Today, the Third Sunday of Easter, we read the story of Jesus' appearance to the disciples after his meeting with the two unnamed disciples on the road to Emmaus. Like all the stories of Easter appearances, and like the Acts of the Apostles as it recounts the life of the early post-Easter Christian community, this one reminds us that Easter was and is a life-changing event not only for Jesus but for every life he touched and touches. We see the first disciples and the early Christians struggling to make sense out of what they have witnessed, to pick up the pieces of lives whose basic assumptions had been blown to bits, to forge a future out of hints and guesses (with lots of help from the Holy Spirit) in order to be faithful to their call. Any conversion that brings new life presents us with these same tasks. They may be exciting, life-giving, joyful--but they are always also confusing, sometimes frightening, even paralyzing as we fight to get our bearings in a whole new world we had not expected. This poem seeks to express Easter's effect.
On Easter’s road we meet the Mystery,
half seen, half hidden from unwilling eyes
that know the invitation but resist
lest we be burst asunder by surprise
and find ourselves made new before we take
farewell of what we were, before it dies.
though yesterday we found it hard and thin.
New leaven makes a wilder loaf that breaks
in fragments we can barely gather in,
for all our baskets now have grown too small
to hold the feast we hardly dare begin.
The wine is heady as it spills from cups
that careful craft cut shallow by intent
to mete out life by sips too cautious now
to hold in check the vintage that has rent
our wineskins with a stone-displacing force
erupting from a fountain never spent.
We thought we knew you when you spoke to us
the word that seized our lives and turned them round
to face a different sun than we had seen
along the roads we tramped, eyes on the ground
to measure steps with care lest pebbles trip
or unsuspected crossroads, met, confound.
who hardly know you now by voice or face,
but only in the breaking of the bread
catch sight of what you are and were. The grace
spills through your wounded hands and floods the room
with fragrance from some strange, familiar place.
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