"Resurrection Everywhere" (Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
Sunday August 4, 2024
Scripture Reading:  Luke 24:13-35

Note:  Every summer, we gather weekly for Church Family Movie Nights; and this year we are linking our Sunday morning worship to the movie we watched the previous Tuesday. This week’s reflection is tied to the movie Toy Story 3. You can read a summary of this movie by clicking here, or watch the trailer by clicking here.


This story from the Road to Emmaus is maybe my favourite resurrection story about Jesus.  The setting is the afternoon of Easter Day, and two of Jesus’s disciples are walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a 7-mile journey.

 

I can only imagine what they must have been feeling at that moment.  Two days previously, they had watched their beloved teacher and friend cruelly tortured and murdered by an oppressive empire.  And then just that morning, some of the women who were part of their group had discovered that the tomb had been opened and the body was gone.

 

I can only imagine that they must have been feeling a mixture of deep grief, deep anger, and deep fear.  Not only had they lost the person who was at the centre of their lives, but now it seems as though his body had been tampered with, and there was a cruel rumour that he was actually alive.  But it would be too painful to hope.  In fact, we’re told that they are living in the past tense of hope:  “We had hoped.”  Nothing in their lives is ever going to be the same again.

 

The story continues, and a stranger joins them on the road and asks what is wrong. They share their story with the stranger, who then begins to teach them from the scriptures.  They arrive at their destination for the night, and when the stranger goes to continue walking along the road, they extend hospitality to him, and invite him to break bread with them and stay the night.  Even in the midst of their grief and anger and fear and hopelessness, they haven’t forgotten the basic guidelines of hospitality.

 

And then there, in the middle of the meal, the stranger takes bread.  The stranger blesses the bread.  The stranger breaks the bread.  The stranger gives the bread to them.

 

In the middle of confusion, a moment of clarity.

In the middle of mystery, a moment of familiarity.

In the middle of grief, a moment of hope.

 

And in that moment, the two disciples of Jesus recognize the stranger.  For it was only 3 days ago that their beloved Jesus had taken the bread, blessed the bread, broken the bread, given the bread.  The two disciples recognize that the stranger who had been travelling with them wasn’t a stranger, but was Jesus himself.  The rumour about him being alive wasn’t a rumour at all, but was the truth.  And in the moment of their recognition, Jesus vanishes, and the two disciples rush back to Jerusalem, all 7 miles along the road, to share the good news with the others.

 

I love this story, and the detail that causes me to ponder, every time I read it, is how the disciples didn’t recognize Jesus as he travelled with them.  Had their eyes been blinded by grief, so that they hadn’t been able to recognize the one they were grieving?  Or had Jesus’s outward form been changed by death and resurrection, so that they weren’t able to recognize him?

 

Jumping from Easter to Toy Story 3, to me, this is a story about resurrection.  It is the perfect conclusion to the Toy Story trilogy… like I mentioned last week, I’m going to pretend that Toy Story 4 doesn’t exist, and that they aren’t making a 5th film in the franchise!

 

In the Toy Story universe, the toys have their own lives.  When they are around humans, they are the passive objects that we are all familiar with, but when the humans aren’t around, they have lives of their own.  And in the Toy Story universe, the primary purpose of a toy is to be played with.

 

The movies focus on the toys belonging to one particular child named Andy.  The first two movies take place when Andy is young, and the toys have all sorts of adventures as new toys are acquired by Andy, and as they get played with in the rambunctious way that many children have.  But at the start of Toy Story 3, Andy is 17 years old, and is heading off to college at the end of the week.  His mother tells him that he has to clean out his room before he goes, and gives him three options for his things:  take to college, put in the attic, or trash.  Shenanigans ensue, and even though Andy had originally planned to take his favourite toy to college with him and store the rest in the attic, the lot of them end up donated to a daycare where they end up in the chaotic toddler room, and under the dictatorship of a cruel stuffed bear who rules over all the daycare toys.

 

From the perspective of Andy’s toys, watching their kid grow up and become less interested in toys has been a painful and lonely time. If a toy’s primary purpose is to be played with, what happens when their kid doesn’t want to play with them any more?

 

The toys are divided on what to do.  What they all long for is for things to be the way that they were 10 years ago, when all that Andy wanted to do is to play with them.  Some of them think that they should wait patiently in the attic – to always be there for Andy, and maybe some day he will have children of his own, and they can be played with again.  Some of the toys think that they should embrace the daycare lifestyle, where at least they will be played with regularly, even if they never get to bond with one particular child again since the children turn over every year.

 

But what none of the toys could imagine is that a resurrected future that is even more beautiful than their wildest dreams.

 

Now I’m about to spoil the ending of a 14-year-old film, so if you don’t want to know how the story ends, I suggest covering your ears for the next minute or so!

 

At the end of the movie, Andy donates his toys to a young child – the daughter of one of his mother’s friends – and she then plays with the toys the way that they want to be played with.  This is a resurrection moment for the toys.  They haven’t been able to go back in time to the way that things were, we can only move forward in time.  Their future is going to look very different from their past, but it is going to be good.

 

Before they get to this Easter moment, before they get to this resurrection, they do have to go through a Good Friday moment of death and destruction – but there is a beautiful moment in the midst of their Good Friday that made me tear up on Tuesday even though I’d seen the movie before.  As the toys are being pulled towards a garbage incinerator and they realize that there is absolutely nothing that they can do to escape, they reach out and hold each other’s hands.  As they move into a terrifying future and they realize that they can’t go back, they recognize that the future will be bearable only if they face it together.

 

We can never go back to the way things were – we can only ever move forward through life.  It is OK to honour the past, but if we try to hold on to it or re-create it, we will only face disappointment.  But the good news of Easter, the good news of the Road to Emmaus, is that even though the future looks very different than the past, the future is even better than we could have imagined.  And so, like the toys in Toy Story 3, let us hold hands and face the future with courage together.  And so, like the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, let us recognize Christ as our companion on the way.

 

And always, always hold on to hope, knowing that new beginnings are always possible, whether you are a toy or a human, and trusting that our future is held in God’s hands.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

 

"Take. Bless. Break. Give."

(Loaf from our Wild Worship service last Thursday)