Text: Luke 24:13-35

A sad thing happened the other day when two young men were exploring a cave. This cave was way back in the hills and they were far from any help. One of them slipped and fell into a deep hole of about 30 feet in depth. He hit the bottom very hard and broke both his legs and his arms. His friend was desperately trying to figure out how he could get him out of the hole.

His rope was not quite 30 feet long so he couldn't tie it to anything and drop down to tie the rope on his friend even if there had been enough room. Finally he had a brilliant flash and told his friend to grab on to the rope with his teeth and hang on until he reached the surface. All was going wonderfully well until he was about 3 feet from the opening and the puller asked his friend - "How are you doing buddy?"

OKaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

You may be wondering what this has to do with the appearance of Jesus on the Road to Emmaus? I have been struggling for years with the feeling that as Lutherans we tend to make our relationship with God one of, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer would say, "cheap grace". We seem to think that salvation is an absolutely free gift and that we are not able to affect our salvation in any way. We tend to think that if we dare to open our mouths with some kind of response or testimony we will end up in destruction like the cave explorer.

As I was studying this text, it dawned on me that the appearance narrative was a perfect summary and example of the life process of a Christian.

The narrative separates quite handily into five events, all of which are important in themselves, but even more important, I believe, in the particular sequence in which they occur.

The First event is the approach and joining of Jesus with the two on the road.

As in our lives Jesus comes to us in Baptism not by our own choice, but by the grace of God and through baptism we enter into the Body of Christ - the church.

Secondly, Jesus talks to them about the events in the scriptures which point to Jesus and the necessity for Jesus to suffer and die, before he would enter into his glory. The two at this time seem to have been knowledgeable of the scriptures and knew of the empty tomb, so from an intellectual point of view, they should have known all about Jesus, but they did not recognize him.

This may be correlated with our years of instruction, confirmation for most of us -- adult instructions for others -- and for some individual study. But there is still no personal relationship or involvement with God.

Now the Third event occurs - up to this time all initiative has been on the part of Jesus. But Jesus does not force himself into their home -- he actually pretends to be going somewhere further on. The two on the road, however, ask him to come in and stay with them and eat with them.

We too must decide to accept the grace in which God has chosen us and make a personal commitment to follow Jesus as our Savior and Lord.

The Fourth event is the recognition during the breaking of the bread.

After our commitment to follow Jesus - for some confirmation - for others earlier or later - a time of understanding usually occurs. For some this can be recalled as a moment of conversion, the time when Christ first became real to us in a personal way.

Some call this the time when they were saved - and there are many other ways of expressing this same consciousness. For others the awareness is a gradual thing that kind of sneaks up on them and is just there without any bells and whistles. After this recognition and commitment, we can look back on a lot of things that happened while attending Church, Sunday School, etc., and reading the scriptures and see how the Holy Spirit was working and causing a burning in our hearts - as did the two on the road -- and then decided to make the commitment.

We seem to have the most problems with the last two events. It seems that we react overly strongly to the so called Evangelists who grab us by the lapels and say Are you saved? or Where will you go if you die right now? The result is often a fear to either ask people for a commitment or talk about our own testimony - our relationship with a caring God.

I recall a trip to the Boundary Waters area on the Namakin Lake years ago with a group of High School Youth from our church. We were sitting around the campfire one evening having an informal discussion about sharing our faith. I asked the group what they would say to someone who asked them how they knew that there was a God.

All of the replies were things like "Well look at the magnificant stars - the order of the Universe", and other such answers. Not one of them was able to articulate any kind of story about their relationship with God as a personal and caring relationship. And these were the Cream of the Crop of our youth. The 16 young people out of our entire congregation who were willing to spend four days with the Church People.

Well, I must have gotten kind of frustrated and excited, because I recall my wife joining me later as I was walking on the beach sorting out my thoughts. She said something like - You shouldn't get so excited about these things, Lowell -- these kids haven't been to all those Evangelism meetings that you have. But they had almost all been to 10 to 12 years of Sunday School, three years of confirmation instruction, and many sermons in the Lutheran Church.

Lest you think that I am making this up - as Dr. Stensvig would say - I will quote from an article in the February 5, 1980 Lutheran Standard - now The Lutheran - titled Sitting on a Time Bomb.

The basic flaw of youth-ministry programs within the main-line-denominations was the failure to take seriously the spiritual growth needs of youth as they were being challenged to solve social problems. There was little emphasis on prayer, Bible Study, and personal commitment to Christ.

The article continues to talk about a trend which is now starting to occur where more emphasis is being placed on personal commitment and ends with We must also equip them for reaching others.

These youth of the 60's and 70's will be the young adults of our congregations. If we do not want this Time Bomb of apathy toward God to explode, we must preach commitment and exhort our people to take God seriously.

I am convinced that we as leaders and preachers in our Church must make that personal commitment to Jesus to accept God's free gift of salvation. Then we must do as the two on the Road to Emmaus did after a short time of reflection, we must go and tell others of what we have experienced.

The Fifth event of the narrative was the immediate return to Jerusalem to tell the others.

We must not stop, however, with the telling only to our friends and church members, but we must continue to follow the command of Jesus in verse 46.

Thus it is written that Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Luther-Northwestern is our Jerusalem, our beginning. We must begin here with a personal commitment - not to save ourselves - or to find Jesus, but to each day accept God's grace and dedicate our lives to Jesus as our Personal Saviour and Lord. Amen.

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