Jesus let them feel.
They were honest.
"We 'had' hope," they say.
He gives them a reason
to resurrect that hope.
+ Danté Stewart
I like to collect pieces of artwork based on the Emmaus story from which we get the name of our parish in Worcester, Massachusetts. Some of my favorite pieces are included on the Visio Divina page on Emmaus City's website.
Along with Ukrainian Ivanka Demchuk's iconic "Road to Emmaus," another one of my most recent favorite pieces of art is "The Road to Emmaus" by Artist Gracie Morbitzer-Collins featured in her book, The Modern Saints, and at the top of this post.
The artistry and vitality of Gracie's style matches perfectly with Danté Stewart's incendiary writing in his memoir with a chapter entitled, "Back Roads," where he brings the Emmaus story to life again in vivd detail. Discovering both these verbal and visual works of art within days of each other inspired this post. The colorful scene and story ignited fresh faith in me, and I hope they do the same for you today.
The Fire
When I open up this old Bible ...
I am suddenly surrounded by
preachers and mothers and friends
and saints and sinners who
tried to love and live well —
while failing, learning, and
trying again. ...
These words carried both
weight and worth and worship
and worry and whatever "w" words
you can describe — words that
put back together again when you,
your body, and your country
are shattered.
Faith Is Sometimes Giving Up
To Begin Again
I think a lot about the disciples
on the road to Emmaus,
those two who had lost faith
in a moment of great struggle.
I have often heard this story
as a story of the triumph
of the meeting, then rushing back
to Jerusalem to tell the good word.
It has been told as a story
that moves quickly beyond pain,
rushing to have some sort of
So much of what we hear of
Christian stories wanted to move
and rush to Sunday,
the good news of resurrection
on the other side of death,
power on the other side of pain.
That is indeed part of the story,
but there is more.
They had been with Jesus;
they had seen Him.
making both wood and bodies come alive,
dance, shout for joy,
become beautiful again.
They had also seen
those same hands nailed
and held to the bloody platform
as his dark flesh was broken.
They had witnessed poor
sharing laughter,
probably showing off their little toys,
knowing Jesus would have time.
They had also witnessed him
like a wounded child,
helpless, in danger, hurt.
That's what they witnessed,
a lynching.
Lonely. Terrified.
Maybe one of them threw up
from the sickness of witnessing
Sort of like we witness them
on our cellphones.
That churning of the stomach
as you see someone pass
from life to death.
But somehow,
by some miraculous force,
they keep walking.
It may not mean much to us,
but witnessing such complex trauma
does something to the heart,
the psyche.
We know how hard it is to
hold out hope when
the innocent and nonviolent are met
by the empire's sword,
its brutal logic of terror and violence
unleashed upon those who simply
want to live, be free, and
build a life for themselves
and their children.
On the road to Emmaus,
Jesus appeared.
Showing up in a shadow
of a memory.
It is then that they finally see
that they've been speaking to God.
It is then that their weary hearts
burn with joy.
And then Jesus leaves.
After all of that, he leaves.
And they go back,
at once to Jerusalem,
never the same.
They now understood
that they need to lose hope
in order to gain it.
The hope was not in a theory
or in a specific kind of event,
but in a person,
in the living,
in the struggle.
We have known that,
and have given up faith in the belief
that things will eventually get better,
a sort of triumphal note
that takes one's mind away from
such inhumane violence.
But their faith was not a destination;
it was a discipline. ...
I have moved beyond the often
triumphal idea of faith as
future-only, as progression
that doesn't upend power and
optimism that does not honestly
read history and our present moment,
and when I did,
faith became life giving and
miraculously normal.
Faith is as normal and as powerful
as choosing to keep on living in
the face of white supremacist brutality,
economic instability,
political polarization,
religious nationalism, and
the ongoing struggle
of the distance between
faith, Jesus, and
our lives in the present.
It is as normal as
being honest with the world
as it is.
It is as normal as
imagining the world
as it can become.
It is as normal as the disciples
on the road, losing so much,
but having the courage
to begin again,
having the courage to return
to the places of terror and violence,
with the good news that the world
as it is is not the way that
it always will be ...
We are holding on to Jesus
while also living with our
fear, trauma, doubts, and hope.
Our story and the story of Jesus
are bound together in
faith, hope, love, and community.
As a preacher and writer,
my role is to chronicle the struggle,
to give voice to liberation and faith,
to make pain and anger known,
to keep hope alive, and
to join our people in
our long walk to freedom —
to our vision of a better world.
Faith
— honest, deep, vulnerable faith,
as Baldwin writes —
is about growing up,
becoming more loving,
more honest,
and more vulnerable.
It is facing ourselves and
what we desire.
It is finding a way to
begin each day.
It is not that we have
the right answer, or all
the right solutions.
It is that we have found
Faith Is Finding Home Again
+ Danté Stewart,
"Fire"
&
"Back Roads,"
pgs. 3-4, 121-124
Shoutin' in the Fire
With anticipation and joy,
Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan
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