Text: Luke 24:13-35   Speaker: Joel Miller

The hardest part of preaching on the Emmaus Road story isn’t finding something to say, but choosing what not to say.  The passage takes place on a single road between Jerusalem and the village of Emmaus, but it feels more like a hundred different story lines, all converging on this one dense path.  Which ones to follow and which to leave unexplored for another time? 

This is exactly as the gospel writer intends it.  This story occurs in the final chapter of Luke and serves as a summary of Luke’s message.  It’s his way of bringing his story to a climax, weaving together themes he’s been developing from the beginning.  It’s the gospel in miniature.  We are on a journey, together, confused and disoriented.  Jesus comes and walks alongside us, only we don’t recognize him for who he is.  The scriptures are opened and illuminated.  Hospitality is extended around a meal.  Bread is blessed, broken, and given, such that everyone has enough.  We, the travelers, have our eyes opened to Christ, are transformed, and go and share it with others. 

There it is, the gospel in one narrative sweep. 

Emmaus Road is a resurrection story.  It takes place on the same day the women visit the tomb and find it empty.  Easter Sunday.  “Now on that same day,” the story begins.  These two travelers who had been followers of Jesus are walking from Jerusalem to a town called Emmaus.  We’re told it’s about a seven mile trip.  Some of you commuted about that far to church this morning.  So if you want to have a biblical experience today, you can try walking home.  Pretty nice day for it.

Walking away from Jerusalem means they are walking away from the center of the universe, at least in Luke’s world.  Away…

Text: Luke 24:1-12Speaker: Joel Miller

When I say Christ is Risen you say Christ is Risen Indeed.

Christ is Risen.

Christ is Risen

The writer Anne Lamott was once asked how the meaning of Easter has changed for her.  As might be expected, of a writer, she wrote out her answer.  It’s a story from her life, in the form of a poem.  This is how it goes:

When I was 38,my best friend, Pammy,died, and we went shoppingabout two weeks before she died,and she was in a wigand a wheelchair.

I was buying a dressfor this boyfriend I was trying to impress,and I bought a tighter,shorter dress than I was used to.And I said to her,“Do you think this makes my hips look big?”and she said to me, so calmly,“Anne, you don’t have that kind of time.”

And I think Easter has been aboutthe resonance of that simple statement;and that when I stop,when I go into contemplation and meditation,when I breathe again and do the sacred actionof plopping and hanging my headand being done with my own agenda,

I hear that, ‘You don’t have that kind of time,’you have time only to cultivate presenceand authenticity and service,praying against all oddsto get your sense of humor back.

That’s how it has changed for me.That was the day my life changed,when she said that to me.

The words of Anne Lamott. 

It’s not hard to imagine a similar scenario with the same kind of shopping trip, the same dress purchased, the same question asked, even the same response given –  you don’t have that kind of time – but not registering as one of those life-changing moments. 

I think it’s no coincidence that “the day my life changed” as Anne Lamott puts it, happened at the edge of life and death.  This wasn’t just any other day.  It was an outing with a…

I begin this sermon as sermons typically begin, by stating the following: I do notcare for the movie The Princess Bride. Mine is not a popular opinion. My father-in-law routinely brings up my disdain for the film, and though he does so in ajoking, loving manner, I suspect he cannot reconcile his love for the movie with thedisgust I’ve expressed. He has—more than once—hinted that this opinion of minemakes him question my sense of humor, and perhaps even my character.

I saw The Princess Bride too young. I simply could not make sense of thecontrasting energies swirling throughout the film and among those of us watching.Was this a love story? A thriller? An adventure? A mystery? A tragedy? None?All?I watched The Princess Bride through my youthful, literal lens and washorrified…the Rodents of Unusual Size were truly terrifying…would I know howto survive forest quicksand, or an energy-sucking machine…is true love actuallyrealized while rolling down a hillside together, in near-calamity?

It was not until my late thirties (yes) that I realized (or, rather, Josh told me) thatThe Princess Bride is a satirical film, akin to Robin Hood, Men in Tights or Best inShow. Though William Goldman, author of The Princess Bride book did notnecessarily intend to create a satire, his work and its subsequent film have beenreceived as such.

Understandably, this realization changed my entire life.

A film that lived in my memory as horrifying and strange became, with a smallshift in perspective, a ridiculously silly social commentary on unchecked politicalpower and mythologized love stories. It no longer seems absurd that the filmattracts the following that it does, because it satirizes works of fiction and aspectsof reality with humor: while on the surface it may be a non-sensical fairy tale, thereis more lying just below, more that bubbles upward following the laughter. If ThePrincess Bride were…

Text: Luke 19:1-10Speaker: Joel Miller

Unlike the previous Sundays of Lent, today’s reading is not a parable.  It’s a story that follows the flow of Luke’s gospel.  Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, and now he’s almost there.  He’s passing through the last town, Jericho, before that final, winding, uphill road to the holy city.  Jesus had mentioned this path in a parable, way back at the beginning of his journey.  A hated Samaritan, who had no business being on that road in the first place, saved the life of a Jewish pilgrim coming back from Jerusalem to Jericho.  Jesus lifts up this Samaritan as an example of neighborliness.  “Go, and do likewise” Jesus had said.

That was a parable, but this is really happening.  Jesus really is passing through Jericho, about to go on that pilgrim road to Jerusalem.  And on his way through Jericho, he has an encounter that only Luke tells us about – with a wealthy executive tax collector named Zacchaeus. 

This is not a parable, but it reads kind of like one:

Once there was man – rich, yet despised – who so badly wanted to see the wise teacher coming through his village that he climbed a tree, like a child, to get a good view.  The wise teacher saw the man and, much to everyone’s surprise, asked to come to his house.  Overjoyed, the man hurried down and welcomed the teacher.  The crowds grumbled against the man and the teacher.    And then, another surprise: The wealthy man declared we would give half his possessions to the poor, and pay back four times over anyone he had cheated.    

If the parable of the Good Samaritan was about neighborliness, the story of Jesus in the home of Zacchaeus is about salvation.  At least that’s what Jesus says it’s…

I have never really been a fan of the whole concept of heaven and hell. I don’t believe a loving God dooms anyone to an eternity of suffering. But I also bristle at the idea that those who perpetuate massive injustice don’t have to answer for it in the end.

This is why “The Good Place” is one of my favorite TV shows. Without giving too much away, through the four seasons of the show, we were treated to an unfolding of an extended theology of heaven and hell. The show begins with the main characters believing they are in heaven, the good place, despite leading less-than-stellar lives on earth. There they are promptly thrust into an array of difficult social situations that make it feel less like heaven and more like hell.

Throughout the show, the characters deal with their own faults and sins committed on earth and eventually plead their case to God herself to save them. When they do eventually plead their case to God, played by Maya Rudolph, they urge her to go down to earth and see that it is almost impossible to be a good person because we are caught up in complex overlapping systems of oppression. She comes back to declare that the world indeed has become too complicated, and recounts her experience there embodied as a black woman.

However her solution is not to show grace to humans, but to implode everything and start over. The main characters offer an alternative. They instead create a sort of purgatory where everyone comes after they die, and have to work out all of their flaws, aided by demons. Eventually, in a process that can take hundreds of years if they’re really bad, they get to come to the good place, a neighborhood of peace and joy where…