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A sermon preached on April 20th, 2008 (Earth Sunday) based upon Acts 7:55 – 60 and John 14:1 – 14, entitled “Beyond Identity Theft.”

Imagine if you will, a certain man – we’ll call him Joshua – who comes each day to sit on a park bench.

Another man – we’ll call this one Barney – has never actually met Joshua, let alone sat with him on that park bench. Barney lives quite some distance from Joshua. He does, however, know some significant information about Joshua: his name, for instance, as well as his address, his date of birth, his mother’s maiden name, and, his social security number, as well as the number on his credit card. You see, Barney is a computer hacker, and he makes his living perpetrating what is known as “identity theft.” Barney routinely speaks on behalf of Joshua, making purchases in his name, and people assume Barney has authority to do so, but, he doesn’t.

Now imagine a third man – we’ll call him Omar. Omar often goes to the same park as Joshua, and on several occasions he has sat for extended periods of time next to Joshua on that same bench. As is often the case when strangers find themselves together, Joshua and Omar would fall into conversations, sometimes quite intimate conversations, without ever sharing the kind of basic information that Barney knows about Joshua. Omar doesn’t even know Joshua’s name. But in a certain sense he knows Joshua himself, at least far more than Barney does. He knows of course that there is much he doesn’t know about his bench companion, but Omar has witnessed Joshua’s interactions with the various people who pass by in the park, and he has reached a point where he can with some accuracy predict how Joshua will respond to the variety of people who pass by. He knows him that well.

This little fantasy is all by way of getting at the basic question, what does it mean to say we “know” someone? The word “know” used in this sense shows up seven times in this morning’s Gospel lesson, including these words by Jesus: “If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” So what does it mean to “know” Jesus, and in knowing him, to know the Father, the Creator of the heavens and the earth?

There are many people in this world who call themselves “Christians”, which is to say, “People who know Jesus,” but what they are actually doing is perpetrating “identity theft.” They’ve gotten a hold of Jesus’ name, address, date of birth, his mother’s maiden name and social security number. They know the formulas and the creeds, they can quote certain passages, including these words in today’s Gospel lesson, which they like to recite smugly, in which Jesus said, ”I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Which for them means, “I know Jesus’ social security number, and you don’t, nani, nani, boo boo!”
But they have never really absorbed who Jesus is. And when Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth and the life,” he wasn’t saying that his name and social security number were these things, but rather the whole distinctive way he approached life was the way, the truth and the life.
These so-called Christians are out there running up Jesus’ credit card on self-righteousness, when in fact Jesus is putting all of his money into reaching out to the downtrodden.

There are also people in this world whose relationship to Jesus resembles that of Omar to Joshua. They don’t know the codes, the formulas, the social security number. They may not even know the name of Jesus. But they have met Jesus in disguise, like those two disciples we heard about last week on the road to Emmaus, and they have gotten to know him quite well. Tim Tyler is presently teaching a wonderful adult Sunday School class about great world religions; within these traditions there are many who have sat with Jesus.

Mahatma Gandhi comes to mind as an example of this sort. Gandhi was drawn to Jesus, but never came to call him self a Christian, in part because the Christian Church rejected him for his skin color, and supported the oppression of his people. But Gandhi was like Omar, knowing Joshua in a way that Barney never did with his identity theft. Asked once what he thought of Christianity, Gandhi replied, “I think it’s a good idea. Christians should give it a try,” implying that most of the Christians he knew bore little indication in their lives that they actually knew the one in whose names they pretended to act.

To know Jesus is to know the grand themes of his life, the things he consistently taught and lived out throughout his ministry – the themes for which he was willing to die.

To know Jesus is to know someone who emphasized love above all else – love of God and love of neighbor – going so far as to call for the love of enemy, not only teaching this, but living it as well.

To know Jesus is to know someone who reached out in that love to the outcastes of society, to the poor, the rejects, the vulnerable.

To know Jesus is to know someone who was all about forgiveness.

To know Jesus is to know someone who said people were far more important than money and possessions, and warned that far too often people value money and possessions more than people.

To know Jesus is to know someone who desired for people to be whole, not broken or divided.

To know Jesus is to know someone who valued integrity and honesty over appearance and image.

To know Jesus is to know someone who refused to coerce or manipulate people, knowing that people’s love can never be coerced or manipulated.

To know Jesus is to know someone who took risks on behalf of these things that he cared so deeply about, willingly laying his life down for these beliefs, and trusting God to take care of him come what may in the taking of these risks.

To know Jesus is to love him, and to begin, as best we can, to emulate him, to try as best we can to be like him, and to embrace the grand themes of his life.

The little story we heard from the book of Acts about the earliest church talks about the death of Stephen, who clearly did know Jesus. Stephen wasn’t afraid to speak the truth to the self-righteous who were oppressing the little people, although he was risking his life in doing so. He trusted God to take care of him in death. And then the clincher: he forgives those who are stoning him to death, just like the Jesus he knew so well and aspired to be like.

A while back the letters, WWJD became popular – short for the question, “What would Jesus do?” Not a bad question. What would Jesus do? Sometimes the answer is a no-brainer: Given a choice, Jesus would be kind, rather than cruel, honest, rather than deceitful, generous, rather than stingy.
But some things can be harder to discern, because the stories we have about Jesus come from a different time, a different culture. There are lots of things Jesus never dealt with during his time on earth.

What would Jesus do in regard to global warming? The idea of human beings damaging the environment in some possibly irrevocable manner would have been pretty hard to imagine in Jesus’ day, as would, of course, so much else about our modern, technology-driven society.

If you know Jesus, however, if you’ve absorbed the things he cared about, it isn’t hard to see where he would come out in regard to caring for the earth. Jesus is the guy who told the story about the rich man who has everything he needs, his barn full of grain, and wonders what to do next: “I know,” says the rich man, “I’ll tear down my barn and build bigger barns to keep all my stuff in.” “Fool!” says God, “this night your soul is demanded of you, and what good will all your stuff do for you then?”
Jesus would say, “My children, all this consumerism that is doing in the earth has always been a fool’s path, a dead end. Turn, give away your excessive stuff, and follow me. Learn to live simply; find joy in the birds of the air and the flowers in the field.”

Something that Jesus would assuredly have focused upon if he were standing among us is the often overlooked fact that as time passes and large portions of the earth become parched, it will be the poor who will suffer the most, forced to roam the earth as starving refugees, searching for food to eat and water to drink.
We who, relatively speaking, are rich will initially be only inconvenienced by the impact of global warming, and as such, it will be easy to ignore the transformation of lifestyle that the crisis requires. We will have to pay more for the gas we put in our cars, but the impact on the poor will be an inability to feed their children.

When there were five thousand poor people who needed to be fed, and the disciples were trying to shirk responsibility for them, it was Jesus who said, “You give them something to eat.” It is hard to imagine this same Jesus telling us not to concern ourselves with what our patterns of consumption are doing to the earth’s capacity to provide for the least of God’s children.

When you look directly at what the scientists are telling us about where we are headed with global warming, it’s scary stuff indeed, and it becomes easy to despair. Perhaps it is necessary to go through this stage, like the disciples going through Jesus’ crucifixion, before we get to Resurrection.

There is a great, hope-filled affirmation contained in the words of Jesus this morning: “If you know me, you will know my Father also me.” What Jesus is saying is that the One who created the heavens and the earth is concerned about the very same things that Jesus was concerned with. As we begin to confront the great problems brought about by our abuse of God’s earth, God is on our side. When we come to know what Jesus is all about, and begin to align ourselves in harmony with his concerns, creative possibilities open up that we wouldn’t have been able to imagine before. Jesus is with God in heaven working behind the scenes to assist our efforts to care for our planet and all living inhabitants. “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” said Jesus. “Believe in God, believe also in me.”

The other night I decided to go to a nearby Barnes and Nobles bookstore while I was waiting for my son to get through his soccer practice.  It was a great choice, since generally I spend the time obsessing about how my son is doing, and sitting in a bookstore perusing books for an hour and a half is like eating ice cream for me. 

