Don’t talk to strangers is a common adage of perhaps good common sense. Especially for children. I was taught the phrase as a child, and perhaps it was wise advice not always knowing who to trust. If a stranger approached me at the playground, I learned to turn and run another direction, perhaps and likely for my own good and well-being.
Alexander Opdyke was sitting in his car in the parking lot of Safeway off Greenback Lane in Citrus Heights this past Tuesday when a man approached his window holding an empty gas can. The man, whom he had not before, said he needed gas, and Alexander offered him a ride. “So, I offered him a ride, and then his girl comes out of the car too. So, I mean, they just seemed like normal people. Like my age,” Alexander said.
Alexander said the man started yelling at the woman with him and at him, demanding to drive his car. Alex pulled over close to a surveillance camera in a parking lot and got out of the car.
Deputies later located the stolen car. The emotional toll has been difficult for Alexander, who said the incident has also impacted him financially. The carjacked vehicle was driven over a spike strip at over 110mph, destroying the tires. Opdyke’s car and belongings are currently being held as evidence by the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office. “All my tools, most of my instruments are in the car, and those are the two things I do to make money,” Alexander said.
How often do you take a journey with strangers on the road? In the Gospel we read this morning, two followers of Jesus are on the road. They know Jesus pretty well, and yet “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” One of them says, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know what’s happened here in the past few days?” He was a stranger. Not recognizable. It certainly never occurred to them that he might actually be Jesus–the one they were talking about as they walked along the path, the one they were grieving over because all their hopes had been lost when he died, the one they had stories about from the women about his body missing from the tomb, the one whom they said was alive. All of it was confusing, astounding, unbelievable.
The thing about strangers is that they are strange. Leviathan is the name of the strange sea creature in the Old Testament that represents the hidden, unknown life buried in the ocean that lurked with fear and uncertainty. Leviathan became thus the image of evil or danger in the Old Testament. It was in the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve became strangers to God and each other, and felt the need to hide themselves.
We too become strangers to one another. Talking with someone of a different political, social background, or economic status can be a challenge and strange. We even become strangers to our own selves with life’s changes, loss, or transitions.
Something similar happens in every resurrection account. Jesus is present, but he’s not recognized. Mary thinks he’s the gardener until he speaks her name. Thomas doesn’t recognize him until he touches Jesus’ wounds. And these travelers don’t recognize him until he breaks bread with them.
A lasting memory by which my Grandfather was known was as a stranger to know. I was shocked at the friendliness and conversational interactions as a child with the cashier, neighbor, and passerby from the front porch. With some warmth, humor, joy, strangers simply were not strangers, but as a friend to get to know better.
Frederick Buccaneer, in a sermon on this text, said, “I believe that although the two disciples did not recognize Jesus on the road to Emmaus, Jesus recognized them, that he saw them as if they were the only two people in the world. And I believe…he also sees each of us like that, too. I believe that, whether we recognize him or not, or believe in him or not, or even know his name, again and again he comes and walks a little way with us along whatever road we’re following.”
The Risen One meets us along the pathways of our life, shows up unexpectedly, and walks right alongside us in our own grief and despair, just as he did to the Emmaus travelers. We might not recognize when the Holy One is in our midst, but still he recognizes us, calls us by name, invites us to look at his wounds, and breaks bread with and for us. The definition of hospitality that Jesus shows on the road in this text is the exchange where a guest becomes the host.
The road to Emmaus is not just a story about something that happened to other people, long ago and far away. The same amazing things, the wonderful works of God, are happening here, today, in our lives, too. And if we open our eyes and see, then maybe our hearts, too, will burn within us. The word Emmaus means warm fountain, and the exact location has never really been known, but most believe it to be speaking to the open notion that all of us find ourselves headed to Emmaus.
We are invited to experience the real presence of Jesus in the breaking of the bread. The travelers on the road to Emmaus didn’t experience the Risen Christ through physical evidence or biblical knowledge. But when Jesus took, blessed, broke, and gave the bread, their eyes and hearts were opened, and Jesus was made known to them. It’s the same pattern–took, blessed, broke, gave–that was used when Jesus fed the 5,000. The same pattern–took, blessed, broke, gave–when he shared a passover meal with his disciples the night before he died. And in our worship at this table follows the same pattern once again–took, blessed, broke, gave.
Christ is made known. Jesus, a guest and stranger in this world, becomes the host and guide. Will we recognize Jesus in our neighbor who is sick or hungry? Is it the one who is grieving, anxious, or angry? Will we recognize his presence when everything is going great, and there is much to celebrate? Will we recognize him in unexpected people and places?
Maybe. I hope so. I pray that God will open our eyes and hearts to recognize the Risen Christ.
Despite the ordeal, Alexander said he still wants to help people but will be more cautious in the future. “I was just trying to do a nice thing for somebody, you know, something that I wish that somebody would do for me,” Alexander said. A GoFundMe campaign since Tuesday has raised $5000 to cover all of Alexander’s lost tools and car repairs. With open hearts and open eyes, walls can come down that we are all strangers no longer but united in Jesus, belonging to each other.
