YEAR A

3^rd Sunday of Easter

I don’t know about all of you, but I find real comfort in clarity.  Once I know what something is, I feel much more confident in dealing with it.  If I can bring a situation into focus, my anxiety lessens and my powers of problem solving inflate and engage in full force.  I just love separating the background from the subject, the noise from the melody, and the distractions from the truth!

I think this is my I’m intrigued with puzzles, word puzzles, number puzzles, picture puzzles.  I especially like the dual image ones, the ones where if you look one way, you see an old woman with a scarf and pointed nose and long chin, but if you change your focus, you see a beautiful, young woman in a hat.  You’ve seen those pictures where if you focus on the dark color, you see a lamp, but if you gaze at the white shading, you visualize two profiles facing each other.  Usually, I find the hidden images pretty quickly.  I can make out the boat in the dots.  I spy the wedge of cheese in the tree.  Except, I never ever see the constellations.  No matter how many maps are put in front of me, no matter how many times someone takes my finger and moves from star to star, I never see the archer or the scorpion, Orion’s belt, the scales or the bear.  Sometimes I get embarrassed by my lack of night sky perceptions and I say, “Oh yes, there’s the Little Dipper right there.”  But, I’m not sure I’ve ever actually located the Big Dipper, so I could be looking at a thimble. 

It is a frustrating, perplexing, unsettling experience to have an image right before you and to have the sense that you aren’t getting the complete picture.  We become uneasy when we feel we aren’t aware of the whole truth and our irritation grows when we discover we’ve missed some significant details.

When the reality at last comes into focus, we wonder at our blindness.  How in the world did we miss that point?  There it is, as clear and bold as can be.  What were we thinking, where was our focus? 

I imagine this was part of the conversation the two disciples had on the road back to Jerusalem from Emmaus.  They had had a long, trying day, no wonder they missed some interesting signs.  In the early hours of that morning, just after sunrise, they wakened from a fitful sleep and were told the end is not really the end.  Their teacher, t heir friend, their promised leader, is not in peaceful final rest.  His body is gone.  He has disappeared under mysterious, suspicious circumstances.  They are at a loss.  What do they do now?  Where do they go?  Jerusalem is not safe for them.  Jewish officials will want them found and will demand explanations they don’t have.  Roman soldiers will support the arrests and questioning.  So, the two leave the city.  With heavy hearts, they walk outside the gates, they turn their backs on all the hopes they had when they arrived just one week earlier.  Everything has changed.  Everything good and promising has been lost.  They are confused and dazed, heartsick and grief stricken.  They are struck in their own despair and confusion.  Their focus is narrow and inward.  Cleopas and his companion begin the seven-mile walk back to their home in Emmaus, back to their life before Jesus.  They reminisce.  They recall the lessons, the parables, the great sermons, the shared meals, and the big vision.  They wonder how everything could go so wrong.  They fret.  The two go back over every detail, every encounter.  What did they miss?  How did this great hope come to such a horrible end?  Step by step, point by point, they muse, engrossed, head down.  They go back to thinking, to understanding, to interpreting the world the way they did before they met Jesus.  They default to old habits.  They see the worldly images and so they miss the divine image! 

Cleopas and his friend, like most of us, were tired and worried and stressed and bogged down in the day-to-day focus on the expected.  They notice the noise, the dots.  They, like us, see the mundane and miss the grace.  Right in front of them is the power and beauty, the promise and hope of Christ, and they don’t recognize the holy presence.  Grace, an arm span away, and it might as well be beyond the heavens.  But, their blindness, their lack of perception, will not confine or confound God’s plan. Grace, the presence of His

Son in this world, will not remain obscured.   The face, the image and goodness of Christ, alive and moving in the world, will be revealed.  Slowly a shift occurs.  Slowly the two begin to see reality differently.  What was a blur comes into focus.  Out of the ordinary, grace becomes clear. Christ is seen.  Christ is experienced.  And once the two catch the divine presence, they can’t go back to seeing the event any other way.  They know Christ is in the world.  They can’t not see this truth.  They can look past Him, but their eyes, their minds, recall what they perceived and their memories won’t release them from that truth.  “Were our not burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?  When Christ is before us – we are changed.  We can’t always describe the difference.  We often don’t claim the new insight but we can’t escape its reality.  Christ, God’s grace, comes upon each of us.  Sometimes we catch the image sooner and clearer. 

