Go and Listen
The Rev. Canon George M. Maxwell, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip
Atlanta, Georgia
10 April 2005
Third Sunday of Easter – Year A
I visited my parents in Savannah this week. Mother underwent some minor surgery, so I went home to see her. As I was driving back to Atlanta, knowing that everything had gone well, I reflected on the different ways that my parents expressed their love for me. Sometimes they used words. They just said “we love you.” But, sometimes they used actions. It was in their eyes when I arrived at the front door. It was in their posture when we talked about things that worried them. It was in the way that my Mother extended her hand for me to hold just before they took her into surgery. I usually know what to look for and where to look for it.
I can’t say the same thing about God. I often wish I could discern God’s presence as easily as I can my parents’ love. I trust that God loves me, but when I want to feel God’s presence, I don’t always know what to look for or where to look for it. And, when I find it, it always seems to be too fleeting. It often feels like the word on the tip of my tongue or the action I didn’t quite catch. Sometimes I think I know God more by his absence than his presence.
I suspect this is how Cleopas and his companion felt as they walked along the road to Emmaus. They had just lost their Messiah and I suspect you could hear despair in their voices and see it in their eyes and in their posture. They thought they had found God’s presence in Jesus Christ, but now he was gone. They were left with only his absence.
I suspect it was this desperate sense of loss that prevented them from recognizing Jesus in the face of the stranger as he walked with them. They felt a burning in their hearts as they listened to the words of the stranger, but they failed to recognize that fire as a sign of God’s presence. It was only after the familiar actions at the table that they recognized Jesus and remembered the feeling caused by his words.
And, of course, when they did recognize Jesus, his presence was fleeting. They invited the stranger to dinner and treated him like an honored guest, asking him say the blessing for the meal. Then, as he performed the sign they had already been taught, they recognized him. When he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them, they recognized him as Jesus. Yet, no sooner did they recognize his presence than he disappeared, leaving them again with his absence.
This time, though, they knew he was alive! This time they knew that the one who had been crucified had been raised from the dead.
Jesus was alive not just in the sense that they remembered him, or in the sense that they continued to follow his ethical teachings. Jesus was alive in the sense that they had experienced him as present in a new and different way that was even more powerful than before. Jesus was alive in the sense that they experienced him as a life-giving Spirit that entered their hearts and caused them to burn.
And knowing that Jesus was alive was enough to energize Cleopas and his companion. They did just what most of us would have done. They jumped up from the dinner table and returned to Jerusalem so that they could tell the others what they had seen.
Our first instinct after a transforming experience is usually to go and tell someone. We want to share our experience with others. Think of the athletes frantically hugging each other after winning a championship, or a new father standing in the hospital corridor hurriedly punching in cell phone numbers to tell others about his new baby daughter.
Sharing our experiences of God with others seems in itself to be a sign. The instinct to go and tell others often feels like a force from outside of us that works through us to connect with other people. Those people form a community with us around our experience. Just creating the community often makes our experience taste sweeter and last longer, particularly if what has changed our lives changes the lives of others as well.
Unfortunately, in our excitement, we sometimes forget that our experience may not be the only experience. We sometimes try to form a community too carefully tailored to ourselves without realizing that our experience is a function of our individual perspective and interpretation. We can’t take ourselves out of our experience any more than we can take the photographer out of the picture or the painter out of the portrait.
It is the different or sometimes conflicting experiences of the same truth that give our collective understanding of that truth its dynamic shape and character. It is only in listening to the experiences of others that we can get beyond the limitations of our own perspective and interpretation. It is through community that we are able to enlarge the picture of Jesus that we see and experience.
Just look at the resurrection appearances in the Gospels. Jesus appeared to the disciples in different ways. I suspect he did so in order to give each one what they needed. Thomas, for example, seemed to need the rebuke of being invited to touch Jesus’ wounds. He needed to break the pride that isolated him from the others. Perhaps Mary needed the recognition of hearing her name. Maybe she needed to avoid getting lost in an exaggerated unselfishness that would separate her from herself.
Discerning God’s presence, then, seems to lead us inevitably to community. We go to the community to tell of our experiences, and we listen to the community to fully understand what our experiences mean. It is the community that often tells us what to look for and where to look for it. Even this process of going, telling and listening can create the space that we need to experience God’s presence.
What is interesting, at least to me, is what we are called to do first. Flushed with the energy of having seen the risen Lord, Cleopas and his companion raced to meet the others in Jerusalem. But, they didn’t even get a chance to tell the others about their experience before they learned that the others already knew that Jesus was alive. The Lord, they others said, had already appeared to Simon.
They went to Jerusalem to tell the story of their experience, but first they were forced to listen to a truth already known to the community. Cleopas and his companion ultimately told their story. But, it was important not because it was the first or the only account of the living Christ. It was important because it added to the community’s understanding of their risen Lord. They told their story so that others would learn about a different perspective and interpretation of the risen Lord.
“Go and tell” is the command given in some of the resurrection appearance stories, but here to message is “go and listen.”
Go to the community and listen. You will find God’s presence there.
Amen.
Comments? Contact George Maxwell at: GMaxwell@stphilipscathedral.org