Waiting. It is something we have all been doing too much of lately: waiting for a vaccine. Waiting for election results. Waiting to see what the COVID numbers will do and what they will mean for our lives. Waiting to see our family and friends again without fear. For the past 8 months, we have all been watching, and waiting, and praying. As individuals, as a Church, as a nation, and as a world. Waiting, sometimes with hope, sometimes with heart pounding anxiety, sometimes with an improbable mix of both.

Today, on this first Sunday of Advent, we celebrate the beginning of the Christian new year – not with fireworks or balls dropping in Times Square, but with an all too familiar instruction: to wait. But what, exactly, are we waiting for? Are we waiting for judgement or salvation? Are we waiting, with the Prophet Isaiah, for God to “tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at God’s presence?” Are we waiting for “the Son of man, coming in clouds, with great power and glory?” Or are we waiting for a much less sensational coming, for a child to be born to travelers, in the dark of night, with only animals for company?

Yes. To all this and more – yes. And so, our hearts full with every emotion at once, we wait. And wait. And wait some more.

We wait and hope for God’s coming as the world spins on, as these apocalyptic Advent texts start to seem more disturbingly familiar by the day. We wait for the world to – and our own hearts – to be reborn.

In quote unquote “normal times,” – at least what is normal for those of us who are privileged enough to have relative stability when it comes to the basic human necessities – entering into the season of Advent is an exercise of imagination. It requires some mental gymnastics to allow ourselves to be surprised year after year by the seasonal narrative because for us, 2000 years after the birth of Christ we have heard the story so many times that we’ve started to become desensitized to it. An unmarried teenager becomes pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Against all odds, a child is born safely in occupied territory, in less than ideal accommodations. A baby, both human and divine, is visited by shepherds and kings. We know how the story unfolds. Or we think we do. Or maybe we thought we did.

Because, the truth is, 2020 has taken so much of what we used to take for granted about how the world works and dashed it to pieces. The past year has eroded our complacency and erased our certainty. Things that, a year ago, we would have dismissed as dystopian science fiction have come crashing, unbidden, into our day to day reality. Plagues: check. A world on fire: check. “But in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light.” For those of us who live in the Bay Area, that apocalyptic image from Matthew no longer requires an exercise of imagination because it is seared in our memory: orange skies, so thick with wildfire smoke that the sun was invisible for 24 hours, a harrowing reminder that the world is changing and our fate in it is not guaranteed.

The very nature of time seems to be changing as well. The pandemic has erased or muted so many of the seasonal markers by which we orient ourselves in time, holidays, birthdays, traditions. One moment, it feels impossible that it’s already December and, another, it feels like it should be Easter by now. Time crawls and races and refuses to follow the usual rules.

And so here we are: at the beginning of the church year, reading about the end times, right smack dab in the middle of a pandemic. Beginning, middle, and end…all smashed together. Middles are where the waiting is hardest – when any novelty (or at least adrenaline) has long since worn off and an end is still too far off in the distance to really be useful to us. Middles are an uncharted wilderness of frustration and boredom, an expanse somewhere between fear and hope. But middles, as unsensational as they are, are also where things get interesting because the story is still being written. The end is not predetermined. Middles are where God often shows up, unnoticed at first, and begins to transform the very structure of the world, beginning with our own hearts.

In her book Still: Notes on a Mid-faith Crisis, the theologian Lauren Winner notes that, “middle rarely denotes something good… [because] middles are often defined by what they are not.” Think of Middle School or the Middle Ages. There is an in-between-ness, a sense of not yet. In Ancient Greek, one of the most difficult grammatical tenses to master is called the middle voice, used to describe actions that occupy the thin, middle space between the active and passive voice. Actions of mutuality and reciprocity, actions of care and emotion: mourning, turning, confessing, embracing, yearning. Interior actions that seem appropriate for times of waiting – frustratingly vague and seemingly unproductive, yet also vital because they point us towards the divine.

And so, Winner writes: “the middle is the language of spirituality, of devotion. If English had a middle voice, I would use it to speak of prayer: I would let the middle remind me that I am changed by this action, by these words, this supplicant’s posture…And I would let the middle bespeak the hidden agent, the One who animates my prayer, though undisclosed, though sometimes even forgotten.”

In other words, the middle is where we become vulnerable enough to meet God. Where we can drop our charades and pretensions, where we can admit our need and allow ourselves to be surprised by God’s blessing. Even now, in this middling wilderness of our faith, God comes to meet us. Humbly and inconspicuously, God enters our midst and prepares a way for us. A way of healing and revival, a way of justice, a way of peace. A light shining in the deepest darkness, a desert, blooming with new life.

