My sister Vicki writes:

How fitting that God would choose Thanksgiving Day to bring our wonderful Great Auntie Mena home to heaven! She so personified a grateful heart to everyone who knew her. Her cheerful way, her servant’s heart, her positive outlook in every part of her life could only come from someone truly thankful for all that God had given, even through the difficult times. When commenting on the loss of her vision, it’s no surprise that rather than complain she said, “You know, when you live this long, things just start to wear out.” Even into her nineties, one could never think of her as a “little old lady.” There was always a sparkle in her blue eyes, a smile on her face and on her feet sneakers rather than orthopedic shoes. Around her 90th year, we paid a visit and I asked her what year it was that Northern Michigan University presented her with an honorary Bachelor of Nursing degree. Before I could beat her to it, she was bounding up the stairs to get the plaque from her room. Coming back down to show us her award from 1978, she said, “It’s good for me to go up and down those stairs.”
On our last visit with her in August at Norlite, she was slowing down, but still persistent in spreading warmth and cheer. She spoke of being blessed to be cared for by a wonderful staff and for the food that is “out of this world.” As we prayed with her before leaving, she prayed herself and in a strong voice, “Thank you, Lord, for giving me so many people who love and care for me.” As we said our good-byes, she urged us to get a cup of coffee for the road, “It’s the best coffee you’ve ever tasted!” That was our Auntie Mena. How thankful we are to have had her influence and example in our lives. We will miss her, but we know she is rejoicing with her Savior, Jesus Christ, and all of the loved ones who have gone on before her.

“Thank you Lord for giving me so many people who love and care for me.” My sister Vicki’s anecdote captures my Great Aunt Mena at her most characteristic. Humility, as C. S. Lewis said, is a cheerful virtue.

Mena Haskins Hartvigh was cut from the same cloth as the man whose remark stopped me in my tracks a few years ago as I watched the BBC production Windsor Castle: A Royal Year. In three nearly hour-long episodes, it gives an inside look at the royal house. Thus we see the maids on their knees polishing waxed floors in great gilded rooms, men in felt socks walking on top of the banquet table set with gold service for one hundred and fifty. Upholsterers, clockmakers (keeping time with the 400 clocks in the castle), the fender men (polishing the fenders on the 80 hearths), the footmen, chefs, stable boys, guards and game wardens, we see all of them cheerfully going about the business of serving the monarch.

What stopped me in my tracks was the remark of a man named Tony Martin. Mr. Martin’s duty is to hoist the royal standard at the top of the great tower of Windsor Castle when the Queen is in residence. When the Queen leaves the castle, he lowers the standard. On her majesty’s return, the moment she is inside the ramparts, he raises it.

There are nearly 400 servants at Windsor, so the sovereign can’t know each one personally. But Mr. Martin finished speaking of his duty by saying that he met the Queen once. “She said to me, ‘You’re the flag man, aren’t you?’” He finished his remark by saying with apparent joy, “She knows who I am.”

It’s rather like that scene from one of Lewis’s Narnia Chronicles, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In the chapter titled How the Adventure Ended the tiresome boy Eustace Clarence Scrubb says to Edmund, “But who is Aslan? Do you know him?” And Edmund replies, “Well — he knows me.” That is very good theology impossible to grasp by an imagination in thrall to the democratic. (I might suggest that the key to Mena’s gladness was kept as in the keep of a castle, except that in her case it was as hidden as the key my Uncle Lowell hid thirty-three years ago. My family had come from Sault Ste. Marie to Marquette, Michigan for a visit. Vicki was in college there at Northern Michigan University, and Mena and my Uncle Lowell lived in Marquette. On such occasions we would stay at Lowell’s house and on this one, fearing we would arrive before he could be there to greet us, this cunning man hid the key to his house in an envelope and taped it to the front door. On the envelope for anybody to see he’d written a discreet note to my folks. It read, “Bud and Ann: The key is in the envelope.”)

The Lord knows who Mena Genevieve Haskins Hartvigh is. The Sovereign she served faithfully knows who she is. That was the source of her joy, as it is now and shall be forever.

