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Easter III-A 3005
H O M I L Y G R I T S
Third Sunday of
Easter
April
10, 2005
¶ Book of Common Prayer lectionary
Acts 2:14a, 36-47 All who believed had all things in common
or Isaiah 43:1-12 You are my witnesses, says the Lord
Psalm 116 Dilexi, quoniam - I love the Lord because he has heard my
voice
or 116:10-17 Quid rependerem Jehovae? How shall I repay the Lord?
1 Peter 1:17-23 Love one another deeply, constantly, from the heart
or Acts 2:14a, 36-47 as above
Luke 24:13-35 Jesus himself came near and went with them; moreover,
some women of our group astounded us
Of all the resurrection appearances, the ones in the gospel reading
today are the favorites. Like favorite bedtime stories, we never
tire of hearing them.. The story of the supper at Emmaus* holds onto
our imaginations, and reappears amongst us in poetry and art as
mysteriously as it appeared in the gospel accounts. We cannot with
certainty fix it on a map, for several places (with their religious
establishments) claim to be the true one, like the custodians of the
various available tombs--Catholic or Protestant--claim theirs to be
the one from which Jesus escaped as Houdini did from his chained shut
casket. Resurrection has become epidemic, and frequent enough to be
parodied. It's safest to visit all the sites in pilgrimage, and let
God sort out our devotion.
Luke, the literary genius of the Greek Scriptures, who may have been
Lucy, has told the story beautifully, with poetic imagination, and
fleshed out the story like an Old Master at his canvas. But there
are some big and solid bones, some visible skeletal structure here in
the story, as in a Rubens or a Rembrandt matron. They are the big
and solid bones of the Church's adolescent life--growing
prodigiously, handsomely and with integrity. The church's
constitution and bylaws are not laid out in chapters and paragraphs,
items and footnotes, but in stories that tell of a community's life.
It is a lifestyle of Resurrection. Common-ism, appointment as
witnesses, love as a lifestyle, and our life together in the Church
thus begins with some women of our group astounding us.
It is a Church of the Holy Commuion that is described. Time after
time Luke/Lucy brushes the canvas with broad strokes--that show the
oneness of Scripture Study with the Koinonia and the Holy Communion.
Common Bible, Common Life, Common Meal. Then, it is brilliantly
clear that the Church is a Pilgrim church--its disciples on their way
home. In this story, to a village named Emmaus, some seven miles
> from Jerusalem. A pilgrim church, a church on the move, is
sometimes bemused and sometimes bewildered, like any adolescent,
unable to discern the meaning of its own overwhelming experiences.
It is in shock and denial, unable to accept crucifixion, yet it is a
church that had looked for liberation: "We had hoped he was the one
who would liberate," Cleopas said to the Stranger. Yet it is a
church on the way home from Good Friday, not yet understanding the
amazing reversal of defeat that walked their way on the dusty road.
It is a church hesitant to accept the message and the ministry of
women apostles. "Some women of our group astounded us," they said,
"and told us how THEY had seen a vision of angels!" . "And some of
us went to the tomb and found the tomb empty, just as THEY said, but
they did not see Him." "Öh how foolish you are, how slow of heart
to believe!" they were told by the Stranger on the Road. How foolish
not to believe the women witnesses! .
The earliest witness to the Anastasis, remember, was Miriam of
Magdala, and her companions, the strong Galilean women who had walked
everywhere with Jesus. "Some women of our company amazed us" -- a
verse that has been quoted many times in church venues since the
ordination of the Philadelphia eleven, the women called to witness
to the Resurrection with the eleven Jerusalem men of centuries ago.
And in between, centuries of suffering, in struggle. The Stranger
asks, "Was it not necessary that there be suffering?" No cross/No
crown. A Church reluctant to believe witnesses if they aren't part
of the dominant power structure, a church too fond of its own
triumphs, comfortable in seats of privilege, too trusting of its
patrons, needs to hear these queries--they will always make
suffering necessary, and struggle an imperative.
The Church is given two great and imperishable gifts by the Stranger
on the Pilgrim Road: First, An understanding of the Scriptures. An
opening up of the religious tradition, so that we begin to get heart
burn from the full meal of honest hermeneutic, a feast of meaning.
There's no church without the Bible but the Bible doesn't mean much
outside the church, anymore than a cookbook is much help outside a
kitchen nor will a kitchen be much good too far from a dinner
table. The disciples on the road had some familiarity with the
Scriptures; they had heard the regular lectionary readings in
synagogue . But they hadn't had them opened to their experience,
they had not "contextualized" them in their own lives, and the life
of their beloved Rabbouni. And so it is the Spirit of the Risen
Jesus in the community that opens up the meaning of our lectio divina
for us even now. And the Scriptures are tied to the Lord's Supper in
this story, as securely as the Bill of Rights is to the Constitution
of the U.S. (Oh, oh, -- Bad example, now that Bush has pried them
loose.) Scripture pried loose from the church's common life, its
koinonia, its Sacraments, led to a raging flood of BENT, not only in
belief but in lifestyle and praxis. It is when the Scriptures are
tied intimately to the Sharing Supper and the commonist social life
that our hearts burn within us and we recognize the Stranger amongst
us as the Liberator.