And so, as the new beginning of Advent collides with the end of our illusions and the middle in which we find ourselves, it is up to us to do as the Scriptures say and stay awake, to keep our eyes open so that we might find where God is hiding and disclose her. For many of us, the veil of complacency has already been torn from our eyes – and, painful though that process has been, there is blessing beneath it. What can we see with our newly unclouded vision? Can we see, more clearly, our deep, fundamental interconnectedness? Can we see the devastation we have wrought on the earth? Can we see the profound need of our siblings, created in God’s image? Can we see God’s hidden presence in our lives, even here? Now that we are awake, will we have the courage to join in Isaiah’s prayer, asking God to continue tearing down the veil of the heavens and dwell among us here on earth?

We may not know the day or the hour of God’s coming, but we can learn our lesson from the fig tree and interpret the signs of the times. Because, friends, it is in times such as these that the Messiah chose to be born: turbulent times, violent times, unstable times, middle times. Times of seemingly interminable waiting. Times of rampant fear and desperate need. And it is in times such as these that the Messiah continues to be born again and again. Amidst the rubble of our shattered illusions, amidst our fear and uncertainty and longing, Christ appears. This Advent, may we have eyes open to see him and hearts open to receive him. Amen.

“I do not cease to give thanks for you… that you may know what is the hope to which [God] has called you” (Eph. 1).

Did widespread fraud affect the outcome of our recent presidential election? It seems as if Americans cannot broadly agree about this. We fear fake news. We worry that untrue stories manipulate us and others, that they sink so deeply into our consciousness that we become strangers to our former selves, alienated from what is real, slaves to the powers of evil.

Isn’t it strange that even the expression “fake news” has become itself another layer of deception. It cuts us off from trusting any relatively objective or authoritative news source. These days we feel adrift, almost overwhelmed by a strange disconnection from truth. It reminds me of the way Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote that capitalism undermines its own foundations and creates conditions of what they call “everlasting uncertainty.” In The Communist Manifesto they say, “All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”[1] What exactly are the “real conditions of life,” anyway?

Today in America we also have an equally serious problem with fake religion. The twentieth century theologian Karl Barth (1886-1968) used the word religion pejoratively. He contrasts the word “religion” which he says is abstract and merely a veiled form of self-centeredness, with the true way to understand God that Jesus teaches us. Jesus is the servant of all who takes on our suffering so that we might freely care for others.

Fake religion is tribalistic. It focuses on us versus them, on who is saved and who is not. It is obsessed with believing the right things, or at least saying that you do. It talks more about vague inner spiritual states than actually caring for the poor or welcoming the stranger. Forms of fake religion today seem engrossed by the issue of abortion although it is not mentioned in the Bible. These forces have raised the stakes in elections so that mere differences of opinion cannot be tolerated and opposing politicians become the enemy.

Fake news and fake religion are not disconnected from a distorted understanding of what it means to be human. You may remember this story. A group of English schoolboys are the only survivors of a plane crash and arrive on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. One boy named Ralph becomes the leader and sets up rules like tending the signal fire so that they might be rescued. Another boy named Jack becomes obsessed with hunting pigs and leads a kind of rebellion that results in brutal hazing and the death of other boys.

When the British naval officer comes ashore to survey the island now laid to waste, he feels surprised. He says, “I should have thought that a pack of British boys… would have been able to put up a better show than that.” Ralph the leader weeps, “for the end of innocence,” and for, “the darkness of man’s heart.”[2]

Of course, none of this really happened. It is the plot of William Golding’s 1951 novel The Lord of the Flies. The book sold tens of millions of copies, was translated into 30 languages and is often required reading in English classes as a venerated classic. Some people admire it for its realistic depiction of human nature and what happens when human instincts are no longer held in check by civilization.

But is this really how people are? Was the philosopher Thomas Hobbes right to say that outside of civilization, life was “nasty, brutish and short,” “a condition of war of all against all?”[3] William Golding seemed to believe this but he was also a pretty unhappy person. He struggled with alcoholism. As a teacher he turned his students against each other. At one point he even said, “I have always understood the Nazis because I am of that sort of nature.”[4]

Strangely it turns out that there is a real life version of The Lord of the Flies. In June of 1965 a group of six boys between the ages of thirteen and sixteen were bored by their studies at an Anglican boy’s school in Nuku’alofa, Tonga. They took a fishing boat and cruised quietly out of the harbor on a calm night. Later they made a crucial error and all fell asleep. They awoke with a storm bearing down on them. The sail was torn to shreds, the rudder broke. They shared dwindling water and food supplies for eight days until they spotted a bleak rock called ‘Ata Island.

