ESCAPING TO EMMAUS

If the truth were told, there have been, and perhaps still are, times in the life of each one of us when we just want to run away from it all – “all” being job, family, responsibilities. We’ve had it up to here with life as it is and need a break. We want to escape and, perhaps, leave no forwarding address. Dream on.

Yet the further truth is is that there are times when we really do need to get away from it all, escape the present, if only to get a breather, even for a short period of time. For it is only in being able to get away that we can make some sense out of the present because at present the present makes little or no sense. It is overwhelming.

Such was the situation with those two disciples of Jesus after he was crucified. They had staked their lives on his being the Messiah, a political one, of course. But even if his messiahship was of a different kind than they had hoped, it now did not matter. He was dead. Yes, there were reports that some women had been to his tomb and reported back to their colleagues that they saw angels who told them that he had been raised from the dead. But you know how emotional women can be!

What these two men needed at this moment in their lives was to get away from it all. And that is what they did. They decided to escape to Emmaus, a place where there were several hot springs. A few dips in these springs just might help clear their heads and help them decide what was next for their lives. They could not do that in Jerusalem. It was too chaotic. So off they went to Emmaus.

As the story goes, they never made it to Emmaus. They only got a little way down the road until they met up with Jesus whom they did not recognize but who tried to explain to them exactly what happened back there in Jerusalem. My suspicion is that they still did not get it. But they got enough of what he was trying to tell them that a trip to Emmaus now seemed like a waste of time. They needed to get back to Jerusalem. And they did.

Would that you and I, when we find ourselves in a situation where we are overwhelmed with life, Jesus would run into us as he did for those two disciples and help us make some sense out of everything. Yet, even if that would happen, we would still need to get to our own Emmaus, sit for a while in the warm waters and try to get a handle on what we have just heard.

It is so easy for us to allow daily events to control our lives. No, we cannot escape our responsibilities, overwhelming that they sometimes are. But unless we make and take the time to escape to a quiet place to relax, to think, to pray, our life will only become even more burdensome. Jesus always made the time to escape from the crowds because he knew he could not fulfill his ministry if he was exhausted by daily life. Neither can we. We need to find our own Emmaus to which we can escape.

IT NEVER WAS/IS/WILL BE THE SAME

There are events in the lives of each and every one of us when everything changes, when nothing will be the same again. Some of these life-changing events are wonderful: graduation from college, marriage, a move to a new part of the country – the list is endless. On the other hand, some of these life-changing events are not so wonderful. In fact, they can be frightening: a cancer diagnosis, the loss of a job, the breakup of a marriage. Again: an endless list.

What we do with these life-changing events, how we respond, is what is important. And respond we must. We have no other choice. We can rejoice with the good and lament with the bad, but we respond. And we respond by moving on with our lives. Our lives are now changed forever. They will never be the same again.

The euphoria from joyful events eventually dies down. As they say, the honeymoon does not last forever. On the other hand, the sadness that comes from painful changes and the pain itself does not mean that our life is over. We live on, changed to be sure, but we live on. We can wallow in our misery and pain, but we still must move on. Our lives will never be the same again.

But they never were. Life-changing events are rare, few and far-between. Thank God for that or else it would be difficult to even survive.  Psychologists tell us that one life-changing event at a time is difficult enough. It causes us great anxiety to our psyche let alone what it does to our body itself. Two such events can be overwhelming.

Our lives change every day. No two days are alike. They may be very similar but they are never identical. We will never repeat yesterday and we will never repeat today and tomorrow will be different than any day we have lived to date. Sometimes we forget that truth. We are a changed person each day. Granted, we may not be able to perceive the change, but we are changed.

Over the long run the imperceptible daily changes can morph into a significant change in who we are and how we live. Crash diets may work but they do not last. We are not suddenly a different person the day after our marriage as the day before. Life changes take time, often more time than we would wish that they would take. But when give ourselves the time to change, to adapt to the new day, the new life, the new way; when we do that, we grow.

“It will never be the same again,” we may lament. But it never was. We cannot freeze frame the joyful moment and live it forever nor can we excise the bad moment as if it never happened. We simply move on to the next moment and the next and the next dealing with what now is as best we can with the help of God’s grace and the love and support of one another.

JUST DON'T SAY "JUST"

My favorite Preacher, The Rev. Will B. Dunn, is sitting with a parishioner, discussing the foibles of life. The young man says to Will, "They make it sound so easy. ’Just say "No",' 'Just Do It!'" Will responds, "Never trust a culture whose commandments start with the word 'just.'"

Arlena had a professor in graduate school who forbade his students to use the word "just." Try writing a paper sometime, especially a paper in philosophy, as was her situation, without using the word "just." It just isn't easy! Try praying sometime -- or at least listen to the TV preachers who do our praying for us: "I just want to thank you, Lord. I just want to give you all the praise and glory. I just...." and on and on, every phrase modified by that word. We build up our lists of "just" phrases until we have a whole litany of things we just want to do.

Well, if we just want to do it, just want to say it, then let's just do it and say it and get on with it. But it is more than that, is it not?  Life is never as simple nor as easy as we make it.  Any commandment that begins with the word "just" is like any commandment that does not. Commandments are easy to make and not easy to follow. "Don't kill" is as easy to assert as "Just don't kill" – and just as difficult to keep.

Yes, we would all like life to be easy, simplified. We would like to be told that the solution to our problems can be found in one simple phrase, action, responsibility. But even if we could make it all that simple, it would not be. It never was meant to be. God never intended it to be, not in this life, anyway. Life is a struggle, a struggle to do that which we know we should do and not do that which we know we should not. But to do this or not do that is not just a matter of "just doing it" or "just not doing it." There are so many variables and so many temptations. It takes work.

