Latah Valley

Read Luke 24:12

Watch Forrest Gump, Scene 16

Going home is not very glamorous.   Going home after a day at work, for example, may remind us of all the chores we have to do, or all the bills we have to pay.  Going home after a trip overseas may be nice, but then there’s that carton of sour milk that we left in the refrigerator.  Going home after a night in the hospital may help with the insurance coverage, but what happens when we buzz for the nurse and she doesn’t come.  Going home is not very glamorous, and if we ask the famous author, Thomas Wolfe, he will tell us that it’s impossible.   The old neighborhood has changed and so have we.   The diner has been torn down and replaced with a CVS pharmacy.   The church on the corner has been converted into a condominium.   The folks have moved to Daytona Beach.   The kids have moved to Bellingham.   Going home is not very glamorous…which is why I think that Luke 24:12 winds up missing in most of the ancient manuscripts that we have of the gospel.

 

 

 

 

Let me repeat that.   In my New Revised Standard Version of the Holy Bible and in many other translations of Luke’s gospel, verse twelve has become a footnote or an asterisk that directs us to the bottom of the page, where we can read that mostly all of the ancient manuscripts do not include the part about Peter running to the empty tomb, or the part about Peter returning home.   Mostly all will describe how the breathless women of Easter morning found the eleven disciples and proceeded to tell them about the angelic announcement.  But then, we read about the followers of the now dead Messiah ridiculing that story as “an idle tale.”   And what do we typically do after we read the gossip in The National Inquirer ?  

 

 

We go home of course.   We go home, hoping to high heaven that no one from the old neighborhood will recognize who we are, or wonder what we’ve been up to for the past three years.   We go home with this bizarre rumor about an empty tomb ringing in our ears and with our sorry tunic tucked between our legs.   Walker Percy refers to this phenomenon as “re-entry,” and it involves the ways in which people experience something powerfully transcendent, but then have to settle back into life at 4 o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon.   Re-entry is a conundrum, sort of like realizing that the Holy Bible has been compiled from a bunch of old parchments which have been copied and re-copied over centuries by scribes and by monks and that every once in a while one of them made a mistake.  The fear of re-entry is why most people get drunk, tell lies, take drugs, steal cars, commit suicide, pick up prostitutes, join a cult or become infatuated with movie stars.   We simply don’t want to come down.

 

 

And yet, if Luke 24:12 informs us that Peter ran—that upon hearing the rumors of resurrection he ran and then stooped and looked in and saw the linen cloth that had once wrapped Jesus’ body—where are we supposed to go?   Let me simply say that I have no doubt that your life and my life have been riddled with what the Bible calls Kairos Moments—that is, moment of great fullness.  There are those intense and beautifully sublime epiphanies.   But the reason I think we believe Easter and the risen Christ are all the chronological times through which Peter and others had to endure.   Peter goes home, and Christ is either risen or he’s not.  And, if he’s risen, that’s the truth whether we’re high or whether we’re low.    

 

 

During the Los Angeles race riots of the early nineties, Reginald Denny drives his tractor-trailer through the wrong part of town.   There had been looting and violence and the roads are clogged with angry mobs.   And in the middle of it all, Denny is dragged from the cab of his truck and beaten.   Then, while the cameras from the news-helicopters are running, there’s this image of an African American teenager picking up a brick and throwing it at the white man’s head.   Reginald Denny is severely injured and eventually taken to the hospital where he re-covers.   Ordinary hours, weeks and months go by.  Finally, during a broadcast from the Denny home, at four o’clock in the afternoon, a reporter gets an exclusive interview and the victim is peppered with inflammatory questions.  But when he replies with words of forgiveness because of his hope in Christ the face of the reporter goes blank.  “Obviously, Mr. Denny still suffers from the effects of brain damage,” says the man with the microphone.   And yet, is that all the news to be heard at four o’clock in the afternoon?

 

You see, what I’d like to highlight this morning and this entire month of April is the way Luke 24:12 allows us to go home without the hype.   Think about this.   If Peter is the paragon of all Christian patriarchs—if he is the rock or the quintessential disciples upon which Christ will build the church—why do we not hear about him again until verse 34?  In between we have this amazing story, known as the Road to Emmaus.   And when Cleopas and the other unknown disciple race all the way back to Jerusalem, the report they hear goes like so:  “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon.”   But we’re never told about that moment.

 

 

In fact, there is no recorded or written-down, detailed account of the resurrected Jesus as he talks and walks with Peter.   Not in Luke 24.  Not in Matthew 28.  Not in Mark 16.  In fact, in John 21, we finally have this dialogue between Jesus and Peter.  But guess where that encounter takes place?   It’s by the Sea of Tiberius, or the Sea of Galilee, near Peter’s home.   So, we might as well face it:   Peter goes home.  Peter has gone home.   And before home, he’s simply running on empty.

 

Leaders in the tradition of Christ Jesus do that sometimes.  Churches also do that.   We run on empty.   We run without the hype or the hoopla and then we practice re-entry.   We go home.

 

A few years ago I went home with this Nez Perce native who also had been baptized as a Christian.   His name was Adrian Moody and when I stayed at his home he gave me smoked salmon to eat and invited me into his sweat lodge.   Then, Adrian told me stories, stories about Coyote who is this mythic trickster, who eventually figured about a way to subvert the power of the monster.   And I heard these stories and I told Adrian that Coyote is like the risen Jesus.  The risen Jesus tricks the monster.  He was dead, but now he lives and everything he said and did now resonates with all of creation.  I had this discussion with Adrian and then he took me to the Henry Spaulding Museum, to this place where Nez Perce culture had originally clashed with the missionaries.   And, after we honored those missionaries, Adrian led me out back of that museum, by the dumpster. 

An old tree grew by that dumpster and in the knot of that tree I noticed these rusted old shackles.   Adrian put his hands in those shackles and he declared, “This is how they converted us.  This is how they forced us to give up our native dress and our native language.”

 

“That’s not the gospel,” I replied.  “That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

 

“I know,” said Adrian, smirking a little.  “But this is our home.”

 

Now, I’m relating this memory to you because I feel a little bit like Adrian today.  This is our home.   Home is the place where we can tell and can hear uncomfortable truths.  Home is the place where our opinion and our viewpoint matter more than anywhere else in the world.  Home is the place we go when we’ve been depleted and running on empty for a long, long time.   And home is the place where the risen Christ will come for us.  And it’s not always glamorous, but it’s true.

 

Last Tuesday night, our family sat around a campfire at the Latah Valley property.   Philip had wanted to spend the night there with his friend, Ben.   Sheryl showed up with Ian, our dog, Pearl and another dog who belonged to our friends, the Kuuskevere’s.   Anyway, we all were roasting marshmallows and making s’mores when out of the woods bounds this enormous moose.   It walked within thirty feet of us and then started chewing on a tree behind the garage.   And I’ll tell you what that wild animal did for me that night.  It filled the emptiness.  Amen.