The Smell of Bread

 Eastern Parkway United Methodist Church

 A warm welcome to each worshiper today. We celebrate you and offer you our friendship and love. We are a congregation of people who seek to grow spiritually, to become more like Christ in His compassion and acceptance of everyone while growing more aware of what it really means to be Christians today.

As a Reconciling Congregation, EPUMC affirms the sacred worth of persons of all sexual orientations and gender identities and welcomes them into full participation in the fellowship, membership, ministries, and leadership of the congregation.

 

 

 

943 Palmer Avenue, Schenectady, NY 12309 / 518-374-4306 epumc943@gmail.com / www.easternparkway.org

Order of Worship

April 23, 2023

Third Sunday of Easter

10:00 a.m.

*You are invited to rise in body or spirit.

 

Prelude

Greeting and Announcements

Mission Statement:

We are a faith community striving to be, to nurture, and to send forth disciples of Jesus Christ.

Call to Worship:

As you walk with us, as we journey together,

Lord, your word fills our hearts!

As you speak with us, as your love is revealed,

Lord, your fire burns in our hearts!

As we proclaim what we have seen and heard,

may all people be drawn to you, the risen Lord!

*Hymn Open My Eyes, That I May See #454

Prayer of Confession:

We’re afraid to take a truthful look at ourselves,

yet you see us as we really are.

Open our eyes, Lord.

Even when we won’t listen to you,

you hear us when we call your name.

Open our ears, Lord.

We keep the light of your word hidden to ourselves,

though you gave it to share with the world.

Open our mouths, Lord.

May we know and serve the One

who calls us to see, hear, and speak.

Open our hearts, Lord.

Amen. 

Assurance:

Every day teaches us new ways to see the Holy among us. Jesus forgives what we missed before, and helps us see with new eyes. Amen.

Scripture Reading Luke 24: 13-35

The Walk to Emmaus

13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles[a] from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad.[b] 18 Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19 He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth,[c] who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20 and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.[d] Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22 Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23 and when they did not find his body there they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” 25 Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26 Was it not necessary that the Messiah[e] should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

28 As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29 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. 30 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. 32 They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us[f] while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33 That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34 They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35 Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Sermon The Smell of Bread

Out of all five senses, smell is the one that triggers memory the strongest and fastest. I learned this in college, as a psychology major, but did some research via the Discovery Channel this week to get more information. When you see something you remember, first your retina has to track the image, then your optic nerve has to send the image to your brain, where it gets sorted out and identified, and if it’s an important image to you, your hippocampus, the part of your brain responsible for memory, will ping it, and your amygdala, the part of your brain responsible for emotion, will react, and activate neurochemicals that tell your body what to do. We humans only have four light sensors, can interpret three main colors (blue, green, and red), and we have surprisingly tight limits on what our eyes can interpret.

By contrast, humans have a thousand different types of smell receptors. When you smell something, the sensation goes straight to your olfactory bulb, which stores an encyclopedia of important scent information. Your olfactory bulb has a direct connection to your hippocampus and your amygdala, so your memories and feelings are turned on right away. More so than most of the animal kingdom, humans have taught one another to look first, then listen, then feel, and smell and taste last. When we do attempt to do that, we go against our own instincts. Our brains still parse out information in a primal way, and ancient humans relied heavily on smell to distinguish what was around and respond quickly. We smelled if a plant was food or poison. We could smell nearby predator animals. We could smell our friends and relatives. We could smell home. And we could smell the weather. Think about it. How do you know it’s going to rain? Or that someone just cut the grass? Or that Grandma’s home? Your nose gives you the first clues.

Some of our most vivid memories are connected to scent. The playground at my school growing up got resealed every August, and that meant fresh asphalt. That fresh asphalt smell means school starts in two weeks. I’m 36 and I still think about desks ancd chalk and crayons when I smell asphalt. Easter Sunday at church smells like a whole lotta lilies. The smell of coffee makes me think about my mom and dad. And the smell of incense and cats makes me think of my little sister. 

If y’all think about it for just a second, I’m sure you could come up with hundreds of stories about memories you have when you smell something. A familiar smell can send you in a time machine to a place you haven’t been in years, or to a person you haven’t seen in a very long time. My Grandma G has been in heaven for over 20 years but I can still smell her soap. And one of the easiest ways we can signal to someone that this is a safe, warm, loving, and welcoming place is with smell. Think about when your neighbor’s having a barbecue a block away and you want to haul over there and grab a hotdog, or when you walk into your favorite restaurant and you want to sit right down and order one of everything. It was your sense of smell that told the rest of you where you should go and what you should do.

I have a theory that this stuff was at play on the day of this morning’s Gospel story. Jesus, resurrected and out walking in a community where few have heard the Good News, sees two travelers on the road to a place called Emmaus. We don’t know a ton about these two people, only that they are two men, one of them is named Cleopas, and they knew and loved Jesus. Jesus overhears their conversation and casually weaves his way into it, and even though Cleopas and his friend see Jesus’ face and body, they don’t recognize him. That visual information just isn’t turning on the lightbulb in their brains. They’re also completely overwhelmed with the experiences of the last week. Their brains are too jammed with other information to see a familiar face and signal either man to ask, Wait, do I know him? Jesus provides a listening ear, they need someone to decompress with. Then he teaches and interprets scripture in their presence. You might be inclined to think they’d recognize Jesus’ voice, or realize he knows things that only Jesus would know, but that still just isn’t enough. 

