2022.04.23 | Divine Companionship
“Divine Companionship”
Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Third Sunday of Easter; April 23, 2023
Forty-two years ago this spring, my twin sister, Marlene, and I graduated high school, and decided to celebrate our last summer together by driving to Daytona Beach, Florida to visit our former pastor and his family who had moved there the year before.
Willie Nelson’s hit song, “On the Road Again,” was playing on every radio station in the nation. That song became our theme for the summer. Every time we heard it playing on the radio, we busted out singing it together. We’ve talked about this road trip so much, my nieces could tell it for us and make it sound like they had traveled with us.
Mar and I loaded up my Honda Civic with our suitcases and sleeping bags, a pup tent borrowed from our youth advisors, and a bag of charcoal and a pint of lighter fluid. We intended to eat cold cereal for breakfast, fast food for lunch, and camp and cook at KOAs for supper.
Our mother packed us a huge picnic lunch consisting of tuna fish sandwiches, grapes, and chocolate chip cookies. She also threw in two cans of pork and beans for supper. Unfortunately we forgot to pack a can opener.
Between the two of us, we had about $75 in our pockets, which we had earned from babysitting for church friends. We were rich! Gas was about $1.30 per gallon. We were driving an economy car. I knew how to change the oil myself, and planned to do that in our pastor’s driveway before we headed back home. We were all set. What could go wrong?
As it turned out — plenty could go wrong — but somehow, by the grace of God, we survived and lived to tell this story.
On day one, Mar and I discovered toll roads. We don’t have toll roads in Iowa. So Mar and I did not include tolls in our travel budget. Somewhere between Chicago and Gary, we realized that we would run out of money if we took toll roads all the way to Cleveland. So we changed our anticipated route, and turned south when we hit Gary, Indian and traveled on to Terre Haute, Indiana. We soon came upon torrential rains and we kept driving for something like eight hours, trying to drive out the rain so that we could set up our pup tent and get a decent night’s sleep. We did not escape the rain that night.
At about 11 p.m. that first night, we pulled into the parking lot of a First Federal Savings & Loan, in Terre Haute, and decided to park and sleep in the car, and get a fresh start in the morning.
We awoke after a few hours to clear skies and bright sunshine, and pressed on southeast through Chattanooga and then headed on to Atlanta. Our timing was amazing. We hit Atlanta at rush hour. Neither one of us had actually ever seen 16 lanes of traffic before then — eight going with you, and eight coming at you.
Talk about a come-to-Jesus moment. We thought there was a lot of traffic in Des Moines when the State Basketball Tournaments were in town. We were pretty freaked out. I made a deal with Mar. I said, I’ll keep my eyes on the road. You keep your eyes on the signs, and tell me what lane I need to be in, in order to switch from I-75 to I-16, so we get to Savannah and head down the Atlantic Coast to Dayton, rather than Central Florida or worse, the Gulf Coast.
By the second night we made it all the way to Southern Georgia. We hadn’t really planned to get that far that fast. We would have stopped earlier, but we ran into another rainstorm just about supper time, so we tried to out-drive the storm again. That plan bombed, too.
We decided at about 11 p.m. that even 17-year-olds needed to sleep in beds once in a while, so we decided to spring for a motel. We knew we couldn’t afford anything fancy, so we stopped at a little mom and pop motel in a small town near the Georgia-Florida border. The room cost $28. To save on cash, I asked the proprietress if she would take a personal check. I explained that I was good for it, because I had just finished two months of field work back in Iowa.
She said, “Read the sign. ‘No checks.’ We take cash and credit cards.”
I said, “My family doesn’t rely on credit. We pay as we go.”
“How old are you?” the lady asked. I said, “17.” She said, “Don’t tell anyone else.” Then she suggested that I go out to the car and get my father to come in and settle the bill.
I said, “I can’t. My father’s dead, and my mother’s back in Iowa. My sister and I are traveling alone. We’re going to Florida to see our pastor and his family.”
