“Resurrection Finds the Road You Are On” Acts 9:1-20; Luke 24:13-35 Rev. Matthew Reeves Easter 3; April 14, 2013

When Paul left Jerusalem for Damascus, he knew where he was going, why he was going there, and what he was going to do when he arrived. In one pocket of his cloak there was a map of the Great North Road that stretched 135 miles from Jerusalem to Damascus. In another pocket were papers authorizing the arrest of Jesus’ followers in that city. In Paul’s heart pockets were convictions and purpose he thought were written in indelible ink. Paul would not have considered himself a wanderer, but Jesus thought otherwise. In the first book of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, Gandalf the wizard writes Frodo the Hobbit, “Not all those who wander are lost.” A wanderer is, by definition, a traveler without destination, someone who has left the fixed path. A wanderer would seem to be a soul who doesn’t know the way. That term, “the Way,” is one the Book of Acts would have stick in our heads. Luke, who wrote Acts as well as the Gospel, tells us the people Paul meant to round up belonged to the Way. This phrase could just as easily be translated from Greek as “the road” or “the path.” Followers of Jesus were called the Way--people who knew where they were going; people who walked a certain path. Luke says, “There’s irony going on here, people.” The one on the road had lost his way. The one who walked with purpose was actually wandering. But not all those who wander are lost, and this is the gospel, because our Lord who is the way, the truth and the life knows all the roads. He especially knows the wandering ones. It may not be as dramatic for us as it was for Paul, but the risen Lord shows up on the roads we’re on just the same, to put a gospel fork in our path. Meeting the Lord Jesus on the way of life can be like gospel highway robbery. Just outside Damascus, Paul got waylaid. The map and papers in Paul’s cloak, along with the certitude in his heart, got thieved by the Lord. Paul’s road map blew into the desert. The arrest papers scattered in the wind. His heart pockets got emptied. Though he set out full of plans and convictions, Paul arrived in Damascus empty, having suffered a gospel mugging at the hands of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. Blinded, his ears ranging with a voice that said, “Why do you persecute me?” Paul was learning he’d been a wanderer, but also that all those that wander are lost. For the Lord Jesus strides our roads. *** Luke’s witness tells us the risen Christ likes to meet people on the road. Some months before Jesus blindsided Paul on the way to Damascus, he came alongside a pair of travelers to Emmaus. It was Easter Day but this pair wasn’t joyful. They wore downcast faces and walked without much purpose to their stride. When Jesus came to them it wasn’t as blinding light. They were already blind––“Haven’t you heard?” they said to a dumb-playing Jesus, “about the one mighty in deed and word before God that was condemned to death and crucified? We’d hoped he’d redeem Israel.” Here Jesus isn’t highway robber but the straight man in a comedy shtick. “He was crucified. How awful,” we can imagine him saying, as he does all he can to keep from bursting into laughter. Cleopas and his friend were devastated. They’d gone all in on something, as people do with business ventures, relationships, certain hopes for life. They’d put their hopes in a way things would go only to see it all go bust. So now they went back Emmaus with “What do we do now?” dejection, clueless they went the way with a resurrection bandit. The road to Damascus. The road to Emmaus. The life you’re certain of, the life that bewilders and leaves you feeling at a loss. The risen Christ knows all these roads. Our wandering

