Easter Evening

ISAIAH 25:6-9: This hopeful prophecy of Isaiah spoke directly to the Israelite situation, and it continues to speak directly to ours. God comes to us as host at a meal, destroyer of those things that hurt human beings, comforter of the sorrowing and grieving. He is also the forgiver of our sins and the salvation of those who wait upon him. All this, in just four verses of prophecy!

Isaiah pictures God as seated on a mountain. His table is spread for all people to enjoy. Rich food is there, including meat, a rarity in those days; it is meat dripping with its marrow. Fine wine is offered, well-aged, not just wine made from the grapes plucked yesterday from the vine. Hospitality will be warm around the table, for the Lord is its host. The table of the Lord is set for us, as Jesus sets it in the later years.

God who is host is also God who is the destroyer. There is a difference, however, from former prophecies of destruction. This time it is despair that is destroyed, and death itself. God will destroy "the shroud that is cast over all people, the sheet that is spread over all nations. God will swallow up death forever." Paul picked up these words in his chapter on resurrection, First Corinthians 15: "Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory."

The seer of Revelation picked up the next words in his description of the new heaven and the new earth, 21:4. "God himself will be with us. God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more. For these first things have passed away." God will do more than that. God will take away the disgrace of the people. God will forgive our sins. Jeremiah advanced this thought when he spoke of a new covenant. "The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. . . . I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more." Jesus sealed this new covenant for us, first in his supper and then in his death. "This cup is the new covenant in my blood shed for many for the forgiveness of sins, . . . Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!"

Beneath these words were Canaanite concepts and imagery. The people of Israel to whom Isaiah spoke lived in the land of Canaan, and they were surrounded by Canaan temples and rituals. The followers of the Baals looked forward to a feast for all (nations) celebrating the destruction of Baal's enemies and the commencement of a new era of peace and salvation. The swallowing up of death is paralleled in the Canaanite myth by Baal's victory over Mot, god of death and the underworld. The destruction of the covering and the veil which is over all peoples, and the wiping away of tears, correspond in The Poem of Baal to the triumphant warrior's command to Anat to "banish warfare from the earth. . . . Weave no longer on the earth tissues of lies, . . . a mesh of guile." (Scott, IB5:304) What is said of the baals is spoken more truly of Yahweh. The Lord of hosts, not Baal, will do all that was ever said of Baal, and more. "The Lord has spoken it." So said Isaiah, so said Yahweh.

The passage closes with a graceful psalm just one verse long. "This is our God: we have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation." All this takes place on the mountain of the Lord, as will another scene on a mountain, when the Lord Jesus takes leave of his disciples and ascends to the seat of Power.

PSALM 114: The psalm recites once more the story of Israel's deliverance from Egypt. But this account has a distinctive twist. It transforms the Exodus into a cosmic event and invites everything to participate in that transformation.

When God brought the people out of Egypt it affected not only the people but the forces of nature itself (3-4). The sea fled the power of God. The River Jordan reversed direction. The mountains moved, skipping like rams. The hills moved, dancing like lambs.

Verses 5 and 6 are like a "taunt psalm." Israel, or is it Yahweh, taunts the status quo of river, sea, mountain, and hill. What ails you, asks the psalmist, that you can no longer stay your course? Is it God who has changed you?

God will leave nothing as it was: not Egypt, not hills and mountains, not rivers and seas, not Israel or Judah, either. As Brueggemann says (Message of the Psalms, 142), "No part of the world is in fact as it appears, for all of it must face the decisive sovereignty of God, whose will is for transformation."

FIRST CORINTHIANS 5:6-8: Paul is dealing with an unusually difficult ethical matter in this part of his letter to the Corinthians. It has been reported to him that a man has been found living with his father's wife. Paul is shocked. Not even the pagans do that.

He tries to deal with the issue by using a double metaphor. The first has to do with the leavening of dough for bread. The second has to do with Christ, the paschal lamb who is sacrificed for us. Both metaphors are "spiritualized," that is, they are given new spiritual meanings to replace the physical meanings implicit in the words.

The first metaphor concerns baking bread, and the yeast that is used as the bread is made. In the ancient method of making bread, the one Paul and the Hebrew people were familiar with, dough was leavened by adding sourdough left over from a previous day's bread production. This sourdough mass tended to inhibit the growth of molds and undesirable bacteria while allowing preferred strains of yeast to proliferate. The results were unpredictable, however, because varying amounts and types of yeast developed in the sourdoughs. An improved method of ancient origin used the relatively pure yeast that settled out from beer or wine.