Alfred Loisy, the French priest who was a brilliant reformer born
into his church a generation prematurely, wrote that "This lasting
joy which no power on earth can take from the disciples is not
confined to the passing appearances. The risen Christ is the object
of the joy, the appearances mark the beginning of it. What
guarantees its perpetual continuance is the actual possession of the
glorified Christ through the agency of the Spirit, to which will be
added the direct vision in the eternal Kingdom."**
The "day is far spent." There's not time left to do everything. But
there's time
left for a supper of sharing. And so the Stranger appears to have
somewhere else to go, and so he will, if we do not bid him stay The
stranger has fish to fry on other beaches, beside an Otro Mar. In
another hymn we sing "Come risen Lord and deign to be our guest.
Nay, let us be thy guests, the feast is thine. Thyself, at thine own
board made manifest, in this our sacrament of bread and wine." For
centuries, until very recently as a result of the Liturgical
Movement, Roman Catholics had Mass, Mary, and Confession, but they
had no more acquaintance with the Bible than a hog does with Sunday.
And Protestants had more Bible--if only in what they called the
"Saint James Version", than they could read and understand, but no
sense of Church or Sacrament. They kept those in the footnotes or
confessional statements, out of their praxis. Both branches of the
church resembled gigantic sects which had severed half their lives.
It is not only the Church which is fractured.
We live in a fractured time, crippled still from our broken bones and
torn flesh. We live in what my friend Edward Moran in Brooklyn calls
a Moral Famine. Ed has sent me this poem:
A COMMUNION HYMN IN TIME OF MORAL FAMINE
(Edward Moran, 2005 St. Flavian, C. M. Day's Psalter, 1562)
Can this our bread be living bread
If all the children starve?
Unconsecrated, underfed,
As prophets lose their nerve?
Can any vine shed saving wine
With power to redeem,
When lips that share the cup consign
Flesh, blood to low esteem?
"For if you feed a hungry child
You feed--are fed by--Me":
A simple message, so defiled
By power's perfidy.
Forgive our meager eucharist:
Can sacrament suffice
That feeds on famine's holocaust
And mocks the bread of life?
God, send new prophets on the winds
To claim the cross instead
Of those who vaunt her twisted ends:
Command the stones be bread.
In Peter's sermon, written down for us by the beloved physician
Luke/Lucy, as the second volume of the history of Jesus and the
Apostolic Church, we have an outline of the life in the
proto-Catholic church. First, there's the preaching of repentance,
and there's Baptism. The preaching is simple: You are the ones who
crucified Jesus! Repent and be baptized and save yourselves from a
crooked generation. The Baptism is of those who receive the word.
There's no trotting in of an occasional churchgoer here, the
baptism-as-lagniappe or party favor for visitors to brunch. It's
life commitment here, or no show. It is very much the same picture as
he gave us in story form in the account of the supper at Emmaus. He
says that those who were added to the Church (and it was the Lord who
added them, mind you) devoted themselves to four things: (l) the
Apostles' teaching. That is, they were immersed in the Church's own
Scriptures and their interpretation. No one got to interpret the
Bible idiosyncratically, idiorhythmically, idiotically. The
disciples on the road to Emmaus had discovered that, and looked for
someone to open the hermeneutic. "Everyone has the right to
interpret the Bible for himself" claimed the radical protestant.
Sure, and everyone has the right to interpret "The Joy of Cooking"
for herself, out of the kitchen, not facing the stove. And that's
okay--the Bible, like a cook book, is fun reading -- but bon
appetit! Find substitutes for all the ingredients listed, and then
eat it yourself.
The disciples asked for and got the Fellow Traveler (the Paraclete's)
help to figure out the Scriptures. With the apostolic tradition to
help us out--and number (2) , we need the apostolic fellowship. The
Greek word is Koinonia, and it means more than coffee hour
conviviality. It means caring about the physical and spiritual and
social needs of every other communicant, not just the pretty ones.
It means doing what some of you are doing very well: caring, being
pastors to one another, and not just lost sheep and privatized
goats. And the number (3) element of the apostolic life: the
Breaking of Bread. That's the Holy Eucharist, not Big Macs at
McDonald's. It means the sharing of the sustenance of human life.
The first Church began with a common life of communal living, when
the members sold their possessions and goods and used them as the
community needed them. Today, most church members take this to be
freakish, but it's clearly the Scriptural and traditional norm for
Christian community. Maybe not popular, any more than monogamy is
popular, but it's the norm. It's the Bible's lifestyle.
