One of my favorite activities in all the world is road-tripping. There’s no place I’d rather be than on the road—whether as passenger or driver, cruising down an open highway just fills me with joy. My ideal vacation involves a map, a full tank of gas, good music on the stereo, a cooler in the back seat, miles upon miles of open road. I consider a good country road is just a little glimpse of heaven.

I am not alone in this passion. I’m sure all of you have your own road trip stories, and I imagine our visiting choir is right now in the process of making new stories. Much of our United States culture idolizes the road. Just think about all the great songs that sing the praises of traveling our highways and by-ways—Willie Nelson’s crooning, “I just can’t wait to get on the road again,” Bruce Springsteen declaring we were “born to run”, and Dion singing the praises of the wanderer, who “roams around and around and around and around.” And, of course, where else could we get our kicks if not on Route 66? So as I thought about today’s stories from the scripture, the Emmaus Road and the Damascus Road, my own love of the road caused that very aspect of the story to stick out to me.

In our culture, the road looms most romantically as a symbol of freedom, of not being tied down to responsibilities, of the ability to follow one’s passions wherever they might lead. To be on the road is to be in motion—even if we don’t know where we’re going. In addition to freedom, the road has also come to symbolize the space of quest, the place of longing, the place where we go to find ourselves. Frequently, the road serves as a liminal space, the edge of society one must traverse in order to transition to another stage of life. Being on the road necessitates an open-mindedness, a willingness to see new things or hear new ideas. When you are on the road, you are somehow outside of the familiar routines, beyond the reach of the ordinary. Time itself loses its meaning and relevance. I think it’s all of these things—freedom, questing, openness—that contribute to the lure of the road in our society. D.H. Lawrence, in praising that great American poet of the road Walt Whitman, goes so far as to say that, “the great home of the soul is the Open Road. Not heaven, not paradise. Not ‘above.’ Not even ‘within.’ It is a wayfarer down the road.”  The great home of the soul is the Open Road. The road suspends the ordinary in such a way that the extraordinary is revealed. I think it’s also why the road is so often God’s chosen meeting place.

Our first pair of travelers in today’s gospel story are on the road to Emmaus. Now, every good road trip needs a theme song, so I think the theme song for this particular road trip would have to be “Truckin’” by the Grateful Dead— with it’s classic refrain: “What a long, strange trip it’s been!” These two souls are on the open road from Jerusalem to Emmaus, returning home after a week in the holy city. We can assume they were on a religious pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover, and have witnessed the dramatic events unfolding—they had seen first hand the soaring hopes surrounding this man Jesus, and watched the dream crumble as their hero ended up tortured, instead of triumphant, crucified instead of conquered. And then, that very morning, the women reported that they had visions of angels who said he was alive. What a long, strange trip indeed! On the return road, their souls sought to make sense of it all. And what happened to them on the road home? Christ appeared and walked beside them, explaining the scriptures to them and breaking bread at table. When they recognized him, their hearts burned within them. Out on the road, they found clarity, found freedom, found God. Or, rather, God found them.

And Saul on the road to Damascus? Unlike the travelers on the Emmaus Road, Saul seemed to know right where he was going. He was confident in his own righteousness, and refused to admit the slightest bit of confusion or curiosity. For him, the road was narrow, and those followers of Jesus had strayed from it. His duty was clear—go to Damascus to round them up for trial. But even his soul, out there on the road, was somehow penetrable, somehow vulnerable—and while he was on the road God came to him. Although the term applies, it just seems too gentle to refer to this as Saul’s “moment of clarity.” The author describes it as a blinding flash of light and a voice from the heavens. Such emphasis must have been required to get stubborn Saul’s attention. He was struck blind and ordered to stop persecuting Jesus’ followers. And the scriptures tell us he did, immediately. The theme song for the road trip of our friend Saul-turned Paul? Hank Williams, of course, “I Saw the Light.” Out on the road, Paul found grace, found himself. And God definitely tracked him down.

