Secret Siblings

Sermon manuscript for Sabbath, April 29, 2017, for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Genesis 16:1-11, Matthew 2:1-11.

Synopsis:

The Bible reports that Abraham, the “father of the faithful,” had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Ishmael quickly recedes into the background (along with six other sons born in his old age to a concubine) and the Bible becomes the story of the Isaac branch of the family of Abraham. The Hebrew people (grandchildren of Isaac) emigrate to Egypt, are enslaved, then rescued by God. The Hebrew people become a kingdom with David as its most illustrious monarch. Among Hebrews prophets arise—Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel. And from the Hebrew royal line comes the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, father of the Christians. This is the story that features in our worship. It is the story we rehearse and claim as our own. But what about the descendants of Abraham through Ishmael? God had promised Abraham that Ishmael, too, would father a great nation. God would honor his friendship with Abraham by showing kindness to Abraham's “other son.” Did God forget his promise? Skip forward in time to one of the greatest Hebrew prophets, Isaiah. In one of his visions of the New Earth, the prophet writes regarding the descendants of Ishmael, “They shall ascend with acceptance on My altar,

And I will glorify the house of My glory.” When the vision of God reaches its glorious climax, the hidden siblings of Israel are publicly welcomed and honored. God keeps his promises, even to the second class family members, even to those who appear lost beyond recall, distant to the point of invisibility. As children of God we are invited to partner with God in welcoming our secret siblings.

Sermon:

As Karin and I were planning our move to Green Lake Church, we knew one thing would be different from every other church we had pastored. We would have relatives in the church. Erik and Katrina and Brian and Naomi. Never before had any one in our churches had connections with our families or even with our pasts.

Shortly after we arrived I was greeting people at the door and I met a woman named Edith Burden. I did a double take. Burden? Are you related to H. O. Burden? She was. Another relative.

Then I met with a woman whose husband was in a Seattle hospital with a scary diagnosis. I had heard about her because some people were critical of a specialized ministry she was involved in. I visited her at the hospital. We talked for a long time. I was fascinated by the potential of her ministry. At some point she said, “You do know we are related right?”

I felt like an idiot. We had been talking for an hour. I did not recall we had ever met, much less that we were cousins. I try to say nice things about everybody I meet because who knows—they might be relatives!

Family is special. We carry a special sense of responsibility for our relatives. If one of our nieces or nephews flies into town, they know they have free airport shuttle service and a free hotel room at our place. Some people in this congregation have taken this family responsibility to great extremes. You have literally saved the lives of relatives. If I ask why you do it, you shrug your shoulders and say, “What else could we do.” Help was needed. Help was provided. That's part of the way family works—when it works the way it's supposed to.

Family connection is central to the Bible story. The book of Genesis features genealogies, family histories. And the most important genealogy is the record of the ancestors of Abraham and the record of the descendants of Abraham's grandson Jacob. You are in the story if you are part of that family. You are peripheral to the story if you are not in that family.

This story of the family of Abraham's grandson plays out through the rest of the Old Testament. The descendants of Jacob split into two nations. The Bible keeps track of both nations until the northern kingdom goes extinct.

The story continues and sets up the story of Jesus. Jesus is the descendant of David, and Abraham and Adam . . . who is the Son of God.

This is the story that stands at the center of our worship. We claim the Bible story as our story. We claim the promises to the Jewish people as promises to us. We imagine ourselves as part of the beloved family. When God talks of never forgetting Israel, we read those words as applying to us: God will never forget me. When God promises to forgive Israel, we apply those promises to ourselves. We are “spiritual Israel.” we say. We claim this connection because of the Apostle Paul.

Clearly, God’s promise to give the whole earth to Abraham and his descendants was based not on his obedience to God’s law, but on a right relationship with God that comes by faith. Rom 4:13 NLT

Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed to all Abraham's offspring—not only to those who are of the law but also to those who have the faith of Abraham. He is the father of us all. Rom 4:16

Abraham is the father of all who believe—the spiritual father. We are spiritual children of Abraham. This is nice. It allows us to apply to ourselves all the good promises of mercy and protection God gave to the ancient Jewish people. We are in the family.

