AEaster7

People of Coolidge, why do you stare up into the sky? He will return, in the same way as he left. And he won’t be mistaken for a bird, or a plane, or a superman here to save us one by one by silly means. 

As he ascended, Jesus gave his disciples, and that means us, a job to do: a commission, to take his message to all people, at home right here, and beyond our comfort zone or even our knowledge. 

We know this town, its people; we know ourselves. And yet we do not know what is coming. Not really. Though we may fear or gleefully await a change, or strive to keep the faith with what we know and love. 

But there is more to the story than that: we have something to share, a story to tell, to every new person that walks through that door, and a new story to tell to every one we may see week after week. It is the good news of the story of the glory of God. It is from the beginning the story of God’s love for us, his people, and his people includes everybody. 

Today we welcome a new person into our company. Last month she was only ten days old and here she is to be baptized.

In the story of the Church it is an unusual day to be baptized, or for anything to happen. Last week, or last Thursday, we began to accept that Jesus, who arose on Easter, is no longer with us. 

We do not see God in Christ face to face. We must seek him in each other – and in the stranger we meet on the road, or in the hospital, or at the diner. He may help us, we may help him. But the image of God is in each one of us. 

Next Sunday, the feast day of Pentecost, the Church celebrates a new beginning. You will notice that in our first lesson today things have already begun. Returning from saying good-bye to Jesus outside town, the disciples, including women, and the eleven apostles, begin to gather for prayer. They meet in an upper room, perhaps the very one they met on the night he was betrayed, Jesus’ passion beginning.

They gather in prayer. They will go on gathering in prayer and telling the story of Jesus, and of the life that ends not in despair but hope.

At Pentecost the promised Spirit will arrive in dramatic fashion. If you are down at San Xavier del Bac Mission Church, sometime. look for the painting on the wall of the disciples, each with a tongue of flame above his head. This shows us visually what happened internally. 

They began to understand that the Spirit was within, and working in them, to bring that commission into action that Jesus had left them with. Left us with. To take the message home and to the whole world.

This morning we receive a new member into our midst, a new Christian, a new person, a new human being. One of God’s own delight. Evelyn. Our duty to her as to all new Christians is to remind them of their baptism. What it means. 

And it means, among other things, that you are God’s delight. You are loved by God. And we try to show that in how we welcome you into our company. We are the company of God’s delight: the creatures he has made and in whom is his joy. 

We show God’s delight in us, God’s love for us, in part in how we are together as one; one people, called together in faith by our own baptisms. We too, Evelyn, have had water splashed on our heads, oil spread on our foreheads, and our names proclaimed as God’s own. 

Together as one family, one people, with one God father of all. Christ prayed for us, that we might be one. 

You are one of us. You are one of us, now, and forever.

A visible sign of that unity will be our prayer together, in the Eucharist and in the Lord’s Prayer, as we all together say those words that our Savior taught us.

Simple words; but they cover everything. 

They begin with praise for God and prayer that the will of God will happen – among us, and in part through us. As we pray, we are called to help bring into visible being that kingdom of God, reign of God, that we pray will become realized here. And we pray for our daily needs. And we pray for forgiveness, as we surely know we need it. But forgiveness as we forgive others and ourselves. And again we pray, acknowledging that that kingdom is already here; already real. Glory. 

Watermelon seeds - and grandmothers. 

When I was young Grandma Maxine came to visit.

She taught us two things on that visit. One was how to spit watermelon seeds. We were eating watermelon, the four boys, out on the back lawn, and she asked, do you know how to spit watermelon seeds? No. Well, let me teach you. She lined us up at the edge of the lawn. Just past it was a place my father had put down rich soil for a new garden. We ate - and got the seeds into our mouths - and we spat.

The seeds launched out into th new soil beyond the lawn's edge - and disappeared. But six weeks later - watermelon. First the vines, then the melons.

The other thing she taught me was the Lord's Prayer. It took a little longer for that to bear fruit.

And now, using the exact same words my grandmother taught me, the traditional words, let us pray.  

As our Savior Christ hath taught us, we are bold to say,

Our Father, who art in heaven,     hallowed be thy Name,     thy kingdom come,     thy will be done,         on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses,     as we forgive those         who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation,     but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom,     and the power, and the glory,     for ever and ever. Amen.

***

• Acts 1:6-14
• 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
• John 17:1-11
• Psalm 68:1-10, 33-36

https://sermonoats.blogspot.com/2012/04/seeds.html

For St Michael's Episcopal Church, Coolidge, Ariz. May 17th 2026. JRL+

© 2026 John Leech

AEaster3 a friend and not a stranger

 Walking through San Francisco from my office in the Financial District up into Chinatown and North Beach was a favorite lunch break for me. One day returning from Caffe Trieste or Molinari’s Deli, as I waited at the stop light at Columbus and Broadway, I heard someone quietly walk up next to me. 

