Stay with Me

DAILY BYTE

Yesterday, we heard the story of the disciples who walked with a stranger along the road to Emmaus. And that stranger seemed to know an awful lot about the truth of the scriptures they believed in, who they were, and what their history was. And I guess they listened to him – I guess they listened pretty well – because when they got to what could have been the end of their walk together and the stranger started to walk on ahead as though he wasn’t going to stop with them – they stop him.

And they say, “stay with us.” Stay with us. It’s almost evening and the day is now nearly over. Stay with us.

So, when they ask him to, this stranger who has so many things to teach them agrees. He doesn’t just visit for a little while on the road and then keep on walking. He stays.

Earlier on this week, I told you about my teacher, Jonathan and his wife, Leah, a white couple who had purposefully been going to St. John’s Baptist Church, a church he describes as being led and attended by black people in Durham, North Carolina. They had been attending this church for a while, when as Jonathan was walking down the street, he saw another member from the church. He describes the scene in his book, Free to be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line. He yelled out, “Hey there!” and called her by name. And she hollered back, “Well, hey!” And stopped in the middle of the street, propped her hand on her hip and said, “Ya’ll gonna keep comin’ back, ain’t you?” with a wry grin. And Jonathan responded, “If you don’t mind.” “She slapped her knee and cackled, ‘It’s all right with me, honey!”

Because you see, Jonathan had realized that he had something to learn – a whole new world to understand – from people who were different than he was. And when he asked to stay, his “visit” turned into an openness to a new life for everyone involved.

On the road to Emmaus, the disciples visit with Jesus for a little while, but it’s only when they ask him to stay and sit at the table with him, that they realize who he is!

It’s only when he stays that they realize they’ve been talking to Jesus the whole time.

And then – while that truth is still ringing within them – he vanishes “from their sight.”

And they are left with the second resurrection truth that every single stranger they meet from now on along the road, holds the presence of Christ. The truth that they will only know this and learn from each other, if they ask the stranger to stay with them. Have you ever asked Jesus to “stay” with you in the form of a stranger?

GUIDING SCRIPTURE

Luke 24:28-35 (NRSV))

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?’ That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, ‘The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!’ Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.