Luke 24:13-49
Easter Evening - Years A, B, C
Easter 3 - Year A, B
Talking to compatriots builds solidarity. If that is all that goes on, it also builds deafness to other perspectives. Whether true-believers or true-disappointees circle their wagons, there is a built-in barrier to hearing another way, even if it may be of assistance.
In this setting, even a spirit-breathed word doesn't illuminate. Jesus can talk until he is blue in the face and not make a dent in the armor of like-talking-to-like.
When faced with these sorts of situations street-theatre is needed – he took bread, blessed, and broke it.
He was recognized. He vanished. Mission accomplished. Who was that masked man?
Now the good part – they returned to other compatriots and were able to introject a new perspective in the old conversation. The two on the road become the presence of Jesus in their old crowd; it was as if Jesus himself stood among them.
Having broken the spell, each can now go forth to other relationships and be witnesses of the reality of suffering and the process of repentance and forgiveness that raises us from simply suffering.
Having received a virtual bread-blessing, may you break it again in solidarity with your neighbors. In this we find peace.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
“A stranger in Jerusalem” would be a good title for a book. Knowing what others don’t is the equivalent of having questions others don’t - like the proverbial Martian visiting earth.
Notice the lack of overt evangelism here. Jesus walks with folks. Jesus listens to folks try to understand the not-understandable. He does reflect out loud about expected consequences (labeled as scriptural here, but simply a reality check that could be posited even without previous prophets).
Jesus’ comments captured their imagination, but it was the fellowship that confirmed it in their hearts. When this “click” happens the source becomes invisible in the same way that air is invisible to us and yet is all around and within, giving life, or water is for fish.
Note that it is while the travelers were sharing their moment of enlightenment that fellowship (loving one another) would confirm or dismiss any particular doctrinal formulation. Enlightenment also holds a mystery symbolized by a shift in attention. Jesus shifts from invisible background to visible foreground and back to invisible—just like in any good illusion.
As if to confirm the primacy of fellowship, Jesus moves his generic “Peace” language to “let’s get real” language - touch, feast, repentance, and forgiveness.
We need to be in touch, to eat together, to mutually correct courses and preemptively forgive. It is important to begin where we are. In this case, Jerusalem. In our case, church. If we are not in close enough contact to touch and feast we won’t be able to share in repentance and forgiveness. Without these the church loses contact with the world and there is no message or preaching that will trump these basics for more than a moment.
Remember John Wesley’s old purpose statement and its particular locus:
Question: What may we reasonably believe to be God’s design in raising up the Preachers called Methodists?
Response: Not to form any new sect; but to reform the nation, particularly the Church; and to spread scriptural holiness over the land.
After remembering, what greater reform does the church need than a renewal of touch, feast, repentance, forgiveness.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/04/luke-2413-49.html
A vision of angels by any other name is a vision of life. We are not stuck.
And yet we are slow in agreeing to get unstuck. 7 miles at 20 minutes per mile is a 3 hour, 20 minute conversation. Did the women get it right? Did those who went to see miss something?
How slow our hearts are to be opened. How many Easters have come and gone since you have revisited the silence of Easter, the imagery and symbolism of Easter, and the community of Easter. So has another Easter worn off already?
We could have another long conversation about whether we are to return to Galilee or remain in Jerusalem. Here Luke sets up Pentecost by staying while other witnesses have folks by the seashore. Where was the fish eaten?
We are slow enough to get hung up on the details and miss the meaning of the forest.
The only question this Easter Evening is whether our hearts are any more open tonight than they were in the morning. This is a daily question. A more dangerous way to ask this is whether we experience any more power to see that “repentance and forgiveness of sins” is proclaimed/lived? This is dangerous because it puts more emphasis on the judgment of repentance and less on forgiveness just because. Religious power structures have always arisen at this divide.
So back to this question: is your heart any more open tonight than it was this morning?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/luke-2413-49-easter-evening.html
Eyes open? Recognize what is around you? And it's gone!
Now make meaning out of that.
From ignoring to questioning and dismissal, we come to a time of Wow! Well, now that we take time to consider, we remember being attentive all the way along and ready to receive any good news in the midst of our personal tragedy. What an amazing time we had and we will hold on to it forever.
Ahh, yes, revisionist history — a long and many-storied tradition.
Now we are in the process of making daily bread more sacred than it is by its very nature. Somehow or other what was missed at Thursday night's repast is now reinterpreted. Of course it is not just us looking again, but a duly authorized interpretation — G*D says this is what it meant and you always knew it.
Love Prevails is currently at a denominational meeting of the Connectional Table (implementers of General Conference past). After attending their last meeting in October (being a cause of an agenda adjustment) and a series of letters back and forth since then, we are present, again, to continue the work of removing discriminatory legislation from the United Methodist Church. There is work to do as the church institutional has responded to a new opportunity to get better by repeating processes already accomplished in the 1980s.
There is a sense that the Connectional Table is still all wrapped up in their immediate concern about loss of membership and not clear about the mercy and compassion they have received and so can't see where it needs to be applied. After the discrimination is finally off the books, we can fully expect the Connectional Table to take credit for working toward that all along.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/04/luke-2413-35.html