Recognition

Friday, 13 May 2011 10:01

Sunday 8th May (Third Sunday of Easter)

Read Luke 24.13-35
Shirley Valentine is a comic-yet-poignant film about a bored, working-class housewife who feels life has somehow passed her by. Lavished with indifference by her husband Joe, Shirley Valentine famously resorts to talking to the kitchen wall to get things off her chest.

Eventually things get so bad that she books a holiday to Greece without telling Joe, who comes home from work to find the house in darkness and a note saying, “Gone to Greece: back in two weeks.”

Shirley enjoys her holiday so much that she decides to stay. Instead of the English rain, she has the Greek sun beating down on her and she finds new friends who appreciate and value her. You watch how this new life almost physically transforms her: she walks taller, has more confidence and learns to like herself again. Joe, meanwhile, is depressed. Stuck at home, he is unable to look after himself, yet equally unable to get Shirley to return. Realising that he’s taken her for granted, he travels to Greece to win her back.

Joe arrives late one evening and Shirley is sitting at a table by the sea drinking a glass of wine. She is the only person for miles around, but Joe walks right past his wife of twenty years. Only when he hears her familiar voice does he identify her and turns around to see the attractive woman he fell in love with. It’s a whole new start for them both and we watch them begin their first real conversation for years as the sun sets in the background and the credits roll.

Now I want you to cast your minds back to the Gospel reading of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. There's a link with all I have been saying. Can you see what it is? Its to do with not seeing at first, then having a moment of recognition. Joe was not expecting Shirley to look like she did and it took a word from her to make him realise and his eyes were opened.The two disciples simply did not recognise Jesus - their eyes were kept from seeing him. They were not expecting to see him, and most probably his risen body was not what they remembered of him. It was only when he took the bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened.

It’s often like that with us. Sometimes its like we only expect to encounter God in church, or in a worship service, or in our private times of prayer. At other times were are preoccupied with getting on with what we think is life, busy, or worrying, or lamenting the past, or whatever it might be. But God comes to us in many different ways - only we don’t recognise him. He comes in the words of a friend, a smile, an opportunity to help someone, a chance to say the right word. He comes in the guy selling the Big Issue perhaps, or the decision whether or not to vote. He is there when things go wrong; he can be there when we are hurt or upset. So many ways might the Risen Christ come into our lives.

We do not see the Risen Christ in the same way as did the disciples in those first days and weeks but He is present through his Spirit. He walks with us, he is with us especially when we do what we do in his name. May we learn to read the clues of his presence, may we have our moments of recognition, may our eyes be opened. Like those two on the Emmaus Road, may our hearts be warmed and may we not be slow to share that Presence with others.