This is wonderful. It also carries a risk. Sometimes we who have been taken into the family appoint ourselves as custodians and guardians of the purity of the family. We imagine there is only one family of God and we are it. And the only way for anyone to be part of the family of God is to submit to the name and identity of our particular family.

I remember reading an encyclical by Pope John Paul II in which he carefully explained that while the Catholic Church had charitable feelings toward other Christian bodies, those other Christian bodies were not really churches. Because there was only one church and the church of Rome was it. It reminded me of Adventist literature which makes exactly the same claim. We—our denomination—we are the one true church, the one actual, visible church of God, and everyone else is a spiritual outsider.

We base these notions of “one true people of God” on the Bible story of the Jewish people. The Jews were the people of God. Jerusalem was the city of God. Now we—Adventists or Catholics or Missouri Synod Lutherans or Jehovah's Witnesses or Church of Christ—we are the new people of God. Our denomination is the New Jerusalem.

But let's look a little closer at the Bible story.

Abraham had no children and he was getting old. Sarah, his wife, suggested he take her maid, Hagar, as a concubine so he would have an heir. Abraham agreed and Hagar got pregnant. But things didn't go so well. Hagar got uppity and Sarah got mad. The abuse from Sarah was so bad, Hagar ran away. An angel found her out in the desert and sent her back home with this promise: Your son will be great. His descendants will become an uncountable multitude.

When Ishmael was a teenager, God appeared to Abraham and announced that Sarah was going to have a son, and this son was going to be the one to inherit the promises God had made to Abraham. Abraham protested: What about my son Ishmael?

“I will bless him to,” God said. “I will make his descendants into a great nation.” With that Ishmael pretty much disappears from the Bible story. He reappears when Abraham dies, participating in the funeral honoring his father. Then silence. Decades, centuries of story roll on with no record of Ishmael and his descendants. Until we come to the prophet Isaiah. In chapter 60, this great gospel prophet is describing how it will be in the New Earth and he writes:

“They shall ascend with acceptance on My altar,

And I will glorify the house of My glory.”

Ishmael is the secret sibling, the unknown relative. When God's vision reaches it grand fulfillment, the entire family will be gathered including the secret siblings, the brothers and sisters we did not know we had, the cousins that were completely invisible to us.

This idea of secret children of God pops up all through the Bible story and features especially in the stories of Jesus.

When Jesus is born the royalty that shows up to pay homage are strangers from the East. We have no idea who they were. We don't know their fathers. We don't know their religion. We don't know their nationality. These mysterious royal figures echo the person Melchesideck whom Abraham honored as his spiritual superior. Both the Kings from the East who honored Jesus and Melchesidek who received tithes from Abraham highlight the fact that there is a spiritual reality completely independent of the “people of God,” the corporate body that is the focus of any particular holy story.

Jesus repeatedly made a point of “expanding” the holy family.

The Centurion who had more faith than any Jewish person Jesus had met.

Jesus made the most unveiled assertion of his identity as the Messiah to a Samaritan woman.

Jesus pointed to the Good Samaritan as a premier example of what it meant to be obedient to God.

Out of a group of ten men healed of leprosy only the Samaritan returned to give thanks.

Jesus challenged his Jewish audience: Many will come from the east and west and sit down at the heavenly banquet, but you will be left out.

It was a crippled woman, someone who bore the external marks of divine disapproval that Jesus called “a daughter of Abraham.

Zacchaeus had divided loyalties. He collaborated with the Roman occupiers and was dishonest to boot. Upon his repentance, Jesus announced this man, too, was a son of Abraham.

Luke 4, Jesus preached a sermon in his home town. The audience loved it until Jesus pointedly highlighted God's favor to a couple of foreigners, the Widow of Nain and Naaman. The audience got so mad they tried to kill him.

So what? What does all this have to do with our lives?

First, we think of ourselves as special. We find a special place in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. That's us, we say, pointing to certain passages. This is a good thing. If we are special, it will help us act like special people. We are the Jesus people. We can count on the special favor of God

Then what? Part of being Jesus people is learning to see our secret siblings, learning to recognize our family connection with all sorts of people.

The Bible centers its story on the family of Jacob, more specifically, the part of that family which is connected with the lineage of Jesus. Those people are supposed to remember they are family and show each other the kinds of mutual respect and support that is appropriate in a family.

