The Serendipity of Apparent Presence

3 Easter a         May 4, 2014   

Acts 2:14a,36-47   Ps. 116:10-17

1 Peter 1:17-23    Luke 24:13-35              

Lectionary Link

Today I would like for us to consider the difference between the actual and the apparent.  I think it is important to know the difference between the actual and the apparent.  The discrepancy between the actual and the apparent is probably the first and hardest lesson that has to be learned in life.

  A baby is born and lives with the actual presence of mother with actual contact with the maternal body.  But what happens when a mother wants to get some sleep or do other things?  What happens when mom does not have actual contact with her baby?  What happens when she is not touching her baby?  Or speaking to her baby?  Or is out of the sight of vision for her baby?  Mom may continue to miss her baby and worry about her baby, but she still believes that her baby in still in her life and very important to her.  But what happens from the baby’s point of view?  A baby loses contact with the maternal body; a baby loses contact with the touch of any parent or parent surrogate person; a baby does not hear the sound of her mother’s voice or any voice; a baby does not see any moving person the field of vision.  The apparent absence of mother can perhaps mean the actual non-existence of mother.

  Apparently, mother is no more, when she is gone.  And so there is great relief when the sensorial connections are made again.  Mom has to re-appear again and again so that the patterns of re-appearance can convince her baby that the apparent absence of mom does not mean the actual absence of mom.  And to help the “separation” anxiety mom will provide for her baby many things which will help her baby deal with the times in which the lack of sensorial accessibility to her baby might tempt the baby to assume apparent absence means real absence.

   This relationship is the same in our relationship with God.  This relationship was the same for the relationship between the disciples and friends of Jesus after he no longer was accessible to them in the same way .

  Jesus died.  Apparently he was gone.  His friends could not see him or touch him or talk to him in the same way in which they had had done before.  Did his absence mean that he apparently was no more?  The absence of Jesus could not mean that he had not existed; but how did his absence affect his apparent continuing relevance and meaning in our lives?

  The literature of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus function to cover the transitional period between Jesus leaving this earth and attaining the kinds of presences in the time of his apparent absence.

  Jesus was dead and gone; the Jesus Movement should have been over and done, his followers should have been defeated and disappointed.  The Roman authorities should  have been relieved that this flash in the pan apocalyptic insurrection was so short lived.  And all of the rabbinical schools of Judaism should have felt relieved that one less Jewish sect would exist.  John the Baptist was killed; some of his followers kept meeting and many of them followed Jesus of Nazareth, but now that Jesus was gone, there was one less rabbi to compete in market of religious ideas and interpretations.

  However the friends and followers of Jesus did not quit.  The Movement did not die.  It in fact grew exponentially.  It was a Movement which consisted of people who were probably surprised that they did not suddenly just dwindle into oblivion.  The Movement was so vibrant in the cities of the Roman Empire, they had to reconstruct for themselves the reasons for their success. 

  When the presence of the actual body of Jesus was no longer around, the number of people who believed that the Risen Christ had become apparent in their lives in some way, greatly increased.  A movement which was supposed to die on the cross with its founder, did  not die.  The Cross could not kill the life of Christ out of this world.

  The Cross of Jesus became like a launching pad which suddenly released the insides of Jesus to be made available in many different ways to many different people.

  I don't think we should read the Gospel accounts of the post-resurrection appearances as history; read them as the artistic explanation of the early followers of Christ as they were trying to tell and celebrate how they continued to be comprised with such joy and fellowship. 

  I believe the New Testament were writings created by people who were surprised that they continued to be together.  They were surprised by the phenomenon of something which kept them together and kept the movement growing and spreading to more people.

  The Gospel accounts of the post-resurrection appearances helped the community try to explain their continuing existence and they gave origin answers about the practices of the church.

  This post-resurrection appearance of Christ to the disciples who were walking back home to Emmaus should only be called a “half post resurrection appearance” of Christ?  Why?  Because it was written that the resurrected Christ had the ability to turn on and turn off his recognizability.

   What were the signs and the activities within the church of how Christians expressed how they knew Christ to be still alive?  The church practiced Eucharist and the Church practiced the interpretation of Scriptures to explain how Scripture was relevant to their contemporary life.

  This is what the Emmaus Road post-resurrection appearance of Jesus is all about.

  The Emmaus Road disciples said that their hearts had burned when Jesus was explaining to them the current relevance of the Scriptures.  And so that burning excitement was there in being engaged by God’s Word because it is only through words that we make the creative advance in our lives.  The words about creative advance in our lives cause us to burn with excitement.

  When Jesus was compelled by the disciples to sit down for something to eat; when Christ took bread and blessed it, poof, Christ was suddenly recognized.  Can there be a more obvious reference to the way in which the gathered church realized the presence of Christ?

  Word and Sacraments were two of the modes of realizing the apparent presence of the risen Christ.

  We have the Emmaus Road story because the church had to account for its own success and to celebrate the origins of how the apparent absence of Jesus of Nazareth has become transformed and known as the apparent presence of the risen Christ.

  Today in our gathering, you and I are invited to know the risen Christ in Word and Sacrament but we have perhaps let the church authorities administrate Word and Sacrament so that it can seem that Word and Sacrament exhaust or limit the experiences of the presence of Christ.  Word and Sacrament are not the only modes of how the risen Christ can be known to us.  It has been my goal to show us how Word and Sacrament are connected with our entire lives so that we understand that the apparent presences of the risen Christ can be endlessly proliferated within the events of your life and mine.  We come to be engaged by Word and Sacrament so that we can be prepared for the serendipitous occasions when the risen Christ suddenly becomes recognized, almost like saying to us suddenly, “Peek a boo, I see you.  And I am with you always.”  Amen.