A year and three months later a boat captain discovered them. Their story could not have been more different from Goldings’. Their rescuer said, “By the time we arrived the boys had set up a small commune with a food garden, hollowed-out tree trunks to store rainwater, a gymnasium with curious weights, a badminton court, chicken pens and a permanent fire, all from handiwork, an old knife blade and much determination.”[5]

The boys agreed to work in teams of two, had a rota for garden, kitchen and guard duty. They resolved quarrels by imposing time outs and going to opposite ends of the island to cool off. Then they’d apologize. “That’s how we stayed friends,” one said afterwards. They started and ended their days with song and prayer.

What if human beings are better than we think they are? What would that mean as we tried to distinguish fake religion from true faith? I think Jesus shows us in the very last days of his public ministry. When Karl Barth was young he wrote that, “The Gospel is not a truth among other truths. Rather, it sets a question-mark against all truths.”[6] Today Jesus sets that question mark up against fake religion.

In the last days of his public ministry Jesus tells three parables about the Kingdom of God. They are not so much about what will eventually happen as about how to best live right now. The first parable is the story of bridesmaids who do not bring enough oil to last through the night and as a result end up missing the celebration. It encourages us to live mindfully and joyfully. The second parable is the story of a rich man who invests talents with three servants before going away. Two multiply the investment and the other buries his coin in the ground. This is about the importance of living a daring and fruitful life. Finally, we have today’s story about the sheep and the goals. It encourages us to live as compassionately and generously as we can.[7]

We have this final parable before us today as our last message of the church year from the Gospel of Matthew. The Son of Man in glory has sheep on his right hand and goats on his left. He welcomes the sheep saying, “inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” He says when I was hungry you fed me, thirsty you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothing, in prison and you visited me. The goats are cursed because they did not do this.

This is not a message of threat and condemnation. Jesus is not trying to frighten you into good behavior. Instead he shows us two things. First, Jesus declares his solidarity with anyone who is suffering. He is with us in our darkest hours, in whatever way we might be starving, naked or confined. Second, he unveils who we really are. Our nature is not to be belligerents in a war of all against all. We are made for, and fulfilled by, goodness.

In short, I have never met a thorough-going goat. We have all to varying extents fed, welcomed and visited each other. In this parable we are not the goats. But we are also not the sheep. The sheep say, “When was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you.” Jesus replies, “Just as you did it to the most insignificant of my brothers you did it to me.” We are not the sheep because we now know that when we encounter someone in need, it is the king in disguise.

We stand outside of this parable but we can still learn from it. Before these COVID days 40 million Americans were considered food insecure. Since then this number has increased to 70 million. The number of food insecure households with children has tripled.[8] The food pantry in the middle school by our house has a line that wraps around the block.

In this time the stakes are high. It is more important than ever to recognize fake religion. In his last days of teaching Jesus shows us that it matters what you believe and how you pray and what signs of the spirit you feel. But far more important is what we do. This morning Jesus presents the agenda for Christianity, the program of generosity and kindness which fulfills our true nature and draws us more deeply into the holy mystery of God.

In an article published this week on how her mind has changed as a Christian the novelist Marilynne Robinson writes about moving beyond the predominant and false language of rationality and its false model of consciousness which has such important implications for modern life. Instead of seeing our unconscious self in a Freudian sense as determined by sexual drives, or in an economic sense as determined by greed, she asks us to appreciate that part of us which rejoices in simply perceiving the world with wonder (as a child does).

In her last sentence she says, “I believe also that it is among our strange privileges as human beings to have an important ability to decide what in our minds we choose to attend to – and therefore what our lives will be.”[9]

While I would not call it “everlasting uncertainty,” we do not perfectly understand ourselves. But there is vastly more to us than our fear of one another. Do not be misled by fake news or by fake religion. In the real Lord of the Flies the boys prayed and sang together at the beginning and end of each day. See Jesus all around you. Hold on to his promise that God is present in everything you do for the sake of love and mercy.

[1] Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party” Tr. Samuel Moore and Frederick Engels, Marx/Engels Selected Works Volume 1, (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969).

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.”