First I saw the tennis shoes. A little oversized. Then, looking up, I found myself looking into twinkling blue eyes of– what at first appeared to be a middle-aged woman– but it was a man! 

Not a man in drag, like my old neighbors on Lily Street, but a man impeccably made to look like a woman. A man in drag I could’ve understood, but this was something else. It freaked me out.

Years later I found out: an actor, during a break from filming, had left the film set, and gone on his own lunchtime walk, still in full makeup and costume. He was playing a middle-aged woman. 

Mrs. Doubtfire.

And so he had a little fun seeing people’s reactions, like mine, to see if the illusion would hold up. 

[Apparently Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon did the same thing, when they tried out their wigs and dresses (and heels) for “Some Like it Hot”.]

So I did not recognize him. 

Have you had that experience? Of not recognizing someone, of not seeing?

I feel a little sympathy for Cleopas and the other disciple. Who would be the last person they would expect to see, on the road to Emmaus? – besides Robin Williams. 

The master. 

The one crucified just three days ago. Sure there were rumors, crazy stories. But now?

It was all too real. You could excuse them for freaking out. But they did not. At first they did not see Jesus, they saw a stranger. Then a companion on the way. And by time they invited him to dinner, he had walked them through what had happened, what had to happen, according to all the Scriptures.

Only these truths were not so strange, and he was no stranger. He was their teacher.

***

• Acts 2:14a,36-41
• 1 Peter 1:17-23
• Luke 24:13-35
• Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

***

Kitchen Scene with Supper at Emmaus, Rijck, 1605 http://edgeofenclosure.org/emmausrijck.html

AEaster3 bread and strangers

Velazquez’ “Kitchen Maid With Supper at Emmaus”

https://www.nationalgallery.ie/sites/default/files/2017-04/w1500-Vel%C3%A1zquez-Kitchen-Maid.jpg

Then the two disciples described what had happened along the road and how Jesus was made known to them as he broke the bread. (Luke 24:35)

We were walking along the road talking about everything that had happened in the last few days. We spoke about how Jesus had come to Jerusalem. 

We welcomed him with branches strewn in the road and cloaks spread across the path where he passed. Hosannas were in the air. 

Then he went into the temple and taught. Even as he left for the day he had healed people. His words and his deeds were powerful. Everyone could tell that he was a mighty prophet.

But then our chief priests and the elders themselves handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him. 

Here we had hoped and had hoped. All our hopes were in him that he would be the one: the savior, the Messiah, the one to redeem Israel. 

All these things had happened just three days before.

But then, we recalled what had happened earlier that day. Some of the women had gone to the tomb in the morning and found an empty tomb, and angels who said that Jesus had risen. and when Peter went to check, he found no one there at all.

It was strange and disturbing to hear these things and we had left town. We were on our way away from all this when a stranger came alongside us and became our companion on the way and we told him what was in our minds and on our hearts.

Somehow, he was someone you could trust. So we told him.

He surprised us, though, by rebuking us, saying we were foolish and had not understood.

We were going the wrong way in what we were thinking and what we were feeling.

We thought it was all over, but he said, this is something that had to happen. 

I wish we had taken notes. He told us from the beginning of the scriptures all that the prophets had to say about the Messiah.

The miles passed more quickly and we found ourselves at the village as evening was drawing in.

We did not want the conversation to end. We wanted to hear more. He seemed to be ready to walk on alone, but we pressed an invitation on him to stay with us. It was after all drawing on to night and it was not a time for travelers to walk alone.

So he came in with us to the Inn and at the table he took the bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to us.  

And that is when we recognized him.

It had only been three days after all since we had last broken bread with him.

And here he was breaking the bread again and sharing it. Alive, as always alive. More than always. He shared the bread with us, and then as our eyes were opened he – disappeared.

On the way as he had told us what was happening, our hearts were warmed. Our minds were opened so that we understood 

that 

what had happened and 

what was happening 

was not the end, 

was not cause for despair, 

but that in it, 

even in the worst of it, 

was hope 

and that now a new hope was beginning: 

for he has risen. 

So we could not help but turn around and run back up the hill to Jerusalem to tell our friends.

***

They were there, they told the story. But did they understand it? Weren’t they headed the wrong way, thinking that all was over, when in fact all was only beginning?

When they are most despondent or at least baffled, the holy one appears…but he is transformed and unfamiliar.  

He meets them where they are. He joins them on their journey. 

They admit to this stranger, this unexpected companion on the way, that they are discouraged and uncertain how to proceed… except, apparently, to head away from the center of action. 

