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No it isn't a hand made version of the Swiss national flag. Much more mundane than that. This might require a more imaginative hermeneutic. It's masking tape on a carpet. It was stuck there for a reason. Not to measure, not to tack down trailing cables. It was to tell people where to stand.

When our children and young people are helping us with our worship service, it's a mixture of careful preparation and winging it. The mix depends on who has been learning their lines, practising the music, or remembers the words of the song, or who just turned up on the day, and who had time for breakfast; usually the speed of thought in improvisation by the stressed out Sunday School staff is also essential to pull it off. 

On the platform are the props, pieces of costume, musical instruments, and space for the performance. And at strategic places, white marker crosses that let each performer know where to stand. And yes, being someone who notices such things, this one was obvious.

Advent, Easter and Harvest are definite calendar dates for these risk filled liturgical interludes. But time and again our worship rises in praise, gladness and deepened love for God because our children and young adults got out of bed, learned enough to make it work, cared enough to stand in front of all the rest of us, and gave us their gift.

Nobody is there as a performance critic; at least not if they have come to speak with God and hear God speak. In the mix of well rehearsed or forgotten lines, the Gospel is proclaimed. In songs that need a bit of work still, and through Bible stories and readings that could be delivered better, we nevertheless hear the good news. And so by amateur dramatics in the idiom of those who are still learning, and who can teach the rest of us a thing or two, we are drawn into the Story that interprets our story.

It was an Easter morning that I took the picture of the white tape on the red carpet. The dramatised story from John's Gospel was all about running to empty tombs, arguing about what really happened (advanced hermeneutics this was not), men thinking they knew everything and women knowing, that whatever else men knew, men never knew when to shut up, and those meetings with Jesus when Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Peter came out the other side of sorrow.

So on Easter morning, our young storytellers and minstrels and dramatists, standing in the place marked by a cross, told us the Story that is our story, and sent us away to live into the story of a world reconciled to God by a love from all eternity. 

I've always been fascinated by the geometry of botany. The precise arrangements of petals and stamens combined with colour and light, provide an entire world of beauty in one flower head. One of the best ways of looking closely at a flower is to stop, and look, closely. 

Yesterday morning, leaving the house for our exercise walk, I stopped to look at a small anemone growing in our front border. It was breezy so it was moving around. I only had my phone and I stood there bending down waiting for the breeze to calm down so I could take a close up photo.

The picture here is the result. 

Only when it was downloaded did I notice the sunlit leaf above the flower head. I could look for the rest of my life and not find such a coincidence of colour, light and shadow. But unmistakably, there is the shape of a cross.

So of course the photo has to come into this series on seeing the cross everywhere. But I have already chosen the photos, and thought about what to write about some of them. This one is an interruption, an entirely accidental by product of my focusing on a flower. And once you see the Cross you can't unsee it. Which makes it both an unlooked for bonus or an inconvenient gatecrasher. Not often a flower is photo-bombed by a leaf.

More seriously, because I do take seriously those momentary epiphanies of God's grace, and I do try to attend to those intimations of Presence, when we notice God's fingerprints on his creation. More seriously, then, purple is the liturgical colour leading towards Easter. Purple is also the colour of the robe that draped the humiliated body of Christ. The juxtaposition of a purple flower and a leaf engraved by sunlight with the shape of a cross, I found a deeply moving discovery. Call it a moment of revelation, when the deep truth of who God is clarifies in the fusion of two images, and in the midst of all that is happening, the imprint of the Father's love.  

The cross is the hallmark of God's love, the authenticating signature written across Creation. The link of that thought with Julian of Norwich is irresistible: 

And in this vision he showed me a little thing, the size of a hazel-nut, lying in the palm of my hand, and to my mind's eye it was as round as any ball. I looked at it and thought, "What can this be?" And the answer came to me, "It is all that is made". I wondered how it could last, for it was so small I thought it might suddenly disappear. And the answer in my mind was, "It lasts and will last for ever because God loves it; and in the same way everything exists through the love of God".