Each Jewish household had its own supply of leaven to make bread. Because the leaven would deteriorate during the year, Jewish households were required to clear out the old leaven on an annual basis and bring new leaven into the house. Since in the original Passover story from Egypt, the households were asked to clean out the old leaven at that time, indeed, to eat only unleavened bread during their journey, this practice of cleaning out the leaven in the Passover season was begun. This practice continued in Jewish households until the time of Paul and later. Orthodox households do this to the present day. Paul instructed the Christians in Corinth to clean out the old leaven of their lives.

This reference to Passover bread reminded Paul that Jesus Christ was also considered to be the paschal lamb that was sacrificed. On the occasion of Passover, each Jewish man who was able to make the trip would bring an unblemished lamb to the priests in the temple of Jerusalem. On the day of the Passover meal, this lamb would be sacrificed, and the man would receive a portion of the meat to be used in the family's evening Passover meal. Because Jesus died just before or during the time of Passover, Christians began to refer to him as their Passover lamb who was slain.

In the last verse, verse eight, Paul gets to his point. We are to celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, that of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The "festival" may have been the festival of Passover, though that is unlikely since there is nothing in the context of the passage that refers to Passover. More than likely, Paul is using "festival" to mean the celebration of life that is to mark the Christian's approach to living. Leave behind malice and evil, Paul insists. Live your life on the basis of sincerity and truth.

In my estimation, he could simply have said this to the Corinthian church rather than dressing it up in the mixed theological metaphors that he used.

LUKE 24:13-39: Two men journey from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Two full days have passed since Jesus had died on a cross in the city. As they walk, they are joined by a third, and the three talk together. When they arrive in their village, this third man is about to go on, but the two invite him to come in and have an evening meal with them. The stranger breaks the bread in their behalf, blessed and gave it to them, and they know that it is Jesus who is present with them. He vanishes from sight. They rush back to Jerusalem and are met with the news: "The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon." The men tell the others what they saw and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. This in outline is the hauntingly beautiful story of the first Easter eve in the little village of Emmaus.

Emmaus was a small village about four miles south and west of Jerusalem. It was to become infamous in 70 AD, when the Roman Emperor Vespasian used it as a retirement home for Roman soldiers who had destroyed the Holy City in that year. For Christians, it is famous as the site in which Christ first broke bread with disciples after his resurrection.

The two men whom Jesus met on that evening were not part of the twelve disciples who came with Jesus from Jerusalem to the feast

of Passover. They were part of a Judean group of followers whom Jesus had gathered to himself in his frequent journeys to Jerusalem. One of two, Cleopas or Clopas, was the husband of Mary, one of the women in John's Gospel (19:25) who stood by the cross as Jesus was crucified. The others who watched Jesus die that afternoon are well known to us. Included in that tearful group were the Beloved Disciple, the mother of Jesus, and Mary Magdalene. This Mary had good reason to be there also. She was the sister of Jesus' mother; she was Jesus' aunt. Cleopas therefore was Jesus' uncle by marriage. The other man is not known by name.

Close as the relationship between them was, Cleopas did not recognize Jesus when he joined them that evening hour. Cleopas and his friend were disconsolate. They had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. But the chief priests and the rulers had delivered him up to be condemned to death, and they crucified him. Cleopas and his friend had stayed in Jerusalem for two days after that. They had even heard a report, from the women, that they had come to his tomb early in the morning and did not find his body. Instead, they reported a vision of angels who said that Jesus was alive. Some of the men had gone to the tomb, but Jesus they did not see. So Cleopas and his friend were returning home, their hope in Jesus shattered, their lives mournful and morose.

The stranger on the way challenged them. "Did you not know," he asked them, "that Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" Then he talked with them about the Scriptures. He began with Moses, and all the prophets, and disclosed what they had to say about the Christ. Still Cleopas and his friend were foolish and slow of heart. They did not believe what he had told them from the prophets.

As they came to the village, and as the stranger made as if to go further, Cleopas and his friend prevailed upon him to have supper with them: "Stay with us," they said, "for it is toward evening and the day is far spent." He sat at table with them. He took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. They recognized him. And he disappeared from their sight. He was known to them in the breaking of the bread.

There was more to it than that, actually. They had known Jesus before and knew that he had said he would rise from the dead. But that terrible vision they had had of him - writhing on a cross in agony - had nearly canceled out all that he had previously said and done. They needed a vision of Christ in his glory that was at least as compelling as their vision of his death.

Then there was the report of the women that they could not find his body in the tomb. And that they had seen an angel who said that he was alive. That report was hard to credit. No one since the beginning of time had died and risen again. What was there about Jesus that would make him different, that would bring him back from the grave? They needed to see him, to believe a report like that.

