RBWords

     The disciples from the road to Emmaus have just reported their experience with Jesus to a confused and grieving group back in Jerusalem.  Now the group has their own experience and we are told that they were "startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost." He shows the his wounds and he eats something and tells them that "a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."  How can they make sense of all of this?  Jesus tells them to use the scriptures that are available to them: the law of Moses, the prophetic writings and the psalms!  Then he "opened their minds to understand the scriptures."  After summarizing the message of those scriptures, he tells them, "You are witnesses of these things."

     This is where we stand as well, but in a different context.  Our secular age of scientific skepticism has difficulty accepting resurrection.  Such a direct intervention by divine power requires faith.  Christian faith is based on a very large "narrative" beginning with Genesis in the Bible and coming forward to the moment in time when God intervenes in history in the person of Jesus Christ.  The writings of the New Testament are a response to the challenge to be "witnesses to these things."  However, we too may read the law of Moses and the prophets and psalms and see how Jesus was, is and will be part of a greater plan that the latest photos from the Hubble telescope hosws us is a very large plan, indeed.  At the present moment, as a church, we are reflecting on the immediate experience of the disciples, but that will come to an end and we will have to become witnesses ourselves.  AMEN