And as if by intended accident, the coincidence of light and shadow in my photo, the telltale fingerprint of God discreetly impressed on his Creation:

"In this little thing I saw three attributes: the first is that God made it, the second is that he loves it, the third is that God cares for it."

For a good number of years I have had to hand a small cross, carved from olive wood. It's made to fit comfortably while being held in hands clasped in prayer. 

It was given to me at a time in my life when there were more burdens than could easily be borne. That happens to all of us sometimes, when the emotional cost of being who you are, and the outgoings of personal investment in the lives of others threatens to overwhelm. 

For some it's the incremental demands of the job, or recurring anxiety about family, or the advent of threatened illness, or chronic financial pressures with no easy way out. It doesn't really matter now what my own situation was.

What matters is that one day, sitting at my desk, trying to work out a way to manage impossibly conflicting demands, a friend and colleague came in and said very little. But he placed the palm cross in my hand, saying it might help.

Think about that. How could a small hand carved piece of olive wood, sourced from Palestine, and albeit thoughtfully handed to me in a gesture of kindness I have never forgotten, how could it help? What I needed was a change of circumstances, a lessening of load, or even, God help us, a couple of brilliant ideas of how to fix what I knew deep down I couldn't fix? By the way, "God help us", however pious or defiant the tone, is a prayer.

The number of times I've held that gift in my hand since! You see it isn't the wood, or its shape. But the kindness that gave it, and the originating thought that sent someone looking for it because they were thinking about me, and the unpushy way it was given, – these represent, as a sacrament, exactly what the cross stands for in hearts that have come to understand it. 

Olive wood, carved by skilled and practised hands, bought and given away by other hands, and then placed into my hand, a symbol of those other hands so long ago, "hands that flung stars into space, to cruel nails surrendered…" At a precise time in my life, my own inner suffering was acknowledged by another, and brought into relation with the suffering of God in Christ.

Long before that over worked and lazy cliche, "There are no words", that gesture of kindness demonstrated the kind of care and understanding that make words redundant, and still says the right thing. "And it came to pass", in that moment of gift, that gift of a moment, the equilibrium shifted, and I held in my hand a word from God.

Through those difficult times I began to hold this gift of a cross when praying, and especially when silent because words would not come.The inner shift in my own mind and heart in the days that followed made it possible to work through some of the most difficult weeks in my life. There is something unashamedly and unequivocally Christian about sharing in the sufferings of Christ, and knowing Christ shares all there is to bear of our own suffering.

A hand carved cross, clasped in hands that are praying, is a confession of faith in the God who in Christ, has come to know, eternally know, the broken heart of humanity. All of this is hard to explain. But Paul knew something about what I'm trying to say. "For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows." (2 Cor.1.5) Yes, it's a hard verse. But then, it's a hard life, sometimes. God help us!  

It was a Saturday morning and we were on a mission. We needed a new mattress so headed for our favourite shop. Previously the approach was straightforward. Lie on it, find out if it's comfortable; decide if you want firm, semi-orthopaedic, or soft; try to stay within the budget; buy it. 

But oh no. There was a new smart bed, all wired up with sensors that read your body's position, weight and impression on the mattress and the clever programme told the sales person what was needed to accommodate my particular body. And don't worry about it being for two people; it would read the same data for Sheila and recommend a bespoke mattress specific to the needs of each. Eh?  The price elicited a quick no thank you, and we looked at and tested the available ready made mattresses in another favourite shop, chose one, and arranged delivery.

You wouldn't think that scenario would lead to deep theological reflection. But standing waiting for the order processing, and the paperwork I looked down at the floor, took out my phone and took a photo. Breaking in on the thought processes of the past half hour, the familiar symbol of the cross. 

The tiles had curled at the corners; someone had effected a quick repair with tape. Except that tape had been down there for a while, and had been walked on by countless feet, as people went about their business, from the sublime of choosing a mattress, to the ridiculous of having a mattress chosen for you by a computer. 

