Did you want to see the pictures of Osama bin Laden?
It was a big news story this week: would we, or would we not, get to see photographs of a dead body.
I’m confident that the photographs are ugly and maybe sickening, and personally, I was somewhat relieved that they wouldn’t be released. But there was still the question at the center of much of the news coverage:
If you can’t see it, how do you know it’s true?
Maybe we ask that because we live in a world where we can see things that happen thousands of miles away: a wedding, a war, a grandchild’s first steps.
But still, there are many things we can’t see:
dinosaurs, the ozone layer, a change of heart
and so we hear the story and the evidence, and we sometimes ask ourselves: If you can’t see it, how do you know it’s true?
In an odd coincidence of timing,
that’s the question being asked in today’s gospel story.
Think about Cleopas and his companion for a minute. They’ve spent the Passover festival in Jerusalem among the crowd of Jesus’ disciples. They’ve waited with the others through the tragedy of his death, and his burial. They heard this morning that some of the women among them have been to the tomb and found it empty – and the disciples, perhaps, have suddenly remembered and reminded one another that Jesus kept saying he would be back on the third day.
Our travelers have waited as long as they can, hoping to see him.
Finally, they’ve had to head home. There is work to be done, and the journey can’t be put off any longer.
But on the road, they wonder, and discuss:
The tomb is empty, but Jesus isn’t back. Had they misunderstood the prophecy after all?
If we can’t see him, how do we know it’s real?
You and I weren’t there in Jerusalem, two thousand years ago, the day the tomb was empty. Neither were most of the people who told the story to us.
And God knows there might be a time when we ask ourselves how we know it’s real.
Resurrection is a good story. Essential, hopeful and challenging.
One that can teach us that tragedy is not the end, even when tragedy is real.
One that invites us to imagine a new world:
a world without fear and terror, a world that shines with the love of God.
Sometimes that’s enough.
But when tragedy has hold of our hearts,
when fear or loneliness or grief close doors and build walls to hold us in, that question becomes urgent: if we can’t see it, how do we know it’s real?
I noticed something about the way things happen on the Emmaus road.
It’s God who opens the eyes of the travelers to recognize Christ in the breaking of the bread. But it’s also God who keeps the travelers from recognizing Jesus on the road.
Not a lack of information, not willful misunderstanding or general denseness, but the hand of God. I believe that is so that when they do see, they know not only Christ himself, but something else:
It’s real.
Not just what we can we see,
but even, maybe especially, when we cannot see.
That’s what the travelers taught each other, rushing back to Jerusalem: were not our hearts burning within us? It was real, even when we couldn’t see!
The Emmaus road teaches us that we know resurrection, we know Christ, in the scripture that lights our hearts on fire. And we know the risen Christ at the table – in meals shared with strangers in need, or with fellow disciples.
Even when we don’t see him, it’s real.
They didn’t take pictures on the Emmaus road. Even if there were cameras in those days, there wasn’t time. They don’t have souvenirs. They only have the sudden understanding that truth and sight are different things,
that the ordinary and the miraculous can’t really be separated.
And that’s why we remember their story.
That’s what the Emmaus road is for.
That road is ours on the days when in spite of our honest faith and hope, we don’t really expect God to be with us,
when we aren’t as sure as we want to be that Christ is real, and risen.
The days when we want to believe, but neither our hearts nor our minds can make that leap on faith alone.
The Emmaus road is the place – every place – where God walks with us, unrecognized.
It might be the grocery, or the office, or the highway or Metra train.
And this story reminds us that Christ is risen and real at every table where bread is blessed and shared, not just at the table in the church, but the one in the kitchen, the one in the McDonalds, the one at PADS.
This story assures us that the miraculous is hidden in the ordinary whether we know it or not.
In a way, that truth is particularly appropriate for Mother’s Day, because today is a day we pay attention to the miraculous in the ordinary.
Motherhood is full of roads and tables. Literal roads, traveled with a car full of kids. Metaphorical roads, the paths and detours that our lives travel from beginning to end.
Multiplication tables, table manners and literal tables, with quick meals or joyous feasts.
And perhaps, occasionally, breakfast in bed.
Motherhood – and living with our mothers – is all about what is ordinary. Love, yes. And all the layers of patience and care and chores and grief and hope that make up our everyday relationships, and the relationships we long for.
Today we look at the ordinary moments, and remember that they are full of hidden miracles,
real miracles whether we see them or not.
Love is hidden there.
Our love, but also God’s love for each of us.
Grace, and strength and above all the gift of life hide in every ordinary moment.
It is real.
Christ is risen. Love wins.
Near Emmaus, in our kitchens and cars,
in every ordinary place and time.
Sometimes we will be able to see the miracle, and sometimes we won’t.
But the gospel assures us that even the miracle we don’t see is real.
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