Every expectation of the year 2020 has now been either thoroughly revised or completely destroyed.  Every aspect of life has been affected by the Coronavirus.  We are scrambling to try to ‘figure things out’ within the shadow of uncertainty even as we are told to shelter in our homes.  The economy has slowed to a dead stop.  The loss of life and livelihood grows daily.  There is an ever-increasing sense of doom that is experienced by many.  Failed expectations give way to feelings of debilitating disruption.  Patterns of living have been upended, even as patterns of dying have become multiplied.  Still, everything is moving, even though the motion is unfamiliar, uncomfortable and challenging to the core.

That very day, the first day of the week,
two of Jesus’ disciples were going
to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus,
and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred

This is the day of the Resurrection, Easter, wherein Luke’s Gospel (LK 24: 13-35) depicts the uncertain and seemingly hopeless interpretation that two of Jesus’ disciples are discussing as they travel  from Jerusalem to Emmaus, reflecting on how the prophet, Jesus whom they had hoped would be their redeemer, was crucified and put to death.  Totally distraught, disrupted, confused and emotionally overwrought, the unrecognized Jesus drew near and walked with them, and then asks them about what they are discussing.  The scripture says “they stopped, looking downcast.”  They stopped talking and cast their eyes downward.

Jesus walks along with them and invites them to another interpretation of the events.  The description in the scriptures leads us to believe that the disciples felt power in his interpretation, even if they were not entirely convinced.  Something moved them or lit something within them, something small unrecognizable but nonetheless warming – “were not our hearts burning within us?”   Later, Jesus breaks bread with them at Emmaus, and we are told that they recognize him, and then suddenly he vanishes.  What has happened in this story?

This story is limitless in its images and richness.  Finding just one or two elements is more than enough to chew on for the rest of our lives.  That says something about this whole Easter event that the Christian tradition is centered upon.  It is constantly opening us up, if we let it.  It is a moving target so to speak that cannot be completely explained in any one setting any more than it can be fully lived in any one person’s life.   Like the disciples in the story, we suddenly recognize, our hearts are on fire, and then it vanishes.  What is the paschal mystery – the life, death and resurrection (including the Ascension and Pentecost) -saying about our world, our lives, our God?

In Peter’s epistle (1 PT 1: 17-21), we hear the same invitation to stop and listen and be in whatever story we think we are in and let it open us up.  This is to “conduct yourself with reverence during the time of our sojourning.”  First to simply acknowledge that we are here and what a great gift that is – to be and to sojourn or abide in a life-path.  That foundational gift of being itself is irrevocable and divine.  If this is not a cause for reverence, I don’t know what is.  This precious abiding or being-ness is something that is indelible and inexhaustible, and not dependent upon whatever stories we think or tell about ourselves, our world, our fellow world citizens, or our God.

Throughout our lives, we experience certain circumstances in a way that seems to confirm our beliefs about our lives.  This can be consoling, but it can also be confining and detrimental. We can end up on a long road with others who may be just as content as we are to complain, conjecture and come up with all kinds of confusing explanations for why things have happened that are extremely painful and not in line with our comfort zones and preconceived expectations.  We all do this from time to time.  The question, is whether or not we hear the Jesus question so that the question itself can open us up to the possibility for another interpretation.

What if the Easter story is not so much about what happened as it is about how it happened and what the effects were?  In other words, a deeper meaning to the Christ event – that Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead – could lie in the profound and transformative effect it had on the world and continues to have.  How do we interpret our lives in all that we experience and don’t experience?  Do facts dominate the value we place on life and death, or is there a warming presence that we can sense undergirding it all?  Can our hearts burn with a wholeness of living faith that can transmute uncertainty into hopeful newness? Can we say like David, who is quoted by Peter in the Acts of the Apostles (ACTS 2: 14,22-33):

You have made known to me the paths of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence

The paths of life are all tethered to THE path of Life, that precious sojourn, which is the Easter story – the Christ event lived over and over in our lives every single day.  One day we get it, we seem to understand, we believe, and then something happens, and there is a sense that it all goes away or vanishes.  Yet, there is a burning warmth, a precious sojourn, a presence that can fill us with a subtle joy and remain even when it seems that everything is gone.   This is the moving presence of Divine Love, that abidingly holds us even as it draws us toward itself, challenging the limits of our openness to constantly revise our stories in alignment with that Love, which supports our being in all circumstances and all things.

We want to hold onto it and make it stay within our own private framework and interpretation, as the disciples asked Jesus in Emmaus; however, the irresistible dynamism of its nature must keep moving, drawing us together and farther.  Although we may consider Easter as a day in a year, it is indeed a season, a way of life, especially when we can learn to dare trust the precious sojourn – the very Source of our life – Christ carrying us toward ever-new worlds.

As they approached the village to which they were going,
he gave the impression that he was going on farther.