"What shall we make of this?"

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham,

Rector of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

April 10, 2005, 3rd Sunday of Easter, Year A;  Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

Gospel:  Luke 24:13-35  The disciples encounter Jesus in the stranger on the road to Emmaus

There is an old tale you may have heard. It has been passed down in many versions. I've run across it in Sufi, Taoist, Buddhist, Rabbinic and generic versions.

Once there was a farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbor came over to tell him how sorry he felt for him, only to be told in return: "Who knows what is good or bad?" The next day the horse returned, bringing with it eleven wild horses it had met during its adventurous escape. The neighbor came over again to congratulate the farmer on his good fortune, only to be told once again, "Who knows what is good or bad?" The next day the farmer's son tried to tame one of the wild horses and fell off, breaking his leg. His neighbor came back again to express how bad he felt. But for the third time, all the farmer had to say was: "Who knows what is good or bad?" The next day, the king of that land sent soldiers to the village to draft all of their young men into the army, but because of his injury the farmer's son was not taken. The neighbor returned again to be glad for the safety of the farmer's son, but the farmer said yet once again, "Who knows what is good or bad?"

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Two neighbors were walking down the road to Emmaus. They spoke of Jesus, a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. They hoped he was the one to redeem Israel. But what a tragedy. He was tried for a capital crime, convicted and executed by crucifixion. These are bad times, you know. But there was this strange report. His body seems to be missing, it is said. And some women -- you know how women can be -- said angels told them he was alive. What can it mean? And a stranger walking the road with them, hearing this story, talks with them until their hearts are burning. They stop for a meal. "Stay with us," they say. He does. And at a table and a meal like millions of others, the stranger takes some ordinary bread, blesses, breaks and gives it to them, and their eyes are opened.

John V. Taylor writes, "God is not beyond and above it all; (God) is right within it all. (God) has always been within it all, within the enormous processes of evolution, within the development of your life from your childhood up to today, and (God) will be involved in your life to the very end and long beyond that. God (is) involved ...in the changes and chances of time. And that is why we may never look back and think, 'Oh, if only': if only I'd had a better deal; if only I'd had more chances; if only I'd made more of my chances; if only I hadn't made so many mistakes. That is to regard God, and indeed your own fate, as something beyond the here and now, but it isn't.

"If God is to be of any use to you or to me, he has to be a God who stands gently alongside you, and says, 'Where shall we go from here? What shall we make of it?' You can't undo what has made you what you are. You can't undo history. But from this moment, with God you can look forward and say, 'What shall we make of this?'" (The Easter God, p. 12)

Walking along beside a stranger. Sitting down at a meal. Ordinary stuff. Most of us just find the ordinary, well, ...ordinary. But there are some who seem to see the superficial with a sense of wonder, awe and joy, and they turn to us and say, "Look! Listen!" And we say, "To what?" We usually call these people who see differently artists, or saints, or crazy people. Things are so mysterious, they say to us. They look at something ordinary, and some spirit within whispers to them, "What shall we make of this?" The artists then use some of that ordinary stuff -- rocks, blobs of paint, sound-waves, syllables -- and they create something that can give us a glimpse of undiscovered worlds.

The German woodcarver Ernst Barlach wrote in a letter to a friend: "Creation has no end. Ultimately the creator and the creature are one. This force in us is the force of God, in everything -- all our labours, our longings, our struggles, our hopes, our achievements, our joys and our angers. Art and music sometimes give us a glimpse of undiscovered worlds." (J. V. Taylor, p. 86)

Such is the work of the life-giving Spirit. We who are Christians call it the Spirit of Christ. It is the Spirit that energized Jesus as he walked through his world embracing seeds and flowers, lepers and lame, tax collectors and Pharisees, loaves and fishes. Walking in that life-giving Spirit he made the ordinary extraordinary.

There is a woman I heard about who made it her business to improve the atmosphere of what they used to call "old people's homes." She told of a place in New York where she described the usual state of affairs -- elderly people "sitting in a circle around the edge of a large room, almost half-dead, she said; nobody talking to anyone. Everybody frozen, still, waiting, endlessly waiting.

"She was determined to make a change; and one day she invited a young dancer to visit them. As the music played on a record-player and the girl danced in the centre of the room, little by little the old people began to sway and to move and to strike the time with their hands. They were caught up in her life. One man was seen to stare at his hand and heard to exclaim: 'My God, it is ten years since I moved that hand!' And a 104-year-old German lady was heard to mutter: 'It reminds me of when I danced for the Tsar of Russia!'

"Life-giving is contagious. Life itself, real aliveness as in that young dancer, is catching." (J.V. Taylor, p. 131) A stranger falls into a discussion and says things that kindle a heart's desires. He is going on ahead. "Stay with us," we ask. And for a moment he pauses. Takes the bread, blesses, breaks, gives it, and our eyes are opened to a glimpse of undiscovered worlds. Life is blessed. You might say consecrated. That's what happens to bread whenever we take, bless, break and give it. It is consecrated. That's what happens with life, whenever we take, bless, break and give it. Life is consecrated. Our eyes are opened. And before we can say once again, "Stay with us," he vanishes from sight.

"(H)e will not stay," says Barbara Brown Taylor. "(H)e will not stay put, stay the same, stay with us. 'Stay!' is our chorus, but his refrain is, 'Follow!' Follow me, he says over his shoulder as he moves out into the world, broadcasting his Holy Spirit, blending into the crowd of humanity so well that, if we choose to go after him, we must search every face on the off chance that it might be his.

"Those are our choices, it seems: we can beg him to stay with us or we can follow him. We can plead with him to stay put and, when he does not, we can sit alone with our memories and ...whatever will fuel our nostalgia and grief, which are all we will have left. Or we can go after him and plunge into the crowd right behind him. Although the sea of faces that parted for him closes back in on us, we can still catch a glimpse of him here and there in the face of a gardener, a foreigner, a stranger on the road. If we are thorough we will handle each person we meet with care, just in case it is he; if we are diligent we will wash some feet along the way, feed some hungers, soothe some sorrows, just in case they are his. You can never be too sure." (Barbara Brown Taylor, Mixed Blessings, p. 71-2)

Letting go of the "if only's" we can live into the moment. We are not determined by the past or by our interpretation of the past. "Who knows what is good or bad?" We can't change history. But we can be awake, alert, alive in the present moment. And we can listen to the gentle voice beside us looking toward the future asking, "Where shall we go from here? What shall we make of this?" We can take the ordinary stuff of ordinary life and let the life-giving spirit bless, break and give it away. Being caught up in such a life is like dancing, plunging in, following him, responding to the moments when our hearts are burning, using the ordinary to create the extraordinary, letting Jesus lead us from the known to the unknown. Who knows when our eyes will be opened and for a moment we may recognize him just before he vanishes from our sight, looking over his shoulder to smile and say, "Follow me."