Jesus himself came near – Easter III, 30 April 2017

The lectionary presents us with the long passage in Luke about the group of disciples walking to Emmaus, and what happened that evening.  It’s a complex narrative, and biblical scholars love to dissect it and sometimes cast light.  But one of the tasks of senior years, it seems to me, is to look for the simplicities.  I do not mean returning to childhood and the old comforting credulities – although some seem to do that.  I mean the process of finding something central in what we’re told here, so simple in its way that we may have missed it in earlier times, or else thought it too obvious altogether.

And it’s here in this story.  They are walking along the road.  The events of Jesus’s death are raw and recent.  And, says the narrator, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognising him. 

“Jesus himself” (και αυτος Ιησους) – it’s emphatic -- Luke wants us to understand that the person who came near was not some construct of their minds, some product of wishful thinking; neither was it some concept of theology or liturgy.  It was Jesus himself.  And yet he came near as a stranger, another traveller on the road, incognito – their eyes were kept from recognising him, writes Luke.

They realised later who he was, during the evening meal at the breaking of bread.  But that is when he disappeared.  So they can’t enlist him as one of their company.  He won’t be recruited to the team.  They have no proprietary control of him.  What he does is come near on the road, and walk along for a while, and teach… and join in the breaking of bread.  Moreover it is mostly in retrospect that they see who was present… didn’t our hearts burn within us…? 

Well, you may find that eerily familiar.  Looking back… were we not helped, somehow?  Did a door open, or some other door necessarily close…?  Did I realise that unaccountably I had changed, learned some wisdom, been able to do something that had seemed impossible…?  Luke gives us one picture among many of what resurrection might mean in practice – not so much blinding certainties, as Paul experienced on the road to Damascus, but more likely a presence or an awareness along the road, an influence, an inspiration, typically unexpected, quiet and gentle, revealing a way forward…  And also typically, we realise it mainly looking back, retrospect. 

It may be that most thoughtful people in Christian faith, truth be told, experience resurrection mainly as a strange companionship, a sense of presence, sometimes even a presence of absence, that we suspect is Jesus himself.  This presence brings us to a deeper, steadier, quieter place.  That is surely so in our prayer, as ego settles down and we are quietly available for such a coming near.    

Easter II, 21 April 2017 – Sight unseen

The writer of John’s Gospel reports the risen Jesus saying, when they all met in the upper room:  Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe [John 20:29].

And we read at the start of the First Letter of Peter:  Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice… [I Peter 1:8].

But I think the translators of the King James Version got this part best – they knew the uses of the English relative pronoun – Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice…  It is the quiet, faithful, unfussy appropriation of Easter and all its lovely truth. 

Each year we come to Easter sight unseen.  More importantly, every time we are challenged in life, faced with either hope or despair… each time we have to decide what our hope is, whether to face the light, whether to take the next step in faith, to leave baggage behind, to move on… it is as those who trust that Jesus lives. 

Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice…   And so the church prays in one of its loveliest collects:

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light…: By the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquillity the plan of salvation.  Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

As I wrote this, the United States President was videoed expressing a clear personal and aesthetic delight in having dropped something called the Mother Of All Bombs (MOAB) on an underground base in Afghanistan.  It was the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever detonated.  Just one of them costs US$16 million, and it is too heavy for a conventional bomber – it has to be carried and released by a military cargo plane.  The President is one of many who think high explosive solves things.

The symbolism of the women at the empty tomb on Easter morning is much more powerful, it seems to me, than all the hatred and fear which in Jesus’s day and in ours is fuelling violence and death.  It is better than the truth of those who make war, with sanctimonious regret, on children.   In the mighty B minor Mass, J S Bach gives us two shattering surprises.  The first is right at the beginning, when we might have been waiting for some nice elegant introduction, the choir and orchestra suddenly cry Kyrie eleison…!  Lord, have mercy.  Abruptly, as it were caught in the headlights, we are confronted with our guilt and violence, and there is nowhere to hide.  The second comes in the Credo when, again without warning, all Bach’s genius is poured into Et Resurrexit… and he rose. 

Yes, I am a believer.  Words have been my life, yet for me, the Easter truth is best expressed in silence and stillness and simplicity, as with most of love.  Whom having not seen, you love; in whom, though now you see him not, yet believing, you rejoice…

Passion/Palm Sunday 2017 – The same mind

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. [Phil 2:5-11]

Let the same mind be in you… The Greek literally says, Think the same in yourself as Jesus did.  “In yourself...?”  We are the first needing to be converted, and that is, each day – what the Benedictines call by the Latin, conversatio. 

Way back in Genesis (Gen 12:1 – and now we’re in Hebrew country), when God calls Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees, there is a curious feature of the biblical text.  The Hebrew verb lekh simply means “go – go out, get going, move…!”  God said to Abraham, Go from your country, from your birthplace, from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.   But this simple, commonly used verb, is written twice in the text, repeated, side by side, nothing in between.  It may be an ancient mistake in copying, but also it could be that the second occurrence had different vowels (in ancient Hebrew MSS the vowels are not included).  If we give that verb lekh other vowels it can mean go in, discover, find out, learn…  Maybe some rabbis were hinting that Abraham’s journey was to be inward as much as outward, to the land of promise.

When St Paul writes about the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus, he is referring to the inward journey.  If you read the saga of Abraham you see how he indeed learned, changed, on the way.  Jesus also learned, changed, under the power of the spirit of his baptism… in Paul’s timeless words: …emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… humbled himself… became obedient to death, even death on a cross.  Paul invites us on that journey.  In senior years it may well be, if we retain an adequate supply of neurones, that the inner journey gets simpler, humbler and better… we feel freer, willing to explore.

Perhaps I indulge in a kind of Benedictine Brag, but that word obedient is actually one of the three great commitments of Oblates.  Obey has to do with listening, attending, actually hearing God’s word in Christ.  So it is that the inner journey at times becomes hard and rocky, because it entails attention and change.  What is happening is that we are questioning our fascination with ourselves, our own interests, possessions, safety, life-style, our own future… not that any of that is wrong, but it is occupying us less.  We are learning like-mindedness with Jesus.  The Greek word for this process is kenosis (κενωσις), a word Paul uses in this passage.  It means emptying… he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  He is illustrating the extent to which the inner journey may change our priorities.  I think this is what the senior years are for, if we are Christian believers and especially if we are given to prayer.