At one point I became aware of a man with a very deep and loud voice talking on a cell phone.  It sounded as though the conversation was about some kind of prospective job – he mentioned that he would have to give his present employer two weeks notice.  His voice boomed across the quiet bookstore, and I found myself irritated, my bookstore delight interrupted.

Initially I felt condemnation for his lack of manners.  But I found myself marveling at the fact of how very different this guy was from me, which seems less a matter of morality than a simple difference in our innate wiring.  I could no more talk loudly on a cell phone in a public place than I could walk around that bookstore naked.  I would be overtaken by embarassed self-consciousness.  That’s how I’m made.  Obviously, this guy and quite a few others I’ve observed, are made differently.  We are what we are, though it doesn’t hurt to have a little consideration to the impact of your behaviors on others, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you.   I suppose this is their growing edge.  Mine has more to do with learning how to let go of the burden of carrying so much self-consciousness around with me.  It does get in the way to living sometimes.  We are what we are. 

Although I can’t talk on a cell phone in a public place, I don’t seem to have a problem talking loudly on this blog, inviting anybody who’s interested to listen in on my inner conversation.   I realize that for some people, they could no more carry on in this manner than they could walk around a bookstore naked.  Go figure. 

I found myself thinking the guy should have the decency to go outside to continue his conversation.   Eventually he did. 

I just got back from taking my monthly turn preaching at the nursing home.  I always go somewhat reluctantly; I generally come away feeling blessed with the feeling that here, for sure, was something worth doing. 

In the ministry, one of the challenges with a lot of the stuff we pastors do is that it can be tough to see with clarity what, if anything, is being accomplished.  We have to take it by faith that something good is being brought about by our labors. 

Week before last I went over to Freddie’s apartment to help him look for his wallet that he had misplaced for five days, causing him a great deal of frustration.  I succeeded in helping him find it.  He was very grateful, but from my point of view, I too, felt fortunate, because the experience provided me with one of those rare instances when something good was accomplished and it was as plain as day:  Freddie was delivered from that nagging anxiety that we all know when we misplace something important.   I was delivered from that nagging anxiety of wondering if I did anything worthwhile that day. 

At the end of my time at the nursing home, I told the old folks, “You pray for me, and I’ll pray for you.  Deal?”  They said it was a deal, but one lady added that they were getting the better part of the deal.  I assured her that I didn’t think that was so.  These old folks are very close to God, and I think their prayers are unusually potent.  Those of us running about in this world driven here and there by the rat race have much to distract us from the presence of God. 

You don’t need to be able to walk, to see, or to hear in order to pray.  All you need to pray is to be.  Those moments of synchronicity that I wrote about in an earlier blog give us a little glimpse of the mysterious ways we are yoked together beyond our understanding, and they should encourage us to take open-hearted, agenda-free praying seriously.  As somebody said, “When I pray, coincidences seem to happen more often.”

The only problem, in the end, is that unlike finding Freddie’s wallet, we don’t often get to see the fruits of our prayer labors.  We have to take it on faith.

A sermon preached on April 13th, 2008 based upon Psalm 23, Acts 2:42-47, and John 10:1 – 10, entitled, “Compulsive vs. Centered”. 

I’ve loved the 23rd psalm pretty much all my life.  It was only recently, however, that I the second verse jumped out at me:  “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.”  What, I wondered, is with the maketh part?   Why would the Good Shepherd need to “make” me do something good, specifically, to rest, to lie down in lush green pastures — a lovely image if ever there was one.

The answer, I believe, is that left to our own devices, we human beings — we sheep — will end up harming ourselves.  We have a modern word for this:  “Compulsive.”  Left to ourselves, we will be driven into the ground by compulsive behaviors.  There is also an old word for this same thing:  “Idolatrous.”  Left to ourselves, we will make false gods to follow, and serve them to our destruction. 

On a practical level, this means our lives will end up profoundly out of balance.  We will overdo certain things, and neglect other important things.

