April 2008
Reflections:
"Seeing Jesus on the Road of Real Life"
This past Friday, April 4th, marked the 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I was a high school senior in 1968. For me, I lived a pretty insulated, protected life in a suburban bubble where schoolwork, sports, graduation, and leaving home to go to college were foremost in my mind. I read the sports page everyday, but had not acquired a taste for front-page news and issues yet. But it was pretty hard not to notice that the world was falling apart around me and us in 1968. Dearborn, Michigan where I lived was not directly affected from my vantage point by the far removed violence of the Cold War and the Viet Nam War, but the assassinations of Martin Luther King in April and then Bobby Kennedy in the summer of 1968 shook me up. The Detroit race riots the summer before had unsettled me. We were warned that the Black Panther group might come into our all white Presbyterian Church one Sunday and take over the service. We worried that more riots would erupt after the assassination. It was a time of wondering what to believe, who to trust, where to follow, what to do, asking questions with no immediate answers. And people went about their lives, hoping that life would get back to normal. It was the Road to Emmaus of trying to make sense of a broken world.
Barry Vaughn reflects on our human predicament in light of Emmaus. "We, like Cleopas and his companion, (the two followers of Jesus who left Jerusalem to go home to Emmaus after the Crucifixion) may find our hopes shattered. What Cleopas said to the mysterious stranger (Jesus) was deeply poignant, ‘But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. How often have we said ‘But we had hoped…? But we had hoped
that we would be successful in getting work…but we had hoped that this relationship would last, and bring love and contentment to our lives, …but we had hoped that the doctors would find a cure."
The Good News for this Easter Season is that the Risen Christ doesn’t just appear to the heartbroken disciples in the upper room, to the faithful women who followed him and even to Paul. The Risen Christ also appears to ordinary, hopeless Cleopas and his friend, on the road of real life, people like you and me. Their road to Emmaus is an ordinary road, the road that each of us is on everyday. Christ meets them and us where we are. Emmaus invites us all to expect God to find us. Emmaus challenges us to see that it isn’t our unshakable faith and deep spirituality that connects us with the Risen Christ, rather it is our openness to see Christ among us, embodied in the other, in the church, in the stranger where divine connection can be found. The Risen One who makes our heart burn is present where we feel understood, loved, known, lifted up. The Risen Christ walks alongside human confusion, human pain and human loss, and gives us hope, gives us encouraging word, satisfying sacrament, loving companionship and a new vision for the future. In seeing Jesus on the road of real life, we are invited to enjoy the beauty of God before us, to take heart and to go home a different way to where God’s love calls us also to be witnesses of the Resurrection to a broken world! Happy Easter!
