Hosting the Stranger
Sermon preached by the Rev. John Elliott Lein at St. Thomas à Becket Episcopal Church on April 26, 2020, on the following texts: Acts 2:14a,36-41, Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17, 1 Peter 1:17-23, and Luke 24:13-35. Sermon begins at minute 19:29 in the video recording.
The story in our Gospel reading today is both mysterious and mundane.
In a mundane sense it is a very simple story after all the miraculous and dramatic events in recent chapters. Two ordinary people walk to a nearby town, meeting up with and talking with a third on the way, and then share a meal before returning to their friends to share what they had learned.
But as soon as we take a closer look, the mysteries arise.
The two disciples here are otherwise-unknown, not mentioned in any other story or Gospel. One may very well be a woman, and the other is simply named “Cleopas” which is the only occurance of it in the entire Bible (some suggest that it could be the same as the “Clopas” in John who is known only as Jesus’ uncle or other relation, but others say it is unique.).
These two appear to have all the facts, but no understanding.
Further, without specified reason or explanation of how it happens, we are told that these dedicated followers who have clung to Jesus’ words and teaching and presence during his time of ministry are kept from recognizing him when he shows up to walk alongside them.
Jesus in disguise then interprets the Scriptures and explains everything to them, but they still do not understand or recognize him. When the crucial moment comes, and that recognition finally dawns, Jesus immediately disappears!
They are left with memories of emotion and sensation alone to take with them, hurrying back through the dark to find and tell their friends in Jerusalem.
* * *
This story has been a favorite of preachers and various interpreters throughout the centuries, and has many lessons and applications. I would like to share one with you today from 400 years ago, with the help of our own art historian Bernie Schultz.
So let us take advantage of the visual medium we are using in this age of pandemic and look at a piece titled The Supper at Emmaus created by the Italian Baroque painter Caravaggio in 1601.
Caravaggio was one of many painters who took on this scene, but he has managed to capture the pivotal moment in a special way. He has taken the very heart of the story and given us a picture of that dramatic split-second just after the disciples grasp the truth yet just before Jesus disappears.
Here you see the classic figures depicted. On the left, standing, is the innkeeper of the establishment they are eating in. He seems to be listening in fascination to Jesus, but without prior relationship or likely knowledge of what had occurred in recent past he doesn’t display any evidence of surprise. His shadow cast on the blank wall behind makes a dark halo that serves to highlight the central figure of Jesus.
The table is laden with symbols. We see water, a pitcher likely containing wine, grapes, and bread. The basket in the foreground almost falling toward us off the table casts a shadow that suggests a fish, a frequent symbol of Christianity and an element of the meals Jesus shared with others.
The disciple on the right has stretched out his arms in a dramatic gesture which seems to point back to Jesus’ crucifixion. It may also serve to foreshadow the disciple’s own future death as many of Jesus’ first followers eventually followed their leader in this way, particularly if this figure was intended to depict the Apostle Peter as some have claimed was the second unnamed disciple. He wears a cockleshell on his lapel which marks him for a pilgrim.
The final attending figure, to the lower left, has lurched forward in his chair, placing his hands as if about to leap out in surprise. You can feel his emotion and movement even in this still capture.
And then there is Jesus, in the center, portrayed without the traditional beard as if in his disguise that has just broken. He alone is wearing the first-century middle-eastern garb, while the others reflect the somewhat-tattered clothing of the common Italian citizen of the time. Unlike many similar depictions, Jesus here is not making a liturgical sign with his hands but merely reaching forward as if to invite us, as the viewer, into the meal. His face, with its cast-down eyes and brilliantly-lit cheeks, is compelling and welcoming as a friend rather than preaching as an authority figure.
He seems to be blessing the bread in the moment before breaking it, but if so then his raised right hand is extending the blessing out to us, the viewer.
* * *
Caravaggio, a painter who preferred the company and carousing of the commoners of Rome to the approval of the wealthy patrons who commissioned these works, gives us an experience of this moment as a simple sharing of communion and connection over an ordinary meal rather than a liturgical or religious ceremony. It is all the more powerful for what it leaves out. In Caravaggio’s painting, as for Luke’s writing, Jesus came and remains for the poor and his work is centered in the radical act of sharing food and hospitality in common with the outcast, the doubting, and the stranger.
What strikes me about this story today, as this painting emphasizes, is the context of revelation and belief. As it begins, the two disciples clearly know much, and Jesus provides even further knowledge, but none of this changes that lack which Jesus points out—the “slowness of their hearts”. The facts have been captured in the mind, but they are disconnected from truly encountering the truth.
The miraculous breakthrough happens in a mundane exchange; the disciples beg this “stranger” to accept their hospitality and fellowship with them, and in accepting Jesus sits down and blesses bread to share.
Caravaggio has captured the shock of recognizing the sacred as already/always present in the midst of the secular—the disciples suddenly understand that Jesus is fully with them every time they break bread with a stranger. Just as Matthew wrote in his gospel (Matthew 25:31-46) that the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, the hungry are the presence of Christ to us in our lives, so this story of Luke’s and the painting of Caravaggio tell us that it is in ordinary, everyday encounters with “the other” that we find Jesus to be present in our lives.
So as we break bread with our families in isolation,
as we help the sick and destitute in the ways we are able,
as we support food ministries,
as we invite each other into relationship in new ways,
let us remember the disguises Jesus wears,
let us feel again the burning of our hearts,
let us be converted once again to turn toward each other,
to heal,
to feed,
to love,
and to ever see that we host the very presence of Christ in our midst as we turn to the stranger and the outcast.
AMEN