1 roads; our purpose-felt roads, even our wrongheaded roads: Jesus is on all of these, waylaying people with life. *** We live in a time with more choices than ever about which path to take in life. We like freedom of choice, and we have so much of it the choices can some feel oppressive. I enjoy talking with college students about what might major in, or what they might do after graduation, but I’ve learned from the looks on their faces these questions aren’t always welcome. Sometimes it’s not just that it feels hard to know which path to take, but that we’re afraid to take the wrong one. If Point A is now it’s hard enough to figure out how to get to Point B even when we think we know what it is. But for much of we haven’t the faintest idea of Point B and maybe we’re not ever sure where are right now on life’s map. Things aren’t going well at work and the map in your pocket has lots of roads but not many destinations. Or a relationship limps along. Does this mean it’s approaching a dead end, or is it just a patch of rocky terrain? Or the days when you had the illusion you could rely on good health are gone and you wonder what’s around the next bend. And we don’t have to breathe murderous threats like Paul to be on a path that’s harming others and ourselves. On well-traveled trails of family conflict it’s like stubbing our toe every other step. We can take our emotions––grief, anger, even love and joy––and bury them for so long we might wonder if we could find our way the hole we put them in. We can walk so long in one direction in how we view a person, look at an issue, or consider what we’ll try, that it might feel like it’s impossible to think or live in different paths. Unless, we believe what Scripture tells us this morning, which is that, often unbeknownst to us, Jesus is on our road. And so no matter what direction we’re going, despite now lost or certain we feel in life, the Risen Christ is there to thieve us of all that’s less than his life. He is there, as Craig Barnes says, as the one who owns all the roads––the one who can use even the wrong roads to get us to the right place. We can say this because this is what Jesus did with Paul. *** “Saul!” said Jesus. “Saul! Why do you persecute me?” “Who are you?” Saul replied. “I’m Jesus,” said Jesus. Meeting Jesus on the road often doesn’t involve complex conversation. It mostly involves seeing that he’s there, and stopping to listen. When we see the Lord, when we listen to him, we learn what Paul did. That Jesus doesn’t come to us to berate us for how we’ve walked poorly or without faith. He’ll call us on it, as he did Paul, but that’s only for the sake of forgiving us and starting our lives afresh. “Go to the city,” said Jesus to Paul. “You’ll be told what to do.” Even though Paul continued on the same dirt road he’d planned to take, he was walking in a different way because Jesus had placed a fork in his life. Paul got up, and as he took his next step, he couldn’t see a thing. Living in Jesus’ way isn’t seeing and knowing everything clearly. It’s more about knowing wherever we are, Jesus is there too, speaking and guiding just enough for us to take the next step. Jesus didn’t lay out Paul’s many travels as apostle to the Gentiles. He didn’t map out right then how he’d transform Paul’s thinking about God. Jesus simply said, “Go to the city.” Take the next step. And when Paul did, he found Jesus was there too: in Ananias, by whose hands Paul received his sight; in a welcome from very people he’d intended to throw in prison. From there, Paul live a ministry––a whole life––from the conviction that there’s no a patch of or life or soul where Jesus isn’t risen Lord. *** The resurrection itself is like a fork in the road. Everyone thought Jesus’ final destination was death, but God raised him up in the biggest change of travel plans anyone’s ever known. Meeting the risen Christ is always like coming to a fork in the road. Like Paul, we decide whether

2 the next step we take will be in our way or his. We decide if we’ll walk with worry or if we’ll step our in trust. We’ll decide if our future rests on our strength or the power of the Lord’s. We’ll decide if we really believe Jesus is going to be there as we take the next step, or if we think we’re walking forward alone. Luke’s resurrection witness is, we’ll never reach a place so far from God that there’s no chance of getting back. If our Lord has mapped even the realm of death, owns all the roads. He has a presence on them all, so even the roads that are wrong can be used for getting us someplace right. It’s as David prays in Psalm 139:

“Where shall I go from your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there! If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me”

This means that, in the words of Yogi Berra, that when we come to a fork, it’s best to take it. In means that chances for new paths in life come often––as often as Jesus is present to us, which means right here, right now and always. It means that for any who feel to be wandering, they are not lost but right where God is ready to give life in Christ. The gospel of resurrection is that our future isn’t ours to map. Future with God’s life in it can only be received. Finding our way with God isn’t by taking all the right turns. It’s about opening our eyes and ears to Christ who stands present to us. This involves letting go of trying to live by own plans. It always involves dropping to our knees and admitting blind without Christ to guide us. When Paul opened his eyes he couldn’t see a thing, which might be how it is for a lot of life. We live more near than farsighted, and sometimes as if with no sight at all. But we don’t have to try and squint because Christ is down the road as well. The place for really living, the place for focusing our sight, is where we actually meet him, which is where we actually are. This is how God owns all the roads. This is how Jesus finds us with us borderless resurrection life: as we are, where we are. And so the future isn’t fearsome but free, and full of God’s promise. If we came here today with some kind of map in our pocket, the word we’ve heard tells us not to hold it too tight. Because sometimes the best thing that can happen is for the life we’ve carefully planned to be taken away from us…by the grace of God. For then our life will be open to receive the way of Jesus Christ. Christ meets us today, again, and so we are at a fork in the road. We best take it. Amen.

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