"Journeying Together" April 30, 2017

Acts 2: 36-41 Luke 24: 13-35 Funny, the settings and times in these Easter stories… Mary went to the tomb early before the rising of the sun hearing her own name spoke by a voice she recognized… The evening of that day, the first day of the week, the disciples were in the upper room locked, behind closed doors, for fear, when Jesus breathed saying Peace… Seven days later, they had fished all night catching nothing, when Jesus asked Peter a third time, “Do you love me?”… Our reflection on the resurrection today, comes from Luke not John, and starts out mid-afternoon, of that first day, on the Road to Emmaus John’s Gospel is chocked full of miracle stories, reaching pen-ultimate crescendo at the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and then the crucifixion. But Luke, is different, for Luke the focus is less on the miracles, signs and symbols, than on who is healed, the poor, the blind, the children, a Gentile from Gerasene filled with a Legion of demons, a Samaritan woman, a woman bleeding for 12 years. Why they were going to Emmaus is not stated, except that the reason they had gone to Jerusalem was now over. They went to see the Messiah. They went to witness something life changing, world altering, revolutionary. All the hopes and dreams of a thousand generations hung on the head of that Rabbi from Galilee. Dreams broken, destroyed as he was judged, whipped, hung out on a cross to die. 3 days after the crucifixion, all that was left was to go home. Reweaving fishing nets, counting other peoples’ money at Tax Offices, returning from being AWOL, picking up the pieces of missed appointments, relationships, debts, merciful routine. Instead of Jesus’ Crucifixion insert “When diagnosed with an incurable disease, when downsized through no fault of your own, when the investments you made over a lifetime are swallowed up in the market, when the person you loved no longer recognizes you as important, when our baby our only child overdoses, when at death we do part.” Confrontations with normalcy, the in-breaking of reality, are hard to take because more than disrupting reality, they destroy the illusions and hopes and dreams we lived for. Confronting the realities of life remind us that there is an end to dreams, to relationships, endings over which we have no control, and under which we feel as captured prisoners to a cruel conqueror. After disappointment in our lives, there is return to routine,… except life is different, it can never be the same. What difference is there in miracles, sermons of a Savior, if death still has ultimate power and dominion over us? When Simon Peter preached this sermon in Acts, every person was cut to the heart, responding “What can we do?” and while John the Baptist and Jesus each had come preaching Repentance, on that day 3,000 repented & were baptized. What are the conversations when on the way to nowhere? What can be important, what is worth saying, when there is only tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow… These two were part of the extended disciples, who were not looking for a proleptic in-breaking of the End Time, a Resurrection in the midst of life, but only a contrast to that mythic Genesis “In the Beginning” as if here were “The Day of the Lord“ or Resurrection After our individual Deaths. They spoke as if Fate rather than Destiny were their rule, as if what had been killed was not only Jesus, but their Faith in God. Although Luke spends only the clause of a sentence on their having been in conversation before the stranger joined them, we each know “the conversations of meaninglessness” that last a lifetime. I thank God, that on Easter morning, Bill did recover. I thank God for each of you who responded and acted in concern. But I also Thank God this reality happened on Easter morning, that on Easter, we would be horrified by the shock of reality. As the shadows lengthen and the evening comes, the fever of life is over, and the busy-ness of the world is hushed, the couple on the road recognize the presence and shadow of another on the road beside them. A stranger who asks a strange question “What is the conversation you are holding with each other as you walk?” In anxiety and fear, our options become limited. It is hard for us to break the cycle of depression, until we reach bottom and dwell there. These two had been caught having kept the conversation going in only one direction, down. When the stranger interrupted, they stopped still. Hope is recognizing, suddenly realizing there are other options, to witness a Crossroads, where our circumstance with the world// intersects with eternity and God… I think that what the stranger did was to challenge that “Faith is not the Opposite of Doubt and Fear…That is Certainty!” Faith, is by definition “Trust despite a lack of evidence.” Faith is more tension-filled and therefore more exciting than knowledge, or facts or proof. Faith is living AS IF all of the promises of God are True!” It is acceptable to doubt, it is even required in order to truly believe. Doubt is sort of like the porches on our houses, thresholds you have to get over, in order to get inside, or go out into the world! But many of us make ourselves comfortable on that threshold, the threshold of doubts instead of risking. What always shocks me about this Easter season, is that Jesus holds no grudge. Part of me expects Jesus to walk up behind these two on the road, and smack them upside the head. “What do you mean abandoning me in a tomb?” “Why did you betray me?” “How dare you leave me on a cross to die!” “Some-kind of believers!” But Jesus did not. There is no accusation in any of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection, no condemnation, only forgiveness. When it comes to being wrong, most of us have a hard time admitting it. Even when caught, we see ourselves as justified, we never raped, robbed, pillaged or murdered! But pretty good people, okay-lives, was not what Jesus sought in disciples. He found bad guys, people who knew they had been wrong, and offered them forgiveness. The Catholic Theologian James Alison wrote a book on The Joy of Being Wrong, his point being that only those who have been wrong can ever hope of being forgiven. But the real Gospel, the Good News that inspires repentance is that while Jesus never smacked anybody for being wrong, he also refused to leave us there. EVEN after death, he began patiently painstakingly explaining : Creation as a Resurrection story, because death is a piece of the fertility of life. Seeds must fall, be buried and decompose, in order for abundance to come. The Flood demonstrated how out of total devastation, still there was a remnant. Abraham and Sarah are two who were as Good as Dead, yet their lives were not over, they still had laughter. The Law is dying and rising with new interpretations, not letters carved in stone. The rise and fall of Empires and Superpowers, the suffering and return of refugees, the despair of the suffering servant, expectation of the return of Elijah, are witnesses to God’s promises. Resurrection changes the Scriptures from stories about the past, to miracles in our midst, because God lives. What if we embrace death not as the ultimate reality, but as the penultimate? What if endings, walls, only become obstacles to us, inspiring us to volunteer? The point is not to see death as a passageway from a lower to higher reality, because that diminishes the importance of life; but that this life, relationships, love and faith are vitally important to the meaning of Life! And yet, even that is not all, because God has more to be revealed. If anything, I believe we in the church have done a disservice to Christian faith, by emphasizing the brokenness of the bread. Yes, in recognizing our sins/ in the breaking of the bread, they recognized him; but he also gifted us with: Life in a new Covenant, life in hope of reconciliation. Our Faith is not in the suffering on the cross, but in the resurrection that his death was not meaningless, his death was not the end. We live with the reality of life all around us. There is death, hopes and dreams are routinely destroyed by reality, but still we trust and believe as if God’s Promises are True.