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Breaking down barriers...
SERMON – 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 26th April 2009
Revd. Canon Alan T Perry
Sermon Notes
Luke 24:36b-48
The events described in this passage, still the first Easter Day, are the second part of a larger story. In the first part, two disciples are walking on the road to Emmaus, talking about what has happened, when they meet a stranger and engage him in conversation about the events of the last few days. The stranger explains these events using the Scriptures. When they arrive in Emmaus the two invite the stranger in. He breaks bread and they realize the stranger is Jesus.
In the second part, today's passage, the disciples have run back to Jerusalem to tell the others about their experience with the stranger on the road.
Jesus appears, and the disciples think he is a ghost. Jesus reassures them, but they still aren't certain, so Jesus asks for something to eat, and they give him some fish. Ghosts don't eat.
Table manners and eating customs are extremely important in every culture. They serve a variety of functions, on the one hand providing a code of accepted and expected behaviours that allow people to fit in and to feel at ease; on the other hand, they create closed communities, for anyone who does not know what the proper customs are or who violates them is instantly marked as an outsider.
All of us have felt like outsiders in some new settings, and most have experienced the same thing from the other side, being in the presence of an obvious outsider, who causes various reactions from compassion and sympathy to discomfort or even a strong desire to eject the outsider. The reaction depends in part on how sympathetic the outsider is, in part on the severity of the violation of custom, and in part on whether the insiders are prepared to accommodate the outsider - how flexible they are prepared to be. See Peter Sellers in The Party.
One of the key features of the community Jesus created around himself was the gathering of various people together for meals - open commensality. This violates normal meal customs of the day in which people were required to be very strict about with whom they would eat. Open commensality is about breaking down barriers between people, modelling the breaking down of barriers between humanity and God. "He ate and drank with outcasts and sinners."
These two passages together speak of how we encounter the risen
Christ: the first may be understood as a metaphor for the eucharistic liturgy, as we walk with Christ and the Scriptures, then encounter him in a particular way in the breaking of the bread; in the second we see the disciples again gathering together with Jesus for an impromptu meal, which also involves a discussion and some instructions from Jesus. The latter is similar to the chavura meals that Jesus and his disciples had held previously.
We, too, encounter the risen Christ when we gather together in open communities, which may involve eating, but which do involve offering hospitality to all. When we create closed communities, which is always a temptation, we re-erect the barriers that Jesus was breaking down. When we participate in breaking down barriers, we encounter the risen Christ, and reveal the Kingdom of Heaven in our midst.
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