and you say ‘Oh nothing,' and then you go off and do it. It means just going along, listening to all things you can't hear, and not bothering."
Are you "listening to all things you can't hear?" Are you seeing things that can't be seen? Are you touching faces, and people, that can't be touched? Are you doing "nothing" yourself because you're off and doing everything God is doing? Too much of our "sharing the faith" is a sharing of ourselves or a sharing of our church and not a sharing of Christ. We are too busy liberating ourselves to liberate the Spirit to do its work in our midst.
Is our time back in Jerusalem spent saying "come to church" or "come to Christ?" Is our time on the road spent actualizing our selves or releasing and unleashing the resurrection energies of Jesus the Christ?
CONCLUSION: Road Ready Even in Transition
One final note in Winnie the Pooh: As Pooh and Christopher Robin discuss the world that lies ahead, Pooh begins to wonder if, when Christopher Robin comes back, he will have learned so much beyond Pooh's "very little brain" that he will not be able to tell Pooh anything anymore . . . that their relationship will be over.
Christopher Robin happily "knights" Pooh. But then the newly knighted Pooh wonders if "being a faithful Knight meant that you just went on being faithful without being told things".
It may be the most moving moment in the whole series. Leaving the comfort zone. Transition. Going on. On the road again. On the road back to Jerusalem from Emmaus. On the road from Jerusalem unto the uttermost ends of the Earth. On the road of faith . . . or as Pooh puts it, "being faithful without being told things."
Can you be faithful . . . even when you're living in transition, moving in the absence of understanding, walking in the valley of the shadow? Are you road ready?
Maybe "transition" is another word for true happiness, which is found in this: "trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey."
Amen!