If we want an example of how we are to live out our daily lives, maybe we need to remember how Jesus began his ministry. He went off to the desert to prepare himself. He fasted and he prayed. He disciplined himself. And then when he was at his most vulnerable – hungry, tired and weak – he was tempted to sell out. All he had to do was "Just say 'no.”  And he did.

But it did not come easy and it was not easy, not even for him. And throughout his ministry he was always seeking time away to prepare himself for the next time he was placed in a situation that demanded an immediate "yes" or "no" or some other response. And he was ready, prepared, because he knew ahead of time that one never just does anything.

If you and I are to even become partially successful at living out the demands of our faith, we have to work at it. Those demands may be simplified into "Just do" or "Just don't do" phrases. But they are so much more. We may never take the "just" out of our life. But what we need to add is the spiritual and physical discipline that proceeds it so that we can (just) do it.

THE WORLD, THE FLESH AND THE DEVIL

When I was growing up and going to Sunday School, my classmates and I were warned about the world, the flesh and the devil. Young as we were, we wondered what was so bad about the world – remember, this was long before instant news of any shape or form. Besides, we didn’t listen to the news any way, Cold War or not. Further, we had no idea why we needed to be warned about the flesh because we knew even less about the flesh than we did about the world.

But we knew about the devil. Oh, did we know about the devil. In fact we knew so much about know bad the devil could be that we capitalized the name: Devil. Not that any one of us had ever experienced the devil that is. Thus, when The Exorcist came out in the early 1970’s and I was ordained, I had several parishioners, young adults, scared out of their wits about the devil/Devil.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Even when I was studying moral theology in seminary, we were warned again about the world, the flesh and the devil not only trying to control our lives but the lives of the people we were going to serve upon ordination. By then I had a better understanding about these evil tempters in my life even if I were no longer afraid of them.

What I came to understand and realize was that the world was neither bad nor good. It was and is what it what it was then and is now: where we live and move and have our being, as one of the prayers of the Church puts it. Yes, there is evil out there in the world tempting us to succumb to it. We could avoid that evil by not going out into the world. One way to do that would be to join a monastery and hole up for the rest of our life.

That was and is not me and that is not most of us. In fact the greatest danger to my moral undoing is not the world nor the devil. It is I myself. I am my own worst enemy: me, in my own flesh and bones. The world, as bad and as tempting as it is, does not make me do what I know I should not do. I do it. And trying to blame my failings on the world, or worse, on the devil is both a cop out and wrong.

That does not mean that we should not be wary of the enticements of the world. That would be foolish, and in the end, our downfall – as I have discovered, as I suspect every one of us has discovered. We are not as strong as we think we are; and when we deliberately place ourselves in places where we could succumb to foolish, harmful and sinful actions, sooner or later we will give in. No one of us is that strong. No one.

Actually, both the world and the flesh (us) are innately good. They are God’s creation. It is what we individually and collectively do that makes what is good into something that becomes not so good, into something sinful and bad. And it is our fault and never the world’s or the devil’s. That is sometimes a difficult lesson both to learn and to accept.

YOLO

Even though I have a smart phone, I am not all that smart when it comes to using it. I can easily take pictures but can never seem to remember how to email them. I can use the keypad to text messages, but my thumbs always seem to press two letters at the same time and almost always the wrong one. I know there are a few shortcuts to use when typing such as “u” for “you” and “r” for “are”, but that’s my limit. That’s it.

Thus, when Arlena and I attended grandson Zach’s high school graduation and listened to the class president speak about YOLO, I had no idea what she was talking about until she explained. I seemed to be the odd man out. Everyone else, including my wife, knew YOLO stood for “you only live once”. After getting over my personal embarrassment for being out of the loop, I listened to a wonderful address. Here’s hoping Zach and his classmates take to heart what she had to say and make sure they live this life, the only life they are given, to the best of their ability. There is no do-over to life.

To be sure we can all look backs on our lives and regret the mistakes we have made and wish we had done otherwise. But they are water over the dam. We can and should also recognize the more-often-than-not good choices we have made. Sadly, of course, a bad decision years ago can have a profound affect on the rest of our lives. A foolish act can leave us permanently disabled. That does not mean our life is over. It simply means that our life is altered and we have to adapt to a life that is different than what it might have been had we acted differently.

Such is life. Lamenting our mistakes might be cathartic and probably is, but we must move on: YOLO, as they say. “What now?” we ask. “Where do we go from here?” Those are questions that have no time limit, no age limit. It would be wonderful if we so learned from our juvenile or early-adult mistakes that we would never, ever do something foolish again. But, again, such is life. We don’t always, if ever, do so. We just tend to make less of them. For that we can be thankful.

The truth is that even our mistakes, our foolish actions, our sins, can be beneficial. We learn from them. We move on. And when we look back on our lives, even as we regret those mistakes, those foolish and harmful acts, those sins, they have brought us to where we are today. And if we like where we are today, then we can even be somewhat thankful for them. Without them we would be in a different place.

That does not mean, of course, that we deliberately do what is foolish and/or sinful. That is utterly foolish. It does means that we become more and more aware of who we are, the gifts and talents we possess and the ones we do not. It means for me as frustrated as I sometimes get when it comes to using technology that is above my grade level, that I not get angry at my limitations but recognize that they are the result of my age and my generation and smile. I don’t want a do-over. Once is enough and sufficient, thank you.