Wednesday in the Octave of Easter, April 12, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Walk with Jesus toward my own small town
Two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus. Jesus himself drew near and walked with them. He asked them, what are you discussing?
According to my new friend in the dentist’s office, traffic in Austin is worse even than in her home town Chicago. She drives an hour to get to work every morning. She drives a car, as do nearly all of us. You won’t find many of us walking seven miles to or from work. To or from Jerusalem.
If we did we’ve have more chance to encounter Jesus, who might walk with us just as he did with Cleopas and his … wife? I can imagine asking Jesus a thousand questions if I recognized him. I don’t think I would recognize him, though. He could be dressed as any of the folk who spend their days walking rather than driving in their cars.
Jesus was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, but our chief priests and elders handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.
“No! How could such a travesty of justice ever take place?” I might say that in grieving disbelief. And then I suppose I would look at Jesus and think, how about every day it happens somehow? Nobody trusts the government anymore. Or the police. Or the newspapers. Or each other.
O how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?
Jesus would insist on returning to his constant theme, that we must be last to be first, we must die in order to live. We must be patient with God’s Kairos time, because with God a day is like a thousand years.
Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the Scriptures.
Up until the present moment, then and now. The reverberations of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection continue unabated. Think of this:
All the world is called to attention. Everything that is and ever was and ever will be, the macro and the micro, the galaxies beyond number and the microbes beyond notice – everything is mysteriously entangled with what happened, with what happens, in these days.… Every human life, conceived from eternity and destined to eternity, here finds its story truly told. In this killing that some call senseless we are brought to our senses. Here we find out who we most truly are because here is the One who is what we are called to be. The derelict cries, “Come, follow me.”
Jesus and I walk beside the West Branch Parkway, along the road from Pluegerville. I sense the silent invisible presence of Cleopas and his … friend? I have no idea which century it is. I am caught in the death of Jesus, in the story from Golgotha, the skull, from Calvary, and the ripping of the temple curtain, and the screams of the two thieves, I hear it all over again and again. I cannot follow this derelict any longer.
We recoil. We close our ears. We hurry on to Easter. But we will not know what to do with Easter’s light if we shun the friendship of the darkness that is wisdom’s way to light.
As I gradually understand that this man I’m walking with is Jesus, I also understand how Easter is just a showcase for my ego until I’ve spent three days in the belly of the whale, three days with Jesus in the tomb, three days in darkness before the dawn. He does rise, then, and so do I.
Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us? The Lord has truly been raised!
(Acts 2, Psalm 33, 118, John 20)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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