April 6, 2008
Third Sunday of Easter (Year A)
Acts 2: 14a, 36 - 41; [Psalm 116: 1 - 4, 12 - 19;] 1 Peter 1: 17 - 23; Luke 24: 13 - 35
The children are invited to take out the crayons handed to them as they came in and to draw pictures of the many African things that we have in our sanctuary today: the banners in the back made by Margaret Geanisis and Andy Carpentier, the drum up here brought in by Andy, the bowls that belong to Kate Ogle and the Pupos, the fabric that came from Tanzania, the flowers in honor of Cameron’s birthday – any part of the extra things so many people have added to our worship space this morning.
As you do that, I am going to talk about the road to Emmaus from the story you’ve just heard. I hope you will listen, along with your parents and friends.
What I like about this story of the road to Emmaus is that it affirms two very important things for me, one theological and one, well, I guess, I would say Christian human reality. The theological thing that it reveals to me is that resurrection is not recussitation. Resurrection made Jesus a new person, the Christ, alive in the first century and alive today, present with us actually – as actually as on that road to Emmaus, perhaps. Resurrection did not bring his dead body back, but clothed the whole of who he was in a new body, one that didn’t look the same as the old one. After all his friends didn’t recognize him until he began to teach as he always had, until he broke the bread as he had done with them so many times before. Resurrection doesn’t make us mortally alive again. It allows us to live forever with God, recognizable for who and what we are in our souls, not with mortal trappings, but with eternal truths.
I think that is the resurrection we are promised as followers of Jesus. We will be ourselves; we will be recognizable, but not for our degrees or status or achievements, but rather for who we are at the core of ourselves, especially the part of us that serves others and follows Christ, the part that puts the good of the whole before our own desires. Not that achievements are bad, nor material things unseemly; it is that they pass away. But the good we do, the way we forgive, the honor we give to others, the respect and dignity we show to others, merely because they too are God’s beloved, the more we help others, serve others, then the more I think we will find of ourselves in resurrection.
The second thing, the merely human, merely mortal, Christian thing that this lesson teaches me is that sometimes you have to be traveling a road in a strange place, like Emmaus, to find what you value and know best. We have been traveling by way of our worship around the Anglican communion, and that is why we have all these African things here with us this morning. We are worshiping as they do in Kenya – with a few modifications that you can read about in the liturgical notes!
I have had the privilege of going to Tanzania, which is the country right next to Kenya. It is as close as Maine is to us. The two countries, though different in many ways, are also very much the same just as we Massachusetts folks are like those from Maine or Connecticut in many ways, but with, of course, our own identifying marks!
I was able to visit the people who live in the bush country, the "bushmen," and also the people of the Massai tribe, as well as two or three other tribes that can also be found in Kenya. You could say I traveled on their roads, though I learned that “road” is a very loose term. It means a sort of, very sort of, cleared space that one heavy-duty jeep can go on. The bumps and the holes are not smoothed out, and, of course, there is no pavement. I would imagine it was actually very much like the road the friends of Jesus were walking on to Emmaus.
The road to the people’s homes and villages and schools was also very like the road to the homes of the people in El Ocotillo where the Pupos and Hochs will be going in a week or so.
It is hard to imagine how one could find Jesus on such a road, or anything at all, for just the walking of it, or riding in a vehicle with just enough suspension system to sustain the bumps, is hard work, dodging pot holes, ridges, and animal droppings. But each time I have traveled a road in such a country, a rough road, I have found Jesus in ways I would not have expected. And it has become clear to me that what I have and need is right before me if I can but take the time to see it.
When I traveled to Tanzania, this was particularly true. The road was rough, but the scenery was so beautiful that any description I would make of it would pale to the reality. The animals were exquisite. I have visited zoos and even wild animal parks where there is the hint of what the life of the animals is like in the wild, but nothing prepared me for the reality of giraffe and hippos, zebra and elephant, lions, monkeys, gazelles of every description and size, and the elephants. I did mention them but they are worth mentioning at least twice! All there right there on the road, outside my car window in huge numbers, and themselves huge, and me on their turf. It was exhilarating and indescribable.
But the people I met in their homes, women, wife number one through wife number 4, showing off their living space, walls made of cow dung, mud and straw, one circular room, the cooking fire, furs on a crude wooden rack not far above the ground for sleeping, helped me to see Jesus in a way that I realized was seeing Him as He had always been. For their eyes were alive with faith, and their hearts full of hope and promise because of their faith, but also filled with the hope that having education for their children, maybe even themselves, and the difference that would make for them. The boys, of course, were the ones to be educated, but even in that there was hope.
And the schools that I saw had both boys and girls, but relatively fewer girls than boys because the schools require uniforms. And even though they are passed through several children and often are in tatters, a family can really not afford many and so the boys go to school.
In one class of mostly nine and ten year olds, there was one very tall obviously older boy – eighteen we were told by him. He had to work to earn the money for his clothes, and now he was in school because he had earned them. Can you imagine an eighteen year old working that hard to be in school, to go to school we with children half his age? It was a wonderful thing to behold.
The contrast of their homes and life to mine, even to the places where I stayed was stunning. I was privileged. I stayed in gloriously luxurious tents, with hardwood floors – one even mahogany, with running water, decadent showers, exquisite food, even a birthday cake on my birthday. As I blew out the candles, I thanked God for I saw, not for the first time, but perhaps in a more profound new way, I saw all the moments of happiness that fill my life. I thanked God for how truly blessed my life is. I got to see the animals, meet the people, be present in their homes. I have traveled to Africa, to El Salvador, Mexico, Europe, all over the United States. I am educated. And while money is tight and there is a recession going on, I eat three meals a day if I want to, and I have a more than adequate roof over my head. But even more I realized that God has blessed me with incredible moments of happiness every single day. And it is not the more than adequate roof over my head or the three meals a day or the travel or the education, that make my life so blessed, it is all of you, this work, my children, and grandchildren, my friends. And each day brings with it at least one moment of indescribable happiness, and in those moments I meet Jesus of course; we all do.
The Hochs and the Pupos will meet and stay in the homes of people in El Ocotillo that I have met and in whose homes I have rested, even slept and snored. I have found that visiting one developing nation is much like visiting another, but not identical, of course, for the cultures are very different. But I dare say that they will find that the people of El Ocotillo also know and find happiness not from what they have or don’t have; the people will teach them about those moments of happiness where Jesus resides too.
So, we send them off in peace and with the hope that they will return to us with new stories, new friends, and a deeper faith – a personal encounter with a living Christ, just as the disciples had when they traveled the road to Emmaus.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd