Sun, Apr 30, 2017 (St. John’s, Winnsboro)
lectionary
Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.”
- that day about three thousand persons were added
- Now on that same day two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village called Emmaus …
We’re still connected by the narrative of the gospel with Easter time … with the time still being around Easter
Taking a fork in the road
Walking along a road, two companions. They didn’t really know where they were headed because where they were from was so astonishing.
Frost: 2 roads … I took the one less traveled
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
An oh-so-familiar-journey
made by two disciples shortly after Crucifixion. Rumors are circulating that He is risen. “Haven’t you heard about it?” they ask Jesus.
Jesus: Road to Emmaus
The circumstances are intensely dynamic. Jesus acted as if he would just be going on his way. The 2 disciples, Cleopas and the other, would have to choose which road they went down. Encountering the Risen Lord is not like bumping into some larger-than-life reality TV star. It is absolutely ordinary. It is in the ordinary that we encounter the most important events of our lives.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us,
They could have just gone on. But they didn’t. They chose this way. They weren’t necessarily excited about it. They were leaving the excitement that seemed to be just now brewing in Jerusalem. Rumors swirling. “They say that he has risen!”
Jesus chastises them for not paying attention. And he goes on to reveal himself to them in the breaking of the bread.
Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
bestseller: road less traveled
M. Scott Peck wrote a best seller some 40 years ago. It was titled: The Road less traveled: a new psychology of love, traditional values and spiritual growth. It began with the striking sentence: Life is difficult.
Growth in life, maturing to be a “fully alive human being” as Irenaeus put it in the 2no century. It consists of: discipline (spiritual & emotional), love, and grace. he wrote.
It’s a powerful synthesis and I could spend a lot of time now talking about that. But I’m not. What captures my attention at the moment is his use of Frost’s poem in the title of his book. Life consists of choices, choosing one road for our journey over another that presents itself to us as a fork in the road. That is where all the important stuff happens.
When the two disciples headed down the road to Emmaus they had no notion that they were going to have an encounter that would change their lives.
I am convinced that all of our lives are filled with the ordinary events that offer us the extra-ordinary revelation of God at work.
Pilgrimage is whatever happens (Northumbria 4/27)
Earlier this week my own spiritual readings offered me a perspective on this road we are on. A road which is a pilgrimage and it makes of each of us a pilgrim. It turns out the Celtic understanding of travel of any sort is that it is a pilgrimage. It means that at any moment, this road we have taken, may reveal a stranger who is a messenger from God.
On the eve of a walking pilgrimage, Kathy Berry spoke about travel as spirituality and as essentially pilgrimage. She reflected that in her study of the Celtic Christian way of pilgrimage, the Celts did not see their travel as achieving a previously understood goal but rather that pilgrimage is whatever happens’. That is, they so trusted their spiritual processes into the hands of God that they could relinquish unholy control of their lives and take the posture of holy abandonment in preparation for whatever God had planned. (Northumbrian Prayer)
The Celtic church understood that to be a pilgrim – no longer in Jerusalem but on the road – is to be in between, neither in the place we have been but not yet arrived at where we are going. That is the circumstance of Cleopas and the other disciple. It is our circumstance. We are not yet what we shall be. We are no longer what we were.
*The pilgrim church is itself a liminal reality, occupying the border between heaven and earth. The term peregrinus from which ‘pilgrim’ is derived recognises liminal status; the meaning of the term in Latin includes foreigner, wanderer, exile, alien, traveller, newcomer and stranger. Like the Israelites whose care for the alien and poor was motivated by remembrance of their own slavery and wandering. William Cavanaugh
The promise of Easter
We all have made that journey. Decisions that make all the difference.
- my calculus class
- the principles of morals class
- library work + piano repair & tuning
- call to Hawai’i
This Easter-tide we are offered the assurance that what seems an ordinary dusty road – whatever your road looks like. With companions that look like – well that look exactly like you and me.
Peck and others can teach us how to prepare ourselves to be like Cleopas and the other disciple, ready to invite a stranger or alien into our midst, to offer them hospitality, and perhaps, then, through the breaking of bread or some other godly means – to have our lives opened up before and to experience what will make all the difference in the world.
May the road rise up to meet you … (Irish blessing)
May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again,
may God hold you in the palm of His hand.
(traditional gaelic blessing)
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