Some Concluding Thoughts...

By Bishop Alan Scarfe

Bishop Alan Scarfe

It is fitting in a year in which the lectionary does not bring us the Easter story of the two men on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24: 13-35) that we are invited to enter into that story as a concluding reflection on all we have been reading as we come to the conclusion of The Agile Church. The hope offered is that Jesus always finds us and accompanies us in our various stages of seeking to understand the faith. The two disciples were confused and disoriented, grieving from what they had experienced in Jerusalem. Their experience of following Jesus had not ended as they had expected, and they were returning to home. “He meets them where they are, in their concerns and reality. Jesus listens them into speech, hearing their interpretation of the events that transpired in Jerusalem. Then he begins to help them reinterpret their experience and world through a different lens. Connecting what has happened to the biblical story of Moses and the prophets, Jesus invites them into a new imagination. He helps them make sense out of their situation using a common story” (p 146).

Recognizing that He is alive as He breaks bread with them becomes their turning point. Nothing else matters. They rush back to the other disciples and life begins again. Zscheile says, “They move from disorientation and despair to community and witness” (p 147).

What would it take for us to have that same power of conviction of the Risen Christ that would drive us past the resilience and indifference of our culture to present the message that there is a new way of looking at life that goes beyond consumer competitiveness and self-driven and self-loving directives? Perhaps many of us are closer to Thomas than we like to think, only we haven’t come back for a second look.

I am convinced by the basic tenets of Zscheile’s thinking. There is a sense that life is passing us by and that is not all of our doing. We exist, however, as people of faith for a way of life as a people sent as witnesses by word and deed. The Gospel, by its very essence God’s Living Word, urges to be taken by us into the neighborhood. God wants to stir up our imaginations and creativity as to how we might do this, as well as find us courageous in the risk-taking that may involve. Some things we have done forever might have to die for new things to emerge, and we will not always know what these things might be. And it is very alright to fail, try and fail better. Above all, we are to listen to our neighbors before we speak, and then trust God to provide the good news which becomes God’s response of healing and turning. These things must be considered at every level of what we know as being Church.

It is not as though we have not been here before. John Wesley saw need all around in society while a church was sleeping in its self-contentment. It was not until the powerful conviction of the Risen Christ gripped his inner being and he knew for himself that Christ was risen for He had risen in Wesley and for Wesley.   Another John—John Keble—found the risen Christ in the treasure of traditional sacramental practices of the Catholic Church, which had been hidden from neglectful sight for many centuries and had come alive just as Jesus came alive in the breaking of the bread before the men on the road to Emmaus. Once we come in contact with the Risen Christ, we are sent out, for we realize that we have riches that cannot be contained and a compassion that knows no bounds. Let us be agile because we have rediscovered a way of life that has to be lived out and shared. That is my prayer for us all.