Then the Bible points us outward. The circle of family gets wider and wider. We discover more and more secret siblings until we come to the Gospel of Luke.

Luke traces the genealogy of Jesus back to King David and to Abraham—the greatest heroes of the Jewish story. Then Luke keeps going. According to the Gospel of Luke Jesus' family is not only the family of Abraham and David. Luke traces the genealogy all the way to Adam the Son of God.

Our family is the family of humanity. Every human is part of our clan.

We are special. And we are called to extend the benefits and privileges we enjoy as widely as possible.

Our house is a house of prayer for all nations.

Juvenile Heroes

Sermon for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

For Sabbath, April 22, 1017

Texts: 2 Kings 5 and Matthew 14, Mark 6, John 6, and Matthew 18

Two stories. Two of my favorite stories.

The girl was a maid-in-waiting for a wealthy woman in Damascus. I don't know her name, so I'll call her Deborah. I'm going to guess she was twelve years old. What is that—sixth grade? Already she was working full time. Her job was to be instantly responsive to every wish of the Lady of the House. Fetch her slippers. Serve her tea. Scratch her back. Comb her hair. Remember where she left stuff. Day and night, seven days a week. That was the life of a domestic slave. At twelve years old Deborah was already doing what she would do for the rest of her life.

Maybe sometimes she dreamed of her old life, the life before slavery. Back when she lived with her parents and her brothers and sisters on a farm in Israel. But that seemed like ancient history now. Even if she could escape and find her way back to the town where she grew up, it's possible there would have been no home to go to. Her parents may well have been killed when the Syrian army invaded and captured a bunch of people as slaves.

But here's the crazy thing. In this story, Deborah is not a victim. She is the hero. She changed her world.

Her mistress' husband was the chief general of the army of Syria, one of the most powerful men in the nation. He was very successful. Under his leadership, the army had won many victories. But he was doomed. He had leprosy.

Leprosy was a slow disease, but it was crippling. And there was no treatment. Naaman was going to lose his ability to function. The nation was going to lose his service, his expertise. And there was nothing any one could do about it.

If we turned this story into a movie, we would see the king and Naaman talking. The king asking, “What are we going to do? I don't know how we are going to manage without you. Do you have any one in the army who can take your place? How long can you hang on?”

We would watch scenes where his wife is crying, asking, “What's going to happen to us?”

Then the scene would change. Mrs. Naaman is in her bedroom. Deborah is helping her undress and get into her night clothes. Mrs. Naaman sits on a stool while Deborah massages her shoulders. Mrs. Naaman is talking, as usual. “What am I going to do? What is going to happen to us? Why did this happen? What made the gods angry with us?”

Deborah continued kneading her shoulders and listening. Finally, Mrs. Naaman runs out of words, and Deborah speaks.

“You know what I wish? I wish Mr. Naaman could go see the prophet in Israel. Elisha is the most amazing prophet in the whole world. You would not believe the miracles he has performed. If Mr. Naaman could see the prophet, the prophet would heal him. I'm sure of it.”

“You really believe that?”

“For sure. Once, one of our neighbors couldn't get pregnant. Elisha blessed her and they had a son. Then a few years later when the boy had a sun stroke and died, Elisha raised him back to life.”

“For real?”

“For real. That boy was a friend of my older brother.”

Mrs. Naaman told her husband about the conversation. Naaman did some discrete investigation, and sure enough, there were credible stories of amazing miracles. This prophet, Elisha, was truly amazing.

Naaman talked to his king. The king of Damascus wrote a letter to the king in Samaria and sent Naaman south.

There was lots of drama. But in the end, Naaman was healed of his leprosy and came back to Damascus a devotee of the God of Elisha. For the rest of his life, the commander of the army of Syria knew that his life was a gift from the God of Israel and his wife's maid.

Girls matter.

The second story.

Jesus and his disciples headed out of town for a bit of rest and recuperation. They were way out in the country, miles from anywhere. They thought they would be able to camp in peace. Enjoy a little down time. But they couldn't keep themselves a secret. People found out where they were and crowds began gathering. Jesus didn't have the heart to tell them he was on vacation. The crowd was there, so he went to work. He spent the entire day healing and teaching. And all the time more people were arriving.

