“The Resurrection Difference”
Luke 24:13-35
On this Third Sunday of Easter—two weeks after our joyful celebration of resurrection and new life, two weeks filled with reminders of this world’s enslavement to violence and death—I invite us to consider two important questions:
First: How can we know someone is not the Risen Christ?
And second: How might we know that someone is the Risen Christ?
Actually, let’s make that three important questions, with the third one being:
What difference does it make?
I offer these questions only in part because they are reflected in our gospel story, in which the two grieving Jesus-followers walking to Emmaus had no idea that the being who appeared beside them and began walking with them, the being who seemed quite clueless about current events but deeply knowledgeable about the scriptures, was their beloved Jesus restored to life. In fairness to them, the bodily appearance of the Risen Christ was apparently quite different from that of Jesus of Nazareth. Moreover, they had no reason whatsoever to think this being might be the Risen Christ; unlike us, they had not been told that Jesus had risen from the dead and, again, unlike us, they had never encountered the Risen Christ.
And that is main reason for my questions: To remind us that we have encountered the Risen Christ: in the single mother waiting in line at the soup kitchen, in the innocent man wasting away behind bars, in the bullied trans kid desperate for acceptance, and in one another. We have met the Risen Christ in the refugee family swimming against the tide, in the undocumented immigrant seeking sanctuary, in the exhausted parent trying to do it all, in the addict struggling to get clean, in the unhoused person begging for spare change, in the ill, lonely, or grieving person needing comfort and support.
I ask these questions to remind us that the Risen Christ is present all around us—not only in other people, but in all manner of things and feelings and experiences. And to consider how often we might better recognize him.
Which brings me back to our first question:
How can we know that a person—or thing or place or feeling—is not the Risen Christ coming near to us?
How do you know, for example, that the person sitting beside you right now is not the Risen Christ come to offer you companionship and support?
How could you know that the Black kid ringing your doorbell, a kid you’ve never seen before, is not the Risen Christ, come to gather his siblings in his arms?
How would you know that the lost young woman heading up your driveway is not the Risen Christ, out looking for yet another party to crash?
How would you know that the young cheerleader opening your car door is not the Risen Christ, just momentarily confused but always excited to go home to her family?
How do we know that the glorious burst of life and color and so much greening that we call spring is not the Risen Christ come to remind us, even in these days of climate crisis and climate grief, that life goes on and soul-feeding beauty is one of the clearest ways God is with us?
Believing that we and all people are made in God’s image, trusting that the essence of that image is a Love more powerful powerful than death and more persistent than evil, having heard all the stories, having felt God’s presence and experienced God’s grace more times than we can count, shouldn’t seeing people and things as expressions of the Risen Christ be our default position?
In an ideal world, yes. In a world where we don’t feel threatened, on a day when we’re not busy, in a time when we’re not grieving some loss or another, in some alternate universe where we don’t feel pressured to—if not be perfect, exactly—at least have our act together, in a country with less trumped-up fear and far fewer guns, in the rare moment when we feel safe, secure, and able to greet the world with an open heart—sure.
But that’s not the world most of us live in most of the time. And it’s certainly not the world Cleopas and his companion inhabited.
Sure, we could settle for the world we can see. We could spend our lives going for the safe bet, the sure thing, the path of least resistance. We could live as if this is all there is. We could—like the old man who shot a teenager or the angry man who shot and killed a young woman—live at all times on high alert for the slightest hint of possible danger. We could live with our hearts sealed shut, the better to avoid hurt and disappointment. We could try living sideways—changing the subject, avoiding eye contact, trying to forget what’s broken inside us, avoiding intimacy, doing our best to ignore God, refusing to pray.
Or we could choose to live by faith and hope and love.
We could conclude that the answer to my first question is that there is almost no way to know that anyone or anything is not an expression of resurrection power, an embodiment of God’s extravagant love, a measure of grace.
We could decide to trust God and choose to live with open hearts.
Once we do that the answers to my second question seems quite clear: We come to see the Risen Christ in another person or situation when we, like Cleopas and his companion, invite them into our lives. When we pay attention to the burning in our hearts, the tears that come to our eyes, the weakness in our knees, an unexpectedly meaningful experience, an unbidden sense of wonder and joy.
We can experience God’s living presence with us in the breaking of hearts as well as bread. We can know God’s tender grace in the sharing of pain and joy as well as a meal. The odds of encountering the Risen Christ are never greater than when we are working and living together in community, sharing our feelings as well as our resources, our struggles as well as our triumphs, our griefs and vulnerabilities as well as our gifts and our hopes.
And the difference it makes is everything. It is the difference between endings and beginnings, the difference between evil and goodness, the difference between feeling alone and knowing that Love longs to draw near to us and politely waits for an invitation.
Many of you know that my brother, Keith, my only sibling, died of AIDS after spending his last ten months living with me in my tiny house in Washington. DC. Every year on March 24, I mark the anniversary of his death with some photos and a few words shared on Facebook.
Three years ago on that day, in the early surreal and confusing days of the pandemic shutdown, I stepped out the door of my somewhat secluded house to see a man I didn’t know in the wooded area just on the other side of my driveway.
Given the day, our Covid isolation, and so much fear and confusion in the air, I found a stranger’s presence at my home rather unsettling.
Then the man asked if he could come even closer and walk down my driveway. When I asked why, he said he was trying to get back to his car. This sounded a little odd to me, so I kindly but carefully asked him where his car was. He told me. He asked again if he could come down and then walk down my driveway. I said okay.
It was only then that he explained he had once lived in the house next door.
”My son grew up there,” he said. And then, choking back tears, he added, ”I was burying his ashes there, and then I couldn’t find my way back. I’m sorry.”
”It’s okay,” I said.”I understand. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Not wanting to make his pain about me, I didn’t tell him it was the anniversary of Keith’s death. Not wanting to discount his grief or the particularity of his experience, I didn’t tell him that, like him, I knew something about surreptitiously burying someone’s ashes (Keith’s).
Instead, I simply invited him to walk down my driveway, and watched him as he carried his grief.
And I knew that I had been visited—by, call it what you will: the Spirit of Life, the love and grace of God, the gift of shared humanity, the Risen Christ.
I knew Christ in the breaking of this man’s heart. I knew Resurrection Hope in his transparent sharing of his need. On that day, of all days.
And this is how we all can recognize the Risen Christ, how we all can encounter unexpected life and experience renewed hope and joy. Any day. Every day.
Friends, we are not as alone as we might think. Evil, defeat, and death do not have the last word.
Let us live in such a way that we might know the Risen Christ when we see him, that we might invite him to stay with us, that we might go on the way rejoicing.
