“We
had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
“We
had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”
Words
uttered by two shattered disciples as they limp home from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Embodied
in their words are our own disappointments, our own despairs.
We
had hoped that the tests would have come back negative.
We
had hoped that the treatment would have been successful.
We
had hoped for a promotion or a new job
We
had hoped to make the baseball team, we had hoped for a better grade.
We
had hoped that our marriage might have been different.
We
had hoped —you can fill in your own blank—where life hasn’t worked the way you
wanted it or where something terrible has taken place.
We
had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
Hope
has turned to despair—the cross has squashed out every last ounce of hope—there
is nothing left but a boulevard of broken dreams. Yes we have been told the tomb is empty but
we haven’t seen anything that has told us that it isn’t grave robbers.
We
had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
David
Bynum, Episcopal priest—who worked at the Church of the Advent in Boston in
1970’s, once preached, "At
the core of human life there is a struggle between hope and despair. We look at
the world as it is, we look at ourselves as we are and we despair. We look at the world the way we would like it
to be, we look at ourselves as we would like to be and we hope. But in the
struggle between hope and despair, despair has a powerful weapon [he writes] It
has the fire of reality. When life is
held up to the fire of reality, we see the world is not what we would like it
to be and we are not what we would like to be.
Hope has no defense against this except the expectation that the future
will be different. But the defense is weak.
The present is visible and tangible; the future is invisible and
intangible.” [1]
For
the disciples on the road it is Friday— their reality is still back there on
Golgotha—it is still back they’re at the foot of the cross—their reality is
that the one that they had hoped for died on Friday.
The one that would free them from oppression
of the Romans had died, the one who would lead them back to God had died.
So
often all we see and experience is Friday —disappointments, despair,
death. The world has trained us to take
a Friday perspective.
We
turn on the television or open our computers and the news we see shooting or
overdoses or sabre rattling with North Korea----Friday. We hear politicians and commentators say
that the country is going to hell in a hand basket—Friday. Our life might be
spiraling out of control—Friday. Broken dreams.
Failing health- Friday. Getting
older—not being able to do and be the person we once were. Friday, Friday, Friday.
But
the road to Emmaus isn’t about Friday—it’s about Easter Sunday. It’s about scales dropping from their eyes as
Jesus breaks the bread and breaks
into their Friday reality.
It’s
about moving from through the pits of despair to rising of hope within us.
Yes,
folks we live in a Friday world—yes Friday invades our lives and our
perspectives, but we can also live in an Easter Sunday world—filled with hope
and expectation.
How
do we move from Friday to Sunday? What
can we do?
You’re
not going to believe me when I say this, but I believe the answer starts with
faith.
Its
starts by walking the road of life believing the promises we hear from Holy
Scripture like the words we hear at the end of the Gospel of Matthew.As Jesus ascends to heaven—he says to his
followers, “I will be with you always, even
to the end of the ages.”
Faith
tells us even in the valley of the
shadow of death Jesus goes with us. Our faith tells us that Jesus stands with
us on the boulevard of broken dreams.
How do you we move from Friday to Sunday?
We
can kneel down at that rail we can stretch out our hands and open our lives to
invite Jesus in again. We invite him in knowing that in the breaking of the
bread we will find Jesus.
We
know that those little pieces of bread aren’t just wheat and water, but that
they have the spirit of the living God within them—that that rail is place
where the spirit of God blows into our lives and into our world. That we get up
from that rail as new, changed people.
How do you we move from Friday to Sunday?
We
can scour world for those small rays of God’s sunshine—the embrace of friend that becomes more than just that. — the smile
of a stranger that just sticks with us through the day, the serendipitous words of a song, or a card
or words spoken from the mouth of friend— become words that are perfectly placed into
our lives where they are no longer the words of a song or a friend, but they
are voice of God speaking into that moment.
Bynum
said that despair has a powerful weapon “reality.”
But
didn’t our reality change two weeks ago when the stone rolled away.
Isn’t
our reality as Christians Easter Sunday? Resurrection?
Easter
Sunday stares into the jaws of Friday-- it stares down despair and disappointment
and says not so fast—I have something to say about that.
AMEN
nice
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