[2] William Golding, The Lord of the Flies (1951).

https://d2ct263enury6r.cloudfront.net/X2bpH13Xnjn4ZJspWQzb5LMu7BGp5CUGaPGFQqVXvLT2M1AW.pdf

“Ralph looked at him dumbly. For a moment he had a fleeting picture of the strange glamour that had once invested the beaches. But the island was scorched up like dead wood—Simon was dead—and Jack had…. The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body. His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

[3] https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2013/04/05/thomas-hobbes-solitary-poor-nasty-brutish-and-short/

[4] Rutger Bregman, Humankind: A Hopeful History tr. Elizabeth Manton and Eric Moore (NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2020) 24-5.

[5] Ibid., 32.

[6] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans translated from the sixth edition by Edwyn C. Hoskyns (NY: Oxford University Press, 1933, 1975) 35.

[7] Matthew Boulton, “The Least of These: SALT’s Commentary for Reign of Christ the King Sunday,” SALT, 17 November 2020. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/11/16/the-least-of-these-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-reign-of-christ-the-king-sunday

[8] “Century Marks: Hunger Pangs,” The Christian Century, 18 November 2020, 9.

[9] Marilynne Robinson, “How My Mind Has Changed: My Mind and What She Remembers,” The Christian Century, 18 November 2020, 26-31.

How are your investments doing?

14 “For it is as if a someone, going on a journey, summoned his stewards and entrusted his property to them; 15 to one he gave five talents,[f] to another two, to another one,

to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

So, how are your investments doing?

Not the financial ones . . . but all ways you give of yourself ?

How is your life’s investment going?

One of my principle investments in college, after studying of course, was travel. One summer I found a way to experience France on the cheap by working on a farm in the center of the country. This region, blandly named Le Massif Central (the huge middle) was NOT as exciting as Paris, but it seemed an interesting way to invest some time in learning French and about life in France.

I had no expectation of how the experience would end up shaping not only my French vocabulary, but my view of life.

The work on the farm was hard!

Up at dawn to milk the goats, then a day of labor building fences with the other volunteers, a German girl and a Spanish girl.

The first weekend after our arrival, the farmer’s family invited us to faire la fete – to attend the nearby village party.

I remember the scene, the music, trying to stomach a shot of Pernot and, obscurely, one boy I danced with asking me if all Americans liked Michael Jackson.  It was the 1980s after all.

It was a good time but by about 3:00 in the morning, the girls and I were ready to head home.

I drew the short straw on who would ask about leaving . . . I approached the farmer’s wife, a somewhat stern and often impatient presence, Uh . . . When do you suppose we will be heading back? We are getting tired and would like to sleep.

Sleep? she scoffed. We are at the fete. There’s no sleeping. We will drive back in time to start working.

When you faire la fete, you faire la fete. She said.

There’s no going half-way.

“When you faire la fete, you faire la fete.”

It was novel to me to think a party, enjoying yourself, life-even, would be something you would strive to do all in . . . but the message has stayed with me.

How’s your investment in life doing? How is our collective investment in living?

16 The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. 17 In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. 18 But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid the money.

This old story of the stewards and the talents from the Bible, like a long-held anecdote, shines a light on what we’ve been invested in, the stories that shape how we move forward.  What do they say about how we are living?

Where are we able to be all in, where are we only halfway making it, and where might we risk burying our future? These are among the fundamental questions of our faith life.

The third steward was afraid. And this fear was enough to keep him from trusting that the system in place (the one his peers knew to use to double their holdings) was safe for him.

How does fear figure into your trust?

Granted, we’ve had more than our share of reasons to be afraid and to not trust, especially with the persistence of racial injustice, the national failure around Covid-19 and this month, the insistence by some holding power that no matter how you add up the election numbers, they mean nothing.

How do we make sense of it all? How much do we bury these worries and go instead to distraction or sleep? Can we safely go all in to repair the world?

How much trust does the graph on our investments’ dashboard show?

Put another way, if trust could be accumulated into containers, each attributed to the three areas in your life where you invest trust, what would the labels on those containers be? Where do you give the most trust? Where do you give a little, where do you not trust?

Given different ages and experiences in life, our answers may vary.

But no matter what our age or who we are, trust matters. Without trust, we cannot hope.

Studies show[1] that children’s experience of trustworthiness in others has measurable impacts on their psychosocial development and interpersonal relationships. [2] Bad experiences with trust lead to bad outcomes. Good experiences lead to healthier personal integration and positive social engagement.

