Hermetic Homiletics

Luke 24.13-25

Currently, I am at a congregation that has applied for a redevelopment grant, but it did not pass. This loss has crushed them. They are a struggling small, rural congregation and had seen the grant as their hope for a future. Now, things are all up in the air. The future is uncertain.

When I look at the passage in Luke, we find a couple of disciples leaving Jerusalem and going to Emmaus. Thomas Keating, in The Mystery of Christ: The Liturgy as Spiritual Experience, writes: "Notice that the disciples were heading away from Jerusalem. They had evidently decided, despite what the women were reported to have said, that their part in the community of Jesus' disciples was over." (76)

It sounds to me like they had given up. Jesus, if he were the messiah, was supposed to "fix" everything. He was supposed to liberate the Jewish people and restore them to the land. That was the key to the messianic job description at the time. The problem of course, was that this did not happen. Instead, Jesus was crucified. The problem remained.

What the two disciples didn't realize at the time was that while they wanted Jesus to "fix" the big problem that loomed over their heads, God was about other things. Their expectations had gotten in the way of their openness to experiencing what God was doing in their midst. Until they could transcend themselves (their wants and desires) they could not recognize God's wisdom in recent events.

That's where I think I'll tie it all in. In our congregation, we had been hoping (and expecting) God to work in a certain way: give us the money. When it didn't come, it looks as though everything has went wrong. God didn't "fix" the problem. Unless we are able to step outside ourselves we will not be able to see how God has been actively at work in our midst bringing about...well, something else. Just because we don't understand God's wisdom and activity, it doesn't mean that God wasn't doing what was ultimately best. Rather, maybe God was doing just what needed to be done and that we need to wrestle with that.

posted by irreverance @ 10:34 AM