ACTS 2:14a,36-47

PSALM 116:10-17

1 PETER 1:17-23

LUKE 24:13-35

Sermon – 4/14/02

When the weather forecasters say there’s a big storm coming, people descend upon the supermarkets and make sure they pick up supplies of milk and...bread. And when supermarkets are designed, the designers want people to have to go through the entire store (and pick up other things) to pick up the essentials, so in the diagonally opposite corner from the entrance you’re likely to find milk and...bread.

Bread. It’s one of those essentials, one of those basics of life for so many people. Lots of different recipes, lots of different countries, lots of different styles and ingredients, but it still comes down to – bread. Not exotic. Not rare. Not extravagantly expensive. Basic.

And this is what God picks for a celebratory meal! The One who made all worlds beyond our imagining, the One with literally limitless resources, chose...bread.

And the two disciples on the road to Emmaus urged the stranger walking with them strongly, saying “Stay with us, because it is almost evening, and the day is nearly over! So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him...”

Does it give you chills, too? Two guys sitting down to dinner. Bread on the table. Main course hasn’t come yet. Ordinary. Routine. Nothing special. Until the stranger does the four-fold action of the Eucharist: taking, blessing, breaking and giving them the bread they had offered him, and only then did they realize it was the risen Christ himself who was among them.

No need for a sermon at that Eucharist. The Lord himself was the sermon, the embodied Word - “Christ is risen!” was revealed in the breaking of the bread.

Who could wait for the main course? The two followers of Jesus took off back to Jerusalem at dusk – seven miles uphill, by the way – as electrified as they had been depressed an hour before, wanting to tell the inner circle of disciples that the rumors were true: the Lord is risen indeed.

And how “He was known to them in the breaking of the bread."

And weeks later, on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter’s first sermon was a smash hit and multiplied the number of believers in Jesus by a factor of twenty-five (as today’s first reading relates), Luke tells us that the momentum was maintained by saying that all the believers “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers.”

In a more subtle way but no less real way, Christ was still “making himself known to them in the breaking of the bread.” The Easter life was continuing in his followers – who were no richer than before but now “ate their food with glad and generous hearts.” They were no richer than before, but they “had all things in common” and they made sure no Christian starved: “they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.” They were no safer than before – but Peter was preaching fearlessly about Jesus Christ just 50 days after he had three times denied he even knew him.

What had happened? Christ had risen. The Holy Spirit had come. But what continued to happen – at this time before the New Testament books were even written – was they experienced joy and strength from the Real Presence of Christ in the Holy Eucharist. In that ordinary bread, now made extraordinary.

It parallels the Incarnation of Christ itself. God the Son did not become incarnate as a Roman Emperor, or as a guru in some remote Himalayan retreat, but into the family of a carpenter in a little farming village. Ordinary? Sure. He made the ordinary extraordinary. He came to our ordinary, every-day lives and transformed them with his life, love and power.

So now – we can know him “in the breaking of bread”? Perfect.

He still comes among us, as we really are, in the midst of our routines, our mundane ordinariness, as one of us, yet our Lord and Savior. And as a means of his strengthening presence with us he chooses – bread. Bread which can lift us up with life when we’re down, with strength when we’re weak, with joy when we’re thankful. Not some exotic, obscure or expensive product – bread.

So let us come for bread – regularly, and not just when we fear a “storm” is coming! This kind of bread for our journeys is always in season: taken, blessed, broken and given for us and to us.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church