Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-12, Luke 24:13-35
The sun is shining this afternoon, yet the day began with a little mist; a thin veil obscuring the towers of the Cathedral. At dawn, while walking the dog, an ethereal silence clung to the city, a pause in time between the cover of darkness and the day’s revelation under the sun. Likewise, in our scripture, we find the disciples shrouded in a cloud of unknowing, and, like us perhaps upon waking when we wrestle with the unknown aspects of the day, weeks, or months ahead, two thousand years ago, the disciples were also standing at the edge of time, wrestling with an unknown future.
The life and death of Jesus Christ appeared as a human drama. None doubted He was from God, but death is a part of life, a known fact—ordinary, final, the end—and they were grieving, confused, and shattered. Perhaps they also felt deceived by Love when a world filled with hate and vicious wolves had torn at their hearts, evilness and suspicion surrounding them on every side—people who had separated them from the comfort of Presence, taking away the Holy One sent by the God who is light and Love. Certainty was gone, the grief of absence overpowering them in the cruellest of ways, their joy gone, hope gone, and their faith left clothed in uncertainty and doubt.
Perhaps, too, there was a frustration against themselves for not stopping the events, a disbelief at the injustice of the cross—perhaps in their confusion and search for meaning, they were yearning for justice, a vindication, as well as punishment for wrongdoings.
This trauma has them looking downwards and into the tomb. Are they praying, or are they lost, seeking answers from the world and from each other? Are they trying to rationalize a mystery, make sense based on what they know—refitting all the pieces into a framework that resonates and restores a worldly comfort and order to their lives?
Alone, we find that between what exists materially in the world and our thoughts, we can only find what we give as meaning to them, for the thoughts of God are not our thoughts. The mind from without created the world that we might live, participating with all that is in a partnership—and by these relations, this interdependence with nature and friendship with God, we would discover and, with the Spirit, create and shape meaning and our shared futures.
This is a journey we make with the disciples, within the heart and out from the heart. How beautiful it is that Jesus meets with them here, on the road, as a fellow pilgrim, a stranger wandering with them. Their faces downcast, their souls clinging to the dust—with gentleness, Jesus asks them to speak with Him, tell Him about their troubles.
A prayer from their troubled hearts, not sophisticated but real in all their confusion. In the movement of listening and response, they have unknowingly engaged with the Lord, and they invite this stranger to share in some food and shelter. Together, they are living the Gospel; they are living His teaching, for He told them, “Whatever you do for the least, you do for me.” Matthew 25:40.
The truth is we do not always see or know, but we are called to trust in the Lord with all our heart, leaning not on our own understanding. Proverbs 3:5. And we can do this because we live as people of a gift, a gift given by the grace of God. Recognizing that it was not by the work of our hands, this gift was not deserved—nothing is deserved—but, nevertheless, it is given freely and with a love for us that goes beyond any understanding.
We know that to be Holy, or set apart from the world, is this “turning aside to see” what is behind the veil of our knowing, so often fixed to the surfaces and lines of things. To be Holy is to find some of what is hidden within the mist of our unknowing, not so that we may hold on to it, but so it can be given away. And in these days of busyness, celebrity, and secularism, we may wrestle, as Jeremiah did, with that vocation. As Christians, our minds are transformed by our perception and interpretation of the real in a whole new way—for God sees not as humanity sees. God sees the heart and has set within it that sense of eternity—unbounded time—a time that is now, this moment, as the lines of appearances dissolve and what was unseen is now seen in the breaking of bread.
His word is in our hearts like a fire, and the disciples perceived this; they felt it deeply within themselves without understanding it—and here lies the evangelization mission of every Christian, namely to make known the Who, where, what, so that this sensation is understood and known as coming from our God, who reaches out across all of space and time into every moment and place that we are.
In His resurrection, the long, silent past is held together with a known future and a known God. Heaven is real, and heaven’s beauty is mirrored in the beautiful that touches our hearts.
The disciples, our friends in this story, do not wait; they rush back to share the good news with their companions, still locked away in fear and trembling. Did they, like Jeremiah, hear many whisperings drifting through open windows, “Denounce him! Let’s denounce him!”? Perhaps the disciples also doubted that upon the cross hung a mighty warrior—they had forgotten the promises of the prophets—the sufferings and victory not by power or might but by His Spirit.
In the mystery of His risen life, that has become our Christian life, this transcendent reality is embodied today by our participation in the Eucharist, in our thanksgiving. For it is by the water poured out from His side that we are cleansed, through the blood of Christ poured out for us upon the cross that death is defeated, and it is through the body of Christ that we come to have the promise that the best part of us will live on with Him in heaven for eternity.
Amen.