The destructive side of some of these compulsions becomes obvious soon enough.  If our compulsion is drinking, we end up with a DWI or worse.  If our compulsion is eating, we end up with the poor health that is associated with obesity.  If our compulsion is shopping, then our credit card balances will end up hanging over us like a noose.  As destructive as these sorts of compulsions can be, they have the benefit of forcing us to acknowledge our underlying compulsive behavior.

Other compulsions can be for more subtle. We can be compulsive about our appearance, or about acquiring stuff.  We can be compulsive about needing the assurance that we are loved by others, and making those others into a kind of god. 

We can be compulsive about “right,” or being “good”, and in doing so miss being whole.   

We can share in those distinctly American compulsions regarding making money, working to excess, achieving success, power, praise and promotions. 

(An aside: one of the difficulties of our political process is that politicians almost have to have a compulsive personality in regard to winning votes and achieving power in order to ascend to the heights of political power.   And do we really need presidents and such who are so unbalanced, so compulsive?)

The by-products of all this compulsiveness and idolatry are many.  Greed:  the desire for more, more, more.  Anger:  the natural response when our compulsive urge to acquire more, more, more is thwarted.  (This explains all the road rage.) 

It is also the cause of the short fall of integrity.  Beneath our compulsions, a part of ourselves — a healthy part — realizes that our compulsions are out of hand, and this in turn leads us to pretend to be motivated by something other than what truly is driving us.  We become two-faced, pretending one thing when we are actually feeling quite another thing. 

The ultimate by-product of all this compulsion and idolatry is the loss of the soul.  We lose track of who we really are, underneath all these compulsions that have come to define our lives. 

We end up depleted in life energy, desperately in need of the restoration of our souls that the Good Shepherd intends for us. 

God has to make us lie down in green pastures for the same reason God needed to command that we honor the Sabbath, because left to ourselves, we are likely to end up driven by our compulsions 24/7. 

Human nature being what it is, our religious piety can become compulsive as well.  And so Jesus found himself in conflict with the religious compulsives who were driven to do the law precisely right, and for them that meant the good that Jesus sometimes did on the Sabbath, healing people and the like, was in their eyes wrong. 

As I was walking into church this morning, I met Mark Gibson, whom the world designates as mentally handicapped.  I call him a living, breathing, saint.  Mark was telling me how last night he had the world’s longest prayer session with God.  It went on till well past 12 when finally God said to Mark, “Okay, Mark, I get what you’re saying.  Now go to bed.”

It is so crucial to get the good news of the God that is revealed in Jesus.  In this morning’s reading from John 10, Jesus says, “I have come that you may have life, and have it abundantly.”   The images of God that we often carry around with us, feeding into our compulsive behaviors, are simply wrong.  God is not the task master who would drive us like a slave, who wants to pile heavy burdens of guilt upon us every time we mess up, every time we stop to rest. 

God is loving father and mother who created us out of great love to be God’s children, not God’s slaves.  The analogy of a parent child relationship is helpful here.  I think I speak for most parents when I say that I hope my children will grow up to do good things in this world, but my first hope for them would be that they know themselves to be loved, and out of that love do good things in this world. 

So it is with God.  God wants us to do good, yes, but the good we do arises first out of the confidence that we are loved already, just as we are. 

It is important to note the absence of compulsion that was in Jesus as he went about his ministry.  Although he had a clear sense of purpose, he was open to be interrupted.  He’d be on his way to a certain place, and somebody would stop him, and he wouldn’t blow the person off because he was compulsively intent on getting where he was going.  He would stop and give them his attention, and then move on to the next thing.  Although very busy and greatly in demand, he would from time to time go apart by himself to lie down in the green pastures. 

There is a crucial point not to miss in Jesus’ words we heard this morning in John’s Gospel.  The sheep — that’s you and me — we really do know the voice of the shepherd.  This is reassuring, because we often doubt we do, because the voice of the Good shepherd gets drowned out by the voices of our compulsions. 

But the strong and reassuring word here is that we really do know the voice of God.  Some times it requires us to intentionally silence those other voices and to patiently enter a stillness were we can listen for that deepest voice.  But we do, in fact, know the voice of the Good Shepherd. 