Late in the afternoon, Jesus told his disciples. “These people must be getting hungry. It's time to serve supper.”

“Serve supper?” the disciples protested. Even if you authorized us to spend all the money we have, there's no where to buy food for this many. There is no Costco, no Safeway. How on earth are we going to serve supper without any food?”

“Well,” Jesus said, “just how much food do you have?”

“Five loaves and two fish. That's it. To feed this crowd???? No way.”

“Nevertheless, bring it here,” Jesus said.

This is the way the story is told in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The gospel of John adds one more fact. When Jesus asked how much food do you have, it was the disciple Andrew who announced the five loaves and two fish. More specifically, Andrew said, “There is a boy here with a lunch. His lunch is five loaves and two fish.”

So, when Jesus says “bring it here,” the “it” is a boy's lunch. Jesus takes the boy's lunch, blesses it and begins pulling fish and bread out of the basket.

Fish, fish, fish, fish. Bread, bread, bread, bread, bread. Jesus pulled fish and bread out of the boy's basket and dropped them into other baskets which the disciples used for distribution.

It was a miracle! A fantastic miracle. Built on the generosity of that boy. He could tell his friends for the rest of his life about the afternoon when his lunch fed 5000 people. Wow! How cool is that.

In that culture children did not count for much. In both of these stories the men in the story are named. Naaman the general and Elisha the prophet. Jesus, Philip, Peter, and Andrew are named. But the girl and the boy—no names. They did not count to the historians. But they counted to God. God accomplished his great miracle through the faithfulness and goodness of a nameless girl and a nameless boy.

Kids matter. Kids mattered back in Bible times and they still matter. Jesus showed a decided preference for kids.

About that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, "Who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?"

Jesus called a little child to him and put the child among them. Then he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. "And anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf is welcoming me.

But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea. Matthew 18:1-6

Who is great? We can start a good argument. Money maker? Because money is the foundation of the systems we depend on—health care, transportation, environmental protection, social services, grocery stores, gas stations, electricity—every one of these systems depends on a steady flow of money. So, maybe the greatest people are those who generate the most wealth.

But then we could argue teachers are the most important. If you're going to generate wealth it is very helpful to be able to read and count.

No, no, no, someone else protests. The most important people are farmers and fishing crews. Money is useless if there is no food to buy. Your kids can't learn if they are hungry. So surely, farmers are the most important.

Who is the greatest? Who is most important, most significant, most worthy of honor? Jesus said, children.

Kids we need you. God needs you. Thanks for being here.

Since it's earth day, I found a couple of examples of young people who are making a difference in the world in connection with the environment.

In 1997, a sailing captain, Charles Moore, discovered a vast swath of ocean littered with plastic junk. Lots of it. Subsequent research mapped the garbage. It covered tens of thousands of square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean. One estimate I saw, said there was 100 million tons of trash in this Pacific Garbage Patch or Vortex. When I first read about it, I was very discouraged. We are ruining the ocean and the problem is so huge there is nothing that can be done about it.

Then two or three years ago, I read about a Dutch teenager, Boyan Slat. He was working on a plan to begin cleaning up some of the hundred million tons of plastic trash. My first reaction was skepticism. How could a 19-year old clean up the oceans? But he paid no attention to all the people who said it couldn't be done. He developed a system to collect the plastic. He created a foundation and raised money. He has already tested a prototype in the North Sea and hopes to deploy the first pilot project in the Pacific this year.

Not bad for a kid. All the adults, the experienced engineers and environmentalists thought the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was so impossibly huge there was no point in even thinking about it. Now, a kid is well on his way to doing something about it.

Kids matter.

Deepika Kurup, was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, but her family was from India. She remembers their summer visits to India when she was a kid. She saw children drink water that was so dirty she not have even touched it. Back home in the US she read about water problems all over the world. 760 million people lack access to clean water. When she was in 8th grade she began working on a solution. Current water treatment processes were slow and expensive or required large infrastructures.

She invented a process that harnessed solar energy to remove bacteria, organics, and other classes of contaminants from drinking water.

