May 1, 2022 – Third Sunday of Easter

Although the journey had only begun it had been a long journey. Frodo, in the first book of the great trilogy The Lord of the Rings, has traversed many difficulties and threats to his life, hardship, hunger, rain, hurt. But he and his companions have made it through these dangers to the elf sanctuary of Rivendell. There they were safe for a period of time. And it was there, in this place of sanctuary, that he unexpectedly met and discovered several companions. First, he met his uncle Bilbo, who had exited his life with Frodo some years earlier and had made his way to Rivendell to spend out his days. Frodo didn't know that, so when he saw Bilbo, he was quite excited and a little astounded. In meeting Bilbo, Frodo received a lovely chain mail corslet, which he put on underneath his clothing for the rest of the journey. Later in the story, when he was under attack, Bilbo's gift of the chain male corslet saved Frodo’s life.

At Rivendell, Frodo also met Gandalf, who had been a wise guide and companion for part of the journey but had had to go and do some other important business, and they continued on the journey by themselves. They didn't know what had happened to Gandalf and when they found him at Rivendell, they were very pleased that he wasn't dead. They were also very pleased that he decided to continue the quest with them. In that unexpected meeting with Gandalf at Rivendell Frodo received great wisdom for the journey and greater understanding of the importance of the quest. Also at Rivendell, in this place of many meetings, the companion that they had met on the road – whose name they knew as Strider, and who looked like a pretty rag-tag, rough-and-tumble guy – they discovered that he, actually, was the future king and a powerful lord. They were astounded by that discovery and that meeting. And they were also very relieved that Strider (whose true name was Aragorn) committed himself to defend Frodo on the quest even if it cost him his life.

Frodo met other companions at Rivendell. They proved to be loyal and stout – although there was weakness in them as well. The point of all those many meetings is that they changed Frodo. They set him off on the journey equipped in new ways.

As I have reflected on our texts this morning, I have noticed that each of them today can be considered through the lens of meetings. And what is common in each of these texts and the meetings that occur in them is that Christ is the one who meets with the people in each of these texts. He's reminding us that this is not the kind of God who sets the world in order and then goes off somewhere else in the universe and does his God stuff and leaves us to fumble along as best we can. No, no, no, this is God with us. This is Emmanuel. This is a God who meets with people, who comes among us. Not a distant God at all.

When we consider the account of Saul: He is a man of religion – I think he felt fairly secure in his religious practices. I believe he thought he was doing rightly in a life of religious observance. He was fighting the fight of faith and doing it well. As part of that he decided that he was going to get letters from the religious leaders in Jerusalem, go to Damascus, where Christianity was really taking off, and he was going to find and arrest all the people that he could who were involved with Christianity and bring them back for trial in Jerusalem.

What he didn't expect is that on the road to Damascus he was met, unexpectedly, by someone he didn't anticipate. That someone was God – Jesus – and, when he appeared to Paul in the light and in the voice, “who are you persecuting, Saul?” Saul replied and recognized that this was the Lord. It must have been a shock for Saul to realize that the one that he had so discounted, the one whose people he was trying to capture and bring to trial, was actually God come in the flesh.

So formative is this encounter for Saul, who actually changes his name to Paul, and who wrote much of the New Testament, that he talks of it two more times. He gives this account twice more, in Acts 22 and Acts 26. The details are slightly different as he remembers different perspectives on the event, but that unexpected and unasked meeting, which blinded him physically for a period of time, but which opened his spiritual vision, was one that marked and shaped him.

Christ meets us all of us in those places in our lives where he exerts his claims. Those places where we aren't expecting, and sometimes where we wouldn't even want to welcome him, he still reveals himself to us. Asking us to acknowledge that he is there, and present in our lives, even in those places where we would like to stay hidden from him – where we feel secure and we feel our religious observance has got us on the right path – he comes and says ‘No, no, no, what you need is this encounter with me.’

My second reading this morning was from the Psalms, and this is a Psalm of the voice of one crying out, who has experienced adversity and sickness, who has known distress and weeping, and testifies that now that has passed because they cried out to God and God met them right in the midst of all their distress. They speak of deliverance. I think it is also important to note that there are many, many psalms – the majority of psalms in the Psalter – which are psalms that come from people in distress, who are saying ‘God, where are you? Help me, heal me, deliver me’. And many of those psalms are written in the moment of distress. They have not yet been delivered. They're anticipating that; they have not yet been delivered. But they're still saying, ‘we're meeting God in this place of distress.’

