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Homily:
3rd Sunday of Easter – Cycle A
I recently came across this story that’s been floating
around on the internet for a couple of years now. It’s a good story and, although there are
multiple versions of it out there, the core of the story remains pretty much
the same; thus I feel pretty confident that at least the core of the story is
true and so I’d thought I share it with you.
As the story goes, a couple of ladies were having dinner in
a restaurant in Dublin, Ireland when the manager approaches their table and
asks them if they would mind moving because Bono was coming to eat and the
table at which they were sitting was his favorite table in the restaurant. Now Bono is the lead singer of a band named
U2 which is very famous throughout the world.
They are from Ireland, though, so the band is a “household name” in
Dublin. Thus, far from being put off,
the ladies were happy to change tables for the famous rock star.
After Bono arrived and sat down to dinner with a friend, he
sent a couple of drinks over to the ladies as a “thank you” for letting him
have his favorite spot. The ladies, not
wanting to miss the chance to meet one of Ireland’s most famous people, finally
got the nerve to walk up and ask if they could have autographs and get a
picture with him. Bono agreed and his
dining companion agreed to take the photos for them.
The ladies, of course, were so excited that they could
barely eat and so Bono and his friend finished dinner and left well before they
did. When the ladies were finally ready
to leave the waiter informed them that their bill had been paid. “Wow, what a night!” they said. “Not only did we get to meet Bono and have
our picture taken with him, but he paid for our meal, too!” Quickly, however, the waiter corrected them
and said, “Oh, it wasn’t Bono who paid your bill, it was Bruce Springsteen, who
ate with him, who did.”
I like this story because it is a classic example of not
being able to see “the forest for the trees.”
These ladies were so focused on Bono, and their excitement in meeting
him, that they failed to recognize the equally famous Bruce Springsteen sitting
there with him. We’ve all had
experiences, I’m sure, in which we get so emotionally “wrapped-up” in one thing
that we fail to see the bigger picture and thus miss something important that
we might not have been looking for.
Just look at the disciples on the road to Emmaus in our
Gospel reading today. It was Easter
Sunday and they were walking away from Jerusalem; dejected because they felt
like everything that Jesus had promised to be had been destroyed. They were so caught up in the distress of
these thoughts that when Jesus himself comes and walks with them they don’t
even recognize him! Granted, this was
Resurrected Jesus, whose glorified body certainly looked different than before
(I mean, Mary Magdalene also failed to recognize Jesus immediately in the
garden of the tomb, right?), but after multiple hours on the road together, you
would think that they might have noticed those gaping holes in his hands,
right?
Anyway, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt that they
were so caught up in trying to make sense of everything that happened in
Jerusalem that weekend that they couldn’t “see the forest—that is, Jesus—for the trees”. Thus, it wasn’t until evening, after offering
this “stranger” hospitality in their home, that these two disciples came to
recognize who it was that had been with them along the way. And how meaningful it is that it was in the
“breaking of the bread” that they recognized him… We must definitely see a connection to the
Eucharist here.
But we must also be careful, my brothers and sisters, that
we don’t fall into a trap ourselves as we listen to this narrative from the
Gospel. Yes, we must be careful that we
don’t find ourselves only “half-listening” to this narrative—that is, listening
with dull hearts because we feel like we already know the story so well—because
when we do we risk falling into the trap of missing the forest for the
trees. How many of you have ever stopped
to think about this story and then said to yourself, “you know, this sounds a
lot like the Mass”? If you haven’t, then
you haven’t yet seen the forest…
When we take a step back and look not only at the details
of what is happening in the story but at the overall picture of the story itself
we see that there are movements in the story that look a lot like what became
the model of Christian worship that we celebrate today. First, there’s a recounting of Scripture and
the interpretation of it. Jesus meets
the disciples on the way and recounts the Scriptures to them and interprets for
them how the events of his life have fulfilled all of what the Scriptures
foretold. Thus, in the Mass we gather
and hear the Scriptures recounted for us and then the priest or deacon
interprets them for us so that they will illumine our daily lives.
Then there’s the sharing of the Eucharistic meal. After spending the day on the road with Jesus
as he interpreted the Scriptures for them, the disciples invite Jesus to stay
with them and share a meal, in which he reveals himself fully to them in the
blessing and breaking of the bread. And
so, from here, we too will gather around this Eucharistic meal in which Jesus
himself becomes present to us in the flesh.
In other words, we will see him once again in the breaking of this
bread.
My brothers and sisters, during this Easter Season we are
being invited to “look again” at what has become familiar to us in a way that
helps us to see more deeply the mystery into which we have been initiated. And so, even as we baptize little Jackson
today, we should all be thinking about the great mystery of our own baptisms
and the new life that lives within us and that we will soon share with another
person through these waters of rebirth.
For when we do, we won’t fail to see Jesus right here in front of us and
we’ll be inspired—by the same Spirit that inspired the Apostles—to go forth and
proclaim his presence to all the world.
Given at All Saints Parish:
Logansport, IN – May 4th, 2014
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