Other people can play a crucial role in helping us listen for that voice.  Not all community is helpful in this regard.  Some communities simply reinforce the voices of our compulsions.  Think of the difference between the fellowship found around bar stools, and the fellowship found in AA.  One encourages a person to give in to the compulsions; the other encourages the person to resist giving in, and to listen for that deeper voice. 

The passage we heard this morning from the end of Acts 2 describes the earliest church, a community where people were empowering one another to listen for God’s voice, and wonderful things were happening, and the compulsive hoarding was giving way to a grateful, generous desire to share what each person had. 

In the institutional church, there is a lot of compulsive activity around the fact that for several decades churches have been losing members and having a hard time meeting budgets.  So we have these frequent training events to compulsively get us to search for ways to reverse the decline.

I went to one of these events this past week; I got Al Booth to go with me.  The speaker said some helpful things.  He made a distinction between a Purpose-Centered Church and a Preference-Driven Church.  The latter is where the center is not that desire to listen for God’s voice, God’s purposes for the church, but simply what people prefer, which inevitably leads to some serious political in-fighting.  I must say, as he described the sort of divisiveness that happens in such churches, I didn’t recognize our church.  We aren’t perfect, by any means, but I’ve never known us to be so closed off to Jesus that we turned the church into a battleground for our personal preferences. 

The speaker said that if Rick Warren had asked his opinion, he would have suggested that he change the title of his phenomenally popular books from “The Purpose-Driven Church/Life” to the “The Purpose-Centered Church/Life” because being “driven” is the mark of a sick, compulsive life, and the life we are encouraged to live in church shouldn’t be a compulsive life.  It should be a centered life. 

All of us are struggling in various ways to hear God’s voice — to discern God’s will for lives.  We have decisions to make, paths to choose, problems to address.  Ideally, church should be a crucial place where we find help in this quest. 

Often people ask to talk to me in my role as pastor, seeking some help in regard to a decision they must make or a problem they must confront.  I am happy to do so, but a part of me often reacts with some anxiety, expressed in the thought, “They are coming to me for an answer, and I have no idea what they should be doing.”  Generally speaking, though, people aren’t looking for me to simply “give them the answer.”  They are looking for me to sit with them, conscious of the presence of God, and to listen, and to ask the right questions that will help take them to a deeper place, to discern what is compulsion and what is the authentic voice of the Good Shepherd.  For me to be quick to try and tell them what they are to do without first doing a great deal of patient listening for the voice of God within their heart  would be to play the part of the thief or bandit that Jesus described in his little parable this morning. 

Parker Palmer in his book, “A Hidden Wholeness:  the Journey Toward an Undivided Life”, describes the soul as being like a shy, wild animal.  If we go thrashing through the forest in pursuit of the soul, we will simply scare it away.   The capacity to listen quietly to one another, to forgo our own agendas, allows the soul to emerge from hiding.  Palmer describes what he calls “circles of trust” where friends gather to listen to one another patiently, with unconditional love and a hopeful expectancy that deep down, each one of us truly does know the voice of the Good Shepherd. 
       

Here is another odd “coincidence” similar to the one I reported happening to me in my recent Easter sermon.  Yesterday in the late afternoon our church held its big Spring roast beef dinner and mini-bazaar.   There were a lot of people in the building.  At one point I went out to the mail box and brought in the mail to the church office.  There was a letter which I opened from Gloria, who hasn’t been at church for about 9 months because of a series of health concerns with which she has struggled.  The letter thanked the congregation for the prayer shawl I had brought her a while back, and for all our prayers.  I thought to myself, “Gloria’s letter should go in the monthly church newsletter.”   Barb edits our newsletter.  I was in the process of writing “Barb”, on the letter, to be followed with a short note asking her to publish Gloria’s letter, when precisely at that moment Barb came into the office saying, “Gloria is here.”  She and her husband Bob had just arrived for the dinner, the first time she had set foot in the building for nine months. 

