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Homilies by Rev. Andrew Collis unless indicated otherwise.

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Easter 3, Year A
South Sydney Uniting Church
April 30, 2017

Luke 24:13-35


‘Re-orientation’

According to Luke and John, it is as a stranger that Christ meets disciples after the resurrection, thus requiring their churches to be open to the outsider. Our song from Iona expresses it well. There’s an old English rune of hospitality by the same title, “Christ in the Stranger’s Guise”, with wonderful lyrics: “And the lark sang in His song:/ Often, often, often goes/ the Christ in the stranger’s guise” (Adapted by Alfred Burt, 1948). The trope inspires genuine welcome and care, of course, as well as reflection on strangeness – what it might mean to be/come a stranger to truth or beauty, for example, to be surprised/saved by way of the other.

Philosopher Karmen MacKendrick paints a cosmic picture: “To be promised the world must be to dwell uncertainly in it: the community is gathered only by as much strangeness as it has the courage to say, by the faith that holds open the question, by the promise received through otherness.”

I’d like to dedicate this homily to a stranger I met on Friday. Born Wednesday April 26, little Ewan Henry Gibson is the beloved child of Nicole and Eve. He has many friends he hasn’t met yet. God be with you ...

Luke 24 is called Luke’s masterpiece. Liturgical theologians consider it the very model of Christian orientation. The account of disciples (Cleopas and his companion) on the road to Emmaus (away from Jerusalem and the conflict there) and their encounter with the risen Christ (in the guise of one with whom they walk and talk, to whom they respond with kindness), is one I/we return to again and again, for encouragement and for teaching.

According to liturgical theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet, it is a story about becoming a believer.

Belief is relational, and responsible faith is made possible within a worshipping community (let’s say within the circular setting of these pews, this sanctuary) and within the broader setting of the Spirit in the world (let’s remember to keep our doors open lest we are tempted to confine the Spirit’s activity to this or any place of worship).

Responsible faith is made possible in and through our assent to the loss of a direct line to Christ.

Responsible believers (mature in their capacities for both mourning and hoping – two modes of loss or absence) accept that they do not see, touch, find or prove Jesus without reference to what happens within a worshipping community. Responsible believers (mature in their capacities for both mourning and hoping) accept that they see, touch, find and prove Jesus, not by sitting home alone, not by wishing the world to one side, certainly not by abandoning fellow travellers on the road (to Emmaus, Alexandria or Waterloo), but in the most concrete commitments to Christian living – ecological, historical, political, pastoral, and liturgical.

Responsible believers receive new selves and lives in at least three ways: in and through the scriptures (symbolised by the pulpit and open Bible); in and through the sacraments of Baptism and Eucharist (symbolised by the font and altar-table, water, wine and bread); in and through the call to ethical relationships (we bow to the image of God in one another).

Responsible believers have come to appreciate the temptations of over-emphasising one or other of these three ways – grasping at one or other of these three ways to faith. An over-emphasis on the scriptures fails to discern the Word from the words – and produces a biblical fundamentalism. An over-emphasis on the sacraments fails to discern Grace from the means of grace – and produces a magical superstition.

All temptations to over-emphasis are “necro-philic” says Chauvet – characterised, that is, by desire for death (seeking the corpse of Jesus rather than the risen Christ) – and have also to do with a desire to control a living and liberating divine presence.

The third temptation, perhaps the most ecumenical and perhaps the most modern, is to an over-emphasis on ethics that produces an ideological hardness of heart or an oppressive moralism. Responsible believers acknowledge that their best efforts to relate justly and kindly to others and to the earth are precisely that – their own best (limited, cultural) efforts. The very faces and bodies of others can serve as reminders of all we’ve yet to learn when it comes to justice and kindness.

In this regard, a word from Rowan Williams is apposite. When it comes to ethics, the former Archbishop of Canterbury writes that we begin again and again “by seeing the cross as the cross of our victim, not of ourselves as victims ... If I am involved in the transmission of violence, I cannot pretend that violence is something I can do absolutely nothing about; and if I discover, through this recognition, a possibility of transformed relationship with the other in whose suffering I have colluded, this makes some difference to the structure of the violent world …”

For the sake of baby Ewan, and for the sake of countless vulnerable strangers, including the stranger within each of us, it’s important we keep this place of worship open and these faith practices alive – seeking God in Christ as we read the scriptures according to a pattern of suffering-and-glory, as we break bread and share wine, and as we travel together and share our stories with a view to overcoming moralism and self-pity in a Spirit of courageous mission (all key elements in Luke’s account of discerning the risen Christ on the road to Emmaus).

We participate today, thanks to God, in a re-orientation (turned again toward Jerusalem, a beloved city/world at risk, alongside brothers and sisters) – in a coming-to-be responsible that just might make our own hearts burn with new understanding and hope. Amen.


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