Reading Luke 24:36b-48

The story today is set just after the road to Emmaus where Jesus walks alongside his disciples, but they don’t recognise him until he decides to reveal himself.
In this instance they know him straight away, and while they are at their most confused.  He shows them his wounds, then he offers them his peace, he asks for lunch….

Then he lets them know what its all been about, Abraham, the prophets, the last 1000 years.

 

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures,
Most importantly what they are supposed to do next?
that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48 You are witnesses[d] of these things.

Chaps your IT, I bet they felt the burden of that when he said it…
I bumped into desert island discs while driving the other day and the philosopher John Gray was on. He said something that really struck me as true, that Humans improve and evolve science, but human nature is cyclical. We as human beings haven’t really evolved anywhere near as fast as our science, if at all?

So on that basis it’s not surprising that we so often find ourselves in our lives where the disciples are in our story today. Amazed at what he has done, but quite often oblivious to the big plan of what was doing while he was doing it?  Maybe even wondering where he has gone?

Daunted perhaps by what he has asked of us next.

Like them maybe we sometimes miss the some of the miracles our lord performs, miss them in the wallpaper of our life, or we don’t understand them, or we aren’t ready to hear them, or we only see them in hindsight.  In our pain sometimes, we just drown him out.

I think however we can if we give ourselves a moment this morning we can see him clearly active as ever in today’s world.

I think he looks like these things

How we pray and then see little things change, how we look back in our lives and see the lord’s footprints, how we feel his presence when times are tough.

Or not

Even if we are angry with him, keep searching for him, pray for him and if he doesn’t answer we keep trying, we spend our days just wondering where he is? Oblivious to the very act of missing him is him calling, and us trying to listen.

Then look around at the people gathered here today?

We see it as normal to be a community that despite the disorienting nature of today’s world that really is in my humble opinion faithful to our lord.

We so often see that, as just the way we are.  As nothing special

That’s very nice, what did you expect and what’s for lunch.
Normal to share his spirit in a million ways so that this little community shares the fragrance of our lord with whoever it meets, whoever it welcomes in.
In simple terms what trying to put Jesus message, his miracle looks like in the everyday miracle of life.  You guys know that, we have been shown that and shown it to each other?

We all see it as quite ordinary that this place, and we all here provide a place for people to enter our community and thrive.

Our little parish has since I have been here given birth to

A bloke who never walked into a church before up here 4 years later J

The bishops chaplain,

#one ordinand, and two LLM’s.

#Meet and make,
who in turn help the homeless

Who in turn help the greatest disease of our time, loneliness

Costa,

Betties,  and Carnivals, where we have fun
The encouragement to help the refugees in Calais, where when we started lots of voices weren’t happy

The ladies refuge, for those in fear, with nothing

children in Kenya,

I think we can take from that, that this little space and place proves that he is very active in us and then shared in our community.

Those are signs of a God made active through our little body of Christ present here today.

Because have been given something to share, our particular, salvation is given to be shared universally.
Rowan Williams said this so much better than me…
‘The gift that we praise when we praise the risen Lord — is the gift now in our hands, our mouths, our voices to share with the world… the apostolic gift given to us comes alive in the transfiguring of the lives we touch by God’s gift, by God’s grace.

All that means that in this mad world, just by being who we are, who he made us, We can and should and do share him with others.

Even when we aren’t quite sure where he might be.

Because he hasn’t gone away, he can’t he is in us, we are in him, he can’t leave us. It would be like asking the milk to leave the tea after its been poured in.

So we can say that the risen Christ is here today, showing us what it means to follow him, we are IN Christ, through grace made part of, capable of sharing, dependent upon and always given his grace.
I think we should hang on to that….

Because maybe just maybe just like the disciples in our story just when he seems most confusing than ever is quite often is just when we get given the gift of understanding, not just for us but to share.

share in his miracle…
And share his miracle

Because I think he has opened our eyes.