Over time, this image has grown on me. I've thought about those feet scuffing and wearing the tape away over weeks. Trainers and boots, sandals and high heels, people getting on with their lives of working and buying, coming and going, talking and thinking, laughing and maybe crying. And all of them trampling unawares, over these four tiles, joined by tape for their safety.

"If anyone will come after me let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." Discipleship is about feet, and the cross. To follow Jesus is to walk, to travel, to go where he goes, and live the Christ life. The connection between feet and faith has a long history. It's the call to walk into whatever future is ahead of us, and being willing to carry the cross by following faithfully after Jesus.

That trampled floor and worn out cross is a reminder, that we will find Christ in the ordinary, even the whimsical ordinary of a worn out floor.   

Oh, let me see Thy footmarks,
  And in them plant mine own;
My hope to follow truly
  Is in Thy strength alone.

I finish with a quotation that has haunted and inspired me since I first read it: 

“He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lakeside,
He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same words: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.”

(Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 

On a dark November afternoon I walked down to the village of Skene, about three miles round journey. By three o'clock it was getting dark.

Early on when this building was being completed, I had noticed the juxtaposition of the cross and behind it the pylons and power lines.

But in the gathering gloom of winter mist, the light radiated into the darkness, highlighting the sharp-edged shape of the cross.

Overshadowed by pylons which were themselves cruciform, the connection wasn't difficult to make.

The cross, a symbol of weakness, suffering and death, but behind it the very power that enables it to shine.

The cross, combining in itself darkness and light, and even that deep darkness cannot eclipse the light.

Darkness takes many forms; death, suffering, depression, fear, cruelty, violence, hatred, injustice. These are all abstract nouns, but the concrete realities add up to so much that afflicts humanity and the life we share on this earth. 

What makes this cross specific, is our ability to see in our own life, and in the lives of all our fellow creatures, what it is that diminishes, crushes and afflicts human life. The Cross is the place to which we bring the suffering of humanity, our own and the world's pain.

Kneeling as those who do not have the answers, and sometimes can't even articulate the questions, we look at the light of God's love that shines out into that darkness, gloom and greyness. And we pray, for the healing of our world, and the healing of our times, and the healing of our hearts.

For Christians, power should never be about coercion, competition, domination or subjugation of others. The cross is the negation of all ideologies of power over others.

The power of God's love in Christ shines in unbroken patience, determined purpose, faithful persistence, redemptive mercy, and an infinite hopefulness that from all eternity, has ever been self-giving and infinite in creative intent.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." 

(This is the first in a series of reflections on the Cross. Each one will focus on an image of the cross based on photos I've taken. The photo above shows Westhill Community Church front, exterior.)  

We are still in the Easter cycle, and we are still in lock down. Passion week is not so much an emotional roller-coaster, as one long descent into the abyss of human horrors only coming to an end with the death of the crucified. Even then, the silence of Holy Saturday was its own further and deeper abyss of meaninglessness, silence and hope's terminus.

Until Easter morning. When in the words of the old hymn. "Up from the grave he arose, with a mighty triumph o'er his foes…." The resurrection is the triumph of love over hate, the hands of peace no longer stilled by the violating nails, hope breaking like the dawn, dismantling the destructive machinery of despair, and, yes, life overcoming death and daring death to deny its own demise, "O grave, where is your victory?"

The wonderful Tony Campolo once preached a sermon which used the repeated refrain, a kind of resurrection slogan for folk feeling the weight of suffering, despair and life getting too hard, "It's Friday, but Sunday is comin'!" It's a brilliant rhetorical rejoicing in anticipation of resurrection. 

But. The Easter cycle, with its Passion, reaches beyond the resurrection. In a world where resurrection happened, people still die, suffering is still a given of human existence, and there are times when hope is hard to come by.  Sunday or not, Friday's shadow is long and still falls across the road we have to travel.

