The Presence of Christ

“The Presence of Christ”
Rev Carolyn Waters
April 30, 2006 CCUM

Luke 24:13-49
13Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. 18Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” 19He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, 20and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. 21But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. 22Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, 23and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. 24Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.” 25Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! 26Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” 27Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. 28As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. 29But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. 30When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. 32They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” 33That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. 34They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” 35Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
36While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. 38He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence. 44Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things. 49And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised; so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
The week following Easter, the UCC church on 6th avenue had on it billboard in the front: “Easter! Wow! That was fun! Let’s do it again.”

I don’t think so!

I think once in a lifetime is enough for a crucifixion, and that’s what precedes Easter. Remembering Easter once a year, recalling to mind the promise and new beginnings of life….now that’s a good thing. Perhaps there would be some wisdom to “doing Easter again”. Certainly there is more to Easter than can be grasp in one Sunday, or one telling of the story.

We are, finally Easter People. People who live in the hope of new life, the forgiveness of sins, and the promise of resurrection.

But to say, WOW, that was fun!

The only time I experienced Easter as FUN was when I was a kid and got to hunt Easter eggs in the greening wheat fields of spring.

There were some parts about Easter Sunday this year, and past years that far exceed the typical Sunday in the life of the church. That a good thing, something to celebrate…………..but Fun?

“Gee…that was fun!” were not the thoughts running through the minds of the two people on the road to Emmaus.

Going back to their regular life, these two people were remembering and retelling their experiences of the past several days when a stranger started walking with them. Not an uncommon thing. In conversation the two realized the stranger didn’t seem to realize what had happened in Jerusalem with Jesus of Nazareth.

You know how the story goes. Jesus asks questions, they answer………..finally Jesus sheds light on the meaning of it all………..they listen………..they are intrigued………invite Jesus to their house for dinner…and while breaking bread and drinking wine………they realize the stranger in their midst is the Christ.

The story in Luke goes on to another setting with more of the Disciples, where once again Jesus shows up………….in his physical form, and is recognized by the Disciples. He challenges them to touch his side and hands in order to believe that it is him.

“Their eyes are opened” to the meaning of the scriptures, to the point and purpose of the resurrection.

I think that most of us today tend to think of Jesus in almost entirely spiritual terms. Nevertheless, in this scripture passage from Luke we cannot help but see him in physical terms, risen in flesh and blood, in hair and bone, brain cell and vocal cord. I have to admit that this part of the story is not what persuades me in my Christian faith to believe in the Christ. BUT today we find Jesus coming to reveal that his body, as every human body, is a place where God exists and reveals all that is holy. That part I can accept. That part makes sense to me.

If we believe that Jesus risen in his body means that our human bodies can carry the very existence of God and can hold the presence of God's spirit, then the resurrected life is a life we live in the presence of God as God is in our presence. As Jesus' body took on new life through God's power in the giving of the life of Jesus for the world, then through the offering of his body, now risen, we can come to see in our bodies the same possibilities for new life. AND even more important I think, there is the opportunity to witness the presence of God through the spirit of Christ, living in others.

The resurrection story says not only that Jesus rose from the dead, but also that his body could never again be taken away from his followers, could never again be taken away from the world.

How can this be true? It is true because the Body of Christ is us. The church is the continuation of Jesus. We are the Body of Christ. We are Christ's hands and feet, arms and legs, eyes and mouth, and Christ's check book. We are everything Jesus is in the Gospel, for we are his body. Or at least, that is who we are challenged to be.

In the last ten days I have had the opportunity to be in a car for two hours with George McGovern, watch Ann Lamott work a literary crowd at Tattered Cover, and sit in meditation for an afternoon with Fr. Thomas Keating and Ken Wilber.

All of these people embody the presence of Christ.

For me, all of these people are living icons that give an open window to the holy, the mystery of life.

I don’t always know what to do with “the rest of the Easter story!” You know, the parts that come after Easter. I don’t think it’s a simple, WOW that was fun!

I struggle with the meaning. I easily follow and believe in the teachings of Jesus as a sane, sound, and meaningful way to live my life. But what of this resurrection stuff?

Finally this resurrection stuff is only as meaningful as it is able to manifest its meaning in your life. The resurrection stuff is only as powerful as I am willing to open myself to God’s presence within me, showing forth as the spirit of Christ in my life.

And that only makes as much sense as you are able to see and observe, much the same way the two on the road to Emmaus were able to recognize Christ in the stranger that was with them.

The living icons of my world live in the presence of Christ, and the presence of Christ lives in them. It is proof for me of the resurrected life. It is meaning for me of the presence of God within.

The greatest wonder of all is that we need not be a famous politician, a famous writer, a living saint of a monk, or one of the world’s greatest philosophers to embody the resurrection.