This man along the way had spoken to them of Scripture, to attest to them that Christ had to suffer before he could enter into his glory. What Scripture had Jesus referred to, as he talked to them? Did he speak of Psalm 22? Isaiah 53? Ezekiel and his valley of dried bones? Daniel and his words that indicated the possibility of resurrection? Moses and the deliverance of God's people from the land of death? We are not told. We are told that Jesus spoke persuasively, unfolded the meaning of their sacred Scriptures to them, so that their hearts began to burn within them, and their spirits became alive.

But it was the meal that did it. The words used in this story are the same as the words that described Jesus' last meal with his disciples: "He took bread, and blessed, and broke the bread, and gave it to them." Around that table that evening, Cleopas and his friend witnessed again the familiar act that Jesus had performed before. They recognized the tender hands that broke the bread. They heard again the blessing he had offered. They sensed the companionship that encompassed them. They knew it was the risen Christ who presided over that table, who was with them at that moment.

As they ate together, they remembered, surely, how important food had always been to Jesus' ministry. The gospels tell us that through Jesus the hungry will be filled with food and the rich will be sent empty away. Through Jesus' gift of food in the desert the starving multitudes were saved from hunger. Jesus' favorite picture of the life to come was that of a great banquet of which he is the host, and the favored guests are the poor, the blind, the lame, the maimed. In extending hospitality to Jesus on that evening in Emmaus, Cleopas and his friend received the hospitality of the risen Christ. They knew him as he offered them bread.

Let's add another dimension to this story. Was it because they offered hospitality to Jesus that he had chosen to reveal himself to them? They had hoped that Jesus would redeem Israel, but that hope had been frustrated. They had grieved over the loss of their friend, and their eyes had become blinded. But disappointment and bereavement disappeared when they welcomed a stranger into their home. They showed hospitality to a stranger, and that stranger brought with him a divine presence when they shared a meal with him.

As mysteriously as he had come to them, Jesus vanished from their sight. Does he come again? Indeed he does. When people provide food for each other, Jesus is there. When we sit down at the supper of our Lord, Jesus is there. When we gather at the great banquet that marks the fulfillment of God's kingdom, Jesus will be there. And he will be the host at the meal.

LUKE 24:36-48: This scene takes us into Jerusalem to the room where the disciples of Jesus have gathered after his crucifixion. The two men from Emmaus have rushed back into the city and have reported to the assembled group that the risen Lord had met them and was known to them in the breaking of the bread. They learn the equally astonishing news: "The Lord has arisen indeed and has appeared to Simon!" (Lk 24:34) Doubt and hope: it is in the vortex of these feelings that our scene begins.

Immediately Jesus himself stood among them. Instead of quieting their doubts and affirming their hopes, his appearance startled and frightened them. They thought that they were seeing a ghost. Recognizing their troubles and questionings, Jesus took steps to meet their doubts.

First, he showed them his hands and feet and invited them to handle them. They did not, of course. Seeing his flesh and bones was enough. Then he asked if they had anything to eat. They gave him a piece of broiled fish, like that which he had eaten with them in the feeding of the multitude, and in their presence he ate it. He had eaten bread with the men of Emmaus. Now he ate fish with the eleven in Jerusalem. As he ate the bread and the fish before them, they knew him.

But Jesus knew that proofs of his resurrection do not depend upon the physical evidence of flesh and bones, or even eating bread and fish. As Alan Culpepper wrote in the New Interpreters Bible 9:480, "The resurrection is not subject to empirical proof or rational verification. The experience of the presence of the risen Lord led the disciples to see that he had been raised, and the experience of the individual believer and the community of believers is still the foundation of faith. Where the Lord's physical hands and feet are no longer present, the ministry of the hands of countless saints in simple and sincere ministries continues to bear witness to the Lord's living presence. Although he may not appear in our midst to eat broiled fish, his presence is tangible in soup kitchens, around the kitchen table, and around the altar table. We see him 'in the breaking of bread.' As in the first century so now the most convincing proof of the resurrection is the daily testimony of the faithful that the Christ still lives, and the work of his kingdom continues."

Jesus' commands to his disciples acknowledged that. He instructed them to read the Scriptures with an open mind. In Scripture - in the law, the prophets, and the psalms - they would find those things that are written about him. He commanded them to preach repentance and forgiveness of sin in his name to all the nations. He said, "Be my witnesses in your lives, for the promise of my father is upon you, and you will be clothed with power from on high."

Then he led them out to Bethany. Bethany was the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. It was the village from which he had come as he entered Jerusalem for the week of Passover. It was on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, facing away from Jerusalem. There he lifted up his hands to bless them. At the beginning of the Gospel of Luke, Simeon had held the child Jesus in his arms and blessed God for him. Now at the end Jesus returns the blessing. About to leave his disciples, he blesses them. On the strength of his blessing, these formerly terrified men and women can return to Jerusalem with great joy and go day after day into the temple to bless God.