The triumph of the resurrection is not a Christian licence to print the currency of triumphalism. Hope is not an exalted form of denial. It is a form of trust that defies despair; hope is a form of truthfulness about the realities we live through, but insists on the equal reality of Christ crucified and risen; hope is therefore faith in the love that suffered and died for a broken and fallen world, and is not defeated. Note the present tense – is not defeated.

We live our lives in the shadow of the cross. "It's Friday…" I know Sunday is coming, but I also know that Friday too is in the present tense, and in the life we have to live we will know times when we are carrying our own cross, and staggering under its load. Resurrection does not cancel the reality, cost and depth of Christ's suffering, it vindicates it, redeems it, and sets free into God's world, the light of God's own power as God speaks again the creation words of life, hope and peace.

For a while now I have collected images of the cross from all sorts of places. Unexpected coincidences of shape and light, moments when I am surprised by what comes into view, brief epiphanies of the man of sorrows, "by whose stripes we are healed. I may do a series of brief posts using some of those visual encounters when a cruciform image became a sacrament of surprise, and a moment of prayer

The photo is from one of our walks the other night. The lock down imposed by the Covid 19 crisis keeps us within a limited orbit from home. At the end of the road which passes by the cemetery where our daughter Aileen rests, there is this old broken down fence. Forget the aesthetics of church furniture, crosses carved in wood or shining cast brass and bronze. Broken concrete held together by rusting metal and tangled wires, strewn stones from a broken down dyke, an image as bleak as it is useless. 

At dusk, looking to the hills, heart sad and still sore with grief, and facing all the uncertainties of the current pandemic, there is this eyesore at the turning point of our walk.  Like the One who died there, "there is no beauty that we should desire it." But in these post-Easter days, as we live in a world made strange, and hear a daily litany of suffering and deaths, images like this matter. They matter when we are humbled to the point of tears at the utterly unselfish love shown by all the healers and carers in our hospitals, care homes and throughout our communities. It is images like this wrecked fence, broken into a cross-shaped contortion, that remind us what suffering love looks like. It's Friday.

But Sunday is coming. The resurrection did not reverse the suffering of Jesus. The nail prints and the wounded side are there as evidence of how far the love of God will go in bearing human pain. Our own suffering, of grief and anxiety, of depression and pain, of weakness and all the losses that come on our finite humanity as our life passes, are all alike drawn into the heart of God in Christ. God's love is cruciform.

The unknown writer of that difficult New Testament book Hebrews, written to Christians facing an uncertain future, gave us some words that might help us understand better our own suffering, and how the suffering of Jesus helps us:  ^"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathise with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." (Hebrews 4.12-16)

The resurrection is the guarantee of "grace to help us in time of need."  

("Bennachie: For Aileen.") Tapestry designed in memory of our daughter Aileen who loved this view of the hills.)

When the world around us changes rapidly, and beyond recognition, it helps if we can hold on to something familiar. These days though, our world has become strange and unfamiliar and the landscape around us more threatening than reassuring.

These past few weeks we’ve very quickly had to get used to the reality that the world is not in a good place. Yet our lives must go on. Our journey continues, even as we try to discern the presence of God in all that’s going on?

Psalm 121 was written for pilgrims heading off to Jerusalem, hundreds of miles away through desert, mountains and bandit country. It was sung by anxious travellers as they set off on a journey full of risks, many of them unseen but real. Here are some questions to ask as you imagine those scared but determined pilgrims: What was it like for pilgrims setting out on the long dangerous journey to Jerusalem, hoping to get there safely to worship God at the Temple? How would they know the way? Could they trust the guides? Would there be bandits on the road? What about wild animals, landslides, or sunstroke in a desert with no water?  Where would help come from in life threatening emergencies? This Psalm answers questions like these.

“I look to the hills, where does help come from? Help comes from the Lord.” Faith isn’t permission to close our eyes to danger. Nor is faith reckless about taking risks. But on the long journey of our lives, as we look to the hills where danger, risk and trouble might await us, faith is knowing the Lord is to be trusted.

