Companions in Creation

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Luke 24:36b-48 (with additional reference to Luke 24:13-35). An audio version of this sermon is available here.

It’s all about the companionship.

In our Collect of the Day today, we pray in thanksgiving to God that the Risen Jesus “made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread.” Breaking bread together is the way Jesus made Resurrection, the way Jesus made New Life, available for his disciples. Breaking bread together is what we sum up in the word “companionship”: literally, the word “companion” comes from two Latin words that mean “with bread.” Companionship is what Jesus offers to his disciples when he breaks bread with them. Companionship is the medium in which the Risen Life is made real for the disciples.

The phrase in the Collect about breaking bread comes from a story in Luke’s gospel — a story, in fact, which comes right before the story we just heard this morning — and the two stories really are meant to be two parts of a single narrative. In the first part, it is the afternoon of Easter Day. That morning, some women of the disciples’ company had gone to Jesus’ tomb and found it empty, and they’d told the other disciples what they’d seen — but none of the rest of the disciples believed them. Then, in the afternoon, two disciples leave Jerusalem to go to the town of Emmaus. As they’re walking along, the Risen Jesus comes up and joins them — but they don’t recognize that it’s Jesus. They talk all about the crucifixion, and the story the women told about finding the tomb empty — and the “stranger” tells them they shouldn’t be surprised, all the scriptures foretold this would happen — and the “stranger” asks them why they don’t believe. Even then they don’t recognize him; until they stop at an inn for the evening meal, and the “stranger” takes bread, and blesses it, and breaks it — and it’s then, in the breaking of the bread, that they recognize it’s Jesus — it is then, in that moment of companionship, that they know Resurrection is real. As soon as the disciples recognize Jesus, he vanishes from their sight; but they are so excited, they run all the way back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples that they have indeed seen the Risen Lord.

That’s when today’s part of the story begins: All the disciples are gathered together, and suddenly Jesus stands among them. One moment he’s not there; the next moment he is. Everyone is startled and terrified at first, because they think they’re seeing a ghost. But the Risen Jesus reassures them: he says “Peace be with you,” he shows them his hands and his side, he lets them touch him so that they can see that he has flesh and bones and a body that is real and solid and really with them in that time and space; he takes a piece of broiled fish and eats a physical meal with them. And when that climactic moment comes, then they can believe; when that companionable moment arrives, then their minds are opened to understand everything in scripture about Jesus that they hadn’t understood before; when that companionship is established, then Jesus commissions them to go out into the world and be witnesses, to give testimony, to offer companionship to others as a sign of these things.

It’s all about the companionship. It’s all about the Good News that the Risen Jesus is with us when we break bread together. It’s all about the Good News that Resurrection is made real for us when we share the things that nourish us, the things that help us grow and be strong and experience joy, the things that sustain us in mutual well-being and help us to flourish. It’s all about the promise that the power of New Life is released in us when we are companions to each other, and when we go out into the world and build up companionship in all our relationships and all our connections. It’s all about the communion in Christ that comes in companionship.

And because today is Earth Day — April 22, a day set aside to be mindful of the Earth and our place in it — because today is Earth Day, on this day we are particularly called to consider how we build up companionship in Christ with all our neighbors — not just our human neighbors but all our neighbors — in this big neighborhood, this environment we share. More and more the sciences of zoology and biology and ecology are pointing out that the many creatures with which we share this habitat are not separate from us, not just a sort of morally neutral backdrop for the drama of human life, but that humans and other creatures are neighbors closely connected in the flow of energy and chemistry through our environment, that humans and other creatures are deeply related by DNA and evolutionary history and mutual adaptation that have shaped us all. And if is true that God's mission for us is to bring New Life in companionship in Christ to all our relationships, all our connections — then it is part of our mission that we build up companionship, that we share in what nourishes and sustains and helps to flourish, for all our environment.

Now usually at this point in a sermon or speech about the environment, this is when the speaker starts to say that human beings have messed up the ecology pretty badly, and that we should feel a great collective guilt for the damage we’ve done, and that guilt should motivate us to do better. There is truth to that: we have messed things up. But I also think that the Good News of New Life in Christ gives us something more than guilt to work on — I think that the vision of New Life flourishing in companionship in Christ can give us a positive vision of Christian creation-care that can motivate us to environmental stewardship for the sake of the joy of a truly fruitful ecology.

I read once of an oasis in the Sonoran desert of Arizona, where Papago Indians had been living for centuries. Irrigation ditches the Papago had dug from the oasis watered orchards and fields, so that a wide variety of fruit trees and food plants and grasses and wild trees could grow. And the variety of trees and plants attracted songbirds and desert mammals, so that the whole oasis was a rich and flourishing eco-community. In 1957, however, the Park Service declared that oasis a protected area and removed the humans from the settlement. When naturalists revisited the area in the 1980s, they found that the fruit trees had died, many of the wild trees had died as well, the grasses were gone, there were less than half the species of birds remaining in the area, and the entire oasis had become diminished and less alive. In the case of this desert oasis, the presence of human beings had been a positive factor, the work of human beings had helped the entire eco-community to flourish, the companionship of human beings had sustained the entire network of creaturely neighbors and relations.

And I think the Good News of Resurrection, I think the Good News that Jesus in rising from the grave has destroyed death and made the whole creation new, I think that gives us a positive vision of how we can work for that kind of companionship in the flourishing of all our neighbors in the New Life in Christ. God’s mission for us to build up New Life can lead us to consider how the food we buy is produced by sustainable farming and distribution practices; how the energy we use does not rely on extraction techniques that dump oil into ocean waters or destroy entire mountaintops; how the transportation systems we use encourage greener alternatives; how the legislators and policy-makers we support are willing to look past short-term gains in human econmies to think about how our actions now will affect the quality of our oikos, our household, our ecology for generations to come. I think taking on the mission Jesus gives us to be “witnesses of these things,” witnesses of New Life, calls us to that kind of companionship in creation-care.

So you see it’s all about the companionship. Companionship with each other, companionship with Christ, companionship with Creation, is the medium in which Resurrection is made real for us. On this Third Sunday of Easter, on this Earth Day, may God give us grace to be good companions in Christly New Life for all our neighbors. Amen.