However, Jesus clearly made a big impression, and we learn these two men are noble people, because they don’t want this unfamiliar man sleeping outside tonight, and they invite him to stay at their house and eat their food. In the context of the Bible this doesn’t sound like a big deal, but how often in this post-Covid world do we invite people over to our houses for dinner and a sleepover? They may not know what they’re doing, but they’re doing the right thing. Our instincts often have us do just that. They help us find Jesus.

It’s not until dinner that something finally shifts in this story. Jesus breaks bread. And then it clicks. Then, and only then, do they recognize Jesus, and when they retell this story they make sure to share the detail about the bread. And not the sight of the loaf, or how Jesus looked holding it, but what happened when he broke it. Have you ever picked up an oven fresh loaf of bread, and then broke it open? That aroma filled the air, that smell of steam, wheat, and yeast. It wasn’t the sight of his face, or the sound of his voice that activated their memories, but when he broke open that loaf and they smelled fresh bread, they remembered him breaking bread to feed five thousand. The smell of bread is the smell of Jesus being around. 

What I take from this story is that Jesus never judges what we need to know him. Whatever we need to know he’s real, he’s here, he’s with us, and he loves us, he’ll give. And he’ll keep finding ways to appeal to our reality until we get it, unphased by how long it takes us. Last week, Thomas needed to touch Jesus. This week, Cleopas and his friend needed a scent. What do we need?

Jesus is fully human, and as real and tangible as anything else in this world. And his presence is warm and magnetic and pulls us in. At our most vulnerable, when our eyes and ears fail us, he’ll appeal to us in the smell of bread. 

We the Frozen Chosen tend to intellectualize Jesus, and relegate him to a set of thoughts and values. There’s nothing wrong with that, our intellect tells us that we should recognize Jesus is acts of love, in kindness, in justice, in sacrifice. But those are big, detached, “out there” concepts. And that’s all head information. A relationship with Jesus requires much more than nice thoughts, it requires our own feelings of love and devotion, and our ability to experience him in this life, in real time, just like his first generation of disciples did. 

So how do we do that? How do we experience Jesus in this world, in real time? How do we, like Cleopas and his unnamed friend on the road to Emmaus, figure out we’re in the presence of Jesus, and the Good News we heard from someone else is actually true? What information do our five senses–sight, hearing, taste, scent, and touch–receive that make us think of Jesus? I don’t think we answer a question like that one very often. What in our physical world reminds you of Jesus? What can you point to, or pick up, or smell, or taste that lets you know he’s here, part of your life, taking care of you, and you’re going to be ok?

I, like Cleopas and his friend, have a smell that tells me that Jesus is with me. It’s dandelion spores of all things. You heard that right. Weeds. The height of allergy season. But three years ago, when we moved into our parsonage, it was the last week of June. And it was a bumpy ride to get here. We discovered that our youngest, Alexander, had lead poisoning from the last place we lived, and his doctor cautioned us to get out immediately. We had nowhere to go, so we lived in a hotel for a month. Granted, it was a posh hotel. But five people in one room for a month is the plot of a reality show. And we were really worried about our baby’s well being. And God was getting ready to take us on a whole new ride, in another city, at another church, and we had no idea what to expect. On move in day at Cunningham Court, I stood in the backyard, and there were so many dandelion spores blowing in the wind that they looked like snow. And my daughter picked up a white dandelion, or a “wish flower” as she calls them, made a wish, and blew more spores in the air. Someone else, in another yard, would receive the spores of her wish. And the wishes of hundreds were blowing to me, wishes of people I’d take care of. And I knew Jesus acknowledged what my inner little kid would wish for on a dandelion and blow into the oblivion. Jesus was drawing me into the sunshine, into the warm, welcoming yard, and telling me everything would be ok. The smells of my backyard all tell me Jesus is here, protecting my family and leading us forward. It’s an odd combination of smells–itchy, tickly dandelion spores that make me sneeze, and fresh wildflowers that my daughter picks and turns into a bouquet for Mommy. That smell that plastic, outdoor toys make when they’ve been sitting in the hot summer sun, and my neighbor’s grill. Metal swingsets and fresh grass.

Does Jesus have a smell to you? Have you experienced him in your reality, tapping on your shoulder, tickling your nose, holding your hand, telling you he’s here and you’re going to be ok? Examine your world, and think about it. Follow your instincts, and trust them. They show you Jesus, and he gives you the rest.

Amen.  

*Hymn Christ Is Alive #318, vv. 1, 5

Offering

Offertory

*Doxology #94

*Prayer of dedication           

Pastoral Prayer and Lord’s Prayer

God of Love,
like the pilgrims on the way to Emmaus,
you journey with us through life.
When we step tentatively through treacherous terrain,
when we march defiantly for liberation,
when we plod through uncertainties and confusion,
and when we dance with unbridled delight,
you accompany us,
taking the same route and matching our pace.

Faithful God,
We offer you these prayers,
trusting that you reveal yourself to us,
on our roads to Emmaus,
in the fellowship of this beloved community,
and in the breaking of bread.
Amen.

Our Father, Mother, Creator God, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who have trespassed against us. Lead us, not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory forever. Amen.

*Hymn At the Font We Start #2114, vv 1, 4

Benediction

Postlude

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Staff

Natalie Bowerman Pastor

Betsy Lehmann Music Director

Joe White Custodian

Cassandra Brown Nursery Attendant