The spiritual truth that comes from the story is that the Good News of Jesus Christ is not about who we are, but about who God is.

The point of the resurrection is not about what happened to the body of Jesus, but the point of the resurrection is about what the body of Jesus became for the sake of the world………………..an incarnation of forgiveness and love for anyone that is willing to receive the gift.

This Most Amazing Day

Easter Sunday
“This Most Amazing Day”
April 16, 2006 CCUM
Rev Carolyn Waters

THE SUNDAY of the Resurrection is not only the greatest day of the church year; it is also the only one that is set by the moon. Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. As complicated as that sounds, it makes ancient sense, since it means Easter coincides with the greening of the earth. Christ is risen and the whole world comes to life. Sap rises in dormant trees, spring peepers start their peeping, and the smell of tree blossoms fill the air. The connection is a happy one, surely guaranteed to renew our faith in the creative power of God.

I spent two days this week working in my yard. The difference I could see in the greening of life between Wednesday and Friday was amazing to me. It happens every year! I know this! But I have been so aware of it this year. Perhaps because I’m in a new yard or maybe it’s because I’m paying more attention.
Life comes to life. That’s what spring is all about. Life coming to life.
I want to imagine that is also what Easter can mean for us. That the life we have, often stagnant or stuck or speeding way too fast down a dead end road, that with spring, with Easter, with an understanding of the resurrection…….that life comes to life.
I imagine that all of us have at one time or another struggled with the meaning of the resurrection. If you’ve been paying attention to our Christian story, or really listened to the Gospel message I expect that you have questioned or doubted or at least wondered about the reality of the resurrection. I wonder about the historical reality of the resurrection, but I have little trouble understanding the meaning of the resurrection, if nothing else it is God’s continuing gift of love for us.
Don't we discover the resurrected Christ in those we love and who love us? Haven't we known the love Christ showed for us from the cross in the loving sacrifices others have made for us? Since childhood, haven't those who loved us and taught us our faith, opened a path for the resurrected Christ to enter our lives? We have no more "proof" of the resurrection than those disciples who peered into the empty tomb. But love has stirred our hearts and that love has enabled us to believe that Christ is risen and alive for us. At this point in the resurrection narrative we are reminded that one way the Easter story of Christ's resurrection is made known to us is through love. If others are to come to the faith we celebrate today, or are to be strengthened in their faith as they stare into the tombs and dead parts of their lives, then we will have to reflect for them the risen Christ by our love for them---whether they are family, friend or stranger.

John B. Cobb, Jr., is Professor Emeritus of Claremont School of Theology asks the questions:
Do we affirm the resurrection because of our experience of the resurrected Christ? Or is it important to believe that the New Testament accounts of the resurrection are based on historical fact? Christians disagree on this.

Cobb continues:
There is, in any case, one important difference between Easter and Christmas. The rise of the resurrection faith involved the belief that Jesus had appeared to his disciples after the crucifixion. It is probable that without some experience of the risen Christ, however we are to think of it, the disciples would not have initiated the movement that became Christianity. Whether or not they are important to us today, historically they were of great importance.
That God raised Jesus from the dead does not mean that Jesus was or is a supernatural being. It does mean that death does not have the last word, that reality is far richer than our small minds can realize. In the context of the whole story, it means that God affirmed Jesus’ message and the mission for which that message called. It means that in Jesus we find a clue to who God is. It means that Jesus’ call of the original disciples to mission is a call to us as well. It means that following Jesus is no guarantee of earthly success but that it does ground our hope of ultimate salvation through everlasting life with Jesus in God.

So the celebration of this Easter Day is an invitation to each and every one of us to at least examine our lives and open ourselves to God’s presence being in the darkest and most destructive places within us, to willingly pronounce death upon those places and open ourselves in this Easter time, this spring time to new life.

Paul Tillich once said that “new life would not really be new life if it did not come from the complete end of the old life.”
(Sermon Nuggets, 4-16-06)

Those are difficult words to accept whether speaking of change here and now, or accepting the reality of death. But through both our living resurrections and our resurrection in death, we are offered the opportunity of a new beginning. A new beginning that comes only with the cost of leaving the old behind.

In the story of the resurrection, Jesus did not continue to carry his cross. Many of us go through life carrying a lot of stuff on our back. Far too many of us hold on to the suffering and pain that has been a part of our lives for far too long. Easter is the invitation to let that go, to lay aside the heaviness of life and be invited into a new day, and new vision, a new opportunity to see the wonder, the beauty, the awesome gift of life.


Easter gives us the opportunity to recall
that people who are really willing to live in the light of the resurrection
are willing to live life as God sees and wills it,
not as we see and will it.

