Margaret Ernst Preaching

      Each Peach Pear Plum was my favorite book when I was three years old. When my mom read it to me, I chimed in at the end of every sentence, and I always knew what picture was on the next page. Granted, it wasn’t that hard. “Each peach, pear, plum, I spy Tom…Thumb!” And there he would be, crouched in the apple tree, in the far right corner. “Wicked Witch over the wood, I spy Robin…Hood!” And I always knew how it ended, after the increasingly idiosyncratic community found themselves under the same thatched-roof, crowded on the same page, eating together. A couple of years later, it was Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia of which I could recite to you the entire plot in finest detail. And at some point along the way, Harry Potter became and remains practically my best friend. Harry, Tom Thumb, Amelia Bedelia…they danced and still dance around my head as the characters of memory and childhood and imagination. I knew best what they might do and what they might say, but never, in my wildest dreams, did I think those I had read about would one day be sitting at a table with me – let alone eating a “broiled fish”.

“A shoot shall come out from the stock of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.” Can you just imagine, years and years before they would be sitting together after the resurrection, the brothers John and James lying in bed, defiant seven year olds, listening to their bedtime stories? “Read it again, Mom!” they might have said. There Andrew might have been, thirty years younger, poring over his own, perhaps grammar-school version of the prophecies. Simon and Philip and Judas and Paul...these were their stories. Some had grown up with them, maybe by reading or by hearing, and others met Jesus along the way. They talked about the stories late at night with under low light and with excited whispers. “Do you think this might be the guy? ”

Then, after they’d seen miracle upon miracle, listened to parable after parable, Jesus appeared in Jerusalem, after they all thought he was dead. “The stories are true!” as the bedridden Granny Wendy says to Robin Williams in Hook. Or in this case, it looked that these hadn’t been “stories” at all. “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things,” we said. “No – way,” is what I might have said. “This kind of stuff doesn’t happen to me – that’s for movies and for books and for stories from long, long ago. That, is when it all went down.” That’s why what strikes me about Luke 24:36-49 is the “now-ness” of it all. It’s so gripping, so unbelievable – it’s the climax.

And there he was, just eating a broiled fish. “I’m here, it’s ok, guys, everything has been fulfilled!” The kingdom of heaven wasn’t when they all agreed about the details, or worked things out amongst themselves, or wrote it down officially. “You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world”, not tomorrow, but now. Not when it is convenient, or glamorous, but “now” - around an old wooden table and a piece of fish. Now it is time, and that “now” will keep on keeping on; not just where were are comfortable, but also where there are people we don’t like or don’t trust. The “time” is not just for this group of friends, or for that co-worker, or only after we’ve had a few coffees, or just on Sundays, or when there is nothing that makes us scared or unwilling to do what is right. “And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised.” The promise lasted, it was a good one, you see, and it should be just as “now” as ever before, just as climactic as there with the twelve and the shock and the joy, and the broiled fish.

But honestly, it just doesn’t always feel that way, does it. The disciples were disbelieving in their joy. Their doubt is one of “this is just too good to be true.” Their disbelief is “pinch me, I must be dreaming.” For us, when we don’t believe, it is because we cannot find enough reasons to say, “this is too good to be true”; sometimes it feels like the world just doesn’t stop pinching. Yeah, Jesus came, and he sat with the disciples and he asked if there was anything to eat, but that huddle around the table in Jerusalem simply feels so long ago that we usually don’t have a problem with “disbelieving out of joy”.

That’s why I think the Bible shouldn’t have an end. Ok, of course it has to have an end. Each Peach Pear Plum did, and even Amelia Bedelia, and this summer, so will Harry Potter. But this story is the greatest story ever told, and yes it needs a last page and an index and a glossary and an appendix of maps. But maybe a few blank, lined pages in the back would be appropriate. Shouldn’t there be a passage about the Crisis Ministry and the Footprints walk? Shouldn’t there be a chapter about “This Little Light of Mine” last Saturday? “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus said to his flabbergasted disciples; witnesses to the miracles, the everlasting love, the sacrifices, the full hearts and giving hands, the joy in the face of desperation, hope in the face of hopelessness. Yes, there is also our spite, and our ambition, our fear of the dissimilar and our school shootings and our foolish wars, but we can do better. We can fix it. And there’s never been a better time than now.

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