coffee

Early Saturday morning before the Third Sunday of Easter. Huge fun: a fine first cup of this month's exciting club coffee, hot & black, perfect, it makes life different: what'll I do when the subscription runs out? Maybe if I close my eyes it won't run out.

Weather? drizzle 69°F 96% humidity, wind West 4 mph, the dew point is 68°, which our weather star on television has explained to us is, as it closes with the air temperature, what brings on fog. I love days like this, rainy mornings of life. At this age, one doesn't know how many more one will enjoy, or indeed how much more Time one has - - could be ten seconds, three minutes, two months, or a dozen years, eh? One doesn't know. My friends, life is short and Every Day Is A Beautiful Day.

Couple of things I thought to ramble about this morning. Three actually. Yesterday we had lobster tails for dinner, raw, I used an online recipe to cook them, and they were beautiful, scrumptiously sweet and tender. Lobster tails, cole slaw, broccoli, and lobster mac'n cheese. Kristen brought mango pie for dessert.

One thing, online I watched almost two hour documentary about the Battle of Leyte Gulf, which turned out surprisingly well for us, especially considering Admiral Halsey took the Japanese bait and went chasing after what he thought was a powerful carrier strike force, leaving waiting American carriers exposed to Japanese battleships approaching from the north. Why do I like these things? IDK. When I was at Navy OCS in Newport, Rhode Island the summer and fall of 1957, sometimes our teachers would show Victory at Sea films, part of the Navy building up our spirit, enthusiasm, and sense of naval history, I guess.

Browsing (I'm still trying to make my brain hold on to whatever the subjects were that I wanted to visit, but they're slipping away), this past week, on an antique car auction seeing a green Chevrolet station wagon just like the one they drove us around in that summer

I googled Joe & Mimi Hull, a couple I worked with my last summer at Camp Weed, 1953, and found them in a cemetery in Quincy, Florida. While scrolling the cemetery population I came across the grave of William Corry,

a Navy lieutenant commander and Medal of Honor winner,

for whom my first ship, USS CORRY, a WW2 destroyer, was named. I first found out he was from Quincy when told by parishioner and friend Betty Embry, who also grew up in Quincy and knew the Corry family. Betty died recently, and her son called me from Jacksonville to let me know.

USS CORRY DD-817 - - can't get away from it, I did love that ship,

my first sea duty, the assignment with its air of enthusiasm, comradeship, competence, firsts in my new life, and strong sense of belonging that moved me to decide on a Navy career.

+++++++

That wasn't where I was going at all when I opened my computer and sipped on my mug of hot & black.

Two things, one I'll leave as possible for another day. But this. We are in Easter, with several Sundays OF Easter not "after Easter," when our gospel reading has us still in the Day of the Resurrection, Easter Day itself. "It's the day of Jesus' resurrection and You are There" sort of thing.

Just so tomorrow, reading Luke's story of the two disciple who, on Easter Afternoon, met Jesus on the road to Emmaus. Here's the story (scroll down), and then I have a couple of comments or observations (scroll way down) that I would introduce for discussion if I were still mentoring our adult Sunday school class.

The Gospel

Luke 24:13-35

Now on that same day two of Jesus' disciples were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place.

Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said; but they did not see him.”

Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

So, okay, a few observations, list style:

1. Luke means us to understand that Cleopas and the other disciple actually knew Jesus and that they didn't recognize him. He may be present in strangers, and may come present when we least expect it, especially if we are "gathered in his name".

2. Luke has Jesus appear suddenly and later vanish just as suddenly: there's uncertainty about whether it's a physical body or what Paul calls a spiritual body.

3. Luke says the disciples know Jesus in the breaking of the bread on the Sunday. This is also how he is known to us in the church.

4. Unsaid is something that is subtly obvious. Jesus appears here and there, is present with this one and that one as he will. Could have been so that Sunday too, maybe there were other such appearances at or about the same Time; and certainly is so when people gather in various churches throughout the world on Sundays and other Times.

5. This is not ordinary history that you learn about in high school history class, this is Heilsgeschichte, a holy story that affirms what is going on in the developing Christian church when Luke is writing a couple of generations or more after the original Easter Day, and going on for us two thousand years on. It's a really good story that Luke means for us to find as true for us today as it was for Cleopas and the other guy that first Easter Sunday afternoon.

RSF&PTL