RECOGNITION: 3rd Sunday in Eastertide

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19

Part 2 of Eastertide 2008

These Year A Eastertide readings cover all the traditional Christian faith bases: deliverance from death, salvation from sin through baptism, deliverance from sin by blood ransom, and recognition of the risen Christ in the breaking of bread. For post-modern exiles, who want to commit to the work but reject the traditional fall-redemption theology as preached by the writers of Peter’s First Letter and Luke-Acts, the time might be better spent looking at how the early followers of Jesus’s Way recovered from a devastating set back, and what happened to Jesus’s original ideas. Also appropriate may be to consider whether and how the foundational rituals of baptism and communion might be reclaimed so that they can continue to define a 21st Century church that is faithful to the original – that is, to a Way for living life in the spirit that is not obscured by Greco-Roman philosophical overlays from the 1st and 2nd Century (and earlier); or the political accommodations of the 4th Century and later; or the guilt-ridden, often blood-soaked, theories of substitutionary atonement and original sin.

The reading from the First Letter of Peter reinforces the apostle Peter’s suggestion for gaining salvation from sin. Most Christians have no idea that the community described in Acts was founded in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus’s death, but the community described in the First Letter of Peter likely was founded 50 or more years later. Most 21st Century folks in the pews on Sunday morning are not going to make a distinction between the two Peters unless their ministers make it a point to do so. Once the point is made, the genie is out of the jug. Luke-Acts was not created until around the same time as the First Letter of Peter, if not even later, and perhaps well into the 2nd Century. Given that timeline, it is debatable whether the theology of salvation through baptism or the theology of blood ransom through Jesus’s death was actually suggested by Jesus, or by Simon Peter. The argument is whether or not Jesus accepted John the Baptist’s apocalyptic call for repentance. I have chosen the side that argues “no.”

Unfortunately, the reading from Acts picks up where we left off last week, repeating the end of Peter’s sermon, once more reminding “the Jews” to whom he was preaching that “this Jesus whom you crucified” was God’s Messiah, sent by God to restore God’s justice. This Peter then revisits John the Baptist’s legacy, and insists that the only way for “the Jews” to save themselves from “this corrupt generation” was to repent and be baptized in the name of that same murdered Messiah. The writer of Luke-Acts reports that “about three thousand persons were added” to the community that day. Assuming (which historically, we cannot) that this happened 50 days after the death of Jesus (Pentecost), his original message of radically inclusive love and liberation from injustice apparently never made it out of the tomb.

All is not lost, however.

Of all the appearance stories in the Gospel accounts, Luke’s story about Cleopas and his companion (his unnamed wife?) who meet the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus may be the favorite. The Elves recommend it to be read every year, when the main Easter service includes a Eucharist on Easter day. In Year A, the story is also included in the readings for this Third Sunday of Easter. In Luke’s story (and it is only Luke’s story), the Greek idea about fate being determined by God is put into Jesus’s words: “Wasn’t the Anointed one destined to undergo these things and enter into his glory?” Luke says, “Then, starting with Moses and all the prophets [Jesus] interpreted for them every passage of scripture that referred to himself” as a proof. But Cleopas and his traveling companion are still so “slow-witted” – as Luke puts it – that they do not recognize the risen Jesus until he shares bread with them.

If anything in these readings can be reclaimed for post-modern minds, it is this story. Theologies of fall-redemption, ransom, and substitutionary atonement no longer work, nor does proof-texting about Old Testament prophecies coming true hundreds of years later. What works is what Jesus did for the travelers on the road to Emmaus: Hands-on, present moment action that reminded them what they were supposed to be doing. Review of tradition and history is very useful. Revisiting the prophetic voices of the Old Testament such as Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah can help post-modern 21st Century Christians recall that the veil between the worlds of God’s realm of distributive justice-compassion and the normalcy of human desire for retributive systems is breached whenever anyone acts in partnership with God to restore the balance.

The metaphor is the shared meal. Of course Luke’s story is meant to be a miracle story about a mystical appearance by the risen Lord, who is only recognized when he breaks bread and passes it to the travelers. They remember that the last time he did that for them was the Passover meal, which – like others Jesus shared – was forever transformed. Jesus is reported in all the gospels getting into trouble because he ate and drank with “sinners” – usually defined as tax collectors and other collaborators with the Roman occupiers – but his table was inclusive of all who were trapped in a system from which there was no escape. With his institution of the “Last Supper,” the old covenant secured by Moses was replaced by the new covenant, sealed with the blood of the Messiah.

21st Century exiles from any of the religions of the Book, but especially exiles from Christianity, no longer resonate with the metaphor of blood sacrifice that reconciles the relationship between God and humanity. The idea that Jesus’s death is a sacrifice required by God as substitution for the death of sinners, or that Jesus’s blood is somehow a ransom paid to liberate sinners from hell makes no sense in a post-enlightenment, non-theistic age. Instead, the communion meal offers post-modern, liberal Christianity a commemoration of both liberation from ancient political oppression and deliverance from injustice for all time. The shared meal is not a guilt-induced volunteer stint at the local soup kitchen (although whether inspired by guilt or not, the soup kitchens can use the help). The meal shared and recognized on the road to Emmaus starts with radical fairness: redistribution of access to power and wealth so that poverty and the conditions that cause poverty are eliminated; negotiation from the standpoint of a radical abandonment of self-interest to reverse hundreds of years of revenge and retribution among families, neighborhoods, governments, and nations.

Finally, in a post-modern, 21st Century, where a non-theistic, kenotic God is present wherever life and justice are present, we can still join the psalmist who praises the God who delivers us from injustice and death. “For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the Lord in the land of the living. I kept my faith. . . .’”