Luke 24: 36b - 48
Laterally Luke…Easter 3…Revised 2018
The Easter story continues & widens as Cleopas & his companion, who’d met up with the raised Jesus on the way to Emmaus, now meet up with the eleven & compare notes. Jesus’ appearance among the disciples, though, produces not joy, but fear & terror! (Fear & Terror were once weapons of choice for some churches. Are some of us still trading on that now? Hopefully, not!) How does our Easter Journey continue & progress? Or is it still, ‘same old, same old’? Do we compare our own Easter notes in Bible Studies, or Home groups? Are we making progress? As far as was reached at Emmaus? Or is it still, ‘same old…’? Are we celebrating Easter-every-day-Joy in our on-going lives, or are we like the eleven in that upper room, still doubt-full? Afraid, even? Of what? Of whom?
Misinterpretations of the Scriptures can be fostered & foisted upon others by people still locked behind their own fears of losing control over their followers. Or even, over ‘God’?
Do we know the feeling? On which side of the locked door(s) are we, or those to whom we preach, standing?
Opening people’s minds to the Scripture is no easy task. So many pre-conceptions, mis-conceptions, & failure to conceive . (Conceiving is the most creative of all activities, isn’t it?) Are we conceiving & bringing to birth the truths of Faith & Scripture? The early church learns to re-read the Hebrew Scriptures in the Light of Jesus & His Resurrection. As today’s disciples we need to learn to ‘join all the Jesus dots’. Make connections between what’s been passed down from before, in both the H.B. & our Christian N.T., & the dots with your name on them, & mine. Let’s keep the Scriptures open & life-giving by reading & re-reading them respectfully, positively, & in the light of increasing knowledge in so many fields. Faith-communities only shape up as we share our stories & move on with the ‘old, old, story’ & into today’s stories. In the faith & hope & love that free us from behind locked doors. Re-living someone else’s yesterday’s stories, won’t raise us from today’s deadnesses!
I’m taken by some words of Richard Rohr1, when he says, ‘For all time he (Jesus) becomes our sign, our promise, our guarantee, our fulfillment. It’s all summed up in Jesus: He’s the beginning, the middle, and the end. For us, he is everything. He is the Word of the Father. He is what God can accomplish in humanity when we say yes to God.’
Saying “Yes” to God may cost us, as it costs Jesus; even if not so drastically. But God is still self-giving as He is in Jesus, & by Holy Spirit frees us to be self-giving, too. Resurrected to walk the Jesus Way wherever that leads us now.
1 The Good News According to Luke, Crossroad, NY, 1997, pp.189-190