“Don’t tell anyone that you two girls are alone,” she advised. Then she said, “I can take your check.”
I wrote out the check. She handed me a key and offered me quite a bit of unsolicited advice about men. We thanked her for her kindness, took the key, went to our room, and crashed for the night.
Neither one of us slept all that well, but sleeping in a bed was better than sleeping in the car again. We got up the next morning and headed on to Daytona Beach, where we camped on our pastors’ living room floor for about a week.
We had a fabulous time visiting our pastor and his family, getting acquainted with their new baby, visiting their new church, swimming in the ocean, and binge-watching Prince Charles and Lady Diana’s wedding, and going to Disney World.
The road trip home was adventuresome, too. Fortunately we had better weather for driving. Taking the Robert Frost, road-less-traveled approach, we charted a course back to Iowa that went through Tallahassee, then on to Mobile and then to Hattiesburg, where we turned north to St. Louis, and finally back to Reinbeck, Iowa.
The weather was nice enough that we were able to camp out a couple of nights. A family at one of the KOAs loaned us a can opener for the pork and beans, and the mom in the family offered us more free advice about men.
The following night we camped in a state park in Missouri. The ground was still pretty wet from all the precipitation the previous week. So we ended up sleeping on top of the picnic tables in our sleeping bags rather than our borrowed orange pup tent.
The next morning, we bought a couple of small cartons of milk at a gas station and dined on Raisin Bran and Captain Crunch, and sorted out parts of the trip we told our mother about, and which parts we would not.
II
The gospel lesson today — “The Road to Emmaus”— is what you might call an ancient “road trip.” The distance between Jerusalem and Emmaus was about 7 miles. Those traveling on foot could go from start to finish in less than two hours, so the trip was not lengthy and the topography was not treacherous, even by first-century standards.
The significance of the trip, then, had to do with the nature of the events that occurred in Jerusalem during the previous week, and the spiritual and emotional process that occurred for the apostles as they traveled between the two cities and when they arrived at their friend’s home in Emmaus.
There were three main characters on the road that day: one was named Cleopas, another was his unnamed traveling companion, and the third was a stranger whom we later learn is the risen Christ.
In the course of a few days the travelers went from celebrating Passover in Jerusalem, to seeing Jesus tried in a kangaroo court, crucified on a cross, and buried in a borrowed tomb. Early on the same morning that they are headed to Emmaus, Cleopas and his friend learned that Jesus’ tomb was empty and that he had been raised from the dead.
Suffice it to say their heads were spinning. It is understandable why they sought comfort in the fellowship of friends.
According to Luke, while they were walking and talking, “…Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” He asked what they were talking about.
Their reply included a summary of the events that had happened in Jerusalem, and their quandaries about next steps. Then the stranger explained that these events were the fulfillment of the Hebrew prophecies. “[Then]…their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.”
III
The Road to Emmaus is in many ways a metaphor for the spiritual pilgrimages that we all are invited to take in this life. They are often fraught with crises of one form or another, so that we must come to terms with loss and uncertainty, and make significant decisions like Cleopas and his companion did.
Along the way dreams die, identities are changed, and the world as we know it is never the same. If we are fortunate to travel with companions who reveal the presence of living God, we discover the Easter hope that Christ intended for one and all.
This Easter hope is not airy-fairy. It may result from empathy experienced in a grief support group, or the companionship of a 12-step sponsor who has gotten further down the recovery path and circled back to mentor us.
The Easter hope may come in the form of a stranger on the road who takes our check or gives us free advice.
Or the Easter hope may be handed to us like a borrowed can opener, or discovered over an Easter brunch featuring Captain Crunch served out in a paper box.
Wherever we are welcomed, fed, and nurtured, like the stranger on the road and the newcomer who was received in Emmaus, we discover the risen Christ and new life, new hope, and new meaning abound. Happy Easter. Amen.