Like Cleopas and the other disciple, can you think of a time when in the middle of your earthly, muddled living you became slowly aware that you were in the presence of God’s divine grace?  Can you recall a moment or an experience when out of the eyes of someone else; you catch the image of Christ?  These experiences are unexpected, surprising and often small and fleeting, but they are real and their memory stays with us.

One that I remember happened one Christmas when my son Ash was about six.  We were in Wal-Mart buying wrapping paper and games for angel tree presents.  In the line ahead of us were another mother and her younger son.  I looked in their basket and asked the little boy, “Is that your Christmas tree?”  And he said “yes.”  And I asked if he was going to put it up today and he said “yes.”  And I said I bet it would be beautiful.  The mother paid, we smiled, and they rolled their cart away.  And Ash looked up at me with these really wide eyes and asked, “Is that their tree in that box?”  And I said “uh huh.”  And he said, “But it’s too little!”  And I said, “Well, it’s in pieces, they’ll get it out and put it all together and it will be bigger.”  And he said, “It will still be small and you can’t put presents under it…and I didn’t see toys in their basket and it’s Christmas!”  I look at him surprised because I hear something urgent in his voice.  “I think they’re poor! I think they won’t have Christmas!  He’s little, he needs Christmas!”  And I say good, comforting things and he seems a little relieved and his eyes stop watering.  And as we walk to our car, I just stare at him because he is my son, whom I know very, very well, but there was also the face of Christ in that moment.  I saw holiness in that brief conversation. Now, trust me, I’m very clear Ash is not Jesus!  I have letters from teachers to prove it, but in that exchange, Christ was clearly, absolutely in that little face caring about another. 

Years later, I was on a parish life committee working with folk planning church picnics and field days and receptions, and our chairperson was acting oddly.  For a while, no one said anything, but as time went on, we realized that she was drinking too much.  She’d call people at strange hours, asking them to fix casseroles and then she’d forget she had had the conversation.  She’d show up at church and be loud and unsteady.  She was uncomfortable to be around and her behavior became more inappropriate.  In an impromptu meeting, the subject came up and everyone voiced concerns, but no one wanted to approach her about our worries.  “Well, what if she gets offended?  She’s been here forever, what if she gets mad and leaves?  We’re a church; we’re supposed to be accepting and welcoming.  We can’t say; anything to hurt her feelings.”  Around and around the discussion went.

Finally, a very quiet, unassuming woman said, “Look, we know her, we love her.  We’ve been at this church for years.  Church is where you love one another and you tell the truth.  I’m calling her tomorrow.  I’m taking her for coffee.  I’m not going to accept any excuses.  And I’m going to say I’m worried about her, that we’re all worried about her.  I’m going to say, ‘You’re drinking too much. You’re not the person you’re meant to be when you act this way.  How can we help you?  Do you need us to take you out more, get you involved in some activities outside yourself?  Do we need to come over and pour out all the bottles?  Do I need to take you to a doctor?  What can I do for you, my friend?”

The woman went on to say, “Now, she may get angry.  She may be hurt, but what I’m saying is true and I’m saying it in love.  She’s a fine person in a bad situation.  She needs help and we can talk about her or we can talk with her.  This will not be an easy conversation but, too bad, this is the right, loving thing to do.”

We all just sat there for a moment and a real sense of peace fell over the room.  Something shifted and we knew we were in the presence of goodness and truth.  From a problem to grace, something holy had been revealed.  And when I looked at this quiet, ordinary woman, I saw the eyes and affect of Christ looking back.

“Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”

Christ comes to us.  We see him in the image of others.  He is there.  He is real.  He moves away, but we remember and we are changed in the encounter.  “Were our hearts not burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?”

Once we begin recognizing the presence of God in our day-to-day encounters, once we get into the practice of perceiving grace all about us, once our eyes get used to focusing on the real, on the central important image instead of the background dots, then we can’t miss the obvious. 

When we see Christ face-to-face, up close and personal, real and alive, powerful and present, we respond to the world differently.  We are confident and hopeful, calm and resilient.  When we see grace, when we see Christ right there, and there, and there, we respond with grace.  We become open to being his agents, his vessels.  We allow him to shine through our eyes.  We give him reign to use our hearts and hands to accomplish good and godly deeds through us. 

Our gospel passage asks us this morning, are we ready to have our eyes opened?  Are we ready to accept what we see as true?  Are we ready to have Christ burn in our hearts?  And are we ready to act in ways that allow him to shine through us to touch others?  Are we?