New blog: Come join me on the road!

Dear friends,

I've opened a new blog marking the beginning of this new chapter for us as we travel back to California. Everything on Fiat Lux will remain – but come join me on the new blog. I'm calling it The Open Table at Emmaus. You can read my first post HERE.

– Jim

The road leads us home

Roman road north of Jerusalem
near ruins of "Emmaus"
Photo by James Richardson 2011

From Bishop Steven Charleston this morning . . .

I walk on, no matter how easy or difficult the path before me. I walk on in good weather and bad, under a beautiful sky, beneath a dark moon, I walk on when the road seems to pull me forward to discover what is around the next corner, or even when I need to stop for rest before I can take another step. I walk on without knowing when my journey will end, embracing the journey itself as gift, it is my life and calling. I walk on in peace, in wonder, in endless thanks that you walk with me, and that together we walk in faith, the road that leads us home.

Holy Land Journal: On an old crumbling Roman road

The old Roman road to the place Jews in
the time of Jesus called "Ammaous."

JERUSALEM – Our time in the Holy Land is drawing to a close, and we are beginning to feel the tug of the homeward journey ahead.

On Tuesday we completed our pilgrimage by taking a walk a few miles away in an Israeli suburb. We walked up a hill, past a few houses, and then left the pavement and disappeared for a time into a ravine.

We wended our way through thistle bushes and under low lying pine branches to reach a crumbled gray footpath that was once a Roman road. Then we walked as far as we could on the old Roman road.

We walked on the road to Emmaus.

You may recall the story in Luke 24:13-35: Two of Jesus’ followers – Cleopas and another disciple unnamed– flee from Jerusalem after the execution of Jesus. A stranger joins them on the road and asks them what they are talking about:

They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him.”

As they walk along, the stranger explains the Scriptures to them; how the messiah would not be a mighty warrior but would be a servant who would be put to death. He explains the entire Bible to them as they walk. When they reach a town called “Emmaus,” the pair of disciples invite the stranger to join them for dinner.

As the Gospel of Luke continues:

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

I adore this story. If I had only one story in the Bible I could keep, this would be it. Everything about the Gospel is here – surprise, divinity, servanthood, resurrection and a great meal. It is a tale of how all of us miss seeing the Holy – the Christ – in the people we meet because we are too busy to see what is right in front of us. It is a tale of how we especially miss seeing the Christ in strangers, in people who are different than us. It is a tale of opportunities still before us if we walk down the road and open our eyes to see.

Today we walked along this old Roman road, we walked to Emmaus. We walked the same path as Cleopas and his companion walked. We worked our way up the ravine until we could walk to further, and we paused to look.

The Arab town that had once been there was completely destroyed in the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. All that remains is the Roman road and piles of trash along the way.

On a gravel footpath before
reaching the old Roman road.

There are no gift shops, no amenties, no signs marking the place. There is no huge basilica, no tour buses. No one hawking pottery. Yet, we knew we were in a very special place. A team of archaeologists were nearby excavating a few yards from our trail.

I had brought a small stone with me to leave in the Holy land: a piece of quartz from Shrine Mont, Virginia. I’ve been looking for just the right place to leave it. Here is where I left it, on the Road to Emmaus.

Was this the actual place of Emmaus? Scholars disagree, as they do on everything else in the Holy Land. There are at least four candidates for Emmaus.

The place we went was once known as “Colonia” by the Romans because it was a “colony” for aging veteran Roman soldiers. The Arabs later rendered “Colonia” into “Qualuyna.”

But in the time of Jesus, the local Jews called it “Ammaous.”

Emmaus? Perhaps so.

Australian Anglican Bishop Godfrey Fryar
celebrates our Holy Eucharist with Jerusalem's
skyline as our backdrop.

We walked back down the road, chatting quietly, and returned to our bus. We were taken a few miles away to the top of a hill, to a convent of the Sisters of Notre Dame, a French order. The convent marks where it is thought that King David kept the Ark of the Covenant for 20 years before bringing it to Jerusalem when the Temple was built. It is also another candidate for “Emmaus,” though it seems much to high up on a hill to be a place where anyone would lodge on their way to somewhere else.