> From the earliest times there have been communities of women and men,
sometimes both, sometimes families, living together, like the
celibate Shakers, and other experiments in common life, amongst
Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans, Protestants and Others. They look
after each other and help each other in need, rejoice with each
other, in prosperity and destitution--always sharing--sharing more
than money: sharing a lifestyle of simplicity, detachment. Peter's
sermon in the epistle today: "You know that you were ransomed from
the futile ways inherited from your forebears, not with perishable
things such as silver or gold, but with the blood of Christ, like
that of a lamb. It is through him that you have confidence in God,
not through money, not through silver and gold. You have been born
again through the living and abiding word of God."
Änd so the indication is here for us: koinonia, fellowship,
commitment to each other, concern for each other's needs. And
finally, the number (5) element is prayer. St. Luke says "the
Prayers." That means, not just private nose-pinching prayer, your
own concerns hung on your bedpost for the Lord to think about while
you're asleep. "The Prayers" here means the Prayers of the
Community--its regular offering of prayer, even if it's only the Our
Father offered three times a day, like a Muslim offering her prayer
five times a day. Christians are people who offer The Prayers.
Some offering of praise, intercession, thanksgiving, supplication,
penitence, for the people of the community, the world. And some of
the literate can do more--the daily office with the Psalter, or some
form of it. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Anglican
Reformation was the rendering of the divine office into "Common
Prayer." Some form of it caught on and became, however mutilated,
the model of all protestant worship. It's the ark that delivered us
all, with the animal articles of the faith, two by two, through the
flood. The Presbyterians and Lutherans have also revived the daily
office in our time.
The Methodist "Upper Room" folks have issued a version of the daily
office.
And look what happens in the account in the 'new' Testament when this
is all done with devotion: when the world sees that the Church is
faithful to her constitution and by-laws, to her bone structure and
musculature, her breathing, pulsing, sweating and exercising life.
"Day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in
their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts,
praising God and having favor with all the people." Favor with all
the people. For people can see when something good is happening, and
they are moved to join themselves to it. All the preaching in the
world, all the Bibles in the bookstore, all the tracts in the rack,
aren't going to build a community until there's a community worth
getting into. The lesson ends this way, "And the Lord added to
their number day by day those who were being liberated."
The Greek Scriptures here never give credit for conversions, or blame
for the want of them, to the Church or its leaders or members, or to
the success or failure of evangelism campaigns.. But it always
gives credit to the Lord. The Lord adds to the Church. We are
called to be the Easter Church that the Lord we know of from the
Bible would want to add to such as are being saved, being
liberated..
GRANT GALLUP
Apartado RP-10
CASA AVE MARIA
Managua, Nicaragua C.A.
Tel. 011-505-2662165
gallup@tmx.com.ni
GRITS 4th series now on-line:
http://newark.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits
*Emmaus is mentioned for the first time in 166-165 B.C., when Judas
Maccabeus defeated there the army of Gorgias. Vespasian took it at
the beginning of his campaign against the Jews, stationed a legion
nearby, and named it Nicopolis. Julian the Apostate closed a well
in which Christ is said to have washed His feet, and in which
diseases were cured. The victory of Islam sent the inhabitants
fleeing, but the town later revived enough to become the last
station of the Crusaders on their bloody way to Jerusalem in June,
1099. To-day 'Am'was is a Muslim village about eighteen miles from
Jerusalem, en route to Jaffa. Near 'Am'was, at El-Atroun, Trappist
monks built a priory in 1890, which has been the locus of Emmaus in
the Jerusalem Church's tradition since the fourth century. The
Emmaus of the Gospel is said to have been 160 stadia from Jerusalem
(a stadium = 607 ft) but the modern 'Am'was is at 176 stadia. More
numerous and more ancient manuscripts have Emmaus at sixty stadia
> from Jerusalem . 160 stadia would mean a walk of six hours.
Finally, the Emmaus of the Gospel is said to be a village, while
'Am'was was a flourishing local capital. Josephus (Ant. Jud., VII,
vi, 6) mentions a village called Ammaus sixty stadia from Jerusalem,
where Vespasian and Titus stationed 800 veterans, and this could be
the Emmaus of the Gospel. But it must have been destroyed at the time
of the revolt of Bar-Cocheba (A.D. 132 35) under Hadrian, and was
unknown as early as the third century. Origen and his friends merely
identified the Gospel Emmaus as Nicopolis, the only Emmaus known at
their time. The identifications of Koubeibeh, Abou Gosh, Koulonieh,
Beit Mizzeh, with Emmaus, as proposed by some modern scholars, "are
inadmissible." [Excerpts from "Emmaus" in Catholic Encyclopedia Vol.
6, on line, S. Vailhé, transcribed by Douglas Potter. Copyright 1909
Robert Appleton.] With Father Michael Johnston's pilgrimage, we
visited several of these places some years ago--I remember Abu Gosh--
and they all "felt" like Emmaus to me. I wanted to stay with them,
and share supper, for the day was far spent. GMG+
**Alfred Loisy (1859-1940) La Quatrième Evangile, from "Sacred and
Secular: A Companion,"ed. Adam Fox et.al. Grand Rapids, Eerdman's
1975.
©copyright 2002, 2005 by Grant Gallup