Psalm 121 is a faith tonic. It was prayed before the pilgrims left on the journey, and it was sung on arrival at the Temple. In between, there was the journey, long, scary, far from home, and no guarantees of safety. Who can they rely on in a strange land, tramping along an unknown road, passing through dangerous mountains? Same answer. The Lord. Help comes from Him.

“He will not let your foot slip” – think of rocky screes like the Cairngorms, and walking in sandals or even bare feet. But the Lord guides your footsteps and will not let your foot slip.

At night, when sleeping round a campfire with somebody else keeping watch, don’t worry. Even if they fall asleep, the Lord doesn’t nod off and leave you unguarded. “The Lord neither slumbers nor sleeps…”

Yes the sun will be hot, relentless, and drain you of energy and hydration, but the Lord is like the parasol over your garden table, you won’t get sunstroke. Even at night when the moon was thought to affect people’s minds and emotions, the Psalmist says, God has that covered too.

“The Lord will keep you from all harm” – he will watch over your life.” We never walk alone, whatever the landscape. Whatever the dangers and risks and troubles, the Lord is our keeper. That doesn’t mean nothing can happen to us; it does mean nothing can happen that separates us from the love of Christ.

“The Lord watches over your comings and goings”, out and in, all the way there and all the way back. This is a Psalm to be said or prayed or sung, especially when the journey ahead scares us. I’d like to suggest we take it as our prayer for this week, and beyond. I’ve included it below in the words of the old Scottish Paraphrase.

What this Psalm does is lift our eyes to the hills, and then beyond the hills to the Lord who made heaven and earth. Praying this so long ago psalm lifts our eyes and our heart beyond our fears about the pandemic, and our anxieties about the journey ahead which will take us over scary territory, in a world now made strange. Remember, “Help comes from the Lord”

The instincts of Israel were to trust and to depend on the God who promised to be there for them, and with them. As Christians we have come to know this same God revealed in Christ, crucified and risen. Ours is a faith whose foundation pillars are plunged deep in love that is eternal, grace that is sufficient for our needs, and an everlasting mercy underwritten by the power and purpose of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In coming days and weeks we will all lift your eyes to the hills, and wonder where help comes from. Listen for the answer, “Help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.” And daily pray this Psalm, about the “Lord who watches over your coming and going, both now and evermore”,

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up."

Sometimes the Apostle Paul writes one liners as if he was looking for a new T shirt slogan! When it comes to having a good argument, Paul's your man. He was never going to be a stand up comedian, but he had an instinct for the knock out punch line. 

"Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up." So that puts all the know-alls in their place. But wait a minute. Paul isn't having a go at knowledge. He's more concerned with what we do with what we know, and with what our knowledge does to us.

My guess is that we have all met the arrogant always right person, somebody who knows a lot but thinks they know more than they do. And especially thinks they know more than you do. Which might be true. But that isn't the issue. If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, an inflated sense of our own cleverness is hardly risk free.

Paul drops his one liner into an argument that was dividing opinion in Corinth, and was dividing the fellowship in Corinth. The issue was whether it was right or wrong to eat meat that had previously been sacrificed to idols. The whole passage is a lesson in ego reduction.

"Concerning food that has been offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love build up. If anyone thinks that he or she knows something, that one does not know as he or she ought to know. If someone loves God, that person is known by him." (I Cor 8.1-3)

In Christian spirituality and ethics, love is the defining quality of life, behaviour and relationships. However knowledgeable and experienced a Christian is, they only half know what they know, if their knowledge doesn't build up and strengthen the life of the Christian community. Those who think they know better than others, also think their knowledge makes them better than others; they simply haven't learned the first principle of Christian knowing.

"Knowledge puff up, but love builds up."

"We all have knowledge" is Paul's way of breaking the monopoly claimed by the super spiritual would be post-graduates in Christian knowledge. What matters though, is not what we know, but whether we love God and are known by God. Love is itself the deepest form of knowing. Those who have come to know Christ have been recreated and renewed by the self-giving love of God and the formative dynamic of the Holy Spirit. They know God and are known by God. They build one another up in love.