By adulthood, trust is also placed in bigger and sometimes less transparent recipients – the government, healthcare, workplaces, the economy and so on. And our capacity to trust these entities has its own consequences for our wellbeing and engagement with the world.

Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this . . .

Part of a series of parables, this story of the divergent choices of the three stewards of a noble man’s money comes on the heels of another attention-getting story where five unprepared bridal attendants got locked out of the feast.

Both stories, though freighted with troubling imagery of systemic class and gender oppression, both parables, ripe with ethical conundrums and end-time allusions may be considered as ancient stories about God’s eternal desire and promise for us. These are stories carried forward as beacons of hope.

Take Jesus’ parable of the bridesmaids, it seems, on the face of it, like a bad dream . . . They hurried to get ready for the wedding, found just as they were meant to go that they didn’t have what they needed, rushed back to get it only to find they had missed the chance.

This is the narrative arc of nearly every anxiety dream I’ve ever had.

Rush, rush, rush to the very important thing – the most important thing, for instance, the presentation, or interview, performance or competition but find obstacle upon obstacle making you feel as though you will never reach the goal.

And the stewards . . . this story could almost be a Harvard Business Review case study: The Steward in cubicle number three, absent a clear directive from his manager, panicked. He let his fear of possible outcomes keep him from realizing the potential he had with what he had been given. Afraid of losing all, the third steward buried his option.

These parables come during Jesus’ last days in Jerusalem, a time when the anxiety had certainly been rising. Jesus and the religious leaders had been toe-to-toe in debate just before these scenes. . . and of course we know things were going to get worse for Jesus . . . Still, the parable needn’t add fuel to anxiety.

Though there was conflict between Jesus and the religious leaders of the time, and though there was a growing threat from Rome, Matthew’s Gospel draws our perspective to a much higher order conflict — to reveal beyond the local disorder, a great cosmic tension, the epic tension between God and humanity’s most stubborn obstacle, our default to try to live without God and God’s desire for us to fully receive the Grace we are offered.

Grace is yours, the stories offer. And this Grace, offering God’s realm, is not a party you want to miss.

Jesus, in these parables is saying stay awake to the things and habits that get in your way – invest in the things that that make use of the Grace that is there for you, your already delivered but sometimes buried, invitation to life with God.

Our task isn’t to have it all figured out. That’s not possible so we can set that anxiety away. The parable of the talents, like the 10 maidens and others in Matthew reveal that Grace is available at the outset. It is given without condition to us.

Our task is to engage fully, to live fully, with hope rather than fear, because doing so will not only reveal all of what God offers but liberate and strengthen us to multiply that Grace in the world.

On this Ingathering Sunday, we give thanks for your investment of time, talent and treasure in this institution’s healthy enabling of our human family, the stewarding of God’s Grace and the rebuilding of trust that leads to fully living. And as we work toward our financial and programmatic goals, we invite your support, your investment in our shared mission to reimagine church.

This stewardship season, we know it is significant when we ask you to invest in us. Your presence, your gifts, your investment in Grace Cathedral, help your cathedral be an investment in a trustworthy society, help all of us to be all-in, and help us collectively and individually thrive in the Grace God promises us all

Together, hopeful, strong is our Stewardship tagline this year. . . Together, hopeful, strong we can Faire La Fete. 100 Per Cent Grace.

[1] Malti, Tina et al. “Do you trust him?” Children’s trust beliefs and developmental trajectories of aggressive behavior in an ethnically diverse sample. Journal of abnormal child psychology vol. 41,3 (2013); 445-56.

[2]Fehr E. On the economics and biology of trust. Journal of the European Economic Association. 2009; 7:235–266.

“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was… opening the scriptures to us” (Lk. 25)?

Who is walking along with you unrecognized? This week as part of our annual requiem service we are remembering the people we love who have died and the hundreds of thousands of lives extinguished by the pandemic.

The situation feels worse because we cannot mourn in the old way. The full Men and Boys’ Choir and our orchestra are not here to sweep us up into the beauty of their music. We cannot all see the colors of light streaming in through the windows and shining onto these monumental pillars. As we gather with old friends and new ones I cannot break open a still warm, freshly baked loaf of bread and share it with you as we once did.

In this place, in these actions, through invocation and hospitality we became accustomed to realizing the presence of Jesus. Our lives feel diminished without this experience. And yet here we are – we still gather together and somehow the spirit of Jesus is present in a historically new way.

