As we continue in the Easter season, we get to hear the gospel re-tellings of that first Easter. Last Sunday’ s gospel from Luke recounts a scene from the first Easter evening. It is a familiar story to many - two unnamed disciples walking back from Jerusalem to Emmaus. They are feeling disappointed because the Jesus they thought was the Messiah has been crucified. Along the road they meet a stranger who listens to them, asks them questions and finally stays with them for a meal. It is in the meal, the breaking of the bread together, that these disciples realize the stranger with them is actually the Risen Christ! In their joy, they race back to Jerusalem to re-join the other disciples and to witness to what they have now seen - Jesus is alive.

This good news changes everything for those early disciples - it changes despair and disappointment into hope, it changes sadness into joy and it changes death into life! Nothing will be the same for these followers of Jesus. As with our faith ancestors, this good news changes everything for us as well!

Clarence Jordan, founder of the inter-racial Koinonia Community in southern Georgia in 1942 and author of “he Cotton Patch Gospels”, said this about being changed by the power of the Risen Christ: “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried away church. . .”

We give thanks that as we celebrate Easter, we are gifted with full hearts, spirit filled fellowship and a carried away church.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Contributed by Bishop Tracie Bartholomew
Monday May 5, 2014
Liturgical Year A: Week 23
Liturgical Color: White
Sunday Gospel reading:
Third Sunday of Easter