‘Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.’ For some reason, that line really caught my attention this week as I read the Easter texts. In fact, there are all sorts of lines about eyes and sight and seeing and not seeing that peeked my attention and seemed to resonate more this week than ever before. It is no secret why. As you know, I had cataract surgery on both my eyes just over a week ago. I have been thinking lots about eyes and how they work, and experiencing first hand a huge difference in how I am seeing the world. I am also in this in-between transition stage between surgery and how this all might shake out for me in the next weeks as the eyes fully heal. Still lots of eye drops. But there is something pretty amazing that happens when you have cataract surgery, and that has filled me will all sorts of images for Easter and a deeper understanding and appreciation for this morning’s Scriptures.
So there I was last Friday at the Eye Clinic at 7 in the morning, filling out paper work and waiting for surgery. I was the first ‘customer’, first patient of the day. I later asked the ophthalmologist how many cataract surgeries she was doing that day and she said 38! After a few minutes others joined the waiting room, and I found myself sitting there with a bunch of old men! I’m too young for this said my inner voice. A year ago, I would never have imagined being there. I hadn’t noticed anything in my day-to-day eyesight. My glasses were working. It was at a regular optometrist eye appointment last Fall that she said my left eye was shifting, and sure enough, if I actually closed my right eye, my world was blurry and cloudy – the right eye had compensated. So here I was, several months later. Do both eyes at once is the advice these days. Sitting there, I couldn’t help thinking back, remembering way back to my Grade 6 classroom in Paraguay, South America, when I came home and told my parents I couldn’t read the blackboard, and that wasn’t just because the words were all either in Spanish or German. I got my first near-sighted glasses when we returned to Canada, and have worn them ever since, with progressives added along the way.
Technology really is an amazing thing. After lots of eye drops to dilate and freeze, you lie there with this sticky mask over your eye that holds back your eye lids as you stare at a bright light, and in a matter of a few minutes, your cataracted lens is removed and a new artificial lens put in. Before they got to the second one, I opened my new left eye, and there happens to be a little digital reading from the HVAC system on the ceiling way above my head, and I could read it clearly. This time it was in closing that new left eye, that my right eye could not see that far. Open the left eye again – I can see! I shared this epiphany with the nurses there, and they laughed, because pretty well every patient makes that comment on this unofficial unintended HVAC test. An hour later I was a passenger in a car, and for the first time since Grade 6 in Paraguay, I could simply look around without glasses and read all the signs, see all the details of the world clearly, with the whole world a little brighter. Then my eyes were opened, and I recognized things clearly. My heart is still burning within me.
In her commentary on the Easter story in Luke, Mary Schertz writes that the story of first the women at the tomb, and then later of the men, is ‘the journey of recognition and reconciliation… The women move through doubt and fear to hope and proclamation, so too, albeit more slowly, do the Emmaus disciples and then the rest of the disciples.’ (Luke, Believers Church Bible Commentary, Herald Press, 2023, p.395.) It is in recognition, in seeing in new ways, in having their eyes open, that the resurrection is caught and understood and then makes all the difference in their lives. During this season of Lent, we have been reading and Bible studying our way through the gospel of Luke and all the stories along the way to the cross and resurrection. We have been following the signs at the crossroads. One of the things that has been important to us, is reading full stories and full chapters, rather than just the short passage lifted out. So we read the Great Banquet parable in its context of Jesus at the home of a Pharisee with people arguing over their position at the table, and we read the Prodigal Son, as the third of a series of parables of the lost and the found together with the lost sheep and the lost coin. This has helped us see the repeated patterns, and the continuity of themes, the bigger picture. In the same way, we chose to read the full Easter story in Luke today, which includes both the women at the tomb, but also, as it says, now on that same day, the continuation in the story of the Emmaus Road. This is one story, one day in two parts, and you can see how patterns repeat. You may want to go home and read all the way to verse 43 in this last chapter of Luke, which finishes the day off and includes Jesus appearing to the displaces and eating with them.
It may not come as a surprise to anyone, that it is the women who catch on first, with the men much slower to get it. Typical! The women, part of that inner beloved circle around Jesus, go to the tomb at early dawn, despondent, taking the spices they had prepared. What they see with their eyes is the stone that has been rolled away from the tomb, and what is missing is the body. They are perplexed and can’t figure out what this means. Suddenly there are two men there with dazzling clothes, later called a vision of angels. Mary Schertz names this as an epiphany, a sudden revelation from God, with the normal response of fear, being terrified but what they are seeing. Instead of the typical ‘Fear Not,’ they give what could be called a scolding – ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.’ And then the key word – Remember. Remember that Jesus had told you that this would all happen – they he would be handed over and crucified and would rise again on the third day. Remember. They had been told this three times by Jesus, it was all right there for the women and the disciples, but they could not see it. For the women, early in the morning, this epiphany from the angels was enough. Their eyes are open, they remember and understand, they get it. As Mary Schertz writes, ‘the scolding is not quite fair, of course. The women are only human… they have not correctly reckoned on God’s power in the equation. They had not listened carefully enough to Jesus’ teaching in Galilee, and they had not quite believed him. Now they do remember – and they are transformed. The tomb teaching, that oddly reassuring rebuke, introduces the ultimate reversal in this Gospel of reversals. The women change. They move from being sorrowful, timid women, burdened by their own grief and their own failure, to being the first messengers of the good news of Jesus’ resurrection. Nothing more is ever required of the disciples in the Gospel of Luke than this: to forget themselves and take up the cross by telling the good news, come what may.’ (Ibid, p. 396) The women run to the eleven and all the rest to share their good news – Christ has risen, Christ has risen indeed. But to the men, this was an idle tale. Women can’t be trusted eye witnesses. They are not believed. They are blind to see. It is only Peter that runs to the tomb as well, to see for himself, amazed.