The odd coincidence that I experienced last month took place the day before Easter when I drove to Boonton to go to a costume shop I had heard of but never been inside in order to rent a Roman soldier costume for children’s sermon I had in mind giving in worship the next day.  I got out of my car and stepped onto the main street to look for the shop, at which point I heard my name called from across the street. I looked up to see my good friends Joe and Laurie.  Laurie was holding in her hands a Roman soldier costume.  She had used it the night before in an Easter pageant at the church at which she works.  She was on her way to return the costume, having been delayed by an encounter with another friend (otherwise, the costume would have already been returned.)  In amazement, I crossed the street, told her I was there for a Roman soldier costume.  She handed it to me. 

What am I to make of these strange convergence of events?   I realize that it can be seen as nothing but a coincidence — that these related events just happened to occur simultaneously by nothing more than mere chance.  It doesn’t “feel”, however, like mere chance.  Both instances seem to be clear examples of the phenomenon Carl Jung referred to as “synchronicity”.  Here is a quote from a wickopedia definition: 

“The idea of synchronicity is that the conceptual relationship of minds, defined by the relationship between ideas, is intricately structured in its own logical way and gives rise to relationships which have nothing to do with causal relationships in which a cause precedes an effect. Instead, causal relationships are understood as simultaneous — that is, the cause and effect occur at the same time.
“Synchronous events reveal an underlying pattern, a conceptual framework which encompasses, but is larger than, any of the systems which display the synchronicity.”

In other words, weird stuff happens.  We are related to one another, and impact one another, in ways that go far beyond our understanding. 

The woman who does my taxes is a member of my church.  She’s been under the weather the last couple of days, which is lousy timing for a tax accountant with April 15th approaching.  Her husband told me that she had a dream last night in which she had figured out a way to save me some money.   He said she would keep me posted if the dream proved to mean something more than that she’s  worrying over her client’s tax returns. 

When I get out of the rhythm of blogging, it’s hard to get back in sync. The first blog backs seems momentous. I’ve been posting sermons that I’ve worked over carefully. Daily blogging is a bit more risky, in so far as taking the time to carefully choose my words isn’t so practical, and the likelihood of saying something I might later regret more likely. But since life requires risk, let me plunge ahead.

I had my first ever colonoscopy yesterday, succumbing finally to the earnest requests of my wife, not to mention Fred Coleman, who feels so strongly about the importance of regular colonoscopies that he makes public service announcements promoting them at the end of our worship services. I am 52, and once you pass 50, doctors say a person should have them done regularly.

Tuesday morning at my men’s breakfast the three other men present had all undergone several such procedures, and when I announced I was having my first the next day, they were happy to share their experiences. I felt like I was being initiated into a secret society of older men who have submitted themselves to the humiliation that is having a scope stuck up one’s rectum. It was a nice sense of camaraderie.

I wasn’t aware of being especially afraid of the procedure (or the possibilities that such a procedure might reveal.) Mostly it seemed I had put it off because I assume myself to be in good health with both parents still living into their late 80s, and setting aside the necessary time seemed inconvenient.

Nonetheless, there is something about finding myself essentially naked (except for the hospital gown) on a hospital gurney with nurses attending to me that lends itself to a strong sense of being in the moment, and an awareness of my mortality. It seemed clear to me that should something come out of left field to usher me towards an early exit from this world, it wouldn’t be so much fear of the unknown of death that would consume me as a basic anxiety about the care of the persons I love and how they would manage without me. I trust that in the journey into unknown beyond this life I would be safe in God’s hands. The safety of those who rely upon me; that is the one that is harder to feel at ease with.

Apparently my body is all right, but a sense does remain of having been initiated into the society of those who are compelled to ponder their mortality and submit to the humbling of being a patient. The nurse who cared for me mentioned that she had these procedures done on herself every three years, so in the end, the caretakers take turns being those who are cared for, and this mortality is shared by us all.

A sermon preached on April 6, 2008 based upon Luke 24:13 – 35, entitled, “The Quest.”