In the life of the Christian community there will always be occasions of difference, arguments and discussions and contested opinions. Often there will be those who claim the high ground, "We have knowledge…" – often with the claim that their position is the 'biblical' position. But Paul says of the Christian community then and now, "We all have knowledge." The real issue isn't what we know; it is whether we are known by God and know God. That knowledge is based on a relationship of love, we love God and are acknowledged by God. 

"Knowledge puff up, but love builds up."

Paul isn't setting knowledge against love; he is bringing them into their proper relation. Real Christian knowledge is embedded in the love relationship between God and the believer. We know because we are known; we love because we are loved. Knowledge can become detached, a form of intellectual control that feeds the ego; knowledge puffs up.

By contrast, love is a way of knowing the other person. That mutual knowledge and love, of each other and of God, enables the Christian community to deal with difference. To know we are loved by God, and to love God, is to know we are known, and to understand that we are understood. "Love builds up."   

   

A lot of humour and imagination is hidden behind various memes and photos circulating on Facebook.

Amongst them this picture of a rhinoceros on a treadmill.

The caption is one of those life coaching motivational one liners.

Except, if I was a rhinoceros why would I want to be a unicorn?

Beauty is not the prerogative of those who think they are beautiful; nor is beauty defined by the cliches, images and prejudices of a self-obsessed culture.

Dreams are those stories we tell ourselves about how we would like our world or ourselves to be.

That's OK. What isn't OK is a dream imposed by others' expectations.

Dreams like that are built on guilt, undermined self-esteem, and someone else's image of what beauty and fulfilment look like.

In this picture the rhinoceros is real, the unicorn is a fantasy. 

In any case a beautiful, healthy rhinoceros will always be the distilled essence of a rhinoceros, it would be a visual display of rhinocerosness at its best.

Instead of this meme reinforcing our already felt inadequacy, it's good to subvert it, and be proud of our identity, image, dignity and right to be who you are. 

This meme and its slogan encourage us to attempt the impossible, to live a fantasy.

Better to live the real life of a rhinoceros with contented gratitude, than the impossible fantasy of a unicorn trying to convince itself it is more than a badly hung poster. 

The Emmaus Supper

“Well, at least nobody died.”

That flippant life coaching quip sometimes works,

usually by minimising the trouble we’re in.

Trouble is, this time somebody did die.

 

We met Jesus a few years ago. He was a life changer.

The way he lived made us want to be near him,

the things he said turned all the politics and good manners upside down.

The last to be first, to serve not be served,

love your enemies, lust the doorway to adultery,

peace-making as family likeness to God, losing life to find it.

 

His laughter came from some well of living joy deep inside him;

he looked at people, not through them;

he listened, understood, and paid attention.

 

He gazed into the heart of who we are, and wasn’t put off,

and for all our fears and uncertainties, he never once walked away from us.

So yes, we were prepared to follow him.

To build the Kingdom of God, to take up the cross and follow,

To not be anxious about food and clothes and instead trust God.

We walked and learned and travelled and lived the way he showed us,

And when we failed and made mistakes, he understood.

 

Then we realised he was serious.

He was going to Jerusalem and he would be put to death.

Jesus had become scary, unpredictable,

way too extreme for his own good.

That outburst in the Temple, riding into Jerusalem like some self-appointed prophet,

Arguing and criticising and judging and publicly contradicting powerful people.

He knew perfectly well our faith Leaders wouldn’t let it go,

And he knew that once Rome was involved,

it would need to be settled, one way or another.

 

So they crucified him. Finish. End.

Rome trades on finality, no one survives crucifixion.

“It’s finished!” Famous last words of Jesus.

And he wasn’t wrong. It was finished. It is finished!

 

So what in heaven’s name were we to do next?

You give up your life and family, you go walkabout with Jesus,

you build your hopes on a new world of God’s Kingdom,

of freedom, justice, peace and new beginnings.

And what have we left? Nothing.

