The weather yesterday morning was the same as it had been for the past week – cold and rainy, a disappointment after early warmth in mid- April. Good, though, too, in that it took pressure from doing all those necessary things that must be done in spring. It was early that I woke, earlier than I had wanted, so there was really no decision to make: I would, sigh, go to church. What else to do but to read the nearly - same headlines as the day before, and drink so much tea that the bathroom becomes the most used, and necessary, room in the house?
It was a sleepy lot in church that made it through the same old rituals that lead up to the beginning of the good stuff, the Gospel, where we actually might learn something - and we did, or at least I did. It was the story of the “Road to Emmaus,” which took place three days after the crucifixion of Jesus, and the guest priest was warm to the subject. Here, we find two disciples walking the 7 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus discussing the astounding events of the past weekend. They are joined by a stranger who we are told was Jesus resurrected, but who comes in disguise to the disciples to ask them about this event they are discussing. What, they say, are you the only one in the area to not know of the crucifixion, and the report that the tomb was found empty? Jesus continues to play dumb until they reach the town and he is invited to stay the night with them. It is then that he re-enacts the last supper, and suddenly they see and recognize who he is, and then go on to tell all the others the next day.
What we learn from the priest is that this is the re-enactment of the entire mass: first we are lead along the road to “talk” and then we find Jesus in the communion.
Fair enough, but something else came to me, just as it came with the Gospel of the Transfiguration which took place on Mt Tabor, or with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, or all those times that Jesus just suddenly “disappeared” into the crowd like Hannibal Lector at the end of Silence of the Lambs. It is that God, indeed, works in mysterious ways, ways far beyond our reasoning or even our imagination. Here, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is disguised without disguise, inexplicably unrecognizable even to those who knew him well; and then, poof!, he is suddenly there for all to see. How? What the heck?
It is this element of God that slapped me across the face this last Sunday, for it reminded me of how hard I have always tried to control events and outcomes, and when thwarted, have even prayed that God intercede on behalf of those plans. It hit me, in part, because I realized just how f’ing boring it would be if things always did work out according to my wishes, and more, just how stagnant I would become, as would anyone else with the same luck. In truth, our best laid plans are made by and for beings (us) with a comparatively limited imagination and understanding of just what life really is. It would be like the sailor steering his ship full speed ahead without having the faintest idea about the rocks and ocean depths he is sailing in – or the real nature of his perceived destiny. If he had his way and was successful, how boring compared to the adventurer who strikes out into the unknown. More so, sooner or later he will ground on the rocks and then bewail his fate, as if it were fate’s doing. But no, it was from sailing without a clue, without faith in the instruments or maps onboard that simply were not studies.
We have maps and instruments in holy wisdom, but still we never fully know, because we are partly blind, so blind that we cannot recognize, in a way, a man we have known well who is walking with us – a man that could be ourselves as well, for we do not even recognize this self at times. We do not recognize that the road we are on is a road to a sacred feast, and that the preamble is the necessary journey, so that we might be ready to understand and appreciate better the destination.
If we got our way on everything, we would never recognize our journey and perhaps not even the feast at the end. We would be flat-minded co-conspirators in denial of our greater selves, and our little triumphs in the world would only blind us to the real journey and the destination. And we would be bored, for our will would not have taken us to where we really want to go if we knew ourselves – to the table where we see the face of God.
If this sounds just too pie-in-the-sky, one should take a moment to reflect on one’s own life. Were the best moments those things that came about through careful planning, or those that came about as a surprise – the hike that brought us to meet our spouse, or that failed grade that made us change our course, which set us off in what we would find would be our true direction?
We design our world to gain the greatest pleasure or success and to avoid pain. These are not necessarily bad things. But that stranger sooner or later will join us on our path and reveal things or take us to places that we could not plan. Like it or not, as long as we don’t know everything, our plans are a hit or miss thing, but inevitably, “fate”, what we are really involved in and cannot understand, will take charge.