I find it stunning that the entire Gospel of Luke builds to a climax, the resurrection and then surprises us. In the story, Jesus could have appeared anywhere for the first time after his death. He could have shown himself on the Mount of Olives where the Messiah was prophesied to arrive. He could have first gone to the Temple, or to the palaces of Pontius Pilate or Herod.

But instead Jesus first appears on the road a few miles outside of Jerusalem on the way to Emmaus, a town that was so insignificant that archaeologists aren’t even sure where it is. I guess for us it would be like encountering the risen Christ on the road to Turlock.

Similarly, Jesus could have appeared to anyone. Imagine the reunion with his best friend Peter, or Mary Magdalene, or his mother or brothers. Or picture how the story would have been different if he came back to confront the religious authorities, or Pontius Pilate who killed him, or the Roman Emperor. But instead Jesus appears to two friends who are so insignificant that the first one, Cleopas, is only mentioned once in the whole Bible and the second of the two is not even named.

Like the announcement of Jesus’ birth to nameless shepherds in obscure places, the risen Christ breaks into history in an always surprising way.[1] The most remarkable thing of all is that as his friends are talking and Jesus joins them, “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” They say, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place?” (Lk. 24). The Greek word for stranger is “paroikeis” and means living alongside. Something about Jesus as he appears among his friends seems different, even strange, but they cannot place it.

So they tell Jesus the story of Jesus. And he opens up the scriptures to them. As they reach their destination he seems to be going on and they invite him to stay. He takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them. This action, an echo of the last meal they shared together only three days earlier, wakes them up to who he is.

As they hurry back through the  night to see their friends, they wonder too, how they did not recognize Jesus. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

So much happens that we do not recognize at the time. We are more than just logical, reasoning creatures. Feeling our hearts burning within us is part of how we see what is real and what is true. Most of us have lost loved ones this year. At Grace Cathedral we have lost some larger than life personalities (like Clifford Moss last week) and it is hard to imagine being able to go on without them.

I was named after my Uncle Malcolm. He stood about three or four inches taller than me and always seemed unbelievably strong. He loved to play Hawaiian songs on the ukulele that he learned from his Princeton roommate. He’d play Fats Waller on the piano and always made us laugh singing, “You’re kisses are worth waiting for.” In retirement he became a nature photographer. Every Christmas I would receive a calendar of his favorite images of the year. Every time I glace at a wall calendar I’ll think of him.

Even more shocking though is the loss of my friend Kristina Watson. When we first met U.C. Irvine was still under construction (that’s what UCI stood for, “Under Construction Indefinitely”). My wife Heidi sat next to Kristina in the movie theater across the street on the first day of their first class in college. The two of them always referred to Kristina as a “girlie girl” and she would wear striking purple nail polish, and dress in outlandish colors. It was almost like the whole world was a black and white movie and she was the only one in color.

Kristina married Tom another of my favorite people. He is the most extraordinary former San Diego lifeguard who reads the ocean like it was an encyclopedia. The two settled in to a happily after life in Pacific Beach. We would visit them. Being together was like the most perfect Indian Summer day at the beach. Everything was golden and it seemed like it would last forever.

The five children in our two families only made everything better. We became godparents for each other. We were looking forward to good times together after our children all left home. But Kristina’s cancer returned and she died on the anniversary of my ordination in February.

Why didn’t the disciples recognize Jesus from the first? In part their eyes were shaded by sorrow and disappointment. Perhaps Jesus also wasn’t the same as he once had been. But most of all they had to wake up to what is real. Jesus’ friends had to learn that there is more to our experience than the arguments and logic of our religious heritage. They had to adopt a new flexibility, to be imaginative because God comes in ways that surprise us.

The disciples also had to learn to pray, which is another way of saying that they had to learn to see in a new way. Understanding that we are in the presence of God often requires us to see with our hearts.

In this time of social isolation and despair over what we have lost in the Pandemic, who is walking along with you unrecognized? These days you may be feeling the presence of people like Malcolm and Kristina and Jesus, or you may not.

But God is very near to us and so are the ones we love. Jesus invites us as ordinary people in ordinary places into the intimate companionship of God and all the saints. The Good Shepherd is leading us into new ways of seeing him and each other, into a deeper form of life together. You will see him wherever love is present and bread is broken.

[1] I’m grateful for the help of my friend Matthew Boulton, “Breaking Bread: SALT’s Lectionary Commentary for Easter 3,” SALT, 20 April 2020. https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/4/20/breaking-bread-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-easter-3