Jerusalem wasn’t safe anymore.

 

So Cleopas and I decided to travel to Emmaus.

Walking might get life moving again, give us some impetus,

some idea of a way forward, some hope.

Cleopas was usually clear headed and positive,

he’d know what to do .

 

But Cleopas was as shattered as the rest of us.

Confusion and fear, sadness and regret,

broken dreams and emotional pain,

minds closed to hopefulness

by the trauma of already shattered hope.

 

We talked as we walked,  

because talking about things somehow eased the pressure of hurt,

by talking we recognise and own that deep human need we all have,

to make sense of what messes up life,

to rewrite the pages torn from our story,  

to put into words what we fear can't ever be fully described.

 

Maybe it’s just knowing another heart feels something similar,

that the loss and hurt aren't borne alone,

that by talking we might salvage some sense and purpose

out of what has wrecked a hoped for future.

 

And then, as if heaven sent, a stranger caught up with us.

We were glad of the company, and another voice.

Someone who could confirm the horror, share the shock,

sympathise and understand and give us another perspective.

 

But he didn’t know what we were talking about.

So we explained about Jesus the prophet, (how could he not know?)

The chief priests and the Romans, the trials and the crucifixion,

And our sorrow, our emptiness, our despair,

and that mixture of resentful anger and lost love

that is grief at its most bewildering and fear at its most disabling.

We told him about the burial and the waiting,

and the women in denial with their stupid fairy-tale endings.

 

But he said it was us, we were the stupid ones,

We were the ones in denial, we who couldn’t see and wouldn’t believe.

He looked us in the face,

and spoke out of depths beyond our imagining,

“Foolish and slow of heart to believe all the prophets

Have said about the glory of the suffering Christ.”

 

And as he talked and explained, we began to feel strangely safe,

His words began to make sense of the whole, tragic, holy mess.

Maybe there was more. Maybe it wasn’t all gone.

He seemed to know the heart of things; and to know the world by heart.

 

He sounded just like Jesus, the way he said the words,

The tough kindness, that faraway look that isn’t fantasy,

but is more real than even that aching, empty space

that used to be meaning and purpose and, God help us, hope.

All hope needs is a promise, a gesture towards a different future,

and a trusted presence to take us there.

 

By the time we got to Emmaus he stopped talking and began walking away.

We asked him to stay, we had to keep him talking.

His words flickered and flamed with truth.

We could feel the energy, see new possibility by their light,

they were words that reconstructed our world.

He told us our story as he told us God’s story,

and he told us the story of Jesus as only Jesus could have told it.

And our hearts burned within us with new possibility.

 

It’s getting dark we said, stay with us.

You must be tired we said, come, stay with us and rest.

You must be hungry and thirsty, stay and have supper with us.

It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us, your friends.

 

And he did. He was our guest, but he acted like the host.

And when we were seated at the table, he took the bread and broke it –

And once again like that broken loaf, our world fell apart,

But this time the pieces fell into place – It was Him!

He is alive! The women were right! He kept his promise!

He lived his word because he lives and is life itself.

 

He had said we were foolish not to believe;

But how foolish we only just realised.

 

To the light of the World we said,

“It’s getting dark, stay with us.”

 

To the One who says to the heavy laden “Come unto me”

We said, “You must be tired, come stay with us and rest.”

 

To the bread of life, and to the living water,

We said, “You must be hungry and thirsty, stay and have supper with us."

 

To the one who is the Resurrection and the Life,

who laid down his life for sheer love of his friends,

who walked the darkest places of sin and judgement and suffering

we said, “It isn’t safe to travel alone, stay with us.”

 

That blessed broken bread! That blessed bread broken,

as only he ever broke it, given as only he could give!

No wonder he knew the story of Jesus inside out.

No wonder we felt ourselves understood.

No wonder the old love rekindled.

 

And as soon as we knew it was him, he vanished!

But by then we knew. That broken bread,

And the way it was broken, and the words that blessed it,

It was Him alright, and because it was him, it’s all right.