Second scene. On that same day, two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, and they are talking about all the things that have happened. A stranger comes alongside of them and starts walking with them. It was Jesus, ‘but their eyes were kept from recognizing them.’ Their mental and spiritual cataracts must have been much thicker and cloudier. They bubble over with their confusing story, with what they think they have seen and how they understand the situation – the hopes for this Jesus of Nazareth, but then his arrest and condemnation and death by crucifixion, the dashed hopes, and even this wild story from the women about an empty tomb and angels. The stranger responds, again with a kind of scolding. ‘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.’ In other words, Remember, Remember your history. Remember the prophets. Remember the role of suffering. The stranger, Jesus, goes on to walk them through the Scriptures, through these points of memory. It is getting late and they invite him to stay over and stay for supper. It was at the table, and remember how many stories there have been in Luke around tables, and who is all welcomed at the table, that Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them, a re-enactment of the last supper, guest becomes host, and then their eyes were opened, their cataracts removed, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. Were not our hearts burning within us while was talking to us on the road and opening the scriptures to us? Mary Schertz summarizes ‘The stranger became a stranger no more when he took the place of host at their table and invited them to share with him his body broken and given for them. Their eyes were opened, and Jesus leaves. His work with them is complete. Did they know and understand the way of suffering love to which they were committing themselves in recognizing Jesus for who he truly is? Perhaps no more than we do. But they do begin comporting themselves as disciples once again… They recognize that they have been going the wrong way on the wrong road. Now they bear witness that Jesus is alive again. Like the women before them, they become missionaries of the good news.’ (Ibid, p.401)
On this Easter morning, I have to admit I find myself identifying more with the men in this story than the women. I can be slow to see the work of God in our world and in my life. There has been a darkness to politics and the global dynamics going on right now. I worry about everything from climate change to economic disaster and takeover, to increased militarization to a marginalization of those without power or voice, to a world of misinformation, to the divisiveness and vitriol present on so many issues. I sometimes miss the signs of Easter, the signs of new life staring right up at me. I miss the good happening in our world and neighbourhoods, the acts of kindness and justice, the new life brought by Christ. Can I, can we, remember the signs of God in my life, in our life, in the witness of this gathered community? Can I, can we remember all the signposts gives to us in Luke – justice, mercy, hospitality, restoration, wholeness, peace – this is where the gospel comes alive? Can our spiritual cataracts be removed to let us see clearly again?
I shared about that amazement right after surgery about being able to look around and see all the signs and sights around me so clear in a much brighter world. That being said, I also recognize that I am in an adjustment period. The first few days were also wonky. My eyes still need to heal fully, and I have several weeks yet of eye drops and finding out where my eyes will settle, especially in close up vision. It is like that slower process with the men. I need patience, grace, trust. In the end, I may or may not need glasses or reading glasses. But I know that things are different – and I see in a new way, and people see me in a new way. I look different. Our family, probably more than me, is still laughing about my one-year-old granddaughter Briar, who came for supper last Tuesday, definitely knew that something looked different and at various points, when Grandpa was referred to or tried his usual antics, she turned her head away and said ‘All Done’. She slowly warmed up, but cautiously. It was better on Good Friday.
How you see the world does make a difference? Living into Easter, does make a difference. Recognizing and seeing the living presence of Jesus in our lives and in our world does make a difference. As followers of the resurrected Jesus we will look and act differently, and then others will see us in a different way, as we become eye-witnesses to the justice, mercy, hospitality, restoration, wholeness and peace of Jesus. Our eyes have been opened, our cataracts removed and we remember and recognize the work of God. That is the good news. That is the message of Easter.
This morning we have been surrounded by these beautiful and colourful images of butterflies. You can read more about Janet’s butterfly quilt from patches left by her mother Reta, and we will hear more in the next weeks about this butterfly Bible Kandace created a few years ago for worship at Stirling Mennonite. The butterfly is a wonderful symbol of the kind of transformed way of seeing the world that is the Easter story. Upon entering the dark cocoon, the caterpillar cannot comprehend, has no idea, of what is in store, cannot even imagine it, cannot see it coming. Suddenly, the chrysalis breaks open and out comes a butterfly, wings unfurling and beauty emerging – and a new perspective and view of the world from the skies – metamorphosis, transformation, a kind of resurrection to new life that could never have been expected, but which changes everything. New eyes to see, and a new way of being seen. This Easter, may our eyes be opened and may we recognize the saving work of Christ in our world. And may our hearts burn within us. Amen.