Richard Mallory
In the moment
Then their eyes were opened,
and they recognized him,
and he vanished from their sight.
—Luke 24.31
Searching among the ruins of your failures,
the gravestones marking your losses,
preserving your sins,
you will not find your Beloved.
Among the sad stories carved in stone
of what you should have been,
you will not find the Holy One.
Trying to understand, you won’t be able to grasp.
Even in your brightest moments,
as with a falling star,
the light cannot be held.
Your Redeemer is not entombed in the past.
but here, in this beating moment.
And then not.
Not waiting for you to notice,
the One Who Is With You
is no longer in that moment just past,
but has gone into the next.
How we have to keep awakening
and awakening.
—Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Dear Friends of Christ,
Poet-pastor Steve Garnaas-Holmes frames today’s gospel story of the road to Emmaus as one that begins with defeat, fear, resignation, retreat. In this moment, the disciples believe that Rome and empire had had the last word. Whatever benefits and deep learning they had gained in three years of tutelage from Jesus belonged in the past. If they did not escape Jerusalem and association with other disciples, who knows? Perhaps they would be picked up by the secret police.
In this moment, they can only experience devastation. The poet compares this way of being to one that captures many of us. I know I have been stuck there over the course of my life. Such dark times are more than merely seeing the glass as half empty. Such times are truly bleak—even lifeless.
A stranger comes along. He asks a question, “What are you two talking about?” The two are startled and assume him to be an outsider, perhaps a resident alien. The stranger, the strange one, the unexpected one, the unqualified one begins to interpret the scriptures as the threesome walk along. A Bible study in motion. Upon arriving at the village, the two had the good sense to invite him to spend more time with them. This moment constitutes movement out of despair. Something wonderful has been happening in this peripatetic seminar. The despairing twosome have gotten a sense of this person without fully remembering and connecting the dots. “They urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us.'”
Jesus has called them “foolish.”
How do you and I accept the diagnosis of being “foolish?” Foolish not to be living in the Bigger Picture of things and preferring to stay in the diminished world of loss and pain. How do we accept the “hit” without further judging ourselves or shaming ourselves for not knowing better? What if life is like this story and there is no way of avoiding it? We will inevitably be foolish from time to time by becoming infatuated and entranced with our victim story. What if one purpose of Christian community is inoculation against despair?
Sometimes people talk about “God moments” or a “God thing.” These two had their God moment when a not so reputable outsider sidled up to them. The two could have shushed him away. By not doing that and then inviting him to stay, the one they thought they were hosting turned out to be the host who was hosting them in a holy moment. Suddenly they knew they were in the presence of the Most High, the great I AM.”
The two change course. Back they go to rejoin the community. They have been freed from living in the past. We can take this all in with further wondering and curiosity. The Rev’d John Dear poses these questions: What makes our hearts burn within us? What makes us turn around? What fills us with new energy to rejoin the community? To join the work of resurrection? To rise up with new energy to resist the culture of death and carry on Jesus’ campaign of life?
Be prepared for the stranger to sidle up to you.
Your fellow traveler
—Richard
