Sermon Preached in an Empty Church
In London’s National Gallery there is a painting by the Renaissance artist Michelangelo Caravaggio. It is called The Supper at Emmaus and portrays the climax of a stranger’s meeting with two travelers on the road to Emmaus. The story is found in the Gospel of Luke. It is Easter evening; the stranger is walking with them, but perhaps because they are distracted by grief, they do not recognize him. We understand. Everything they loved has been taken away from them. Their lives will never be the same. They say (in paraphrase), “Stay with us, for our world is far spent.”
The painting depicts four characters, a server, the two disciples seated at either side of the table, and a chubby Italianate stranger sitting in the middle. The fourth side of the table is open to the viewer. It is our place at the table. You can stand there and watch, or you can join the meal.
The stranger is blessing the bread. And as he does so, we are given to observe the precise moment of recognition. One man’s arm is flying toward the viewer as if to penetrate the invisible wall between the figures in the painting and us the viewers. The other disciple, with a rip in his tunic, is caught coming off his chair in utter amazement.
There are many such recognition scenes in the Gospels, as when Doubting Thomas places his hand in Christ’s wound and cries, “My Lord and my God!” It happens in the dark on Easter morning when Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Christ for the groundskeeper. All the shadowy figure needs to say is “Mary,” and she replies with an inflection we can only imagine, “Teacher!” If the great Caravaggio was right, when recognition occurs, amazement is sure to follow.
This morning, when I came into this church to preach, my heart sank. The place was as empty as a tomb. Just me and the video recorder. Over the years I have dreamed up many a sermon, almost always alone. I have even preached them alone in my kitchen or out on the driveway. But I have never delivered one in an empty church. It is strange.
But isn’t this the triumph of resurrection? He is not a prisoner in this sanctuary. We cannot hold him here, even in this beautiful building, any more than he could be held by Joseph’s impressive tomb. He is free to be out and about. He has other things to do.
Of course, we can “see” him by faith in holy settings, but now also in hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, funeral homes, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, busses and trains, wherever the Friends of God are expending themselves on our behalf.
This is a mystery, and I cannot explain it: after Jesus was raised from the dead, he was hard to recognize. He ate and drank and, as Caravaggio pointedly demonstrates, cast a definite shadow on the wall behind him. But even those who, like us, had followed him for years failed to recognize him in critical situations. Something about resurrection frees him to appear in other guises, to move into new identities and to embody others with his love. The Jesuit poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, wrote, “for Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/ to the Father through the features of men’s faces.”
Now I can see him roaming the corridors of nursing homes, like someone making rounds, pausing to bless those who are alone and in distress. Perhaps he is the young guy who pushes the gurney, every day risking his own well-being for others. Or, he might be the overwhelmed chaplain who had been considering retirement, but now finds herself, prayer book in hand, alone in a dreary crematorium except for God and one of God’s lost children.
Is there any amazement left in us when we recognize such courage? Can there be any greater amazement in the presence of such love?
Jesus once appeared as the Stranger, veiled even from the eyes of those who loved him. He is still here. Disguised. Incognito. I wonder if he is wearing a mask these days. It would be just like him.
Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
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Excerpted from a sermon preached in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Durham, NC and from a forthcoming book, Just Tell the Truth: A Call to Faith, Hope, and Courage to be published later this year.