He invites them to reveal their thoughts, wonderings – to tell their own story of what had happened these last days.

He encourages them to share their perceptions, hopes, questions, disappointments. 

They take him for a foreign visitor, and a particularly clueless one, as even those seem to have been aware… but he is not offended.

Jesus never takes his interlocutors for granted. He gives them the dignity of supplying their own answers, as he did when he asked the blind beggar Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do for you?” 

(Of course this enhances the storytelling quality of the narrative, drawing us further in, as the dialogue continues.) 

The other disciple is unnamed - could it be us?

There was a common understanding of Jesus as a prophet. 

Everybody, it seems, knows what to expect and what it meant – except this stranger.

Then: It looks like it’s all over….. but he is risen.

How could this possibly be?

As if they were blind and needed their eyes, and their hearts, to be opened, just as the blind and the lame and the deaf needed healing, beyond the physical, to the spiritual, so these need the ‘opening’ of their minds, the healing of hearts.  

From the beginning until now, he taught them, Christ was coming.

(heightened tension) He explained what the Christ is, on the road, but they wanted to know, who is he? “Where can I find this living water?”

In the great Middle Eastern tradition, they show hospitality … and find themselves entertaining more than an angel, unawares. 

They fully recognized him in the breaking and sharing of the bread, rather than only in the exposition of Scripture. Now he is real. 

This is the one who only three days before had last broken bread with his disciples. Now he is transfigured in the resurrection.

It was in the ‘opening’ to them of the scriptures that they first became inspired, and left behind their ‘folly’ and disconsolate past. 

But: this is their moment of illumination. They recall, only now, after his glory is revealed, all that he had taught them – on the road to Emmaus that day, and on all those roads they had travelled before his death.

He has turned them around –  from despair to hope.

They encountered him on the road; he opened their minds through his teaching. In the action of communion, he opened their hearts. 

In the bread, in the wine,  of Eucharist, when we are in the presence of each other in communion, we may truly perceive his presence, in the Spirit, in our midst.

Open our eyes, that we may see… beyond our own preconceptions and preferences. Perhaps the Christ we need to see comes to us similarly veiled.

Do our eyes need to be opened? Our hearts? Our understanding? Do we need to be healed, as the blind were healed, but in our souls?

 

Who or what has prevented us from recognizing Jesus? Our fear? Anxiety? Preconceptions of the Messiah? Preoccupations?

I wonder: Do we truly know him in the breaking of the bread? In the communion we share? Do we see the stamp of Christ in each other?  

When do we fully see Jesus for who he is? When do we see each other in fullness? And then, as we go out into the world to spread the word and serve the world in its breathless need, do we see its goodness, the love of Christ reflected in his care? 

Lord Jesus, be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen. (from A Collect for the Presence of Christ)

• Acts 2:14a,36-41
• 1 Peter 1:17-23
• Luke 24:13-35
• Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearA_RCL/Easter/AEaster3_RCL.html

http://edgeofenclosure.org/easter3a.html

Kitchen Scene with Supper at Emmaus, Rijck, 1605 http://edgeofenclosure.org/emmausrijck.html   Velazquez’ “Kitchen Maid With Supper at Emmaus” https://www.nationalgallery.ie/sites/default/files/2017-04/w1500-Vel%C3%A1zquez-Kitchen-Maid.jpg

Grief

Grief has lingered with me this week. Not much to do with Lazarus or his sisters or his friend Jesus from the hill country. It began with a musty old cupboard underneath a window. I'd filled it with cardboard cartons shortly after we returned to Tucson from exile in the Pacific Northwest. It contained some easily discarded decades-old retirement planners. It contained a copy of the Leach family coat of arms crusted with mold: a blot indeed on my family's escutcheon.

But it also contained old letters, and old photographs, and old prayerbooks, and old appointment diaries. The letters had all been scanned in by my brother Dave, who has since died. The prayerbooks are obsolete (if pretty) and the diaries too.

The photographs included slides from the 1960s taken by my mother and father. Maybe there is a technique to recover them, though they too have probably been scanned. 

What has not been preserved, but has survived the mold, are pictures of my past, from college through about 2002. There for example are pictures of a camping trip on Point Reyes in 1977. And from 2000 a picture of a friend in my parent's driveway, on his motorcycle, there to welcome my return from an earlier, solo, exile to the East Coast. 

What brought grief up for me in these artifacts, and these pictures, is remembering what I had lost, or never gained, in those years; and those things now slipping away. Friends die, move away, fade. Even die of neglect. 

Relationships shift. New ones are painfully bought. Old ones are even more painfully lost. 

