Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

April 6, 2008

In the Breaking of the Bread

Luke 24:30-35

Once upon a time when ministers wanted to talk about the hurry of the world, it seemed to me they would always use the illustration of instant coffee. I think that is bad on two counts. One, none of the people that I know who really like coffee likes instant coffee so that is not a very good thing. Two, instant coffee is about as contemporary as Tang. That’s not a very good illustration any more about the hurry and the instant world in which we live.

Then, for a while, we all talked about 24/7. Things were open and on 24/7. It has become an expectation. That’s just part of the world that we live in. That’s nothing special or nothing unique any more. We expect a convenience store, a grocery store, and ATM’s to be available to us every day, all the time. But even those things are now dated when we try to speak of the instant nature of the world in which we live.

I think the Southern Company has a great illustration. Always on. The Southern Company is always on. The power is always on. Whenever you flip a switch, hit a breaker or whatever you need to do in your life, the power is always there. I think that may be one of the best expressions of the world in which we live today. It is always on. It never, ever turns off.

I read that the major banks in this country are adding tens of thousands of mobile banking customers every week. When you see someone with their Blackberry or their PDA and you think they are just sending a text message, you may be wrong. They may be doing all their banking right there. Mobile banking is one of those fast-arching curves in our society. People don’t want to wait to do banking when they are at their computer or when they go to an ATM. They want to transfer money or check their balances while they are eating lunch. They want to make sure that their deposits were credited to their account. People are banking all the time. Banking is always on.

Think about Comcast Cable broadcasts. Have you stopped to see how many different things you can watch on demand? It’s not simply that you can record if you still have video tape or TiVo or some other form of DVR. You can go and select from a menu of thousands of shows that you can turn on, stop if you need to go shopping or check your bank on your PDA, then you can come back, turn it on, and finish watching it. It is always on. Instant is too slow. The word instant is almost too slow for the way that we live today. The world is on.

In this world that is always on, and in this world where our children keep more detailed and more demanding calendars that some of us who are adults, how on earth do I have an experience with God? Where is there in this hurry, always moving, always running, always clicking something, world an opportunity to experience the Living Lord, Jesus Christ, and to grow in that relationship?

The passage of scripture from Luke 24 is one of the most powerful and most beautifully written stories in the New Testament. It is evening of Resurrection Day. Some of the disciples are on the road to Emmaus and they encounter a stranger. We know that it is Jesus, but they don’t know that. As they go along the way, Jesus prompts them into this conversation where they tell everything that has happened. They said there were reports from some of the women that they have seen Jesus and he is alive. Jesus said, “If you only knew the scriptures.” I think the literal language is that he “unplugs their ears,” not a very pretty but a very profound image. He opened up their ears and taught them all that the scriptures have to say. Then as they come to the place where they are going to stay, they say, “Come in. Stay with us,” and he does. Then, there at the table, with a very simple meal, he broke the bread, blessed it, and they saw and they got it. They knew it was Jesus, and then he was gone from their midst. Then they started to reflect on it and said, “Of course. Didn’t our hearts burn within us on the road? Didn’t our hearts burn within us while he was telling all the scriptures?” Then they go and tell the others.

I think this story is so good for us because these disciples have heard about the Living Christ. They believe but they have not quite experienced it. They want more.

Let me draw out four things that are in the text that helped these disciples realize their experience with the Living Christ and how these might help us. First is that they meet him in the Scriptures. One of Luke’s points that comes out time after time, both in his Gospel and in Acts which he also wrote, is that Scripture is sufficient for a person to come to faith in Christ. Scripture is enough to lead us to faith. It is enough to surround us with Christ so that we can grow in that relationship. The way that most of us approach this in our instant culture is, “I have five minutes for my quiet time. I have read this passage and I have not experienced anything that I would call holy. I am not even sure I get the point,” and we are gone. It doesn’t quite work like that.

Think of people you have known, particularly students, who have gone to another country to learn a language. They go and they have the immersion experience. They go where they are going to be among people who only speak French. No English is spoken. They are trying to improve their French, and they hope when they come back, they are really going to get it.

Scripture is like that immersion experience. If you are reading and expecting something important will happen to your heart when you are done, you will probably be disappointed a lot of days. But if you think of it as a lifetime immersion experience where we put ourselves in contact with the voice of God to speak to us today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week, or next month, soon we find ourselves swimming in this sea of God’s presence. Suddenly, on one of these days, there is something that we look at differently because we have been surrounded by the Word, and the Word has been sufficient to lead us to a relationship with Christ and a deeper one, too.

The second point is obedience. In Matthew, what is it that Jesus says to the disciples? “I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you took me in.” Here, these disciples have taken in a stranger. What if they had said, “We are a little too busy for this”? What if they had said, “He is a little shady looking, I don’t think we are going to ask him to come in.” They would have missed the opportunity to have known Christ. It is not simply that one thing, but it is all the things that Christ bids us do. It is loving people that we may not particularly care to love. It is forgiving people that we may not particularly care to forgive. It is service. It is ministry. It is missions. Sometimes we can learn Christ no other way than to obey. It is not just read it in a book and take a test. Sometimes we have to experience it. Sometimes it is in the forgiveness that we are only doing because Christ commands it, not because we want to do it. It is in loving somebody, not because we find them attractive but only because we are convicted that God wants us to love them. All of a sudden we find ourselves closer to God. All of a sudden, we find that in that obedience something has happened that we would not have expected. This is what happened to the disciples. They made it possible because they obeyed and they took in a stranger.

The third point is reflection. We get in such a hurry that sometimes you have to give it time. Sometimes you have to think about it. After the birth of Jesus, Mary pondered all these things in her heart. Sometimes we have to remember and think, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?” They didn’t even recognize it at the time, but later when they had a chance to look back on it and think about it again, they said, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?”

The fourth and final point is Jesus made himself known in the breaking of the bread. I don’t know that I am smart enough to solve all the debates of all the Christians over the centuries of what this means. Roman Catholics talk about transubstantiation. Lutherans talk about consubstantiation. If you grew up in the Church of Christ and missed church on Sunday morning, you had to raise your hand on Sunday night. If you missed it on Sunday morning, you had to get it on Sunday night. Baptists say mere symbol as if a symbol would be mere. The flag is a mere symbol of our country. I don’t think it works that way. I think the reason there is so much strong opinion about the Lord’s Supper Table between different Christian traditions is because the power of the experience is so powerful to us we would all like to be the ones to explain it. All I know is that, when I remember and when I look at the symbol that is the example of Christ’s body broken for me and I eat it, and I take the cup which is the symbol of his life poured out for me and I drink it, Christ is more real, more present, and more powerful than many other times.

We have the Scripture. There has been a time for silence, and there will be more time to come when you can reflect on what is said, reflect on what you have seen, reflect on what we are about to do. The table is set before us. The hope is not that Christ would come on demand and make an appearance, that Christ would be on for us because we asked for it and set aside the time, but that maybe something has been triggered in our hearts that, if not now, later we will say, “Didn’t our hearts burn within us?”

We do this not because it makes us better Christians or because we want to be good people or better than someone else. We do this because we are all hungry for the presence of God and this table holds the food that satisfies.

Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

In the Breaking of the Bread

Luke 24:30-35

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