1st Sunday after Easter
Recently, on CBC Radio, a researcher talked about “super recognizers”. This term, coined in 2009, is used to describe people with significantly better than average face recognition. These individuals have an uncanny knack for remembering faces even if they only saw them long ago, in passing like someone standing in the same line at a busy checkout counter. At the other end of the spectrum are people who are described as “face blind”, who have a cognitive disorder in the area of face perception. Since they cannot recognize even familiar faces, including their own, they live in a world full of strangers. In-between the super recognizers and the face blind are the rest of us.
Until the pandemic, I thought I was fairly good at attaching names to faces – an important skill for anyone in ministry. On occasion, I would confuse two individuals, but they were often related so I had an excuse. Then came covid. As everyone donned masks, I realized: I do not use eyes to identify people; I notice mouths and chins, and the way a person smiles or curls their lip. As if walking into room of masked faces wasn’t challenge enough, I also discovered that hair was no longer a reliable indicator. Women I had known as blondes, brunettes and redheads appeared with grey or even snow white hair. Men who had always been neatly trimmed grew locks long enough for a pony tail or even a man bun. As I walked around Richmond Hill, I could sand did go right on by, without acknowledging, an individual who had been part of my congregation for ten years.
So I can empathize with the two disciples walking along the road to Emmaus when they assume the person joining them is a stranger. They may not be in the midst of a pandemic, but they have certainly been on an emotional roller coaster. Just one week ago, they were entering the city of Jerusalem, shouting “blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord”, and being greeted by welcoming crowds. It looked as if their hour of triumph had arrived. But then came Thursday with Judas’ kiss of betrayal and Jesus’ arrest in the darkness of the Garden of Gethsemane. And Friday with Jesus’ trials before the religious leaders and the political authorities, the sentence of death, the crucifixion and the burial. Now, at last, it’s Sunday. With the sabbath over, Cleopas, and the unnamed disciple who is probably a woman – let’s call her Naomi – are free to leave this city of death and danger, of fear and hiding out behind closed doors.
As they walk along, side by side, they are absorbed in conversation. They are going over and over the events of the last few days. Not unlike Lesley Parrott, a member of Bloor Street United Church. Lesley needed to go over and over the situations, and decisions which led to her eleven year old daughter, Alison, being abducted and murdered by a sexual predator. While introverts like her husband, Peter, need to retreat inward, requiring time alone to process their thoughts and feelings, extroverts like Lesley have to talk it through with family members, with friends, with anyone who will listen, if they are to make sense of what has happened and integrate it into their lives.
As Cleopas and Naomi walk and talk, they are joined by a stranger. I imagine this person striding down from Jerusalem, overtaking these two disciples, and then falling into step beside them. It reminds me of that classic after church coffee hour manoeuvre of shoulder hanging, only this one is in motion. When the moment is right, the stranger poses the question: “what is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?” With that, he opens the door for them to go over everything yet again. I didn’t appreciate what a wonderful gift this is, in and of itself, until Lesley came to speak with the Pastoral Care Team at Bloor Street. After Alison’s murder, she had turned to her community of faith for support and comfort. Initially, people listened. But all too soon, Lesley found their patience growing thin. Some would try to avoid her; others would attempt to shift the conversation. One told her point blank: “it is time to let go of all this and get on with your life.” In our fast moving world of quick fixes, it seems that even grief is expected to stick to a schedule. It is fine to talk about the day of Alison’s kidnapping the week it happened, but not a month later. Lesley was left feeling even more bereft, even more isolated.
Lesley hoped the Pastoral Care Team would learn from her experience, and in future, provide someone like this stranger, someone who is willing to ask inviting, open-ended questions, and then just listen. That may sound easy: how difficult can it be to keep our mouths shut, and our ears open? But we human beings have a propensity for chiming in with our own stories. Someone mentions testing positive for covid and we come up with tales of relatives and friends who have had covid. Someone comments on how busy they are, and we list our own activities. At their best, such comments may help to build rapport – “you can talk to me. I can understand your situation.” At their worst, they derail the speaker, and shift the focus to us. This stranger just listens attentively to these two sad, confused, frightened individuals. He listens them into speech, into sharing with him not only the facts around what has happened, but also their feelings – the hopes they held which have now been dashed.
The stranger then takes it a step further. He doesn’t offer any of the pious platitudes we hear too often in funeral homes. You know the ones – “everything happens for a reason”; “ God never gives us more than we can bear.” The kind of platitudes we too easily slip into when we are fumbling for something, anything to say. The stranger puts their story into what for them is the familiar, larger framework of scripture. He sets the life and death of their Jesus into the context of the ongoing story of God’s relationship with human beings. As Moses brought the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, Jesus, the new liberator, has come that people may have abundant life. His death is not a misfortune he should have been wise enough to avoid, but the means through which humankind learns that love is indeed stronger than hate; goodness, than evil; life, than death. Scripture gives these two lost souls something to hold onto. It can do the same for us even in our worst moments, even when our world has been turned upside down. It did for Lesley. Shortly after the discovery of Alison’s body, Lesley was interviewed on CBC Radio. She was able to say she was not looking for revenge. She had been against the death penalty before this happened, and she remained firmly opposed. The God she believed in was a God of love; the Jesus she followed was a Jesus who taught: “love your enemies” and none of that had changed.
When the two disciples and the stranger reach the village of Emmaus, the sun is sinking; it will soon be evening. The stranger appears intent on continuing his journey but accepts the invitation to stay for dinner and spend the night. The meal is prepared. They gather around the table. As is the custom, the stranger picks up the bread to offer the blessing: “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe who brings forth bread from the earth.” He breaks it. Words and actions that are oh so familiar. The eyes of Cleopas and Naomi are opened. This is no stranger. This is none other than Jesus, their leader, their teacher, their friend.
In this wonderful moment of recognition, their sadness is turned into joy, their despair into hope. And they who had trudged so slowly down the road from Jerusalem cannot let a little thing like darkness or tiredness hold them back. They race up the hills to Jerusalem to share the good news.
We come together on Sunday in a special place, this sanctuary, to worship God. But we do so confident that God is not confined to specific holy places, to be met only during worship services on one day to the week. God is present always and everywhere. It is just that like Cleopas and Naomi, we sometimes do not recognize God’s presence. Head down, eyes not really noticing my surroundings, I was mulling this over on Tuesday as I walked around Richmond Hill. Suddenly, I heard a loud and unusual trumpeting sound. Startled, I looked up and there were a beautiful pair of trumpeter swans winging low overhead. Amazing! I felt as if the swans were shaking me out of my reverie: “Linda, open your eyes; listen! Signs of the Creator are all around you.” A moment of recognition. Sometimes, it comes like this, through what Celtic Christians call “the big book of creation”. Sometimes, through what they refer to as “the little book of scripture” as the disciples feel their hearts burning within them as the stranger opens the scriptures on the road. A moment of recognition. Sometimes, it comes through familiar words and actions as we gather around a table to share bread and the fruit of the vine.
However it happens. However we experience it. Thanks be to God who offers us these moments of recognition. Amen.