These two stories, both appearing in our lectionary during the Easter season, are stories of the resurrection, taken on the road. For those of us who take the stories of the bible seriously but not literally, these stories of resurrection, from the empty tomb to doubting Thomas to Emmaus and Damascus, these are some of the most challenging aspects of our faith. Many of us continue to harbor our serious doubts about the literal resuscitation of the body, yet hold fast to our belief that the disciples did experience something wondrous following Jesus’ death. Despite doubts about what exactly the resurrection was, I remain convinced that without it, Christianity is meaningless. So we need to grapple with these resurrection stories. Two weeks ago on Easter Sunday, Carl described the disciples and the women, those who knew Jesus intimately, at the empty tomb proclaiming Christ was alive. He called it a revolutionary act of defiance, daring to declare life where only death was apparent. That’s an Easter message if ever I heard one. But the stories today are different, and they add another layer to our Easter message.

Unlike the earlier stories of the resurrection, Christ does not appear to those who knew the man Jesus, like the disciples and the women. While we don’t know much about Cleopas and his companion, the very fact that they had to return to Jerusalem to notify the eleven disciples tells us that they themselves were not in the inner circle. Yet their eyes were opened, and they recognized Christ’s presence in their midst. And Paul himself never laid eyes on the man Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh, never heard him preach, never glimpsed a healing, never witnessed the events in Jerusalem. And yet he claims that he did actually meet Christ—the resurrected one on the road to Damascus. Paul testifies to this experience in his own words in his letter to the Galatians, saying: “The gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. … God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles.”  Paul met Christ on the Damascus road, though he had never laid eyes on Jesus of Nazareth.

Biblical scholar Marcus Borg identifies this distinction between the pre-Easter Jesus and the post-Easter Jesus. The pre-Easter Jesus was the man of Nazareth, who was born, lived and died, who was known in and bound by the earthly realities of time and space. The post-Easter Jesus, on the other hand, incorporates all the Christian tradition about the divine purposes and manifestations of Christ. But Borg goes further—the post-Easter Jesus is not just a matter of Christian tradition and creedal doctrine. The post-Easter Jesus, he says, is “an element of experience.” He continues, “Beginning with Easter, the early movement continued to experience Jesus as a living reality after his death, but in a radically new way. After Easter, his followers experienced him as a spiritual reality, no longer as a person of flesh and blood, limited in time and space, as Jesus of Nazareth had been. Rather, Jesus as the risen, living Christ could be experienced anywhere and everywhere.”  Let me say that again. “Jesus as the risen, living Christ could be experienced anywhere and everywhere.” It’s resurrection, on the road. What Paul, Cleopas and the other Emmaus traveler testify to is a post-Easter Jesus, a living Christ who comes to them even if they have never known the earthly man of Nazareth. This post-Easter Jesus meets them right where they are, on the road. They experience in these resurrection stories the sure knowledge that the truth and reality of Jesus is not limited by time or place, but exists with them, wherever they travel.

These two accounts take the resurrection experience on the road—into a place that is boundless and timeless and free—because the resurrection itself is God’s way of telling us that Christ’s presence is boundless, timeless and free. That means that if Paul and Cleopas and the other traveler can encounter the living Christ, so can we. If Christ can be on the road to Emmaus and the road to Damascus, then Christ can also be present right here on any of the roads that we travel today, even right here on Boylston Street. That’s why Christianity without the resurrection is meaningless—because the resurrection signals our participation in a living faith, a Christ we ourselves can encounter and experience.  We do not worship a God who acted one time, long ago, by sending a heavenly being to do mystical things. We worship the living Christ of faith, who comes to us even now, revealing to us the presence of the holy and the path to life.

We worship a God who meets up with us, on our road, and that makes all the difference. The travelers to Emmaus, when they had met Christ on the road, turned around and ran all the way back to Jerusalem, ran into danger, ran into uncertainty, because their hearts were on fire with the light of life. Paul, after meeting Christ on the Damascus road, turned around from ardent persecutor to ardent prophet. His heart too burned within him. Because Christ, the post-Easter Jesus, is alive and comes to meet even us on our road, we too can live with hearts burning within us. Indeed, we must live as Easter people, resurrection people. What does that mean? The best description of resurrection people I know comes from another writer of the American road, Jack Kerouac. In his classic On the Road, he says,  “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see a blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’”

Let us, then, be the mad ones—mad for life, our hearts burning within us, lighting up the world like fabulous yellow roman candles, proclaiming for one and all that Christ is alive and with us now, and he will meet us on the road. Alleluia! Amen.