For decades now I’ve been reading and re-reading this delightful story of the stranger who comes to walk with two depressed disciples  along the road to Emmaus for several hours on Easter afternoon.   Only at the end of the day do they finally recognize the stranger:  It is Jesus!  At which point he vanishes.  This week, however, it occurred to me there was a basic question I had never asked of the story.  Once I asked the question, it struck me that it was an obvious question to ask, and I wondered why I had never asked it before.  (Which in turn gave me some appreciation for how those disciples could have spent all that time in Jesus’ company without recognizing him.  We get stuck inside ways of looking at things in a manner that leads us to lose the capacity to see the obvious.)

The question I found myself asking this week was this:  Why didn’t Jesus simply say to the two grief-stricken disciples at the outset, “It’s me, bozos!  Open your eyes, for God’s sake!”?  Clearly, Jesus could have if he had wanted to, but he didn’t.  Why didn’t he?

Further questions follow:  The story indicates that when they reached the village of Emmaus, where the disciples had planned to sleep that night, Jesus made like he planned to simply continue on down the road, and presumably would have, if the disciples hadn’t taken the initiative to say,  “It’s getting late, buddy, come, be our guest for the night.”  Why was Jesus willing to pass on down the road, having never been recognized?  And finally, why, once their eyes were finally opened as he broke the bread at their supper table, did he vanish the very moment they recognized him?

In asking these questions, the answer seems obvious:  The journey, the quest itself, matters.  If Jesus had simply revealed himself at the outset, the journey would have been cut short; the quest aborted.  Although Jesus first reaches out to them in the stranger walking beside them, they bear responsibility in this quest as well.  And likewise, Jesus vanishes at the end because even here, the disciples would have been quick to believe that the quest was now over. 

Realizing this, I thought about the variety of ways that the metaphor of a geographic journey is used in the Gospels to call attention to the underling spiritual journey we are all called to embrace. 

Jesus’ ministry was not stationary; he walked from town to town, making his final journey to Jerusalem and his death.  He spoke of journeys in his teaching:  A man journeyed on the road to Jericho and ends up beaten by robbers, left half dead at the side of the road.  A priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan were on journeys down that same road… A father had two sons.  The elder son stays home and never embarks on a quest.  The younger son leaves home on a quest, and although much of the journey is misguided to say the least, his quest finally brings him home to a new, far deeper awareness of grace. 

Jesus alluded to this quest and his confidence of its ultimate fulfillment when he said, “Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened…”

Whenever Jesus affirmed people for living out “faith”, their story always involves a quest; they take initiative over against much resistance to reach out to the grace of God revealed in Jesus.  For instance, a woman with a flow of blood for 18 years, having been to several doctors who could not help her, overcomes several religious laws that require her to avoid being in public, to be in the presence of men, and especially to touch a rabbi.  A Gentile woman with a very sick daughter persists in coming to see Jesus the Jew, despite his obvious desire to be left alone, saying, “Even the dogs receive the crumbs that fall from the children’s table.”

Jesus said that unless we adults turn and become like children we will never enter the kingdom of God, and the thing about children is that they are inherently curious, anxious to learn, to discover, to be surprised. 

The quest truly matters, and it isn’t so much where we end up on this journey that matters as what happens to us –  within us along the way. 

This is analogous, I think, to what scientists are about.  If you were to ask a scientist why he or she puts so much time and energy into their work, I think their answer would be something like this:  “I do it in order to attain new knowledge — to extend the frontiers of human knowledge.”

And although there is truth in this, I think it leaves something out.  Imagine — and I know that what I am asking you to imagine may well be impossible in and of itself — but imagine that some where far down the road, scientists were to reach a point where everything that could possibly be known about the material world was finally known, and there are no new frontiers left to explore.   How would they react?  Would they rejoice?  I think not.  I suspect they would all go into a collective depression.   And the reason for this is that it was the quest for knowledge, the thrill of making a breakthrough after endless hours of inquiry, that has sustained them along the way.

Why do the fox hunters hunt the fox?  Is it because of their insatiable love of the taste of fox meat?  No, of course not.  It is the thrill of the hunt itself. 

