Easter 3 (A) + Ah, the wonder! + 5.4.14

From the movie "To the Wonder"

M. Campbell-Langdell

All Santos, Oxnard

(Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Ps. 116: 1-3, 10-17, Luke 24: 13-35)

To begin, a poem by Kay Ryan…

(The Palm at the End of the Mind)

After fulfilling everything
one two three he came back again
free, no more prophecy requiring
that he enter the city just this way,
no more set-up treacheries.
It was the day after Easter. He adored
the eggshell litter and the cellophane
caught in the grass. Each door he passed
swung with its own business, all the
witnesses along his route of pain
again distracted by fear of loss
or hope of gain. It was wonderful
to be a man, bewildered by
so many flowers, the rush
and ebb of hours, his own
ambiguous gestures--his
whole heart exposed, then
taking cover.
--Kay Ryan[1]

Who has seen him?

Perhaps it was by chance, the corner of the mind’s eye glanced him as you spoke with a new acquaintance while traveling or in some local spot and you saw him, Jesus, just for a moment.

Suddenly the words were explaining not the weather or some mundane aspect of human existence or our struggles or our fears, but they were speaking TO YOUR HEART and you saw JESUS. In that moment.

Emmaus is a story unlike so many in the Bible. We see these forlorn disciples walking the road. They are hot, tired perhaps, as we all are at the end of a long trip. They meet a pilgrim, but everyone knows the city has just been full of Passover pilgrims, so this is normal. And to top it off, he seems a bit out of it. Don’t you know? They say. Surely you have heard about Jesus of Nazareth. And they tell him all the details, thinking they are doing him a favor.

And the stranger goes on to school them. About Moses and all that followed. But they are lost in a fog. Their hearts feel it, but their minds cannot catch up because they have already decided what they thought this stranger knew.
And so it is not until they show hospitality, invite the stranger and pilgrim to share bread, com pane, to be their companion, and then he, the invited, becomes the host, do they see him. And then he disappears.
Because we cannot hold onto him. Because we must share.
How do you live your life? Are you open to seeing Jesus in family, stranger, friend and neighbor?

Author Marilynne Robinson writes:

“So, I have spent my life watching, not to see beyond the world, merely to see, great mystery, what is plainly before my eyes. I think the concept of transcendence is based on a misreading of creation. With all respect to heaven, the scene of miracle is here, among us. The eternal as an idea is much less preposterous than time, and this very fact should seize our attention.”[2]

The story of the road to Emmaus invites us into something very profound. It is the invitation to live our lives watching and open. We believe in a transcendent God, yes, but an amazing aspect of the incarnation, of the fact that Jesus came and dwelt among us, is that the ordinary is truly extraordinary.

Perhaps you have had a mystical vision. Or a chance conversation that changed your life. My calling as a pastor was confirmed by a pastoral conversation with a man in a repair shop when my grandmother’s car broke down on the way to Coachella. The hot desert drive just threw off that cooling system. And we were late for the concert. But it was meant to be.  Because through the gift of being able to speak with a man in mourning for his father, for the gift of him being able to share his grief with me, I was able to be a pastor in such a way that I learned that this was my calling.

When Alene and I walked about eighty miles, of the Camino de Santiago in Spain, the first day we began was a Sunday. And what shops were open on a Sunday? None! But strangers opened up their houses to us and fed us, the “trail angels” of the Camino. As we walked that week, we met different people, and spoke with them, and later saw several of the same people in Santiago de Compostela when we arrived. It was like arriving in heaven and seeing all of the beloved friends, all the people who have been faces of Jesus to you.
I am talking about two related ideas here- seeing Jesus in the stranger, expecting Jesus in the stranger, is related to expecting the world to surprise you, to fill you with wonder. Yes, the world will surprise you with pain. This world can smack you sideways with grief sometimes. But how about closing your eyes in the sunshine and feeling God’s glory? Of taking in the thundering vastness of the ocean and saying “AMAZING!” How about letting yourself believe for a whole day, or more, that you actually have a guardian angel? That God is really guiding and guarding you through every moment of every day?

Ah… the wonder of it. What if the whole communion of saints were really looking out for you? Ah… the joy!

Jesus sees the disciples and he is just an ordinary man, returned, as the poem says, after all of the fanfare. After the Easter grass has littered every yard, and broken eggshells are everywhere, or to be more exact, after the palms are trodden, here walks Jesus, and he is at once so ordinary, a seemingly witless stranger, and yet also so amazing, the Son of God, who comes to us to share bread, who warms up our hearts to the burning point, to the brimming point, so that we can rush back to our friends and share the good news. We can’t help but live in wonder. And we can’t help but share.

A last thought from Albert Einstein:

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, his eyes are closed.”[3]

Let us live with our eyes wide open.

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[1] http://elizabethaquino.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/easter-or-day-after-if-jesus-came-back.html. With Gratitude to S. Langdell for referring this and subsequent material.

[2] Marilynne Robinson, “Psalm Eight” in Death of Adam, found at: http://www.journeyifc.com/modx/262 (Accessed May 1, 2014)

[3] From “What I Believe,” inward/outward e-mail.