Heading Home

Coming back from vacation is always a challenge.  However, as with most things it can be prepared for and it needn’t be a ‘bummer’.

The last service I presided over before leaving on my two weeks away was the Feast of the Transfiguration where Peter tries very hard to stay on the mountaintop with Jesus, Moses, Elijah, James and John.  Peter makes one of my favorite proclamations among his many proclamations, “Master it is good for us to be here; let us build three dwellings, one of you, one of Moses and one of Elijah’—not knowing what he said” (Luke 9:33).  Wrapped up in Peter’s enthusiasm is a bit of amnesia.  He either forgets, or hasn’t ever learned that there is a rhythm of going away and returning to engage that is part of the spiritual life in God. I had a notion that God was speaking to me and my eagerness to get away for some re-creation and rest in the timing of the Transfiguration and my vacation time.  I often need to be reminded of that myself.  I suspect we all do.

Maybe because of that I was aware of preparing to go and preparing to return from being away in a way that I haven’t before.  I’m definitely glad to be back, but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t tempted to stay on the Maine Coast indefinitely.  That being said, there have been no shortage of folks to remind me that August in Maine is much different than, say, February in Maine.

Just as Jesus knew that he must set his face toward Jerusalem and called Peter, James and John back down the mountain, we too are called back from our respite of summer vacation, travels, trips and experiences into the more mundane routine of daily life.  That’s the work we have been given to do.  John’s Gospel talks about being in the world but not of the world.  Same concept here it seems to me.  The rhythm of rest and re-creation is important of us as we are called back into all the stuff of life.  We are always being called back to the world in God’s name to be bearers of the gospel, the good news of God in Christ.

As it happens, we were given the Emmaus Road story from Luke’s Gospel (Chapter 24:13-35) for the Wednesday lectionary for William Porcher DuBose this morning.  In that story it was only after the fact that the disciples recognized the importance of the events they experienced while walking with Jesus.

I invite you to join me and one another in reflecting on your experiences away for instances of God showing up.  It is when we do this and do it with our fellow travelers that we come to the place where we too can expect our ‘hearts to burn within us’ as we recognize the kind of covert ways God has been present in our times on the road.

Risen Lord, be known to us in the breaking of the bread as we travel the Emmaus road together.