SERMON PREACHED IN AN UPPER ROOM
TO A COMPUTER AND TO AN INTERNET
THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 26th)
2020
READINGS
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116: 1-4, 12-19
1 Pet 1: 17-23
Luke 24: 13-35
Two dejected travellers turn into proclaimers of hope as the result of an
encounter with a stranger. That stranger expounds facts and scriptures in
tandem, carries out some sort of sacramental act, then leaves them empowered to
make their way out into the world. They go back to Jerusalem with the good news
they have experienced and digested.
There is a conversion here, though the passage is not always touted as a
conversion passage. Paul will have a similar experience, especially as told by
Luke, when “something like scales fell from his eyes.” Something like scales
fall from the eyes of Cleopas and his companion (as you may have seen me mention
several days back, I like to think of the companion as Cleopas’ wife, Mary[1]).
A new dawn awakened not only within them but around them and through them. So,
awakened, they proclaimed; as Luke tells the story, the gospel spread out exponentially from the Jerusalem to which they return.
Recent events across the globe are cataclysmic. How large a cataclysm we
may not know for some time. Waves and potential second waves of a virus are exploding
across the globe, and lifestyle changes are forced on every aspect of our
existence. Many have pointed out that nature – (for now we’ll see her as God’s
shepherd like Cyrus in Isaiah 44) – nature is imposing a sabbatical on our destruction
of her resources. Prophetic Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann, is
speaking of this pandemic as “a summons to faith.”[2]
On this occasion I am less optimistic than Brueggemann; I fear the idiot
fringes that play games with distortions of the good news have done, are
doing too much damage, deafening Christians and others so the gospel cannot
be heard over their cacophony. Yet history will prove me wrong: the gospel has,
as Luke indicated and as Brueggemann knows, burst out from our myopia ever
since those first, bewildering resurrection experiences of the initial witnesses.
Space is too short to discuss in depth the way in which the orgē,
the wrath of God works.
Suffice it to say God’s wrath will ultimately be directed against perpetration
of God’s wrath, not against perpetrators. But we who have let the gospel
down will be caught up in what we might call the birth-pangs of God’s judgement.
We are not immune: the history and current behaviour of many who claim to profess
the name of Christ is far from a glowing witness, and God’s word of judgement
will be spoken. Papatuanuku is stirring because God is permitting her to stir.
Some scientists are reminding us that human negligence is amongst the
primary factors accelerating the spread of Covid-19. Obviously I allude to the
chronic incompetence of figures such as Xi Jinping, Donald Trump, Jair
Bolsonaro and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but there were dark forces at work
long before they buried their collective heads in the sand. Deforestation,
enforced interaction between humans and other previously far-removed species, negligent
management of wild and domestic animals, all these and more have contributed to
the breakdown of Earth’s healing resources. We have so far escaped the horrors
of nuclear winter but have unleashed alternative toxins on ourselves and our
world.
Perhaps this can be a moment in which scales fall from the eyes of
humanity. Brueggemann, I suspect (and I will know when the book arrives) hopes
so. I am as I said, less optimistic than he might be, certainly in the short
term. Earth must suffer this travail, this tribulation as some biblical readers
prefer to call it. It may or may not be the death throes of our planet, or at
least humanity’s role on this spinning sphere. Many scientists are reminding us
that, no matter where Covid-19 takes us, this will not be the last threat to
humanity’s existence, any more than the Bay of Pigs or DDT were. Perhaps we
will learn to listen to the prophets, perhaps we won’t.
By “prophets” I do not mean sensationalist charlatans, the likes of Hal
Lindsey, New Zealand’s own late Barry Smith, or the current theological deceiver
Paula White. I speak rather of those who see the damage humanity is doing to
God’s creation and to all who are made in God’s image. They see, and pronounce
God’s stern word of impending crisis, judgement (the Greek word is the same). I
mean prophets like Walter Brueggemann, like Rachel Carson, like David Quammen,
whose findings I allude to here. I am speaking of those shepherd-prophets who
genuinely read the signs, and warn. They do so not necessarily with reference
to our God – the shepherd Cyrus certainly did not. Nevertheless they message
God’s stern will.
Have we come a long way from a road to Emmaus? Not so much. I will never
reduce the gospel of Jesus Christ to an ecological, economic or sociological programme.
Nevertheless, we need to hear whispers of both judgement and resurrection in
our every circumstance. Despite the resurrection appearances, Cleopas and Mary
were heading away from Jerusalem. Jerusalem for Luke is the place of encounter
with the Risen Lord. But the Risen Lord, or perhaps his messenger or angel (again
the Greek word is the same) brought them up sharply, opened their eyes, turned
them around.
The judgements of God have rarely been pretty, and none of us are immune
from suffering. But we are called to hold to resurrection faith. Ironically we
are living in a time when those most powerful dimensions of our faith have been
stripped from us: fellowship and communion, including Holy Communion, have been
taken from us, and rightly so. Sometimes as God’s judgement of King David warns
us, our loved ones too are stripped from our sight. Sometimes our lives are
stripped from us. No one is immune. Our task is to speak a word of truth and of
hope into this calamitous time – as indeed we were being called to speak a word
of judgement in the complacent times that preceded it (perhaps we might learn
from Jonah?).
We will speak a word of resurrection hope, like that proclaimed by the
stranger on the road, for we discard that at great peril. We are not just a
bundle of cells, indistinguishable from the cells of every other living being,
perhaps even viruses (though their status as living or not is disputed). We bear
the image of God, whatever that might mean. But we will not be so other worldly
that we remove ourselves from meaningful participation in a virus-shocked
world. We will speak a word of resurrection hope and we will speak a word of
judgement: humanity and we within it must change our ways before we strangle
the planet God has given us. Cleopas and Mary went back to Jerusalem and there
awaited the coming of the Spirit. Thus empowered they began the proclamation of
good news.
Their times too were pretty darned apocalyptic, as the Roman Empire, like
the current US empire and probably Western civilization, crumbled around them.
Into that crumbling world exploded a gospel of resurrection-hope. It has been
corrupted and renewed many times since. Let us offer our lives as a channel of
God’s grace and hope in this time too. Let us await and welcome the Spirit who
renews us in strength and hope.
[1] Some
say it may have been his wife, Mary, and some heart-warming art depicts this gender
re-balancing view: see https://artandtheology.org/2017/04/28/the-unnamed-emmaus-disciple-mary-wife-of-cleopas/
[2] See Brueggemann’s forthcoming work Virus
as a Summons to Faith: Biblical Reflections in a Time of Loss, Grief, and
Anxiety, to be published by Wipf and Stock on May 20th.
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