Here we celebrated our Holy Eucharist one last time as fellow pilgrims, and we looked out from this hill and could see the entire skyline of Jerusalem, old and new.

As we prayed, sang, and shared in the bread and wine, we could hear gunshots below the hill – presumably someone was target practicing. At least that is what we all hoped.

As we finished, we were invited to pray for peace. We prayed earnestly for the peace of Jerusalem and for the peace of the whole world.

Amen.

What keeps you from seeing who is walking beside you?

Today is Youth Sunday, and our young people will be narrating an enactment of the story of the

disciples on the road to Emmaus, based on Luke 24:13-35. I preached a homily at 8 am on the story. Here it is:

+ + + 

“Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” 

What kept them from recognizing who was walking beside them?

What keeps you from recognizing who is walking beside you?

Two men – disciples of Jesus – are walking down a road talking about the astounding, preposterous news from women who tell them that the tomb of Jesus is empty.

As they walk along, a stranger joins them on the road.

“Their eyes were kept from recognizing him,” the gospel account tells us.

I’ve often wondered what kept their eyes from recognizing him.

Was it their grief? Is it their sadness? Or the horror of the crucifixion?

Or was it their doubts and their inability to trust the women who told them about their experience?

Or was it the sheer strangeness of all they were encountering? The gospel does not tell us. 

Maybe it was something they carried with them, something very personal? A burden, a disappointment, a failure?

They thought Jesus would be the leader the had waited for, the messiah to redeem Israel. But now their hopes were dashed on the Cross.

Maybe they were just wrapped up in their disillusionment and they just could not see who was walking beside them on the road. They were somewhere stuck in Good Friday.

There is a United Church of Christ pastor in Atlanta, Shannon Michael Pater, who puts it this way: “Easter does not always come in three days. Stones are rolled away, but sometimes we stay in the tomb.”*

The two disciples, engrossed in their darkness, walk on with this stranger, who tells them many things, but still they do not see.

Not until they arrive at an inn, and not until this stranger takes bread, blesses it and breaks it, do they see the Risen Christ in front of them. They see him finally in the act of sharing a simple piece of bread, in sharing a meal. Finally they recognize him in the blessing.

Now they get it.

What gets in your way of seeing?

This story of the two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus puts the question squarely before us. What gets in our way of seeing the Christ in front of us, the Christ in each other, and the Christ in the people around us?

What keeps us from recognizing the Christ in total strangers? Who do we overlook in our daily life and work?

Who brings you blessings, and yet you do not see?

It was not until the disciples on the road to Emmaus were open to the surprise that they finally saw the blessing that was theirs to claim all along.

They caught the newness of this in the very familiar words of a table blessing. The common suddenly became uncommon, the old and familiar became new and different. Nothing for them was ever the same again.

In churches, we commonly talk about our life as on a spiritual journey. We walk on a spiritual path, each our own way, and that is true enough.

The path can take us on an intensely inward journey, encased in the “interior castle,” as medieval mystic Teresa of Avila called it.

Yet, often overlooked is that we are on this journey as a community, with each other. Yes, each of us must walk in our own way, but we are walking together. This does not have to be a lonely path. Even solitary monks gather together to share a meal and escape the interior castle.

When we gather here each Sunday, when we share the bread and wine of our Holy Eucharist, we are like those first two disciples on the road to Emmaus.

Standing at the table, kneeling at the altar rail, we open ourselves to seeing each other, and I pray, open ourselves to the surprise of being blessed by each other.

With these blessings comes a large responsibility. We are called to reach outside ourselves, and touch the hurt and wounds of the world. The walls of our interior castles must have openings that others may see in and we see out.

Our spiritual path can lead us to places most of us would rather not go, and that is why we need the strength of walking together in community.

It is in those difficult places – in hospital rooms, homeless shelters, jail cells, or in an almost forgotten friendship – where we become the hands and face of Christ for someone else on their road to Emmaus.

But to walk that path, we need to ask again: What keeps you from seeing who is in walking beside you? AMEN.

* Commentary by Shannon Michael Pater, Feasting on the Word, 3 Easter.
Painting, Road to Emmaus, by He Qi.