One of the obstacles to faith that we can sometimes encounter is the notion that if there really is a good and loving God, why doesn’t this God just make it evident?    But if there is some essential value in the quest itself, then this is the very thing God can’t do.

There are these math text books that have all the correct answers printed in the back.  The purpose, of course, is that after students work through a problem to a solution, they can turn to the back of the book to find out whether they worked through the problem successfully.  The possibility exists, of course, that students could simply skip to the answers without ever putting in the necessary work. 

There is an important distinction between religion and spirituality.  They are related, but they are not the same.  Spirituality speaks of the common quest all persons are on, whether we acknowledge it or not, whether we embrace it willingly or resist it with every fiber of our being — the quest to find meaning, purpose, direction, balance, and hope in our lives, particularly in the face of the fact that one day we will all die.

Religion,  in contrast, is the inheritance we have received from the spiritual lives of those who have gone before us.  Obviously religion is very important, and can be very helpful, providing us with invaluable assistance on our own quest.  But religion can also easily serve a sinister purpose, which is to provide people with a means by which to avoid the quest for themselves.   

Religion can be the answers in the back of the math book, which the student never bothers to work through for his or herself. 

Religion can become, “MY answers at the back of MY book are better than YOUR answers.”

Religion can become a major barrier to the quest:  “Don’t ask these fundamental questions for yourself, just accept what we tell you are the questions to ask and the answers to those questions.”

If this life is a quest, a spiritual quest,  where will we look for direction on this journey?   Our story suggests a number of sources. 

The two disciples had just had their world rocked.  The times of greatest disturbance can also be times for the greatest breakthrough in the course of the journey.  Though this is not a source any of us particularly welcomes, the places where our lives are turned upside down are ripe with potential for insight and direction.  The places where we feel overwhelmed, where we can’t cope, may actually be settings for the holy spirit to move in powerful ways in our lives. 

When our world is rocked, time is required, of course, for the insights to grow into their fullness.  This resurrection story is unique insofar as it covers several hours, emphasizing the need for patience.

The story suggests that surprises are to be welcomed. 

It also implies that other people – in particular, encounters with strangers – can be sources of insight on the journey.  The stranger invites us to see things differently, to divert from our pre-existing path.  In so far as it is easy for us to assume that we know all there is to know about the people we live closest to, it is people such as these who sometimes can surprise us as the stranger inviting us to awaken. 

When we say here in our church that “we believe newcomers in our midst are Jesus in disguise”, we are not referring only to the importance of practicing hospitality on behalf of the stranger, as important as this may be.  There is also the recognition that we need the stranger to keep us from becoming overly insular.  The stranger helps save us from the delusion that our journey is over and we have already arrived.

The stranger in our story led the two disciples through a process of reflection on the scriptures.   God speaks to us in the present through the insights of those who have gone before us.  We don’t have to re-invent the wheel, spiritually speaking.  And the scriptures give us Jesus, the north star in our journey.

I don’t think its a stretch to say that the story points to walks in the out-of-doors as a source of insight in our journey; that in the encounter with the earth, the natural rhythms of the rising and setting sun, of the birds of the air, the seasons, God’s spirit is present. 

After Jesus vanishes, the disciples say to one another, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”  The suggestion here is that their hearts had been saying something to them to which they had not fully paid attention.  On the journey, we are to pay attention to what our hearts — our emotions and intuitions — are saying to us in dialogue with our intellects. 

Jesus finally is recognized by the two disciples at the moment of table fellowship, when the stranger takes bread, blesses, and breaks it.  We have here a clear allusion to Christian communion and the blessing of the sacrament as an essential source in our journey. 

The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper calls our attention once more to the fact of death in the midst of our lives.  Our quest in this life continues right up to the moment we draw our last breath.   There is a long tradition, often neglected in our modern era, of honoring those who are drawing near to death as persons of profound insight and grace.   Nowadays the dying tend to be isolated in hospitals, with a preoccupation in regards to their physical being diverting attention to the spiritual meaning of the finale of a person’s life on earth.   In ages past, loved ones would sit at their feet in an awareness that they were witnessing something holy, ripe with the potential for providing a glimpse of the light to come.