Kurup's initial idea that won her the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist in 2012 is based on using a photocatalytic compound for water purification. This project involved a photocatalytic composite made up of titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, hollow glass microspheres, and Portland cement. In 2012 Kurup's photocatalytic composite was able to reduce the amount of total coliform from 8000 colony-forming units to 50. In addition, it oxidised Methylene blue at a faster rate than standard solar disinfection methods.[7]

She improved her method and after 3 years developed a pervious photocatalytic composite using sand, TiO2, Portland cement and silver nitrate.This photocatalytic pervious composite showed 98% reduction in total coliform bacteria immediately after filtration. Exposure of the filtered water to sunlight with a photocatalytic composite disc resulted in 100% inactivation of total coliform bacteria in just 15 minutes.[8] This project won her the 2014 United States Stockholm Junior Water Prize. She also is the National Geographic winner in the 2015 Google Science Fair. --Wikipedia

She has created a nonprofit aimed at deploying the technology in the real world where people are dying for clean water.

Way to go, Deepika!

Girls matter.

Kids, the world needs you. It needs your brains, your hands, your heart, your character. God is calling you to great things. We, the church, pledge ourselves to do all we can to support you in responding to the call of God and the great need of the world.

You are the greatest citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

He Is Risen

First draft of sermon for Sabbath, April 15, 2017 at Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Texts: Isaiah 25:1-9; Luke 24

When I walked outside on Thursday morning, there was color in the sky, a bit of blue decorated with wisps of pink and orange and salmon and peach. But by the time I finished my chores and exercises, and sat on my stool for a time of meditation and prayer, the sky had gone monochrome. Shades of grey. I was disappointed, then I noticed the trees. Below the sky, to the east stands a solid wall of trees. A backdrop of dark, towering Doug firs. In front of the firs stand alders and maples and a few cottonwoods. For months I have noted dull gray of their trunks and branches. Thursday morning, as my eyes dropped from the monochrome sky to this wall of trees, my heart skipped a beat. I almost got up from my stool in excitement. The maples and alders and cottonwoods were not gray. They were green, a light, almost iridescent, green. I imagined I could feel the throb of new life rising in the sap.

It is the magic time of year. The time when even nature itself seems to whisper hope and resurrection.

In the Bible story of Abraham is a wanderer, a pilgrim. God promises that someday he (through his descendants) will possess the entire land of Palestine. But for Abraham, the land is always a foreign country. He is a wanderer, a stateless pilgrim, an undocumented alien.

Decades pass. Abraham's wife, Sarah, dies, and for the first time Abraham owns a piece of his promise. He purchases a field and a cave as a burial place. Now he owns it. It is a dramatic act of faith. This purchase of the Cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite is Abraham's way of saying, yes, I believe the promise. This land will be my country, my people's country. There is a future here, a long future, a bright future.

This confidence in the power and good intentions of God becomes more fully developed in the writings of the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Let's hear again this morning's Old Testament reading:

O LORD, I will honor and praise your name, for you are my God.

You do such wonderful things! . . .

You turn mighty cities into heaps of ruins.

Cities with strong walls are turned to rubble.

Beautiful palaces in distant lands disappear and will never be rebuilt.

This is a celebration of God's power. At this point in history, Israel was a smallish nation. Like Taiwan or the Philippines next door to China or Mexico next door to the United States. They were an independent nation but always at risk of domination or subjugation by their powerful neighbors, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria. They were constantly afraid of being squashed.

But not to worry, the prophet assured them. God was more powerful than Egypt, Babylon, and Assyria combined. Those beautiful palaces in Babylon—gone in an instant if God so decreed. The great cities along the Nile River in Egypt—turned into rubble at the mere whisper of Yahweh.

God was mighty. Stronger than every enemy, every foreign nation. Take heart.

But sometimes the enemies are not across the border. Sometimes the enemy does not speak with an accent and wave a different flag. Sometimes the enemy is here. Sometimes the enemy is our own people, our own system. Even when the oppressor and the victim share the same accents and same passports, the oppressed can count on God, the prophet says.

You, O Lord, are a tower of refuge to the poor,

a tower of refuge to the needy in distress.

You are a refuge from the storm and a shelter from the heat.