This is a most amazing day. This day is amazing because life is amazing. Life is amazing because the nature of God is such that love wins out over all else. Love is the strength of the universe because all other forces remain in the dark places, in the tombs.

The tomb had to be empty, because life if filled with light. Jesus came to show us how to live, and that lesson is one that continues even into death.

So on this grand day of green grass, clear skies, excited children, abundant tables, and an invitation to lay aside the heavy things you carry;;;;;;;;;;

Why not join with ee cummins and say:


i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

Lost In The Dark

“Lost in the Dark”
John 12:20-36
CCUM April 2, 2006
Rev Carolyn Waters
Sermon Notes
John 12:20-36
20Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. 21They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” 22Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. 23Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 26Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.
27“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Holy God, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. 28 O God, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” 29The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” 30Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. 31Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. 32And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” 33He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die. 34The crowd answered him, “We have heard from the law that the Messiah remains forever. How can you say that the Son of All must be lifted up? Who is this Son of All?” 35Jesus said to them, “The light is with you for a little longer. Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you. If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.” After Jesus had said this, he departed and hid from them.



Poem from “The Termacollective”……a group of people putting together a spiritual project called “The Box”

What in your life is calling you?
When all the noise of silence, the meetings adjourn, and the lists laid aside

And the wild iris blooms by itself in the dark forest.
What still pulls at your soul.

In the silence between your heartbeats hides a summons…..
Do you hear it?
Name it if you must
Or leave it forever nameless,

But why pretend it’s not there?

What pulls at your soul?


No one can give a definition of soul. But we know what it feels like…The soul is a burning desire to breathe in this world of light and never to lose it---to remain children of the light.
Albert Schweitzer, Reverence for Life

In John Gospel Jesus is to have said: If you walk in the darkness, you do not know where you are going. 36While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light.

I venture to say that when we have lost touch with our soul…we walk in the darkness. When we have communion with our soul, we live in the light.

Story of 2 Year Academy for Spiritual Formation:

Covenant Group, Don Eddy, Petoskey MI



Suicide note Don left:
Never miss an opportunity to ask a friend or colleague “How is it with your soul.”

It’s a question John Wesley always ask of anyone in any group setting.

“How is it with your soul?”

Martin Buber & Aubrey Hodes
Martin Buber
No encounter with a being or a thing in the course of our life lacks a hidden significance … the highest culture of the soul remains basically arid and barren unless, day by day, waters of life pour forth into the soul from those little encounters to which we give their due.

The “little encounters” with one another. The “little encounters” with life.
The “little encounters” that make us flesh and bone.

RUMI Poet Persia

We began as a mineral,
We emerged into plant life
And then to the animal state,
And then into being human.
And always we have forgotten our former states, except in early spring
When we feel the slight recall of being green again.

That’s how a young person turns toward a teacher,
That’s how a baby leans toward the breast without knowing the secret of its desire
Yet turning instinctively

Human kind is being led along an evolving course
Through this migration of intelligences
And though we seem to be sleeping
There is an inner wakefulness
That directs the dream.
And that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.


And just what is the truth of who we are? How far do we have to wonder from our own truth before we suddenly realize the darkness that surrounds us is so dark we can never imagine seeing the light again? How much of “the truth of who we are” do we connect with the image of who God created us to be? How much of our “truth” is in the “light” of who God is.

The inner wakefulness that directs our dreams and startles us back to the truth of who we are is the indwelling presence of God. The spirit of life and light. The essence of our soul.

Mary E Carreiro
The Psychology of Spiritual Growth

The soul is the life force---the only “permanent” part of a person. Evolution is a process of being lifted, by the soul, out of human pain and suffering…Spiritual will means a person uses her energy on behalf of the soul rather than on behalf of the human personality.

So the significance of soul is in the connection with spirit, not self. Or self in relation to spirit not personality?

It can all become rather confusing. I just know the reality of joy and the reality of depression and real forces that make for life and death. Jesus is always on the side of life and the side of joy…………….living in the light.

Our own train wrecks, deep seeded pain, trama, abuse of all kinds……..can easily turn our paths toward total darkness. In those times and in that place of darkness life is hell.

We are invited to live in the light. But we do not simply live there by declaring ourselves followers, by declaring ourselves Christian, or by self determination.

We move from places of darkness to places of light by invitation. The invitation from others inquiring about the state of our souls, by the invitation of Christ in offering forgiveness, by the invitation of a good therapist in healing old wounds, by the invitation of God in opening arms of love. We move from places of darkness to places of light by being people of faith.


Rumi
No one knows what makes the soul wake up so happy! Maybe a dawn breeze has blown the veil from the face of God.


(Rumi)
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe before it’s gone.

Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.