It should not be a surprise to us that this man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, Jesus Christ, comes and he meets us at our point of need. You don't have to wait until you get through it to say God was there. You can acknowledge and receive his comforting presence in the midst of whatever distress you are in and the psalms testify to that everywhere.

Our third reading, from the book of Revelation, sets a final scene in human history in which we find ourselves in the throne room of God in Heaven. I actually find this scene a little hard to relate to – I’ve never been to a throne room, I’ve certainly never been to heaven, and I find it a little hard to actually imagine what it might be like. It describes it, it gives us some details, but it feels so far beyond my human experience. What has happened, in the throne room of heaven, just before our reading, is they have been looking for someone who would come and who would be worthy to read the scroll of God. And no one is found worthy, and everyone is downcast. They're sad that in this final scene in heaven no one is worthy to open God's book. But suddenly, a lamb that looks like it has been slain and is called a lion comes, takes the scroll of God, and reads it. Of course, that is an image for us of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I suspect that if any of us would picture someone who was worthy to come and read the scroll of God in the throne room of heaven, we would have pictured a mighty king in all their vestments, or a priest dressed in beautiful vestments, or a powerful warrior, perhaps. But no, the one that comes to meet God's people, standing there in the throne room of heaven, is this juxtaposition of a slain lamb who is also a lion. Power comes in weakness and meets the need. Who can open the book of God? Who can do the work of God? Who will meet our need? At the end of days, in that throne room of heaven, we will see that it was Jesus Christ, the slain lamb, who is a lion. And our response will be just what we're doing today, but I think in even greater cadence. We will fall to worship and rejoice that in the depth of our human need, in the depth of the need of the world, with war, and famine, and hatred, and exile, there is one who has come who has met the need, and who will ultimately reset all the world to right. He will meet us – he has met us – on the cross, in the resurrection.

But the reality is you and I do not live in the throne room of heaven on a daily basis, do we? I get up, I make my lunch, I go to work. I come home, I do the grocery shopping, I make suppers.  Some of you are getting lunches ready for kids. We have nine to five jobs, we're deep in retirement plans, we live pretty ordinary lives. And it's our Gospel that really speaks to that reality. Simon, Thomas, Nathaniel – the old gang. Those who had followed Jesus for three years are all there and can you imagine the emotional upheaval of Jesus dying, and they think they've lost it all – and then the resurrection, and he's been meeting with them. Can you imagine their emotions are going up and down? Where is solid ground? It's not surprising to me that they go back to the ordinary stuff of their lives – that's fishing. After three years with Christ, after the up and down of the excitement, the emotions, of the resurrection – they go back to what is familiar. They go back to the routines, the things that keep our lives chugging along. And it is in that familiar routine that they meet the Lord, although they don't recognize him initially. Christ comes to meet them, he looks ordinary he says ordinary words to them, but the extraordinary reality of that meeting is not so much the 153 fish that are caught which probably provides their needs for quite some time. That's miraculous, sure! The extraordinary miracle of that meeting is that standing before them, speaking to them in ordinary words, is the resurrected Christ – the one who had been slain. Standing before them is that heavenly voice of Paul’s vision. Standing before them is the sustaining presence the Psalmist sings of. Standing before them is the slain lamb who is the lion who receives all the praise of heaven and he's so ordinary looking.

Here we are in our human realities, and this is where Christ meets us. Often in ways that are ordinary, typical of our day. But he asks us to open our eyes, as the disciples’ eyes were opened, to recognize God, Christ, there in his ordinary human body. Speaking ordinary human words, having an ordinary conversation with Simon Peter. Cancelling out those three times he denied the Lord and calling him to love him. Are we attentive, in the ordinariness of our daily lives, to where God is speaking? Through the ordinary events, ordinary people, the words of scripture – that are far from ordinary but have become very familiar to us – our eyes open, our ears open, our hearts open, to hear and see God speaking to – and meeting – us in the ordinariness of our days.

And if we are open to that, the question that the gospel leaves us with is, ‘Are we, like Peter, willing to respond when Christ, who meets us, says, ‘come follow me’?

That is the most extraordinary call upon us, very ordinary people, that God in Christ extends the invitation to come, to follow him, and it leads us in our ordinary lives into the extraordinary life of God. Amen