For the oppressive acts of ruthless people are like a storm beating against a wall,

or like the relentless heat of the desert. . . .

As the shade of a cloud cools relentless heat, so the boastful songs of ruthless people are stilled.

Because we are a church, because we see ourselves as the people of God, we aim to order our lives in harmony with the principles of God's kingdom.

But even if we learn to cooperate perfectly with God, even if we are able to eliminate every act of injustice and every systematic unfairness, even if we organize help for every poor person, provide adequate help for every person with mental illness, even if we were able to remedy every problem caused by human blindness and immorality, we would still face the dark truth that life is fleeting. Here on earth, love and life are temporary.

Which brings us to the final paragraph of this prophetic message:

In Jerusalem, the LORD of Heaven's Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet . . .

There he will remove the cloud of gloom, the shroud of death that hangs over the earth.

He will swallow up death forever!

The Sovereign LORD will wipe away all tears. . . .

In that day the people will proclaim, "This is our God!

We trusted in him, and he saved us!

This is the LORD, in whom we trusted.

Let us rejoice in the salvation he brings!"

Hope is a constant theme in the Old Testament. God will vanquish enemies. God will topple oppressors. God will rescue the poor and widows and orphans and immigrants and even eunuchs and residents of Babylon, Egypt, and Philistia. Then there are the few passages that say God will even one day triumph over death.

It is this final triumph that forms the very center of our faith as Christians.

Jesus, the rabbi, teacher, healer, prophet, Messiah. Jesus who had raised people from the dead, was himself dead. Buried in a tomb closed with a solid rock door and an official Roman seal.

Then very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn't find the body of the Lord Jesus.

As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes.

The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, "Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive?

He isn't here! He is risen!

The women--Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several others--rushed back from the tomb to tell the disciples what had happened.

But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn't believe it.

That same day two of Jesus' followers were walking to the village of Emmaus, seven miles from Jerusalem. As they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened. Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them. But God kept them from recognizing him.

He asked them, "What are you discussing so intently as you walk along?" They stopped short, sadness written across their faces.

Then one of them, Cleopas, replied, "You must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn't heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days."

"What things?" Jesus asked.

"The things that happened to Jesus, the man from Nazareth," they said. "He was a prophet who did powerful miracles, and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people. But our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death, and they crucified him.

We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue Israel. This all happened three days ago.

"Then some women from our group of his followers were at his tomb early this morning, and they came back with an amazing report. They said his body was missing, and they had seen angels who told them Jesus is alive! Some of our men ran out to see, and sure enough, his body was gone, just as the women had said."

Then Jesus said to them, "You foolish people! You find it so hard to believe all that the prophets wrote in the Scriptures. Wasn't it clearly predicted that the Messiah would have to suffer all these things before entering his glory?" Then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all the prophets, explaining from all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

By this time they were nearing Emmaus and the end of their journey. Jesus acted as if he were going on, but they begged him, "Stay the night with us, since it is getting late." So he went home with them.

As they sat down to eat, he took the bread and blessed it. Then he broke it and gave it to them.

Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

They said to each other, "Didn't our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?"

And within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem. There they found the eleven disciples and the others who had gathered with them. The two from Emmaus told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road, and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread. And just as they were telling about it, Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them. "Peace be with you," he said.

But the whole group was startled and frightened, thinking they were seeing a ghost!

"Why are you frightened?" he asked. "Why are your hearts filled with doubt?

Look at my hands. Look at my feet. You can see that it's really me. Touch me and make sure that I am not a ghost, because ghosts don't have bodies, as you see that I do."

As he spoke, he showed them his hands and his feet.

Still they stood there in disbelief, filled with joy and wonder. Then he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?"

They gave him a piece of broiled fish,

and he ate it as they watched.

Then he said, "When I was with you before, I told you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and in the Psalms must be fulfilled."

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.

And he said, "Yes, it was written long ago that the Messiah would suffer and die and rise from the dead on the third day.

Beneath the dark clouds of war and atrocities, beneath the dark clouds of illness and disability, beneath the cacophony and clamor that demands our attention, we focus our eyes on the vivid green radiance of the story of Jesus and the divine promise.

Death will.

We will rise.

He is risen. He is risen, indeed.