Sometimes I despise these surprises, and that, this last Sunday morning, is what really slapped me in the face. Yes, it is good not to smoke crack and to get to work on time, all these things we know that will help us avoid certain calamities, but often times we have no choice in what happens. Oftentimes we are simply not going to get what we want. And this, in the end, is a good thing, not because it is pretty and kind, but because it is necessary for our real purpose. And it also makes for a far better story. FK
It was a sleepy lot in church that made it through the same old rituals that lead up to the beginning of the good stuff, the Gospel, where we actually might learn something - and we did, or at least I did. It was the story of the “Road to Emmaus,” which took place three days after the crucifixion of Jesus, and the guest priest was warm to the subject. Here, we find two disciples walking the 7 miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus discussing the astounding events of the past weekend. They are joined by a stranger who we are told was Jesus resurrected, but who comes in disguise to the disciples to ask them about this event they are discussing. What, they say, are you the only one in the area to not know of the crucifixion, and the report that the tomb was found empty? Jesus continues to play dumb until they reach the town and he is invited to stay the night with them. It is then that he re-enacts the last supper, and suddenly they see and recognize who he is, and then go on to tell all the others the next day.
What we learn from the priest is that this is the re-enactment of the entire mass: first we are lead along the road to “talk” and then we find Jesus in the communion.
Fair enough, but something else came to me, just as it came with the Gospel of the Transfiguration which took place on Mt Tabor, or with the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, or all those times that Jesus just suddenly “disappeared” into the crowd like Hannibal Lector at the end of Silence of the Lambs. It is that God, indeed, works in mysterious ways, ways far beyond our reasoning or even our imagination. Here, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus is disguised without disguise, inexplicably unrecognizable even to those who knew him well; and then, poof!, he is suddenly there for all to see. How? What the heck?
It is this element of God that slapped me across the face this last Sunday, for it reminded me of how hard I have always tried to control events and outcomes, and when thwarted, have even prayed that God intercede on behalf of those plans. It hit me, in part, because I realized just how f’ing boring it would be if things always did work out according to my wishes, and more, just how stagnant I would become, as would anyone else with the same luck. In truth, our best laid plans are made by and for beings (us) with a comparatively limited imagination and understanding of just what life really is. It would be like the sailor steering his ship full speed ahead without having the faintest idea about the rocks and ocean depths he is sailing in – or the real nature of his perceived destiny. If he had his way and was successful, how boring compared to the adventurer who strikes out into the unknown. More so, sooner or later he will ground on the rocks and then bewail his fate, as if it were fate’s doing. But no, it was from sailing without a clue, without faith in the instruments or maps onboard that simply were not studies.
We have maps and instruments in holy wisdom, but still we never fully know, because we are partly blind, so blind that we cannot recognize, in a way, a man we have known well who is walking with us – a man that could be ourselves as well, for we do not even recognize this self at times. We do not recognize that the road we are on is a road to a sacred feast, and that the preamble is the necessary journey, so that we might be ready to understand and appreciate better the destination.
If we got our way on everything, we would never recognize our journey and perhaps not even the feast at the end. We would be flat-minded co-conspirators in denial of our greater selves, and our little triumphs in the world would only blind us to the real journey and the destination. And we would be bored, for our will would not have taken us to where we really want to go if we knew ourselves – to the table where we see the face of God.
If this sounds just too pie-in-the-sky, one should take a moment to reflect on one’s own life. Were the best moments those things that came about through careful planning, or those that came about as a surprise – the hike that brought us to meet our spouse, or that failed grade that made us change our course, which set us off in what we would find would be our true direction?
We design our world to gain the greatest pleasure or success and to avoid pain. These are not necessarily bad things. But that stranger sooner or later will join us on our path and reveal things or take us to places that we could not plan. Like it or not, as long as we don’t know everything, our plans are a hit or miss thing, but inevitably, “fate”, what we are really involved in and cannot understand, will take charge.
Sometimes I despise these surprises, and that, this last Sunday morning, is what really slapped me in the face. Yes, it is good not to smoke crack and to get to work on time, all these things we know that will help us avoid certain calamities, but often times we have no choice in what happens. Oftentimes we are simply not going to get what we want. And this, in the end, is a good thing, not because it is pretty and kind, but because it is necessary for our real purpose. And it also makes for a far better story. FK
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