meeting Jesus

The encounter on the Emmaus road should be, it seems, what we are all about - meeting Jesus. I am about too head off to Church. As a priest I will have various tasks to perform, various special ministries which I will undertake but I am primarily there for the same reason as everyone else - and that is to meet Jesus, to talk with God, to recharge my batteries at the Eucharist. Oh.....and all those things which you know to be true but do not fit neatly into three sentences.

And this not fitting neatly into three sentences, or into any words at all, gives me a sense of dis-ease. I am charge to provide a place of encounter in my parochial ministry - to do the best I am able to make worship ordered and accessible for anyone who might walk through the door - from young to old, from the least able to the most. Yet, whatever I do, I will always be left with the sense that we could do more.

Yesterday I was thinking that this sense of failure might be linked to my profound distrust of words. Early in my theological career I was introduced to the Via Negativa which roughly boils down to the idea that no words will ever adequately express God's person and activity - in some ways this is obvious but it leaves those of us who lead worship with an interesting dilemma - how - at our main service on a Sunday Morning, where verbal communication is at least a big part, if not the majority of the worship, do we make do with language which can never get us to the heart of God.

I decided in the end that I was worrying too much. That anything we do can only ever be a signpost to God and that I have to trust that if I am doing what God has charged me to do, making my best effort then God can and will step in and pick up the slack and carry people into God's mystery.

Accessible and understandable are not always the same thing. We believe a lot of things without claiming to fully understand them. As someone who has been coming to Christ's Table for most of my life I cannot claim to understand the Eucharist but God works in it and through it.

The Disciples on the Emmaus Road stood next to the Risen Christ but I doubt that they could claim to understand what they were experiencing - they could have, no doubt, found some scant words to explain what they saw - but the further they entered into the reality of the mystery of the resurrection, I am sure, the more they struggled for words.

When we use the acclamation Christ has died, Christ is Risen and Christ will come again I tend to push the verbs when I speak. Our past present and future is held in the reality of Christ incarnate and our meeting with Christ in word and sacrament.

All of us have the same charge, simply to be honestly who we are in the presence of God in our moments of service. There are few words which will express the light and love of Christ - and so we say - Come and see, come and feel, come and experience - and hope that our few words of invitation begin to hint at the reality of the encounter with the Risen Lord!