"Founded on Disappointments" May 4, 2014

Luke 24: 13-35 Acts 10: 34-48 But, we had hoped... For the last many decades we have been part of an intellectual revolution. Our human understanding has increased exponentially, and what our minds could not fathom, our computers and devices could calculate for us. We are rational beings, but we are not only intellectual, we also feel and live and act and relate to one another. The quest to know, the desire to understand and make sense of the world only works for the tangible, the length and breadth, height and depth from nothing to our greatest achievement. The difficulty is that we have equated faith in contrast to science, or philosophy, or psychology, as something to know and master. But to believe is not to commit to mind as memory, but to commit to heart what we treasure. In faith we begin at Chaos trusting God to redeem. What I am struggling to describe is there is a rational progression to our minds; but leaps of faith are not rational, not progressive, if anything Christian faith is built on disappointment, doubt and disillusionment, the traumas which prevent continuing unchanged. If Christian Faith were reasonable and logical, all we would need is the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” This is Karma, what goes around comes around. Good things happen to good people. Following the rules guarantees success. Except, these do not always work out. Bad things do happen to good people, just as those who do terrible things get away with bullying and successes. Life is not always as cyclical as the seasons, as rational as gravity, or laws. The Resurrection is not about Jesus being born at Bethlehem, baptized as a 30 year old, a gifted preacher, teacher and healer who entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and was promoted to being the Son of God. We cannot make the transition, to Jesus rising from the dead, without his having died, died in the most gruesome horrible way of suffering designed to instill fear and domination and hopelessness. Luke 24 is a very real human story. In response to Jesus being arrested, executed, buried 3 days before, two of those who had been followers declare: Road Trip! Let's Get out of Dodge. Let's go south for the winter. Let's clear our heads by going for a walk, or a run. We are taught Escapism. When stress gets too much, when we do not know how to cope with disappointments, we take a pill, have a drink, watch something mindless, go away for a while. When we are Depressed, we DeCompression, except when we are rested, when we come back, this “disappointed reality” is still inescapable. Luke has this wonderful aramaic phrase: “Hlpizomen” “But, we had hoped...” The disciples thought everything would be predictable. In a baseball game the pitcher pitches, the Catcher catches, the shortstop intercepts and runs down the player between 2nd and 3rd. A Surgeon excises tumors. So a Messiah is here to gather to change the world. The Messiah will confront our oppressors, call for revolution against the Empire, we have evidence with Noah, and Moses and King David. But Jesus died... But, we had hoped. Hlpizomen is not specifically about Jesus dying on the cross and being raised on Easter, but our every conversation of disappointment. We had hoped our child was going to be the first to college... We had hoped that going to college they would get a Job... We got married and we had hoped to live happily ever after... We bought a house and had hoped to live here all our days...We had hoped to retire to spend time together... We invested in the stock market to have money for retirement... All these are discussions on the road of disappointments. Struggling to make sense, to change from what we thought we understood, to accept a different reality founded on this disappointment.. We had hoped, Life was Perfect, Fair, We could Win.. Our language, our culture, quickly adapt and use phrases until they become trite, overtly familiar, one of the most recent that has been used to excess is A NEW NORMAL. When we are traumatized, when we had hoped to spend a lifetime together and that other cheats on us, or dies, that is not a new normal. When in a Marathon raising awareness and money for Cancer research, or Mental Illness, and someone blows up a bomb, that is does not create a new normal. In trauma, in hopelessness the disappointment of what we have known, become the foundation of what we will be a Fresh Beginning. The Emmaus Road is the Gospel, within the Gospel of Luke, within the Bible. After the Crucifixion, Resurrection when followers confront Jesus, saying we had it all figured out, we were in control, We had hoped... And Jesus beginning with Law and the Prophets explains how everything fits together differently, from a foundation of disappointment. It takes a seven mile journey for them to hear, and arriving at their destination he appeared to be going further but they twisted his arm to stay for dinner. For many of us, food can become another Escapism. Chocolate, Comfort Food, Red Wine, these fill us with empty calories, satiating our desire, without transforming us. I went to Seminary with Baptists and Congregationalists and AME Zion who emphasized the new understanding that came intellectually from the Word; with Catholics, Lutherans and Episcopalians all would be priests, who seized on this point in the story, that in the breaking of the bread, in that sacramental moment, they recognized him. As a Presbyterian, I believe in both/and, in receiving the Word and experiencing the Forgiveness at Table we are changed. Acts of the Apostles describes a different meal. Simon Peter was attempting to pray, but he was hungry. Have you ever tried to do something, and been distracted by your body's needs and desires? Peter's mind continually drifts off to food, except, in this prayer-state he witnesses this great white table cloth lowered from heaven, filled with Armadillo, Snails, Rattle snake, Tortoise, Mollusks, Vulture, Horse and Pig, all Non-Kosher food, all forbidden in a former time and place. So Peter rejects what is offered. Three different times, his prayers are interrupted by the same vision, the same dream of succulent Non-Kosher forbidden food and a voice from God saying “eat”. Three different times, Peter rejects what is offered from heaven... It seems like it always takes Simon Peter 3 times of denial and rejection, before he recognizes God. Suddenly, instead of the Cock crowing, there is a knock at the door where there were three strangers, with invitation to Go. Peter went with these Gentiles, though again it was out of his comfort zone, in a disillusioned world. The strangers took him to Cornelius a Roman Centurion, who although Gentile, an Officer in the Roman Legion, Cornelius bowed down and asked Simon Peter for blessing. Peter is more eloquent than “But We had hoped...” Peter replied “Where I have always been Kosher, I now perceive that God shows no partiality.” This is not a simple statement of Universalism. I'm Okay, You're Okay, Everything and everyone is Good. Instead, following upon the Vision, Peter is constructing a different reality built from the disappointment of the former no longer being sufficient. There is a powerful irony in all of this. Jesus was incarnate as a human being. Like all of us, his mother's womb enfolded him. At birth he was held and caressed. After he was Baptized, he “touched” people. He touched the ears of a deaf man, the eyes of one born blind, children, lepers and those mourned as dead he touched, a woman in the crowd reached out just to touch the hem of his garment. And being touched by him, all were made well. At the resurrection, in the Garden, in the Upper Room, Jesus invited those disillusioned to touch him, to feel where the spear pierced his side, to touch the holes made by the nails in the cross, and None are recorded as physically touching these. The point is not that our logic or knowledge has been wrong. Not that the Covenant is broken or abandoned. Not that we have to touch the physical wounds of his body's suffering. But rather, that in all our disappointments, all our disillusion-ments, we can now see how those were sufficient in an earlier time and place, but the Covenant can be fulfilled in ways we never before dared. This was not the home where we lived happily ever after, but rather one of the homes where we treasure great memories. We had hopes for what this child would be, and they have become so much more than we imagined.