I Didn’t See Him

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
04.06.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Lesson: Luke 24:13-35

Though we hardly had any Winter to speak of, it’s finally over. Spring is coming, budding up green and fresh out of the damp earth. A few short weeks ago, the trees were just dark bony fingers scratching across the sky, and the grass was dull and faded. But now, those seemingly lifeless branches bear the swelling fuzz of new life, and the grass courses with green chlorophyll blood. It’s a wonderful time of year, and the signs of it are everywhere.

There’s another sign of the season, though, one that always fills my heart with rejoicing. Suddenly, for the first time in what always seems like forever, I’m not the only person out there on a motorcycle. Starting in late September, all the other bikes out there just wilt away, falling off the roads like frost-browned leaves. By November, they’re pretty much all tucked away for their winter hibernation...but in April they spring forth like a great riot of sun-bright daffodils, that is, if daffodils weighed 400 pounds, were made of steel and alloy, and could run the quarter mile in under 11 seconds.

That’d be wonderful, but that sign of the season always comes with another sign, one that’s always hard to see. Here and there, scattered throughout the local news sections and briefly mentioned during the traffic reports, come the stories of motorcycle accidents. Sometimes, it’s because of an error made by the inexperienced guy who let the dangerous cocktail of ego, testosterone and a 150 horsepower crotch-rocket get ahead of his sense of self-preservation. Sometimes, it’s because of the error made by the guy whose midlife crisis drove him to buy himself a $25,000 Harley laden down with 700 extra pounds of chrome, but who hadn’t thrown a leg over a bike in 20 years. But mostly, it’s because the roads are filled with people piloting cars and SUVs who aren’t aware. They just don’t see the motorcycle. They aren’t paying attention. These four words are the most feared in all of motorcycling:

“I Didn’t See Him.”

So right now, as a public service only partly motivated by my selfish desire to not be squashed flat by any members of my congregation, I’m going to administer a short driver awareness test, one prepared by the the British government to test the perceptual skills of anyone planning on being behind the wheel. You’re going to see a video of two teams, one dressed in white, one dressed in black. To simulate the chaos of an urban road environment, they’re going to move in and out, each team passing a ball around. Here’s the test question: How many completed passes does the white team make? This isn’t easy, any more than driving in the city is easy. Watch the white team’s ball closely, stop the video as soon as they stop passing, and remember, your pastor’s life might be at stake:



Alright. Let’s see how you did. How many of you saw the white team make 11 passes? OK. How many of you saw the white team make 12 passes? OK. How many of you saw them make 13 passes? OK. The white team did make 13 passes. Good job!

But here’s another question. How many of you saw the guy dressed in a bear suit breakdancing through the crowd? Yes. Yes there was. I’m not kidding. Let’s take another look, why don’t we?

Why didn’t you see this before? If you didn’t, the reason is simple. It isn’t that you weren’t concentrating. You were. But you were concentrating on other things. You weren’t looking for the unexpected. Neither was I, the first time I watched it. You and I were both so blinded by our expectations that we didn’t see him.

In that, you and I share the same blindness of the two disciples who walked along that road to Emmaus. They knew that Jesus had been a great and holy man. They’d heard stories that his body no longer lay in the tomb,...but the people who’d reported that were just women. And they actually said they saw angels who proclaimed he’d risen again! What sort of self-respecting man pays any attention to hysterical women and their crazy stories?

As they walked along, they’re met by a stranger, who seems strangely ignorant of the death of the one they had hoped was their messiah. They talked, and the stranger seemed oddly irritated, and proceeded to talk to them about their Jesus in a way that showed them that he knew everything about Christ. When they’d reached Emmaus, he seemed ready to go elsewhere, but they beg him to stay with them through the evening.

Then it was dinner, and the stranger broke bread, and suddenly, suddenly, the minds of the disciples skimmed back to that moment, that memory, captured by Luke’s Gospel in Luke 22:19: “Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying: ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’” At that moment, they suddenly saw things differently. Their expectations changed. Their perceptions changed, their worries and their anxieties lifted, and they suddenly realized who was there with them.

We are no different. Our expectations are often not driven a real awareness of what God is doing in our lives. They’re driven instead by our busyness and the things we’ve come to expect. We’re not able to see past that, not able to open our eyes to something totally, radically, completely new.

That is true in our lives, but it is doubly, deeply, and painfully true in our churches. Right here, right in this place, where Jesus should be completely evident, we manage to get ourselves distracted by countless expectations. We become focused on church as a place to socialize. We become focused on church as an institution with a building. We become focused on our programs and ministries and all of the busyness and spiritual clutter that can fill our every waking moment with bustling and frantic activity. Church can become our road to Emmaus, a long path we walk down with a stranger at our side. It can happen, if we allow the distractions to consume us. As we reach the end of that path, will we find we’ve been so concentrating on other things? Will we be so consumed by what is that at journey’s end, we’ll say...what? He was with us? The whole time?

That’s so weird. I didn’t see him.