So as I go back through the ages, seeking what can be saved, and what must be forgotten, old griefs are awakened, connected to new joys or sorrows. Practically speaking, knowing that my brothers' stewardship was more careful than my own, I can refer family members to the essential items in new electronic form. 

But what lingers are the memories awoken. 

Jesus had no such problem, apparently, with memories awaking. "Lazarus, come out!" he said and he did. Martha and Mary had each chastised him earlier with the worthy words, "if you had been here he would not have died". Not a claim many of us could make, though many have tried. "If I had only'" met by "there was nothing we could do". In all that, "thanks for the memories" seems pretty vague.

Were Martha and Mary ever annoyed with their friend? I think so. But then his grief was genuine. Became genuine. "Where have you laid him?" and "Jesus wept."

The evangelist John can be so abstract it can seem painful, even cruel. "I am glad for your sake that I was not there" is not going to fool anybody. 

Yes, you are the son of God. Are you also a friend? Yes. The 'son of Man', better, 'the human one', is a friend and not a stranger. When it comes down to it, he is real. Jesus is real. God is not an abstraction. A difficulty. A philosophical proposition. 

The compassion of the Lord is personal, real, and immediate. Lazarus does not go down to the grave unmourned. He does not rise unaided. And when he dies again, not to be resuscitated from a corpse, he or his sisters, God will be with them too.

In the name of God, merciful, compassionate, and wise. 

"Jesus wept." 

Lazarus rises from death to inevitably face death again. But in this life he is now a sign, anticipating the resurrection I shall know and can know now. -Suzanne Guthrie

In the first eleven verses of the eleventh chapter of the gospel of John, the focus seems to be on Jesus’ delay in responding to the news of his friend’s illness. He seems very cool: hearing this news he stays put another two days.

What kind of friend does that? You or I might, for a start. For practical reasons. Transportation, lack of information, other commitments. But Jesus has a practical reason he does not mention. He has just come from Judah where it has become too hot to hold him. The occupiers are on his trail, and the collaborators are not far behind. The Romans, the Herods. So he has just arrived in Galilee but then turned around and journeyed back through the hill country of Samaria to Judah again. At the risk of his life. But his friend is ill. And so he shows some compassion and bravery in the midst of apparent passive indifference. It’s a risk. But he goes. 

Show me where they have laid him. That is what sets him off. Up till now the fancy talk of showing the power of God. Now he has too – if it is there, if it is real. He weeps at the tomb of his friend. Then he calls, “Lazarus, come out!”

The unbinding of Lazarus prompts us to ask, how are we bound? What holds us back from the fullness of life, resurrection life? 

Lazarus. The resuscitation of a corpse. Not yet the fullness of resurrection. He will die again, and his sisters will mourn him. Or predecease him. 

What does it show us? The power and compassion of God are intermingled. He is not remote. He is on his own time table, for reasons we do not know. 

When he comes. In a sense he is already there. In the compassion and the grief. But it is the presence of a friend, a personal touch, and his voice, that brings us to the miracle. The miracle: God’s showing, through extraordinary events, that he is real. That love is stronger than death. That hope, not fear, is at the end.

“I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Lord, you consoled Martha and Mary in their distress; draw near to those who mourn, and dry the tears of those who weep. You wept at the grave of Lazarus, your friend; comfort all who sorrow. You raised the dead to life; give to all eternal life.

Grant, O Lord, to all the spirit of faith and courage, that we may have strength to meet the days to come with steadfastness and patience; not sorrowing as those without hope, but in thankful remembrance of your great goodness, and in the joyful expectation of eternal life with those we love. And this we ask in the Name of Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Postcommunion prayer:

Almighty God, we thank you that in your great love you have fed us with the spiritual food and drink of the Body and Blood of your Son Jesus Christ, and have given us a foretaste of your heavenly banquet. Grant that this Sacrament may be to us a comfort in affliction, and a pledge of our inheritance in that kingdom where there is no death, neither sorrow nor crying, but the fullness of joy with all your saints; through Jesus Christ our Savior. Amen.

Troparion (Tone 1)

By raising Lazarus from the dead

before Your passion,

You did confirm the universal Resurrection,

O Christ God!

Like the children with the palms of victory,

We cry out to You, O Vanquisher of death;

Hosanna in the Highest!

Blessed is He that comes in the Name of the Lord!

Kontakion (Tone 2)

Christ the Joy, the Truth and the Light of all,

The Life of the World and the Resurrection

Has appeared in His goodness to those on earth.

He has become the Image of our Resurrection,

Granting divine forgiveness to all!

Orthodox, Saturday of Lazarus

http://edgeofenclosure.org/lent5a.html

https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0169V1962

The Raising of Lazarus (after Rembrandt)

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, May 1890

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)