With her death, the last of her generation in my extended family has joined all the company of heaven, but her devoted service continues. She would have slapped her knee with approval had she heard my father some years ago telling the four of his children, “When I die, you can bury me wherever you want. Tell the mortician when he lays me out to point my toes because as far as I’m concerned you can take a maul and pound me into the ground wherever you want because the Lord will know where to find me!” Not, “I will know where to find the Lord,” but, “the Lord will know where to find me.” That’s the hope of the resurrection in language any Yooper can raise a glass to.

What I most want to say for Mena has been said by other servants in the house of the Lord, by my family, by the Book of Common Prayer, by apostles and prophets, and by none other than our Lord himself.

O God, the King eternal, whose light divides the day from the night and turns the shadow of death into the morning: Drive far from us all wrong desires, incline our hearts to keep your law, and guide our feet into the way of peace; that, having done your will with cheerfulness while it was day, we may, when night comes, rejoice to give you thanks; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord;
he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;
and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.

I know that my Redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth;
and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God;
whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold,
and not as a stranger.

For none of us liveth to himself,
and no man dieth to himself.
For if we live, we live unto the Lord.
and if we die, we die unto the Lord.
Whether we live, therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.

Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;
even so saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labors.

Into thy hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant Mena. Acknowledge, we humbly beseech thee, a sheep of thine own fold, a lamb of thine own flock, a sinner of thine own redeeming. Receive her into the arms of thy mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious company of the saints in light. Amen.

The risen Christ is not a generic mysterium tremendum. He is the one who identifies with the God who spoke in Deuteronomy. God is not unknowable, but encountered in a language that Jesus subjects himself to and exalts by his obedience. “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.”

Even Jesus knows his will and the will of God are not automatically the same. He had to conform his will to that of the Father. And his judgment about that will is not mystically endowed by inner voice, but by knowing the God whose will has been revealed in Israel’s scriptures, where sacrifice and ransom and the will that all nations be blessed are passages that conspire to insist Jesus must die not on Groundhog Day or the Winter Solstice, but during the festival of death out of life and life out of death. It is the psalms that comprise Jesus’s last words from the cross, not universal expressions of anguish or hymns to a dying and rising God from the Ancient Near East or Greco-Roman milieu.

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from my sermon A Room Furnished with Grief and Resurrection based on Luke 24: 36 – 48

While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “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.”

Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels, 
and let your trumpets shout Salvation 
for the victory of our mighty King.

Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth, 
bright with a glorious splendor, 
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.

Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church, 
and let your holy courts, in radiant light, 
resound with the praises of your people.

It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible, almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam’s sin, and by his blood delivered your faithful people.

This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.

This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.

This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.

   How wonderful and beyond our knowing, O God, is your
   mercy and loving-kindness to us, that to redeem a slave, you
   gave a Son.

   How holy is this night, when wickedness is put to flight, and
   sin is washed away. It restores innocence to the fallen, and joy
   to those who mourn. It casts out pride and hatred, and brings
   peace and concord.

   How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined
   and man is reconciled to God.

Holy Father accept our evening sacrifice, the offering of this candle in your honor. May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning—he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

My proposal to you is that we should not be frightened of the postmodern critique. It had to come. It is, I believe, a necessary judgment on the arrogance of modernity, and it is essentially a judgment from within. Our task is to reflect on this moment of despair within our culture and, reflecting biblically and Christianly, to see our way through the moment of despair and out the other side. That is why I want to talk to you about the resurrection and about the Emmaus Road story; that is why I want to do so through the lens of the poem that we call Psalms 42 and 43, which (despite its customary division in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles) is actually a single poem, with its refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (42:11)

This psalm contains a magnificent prayer, which we do well to echo as we consider our own calling:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill.

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

Let me take you quickly through this poem, so that we see its shape and its thrust. The whole is about being in the presence of God. At its most obvious level, it is about someone who has experienced the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. The poet remembers the excitement of being close to God and feels a deep ache and a sense of loss because he is not there any more.

So, in verses 1 to 5, he is in a state of what we might call depression. He is thirsty for God, like a deer in the desert longing for cool water. He finds himself in tears twenty-four hours a day. His memories of happier times only make him feel worse. All he can do is engage in an inner dialogue: Why are you so heavy? Hope in God—I shall again worship him.

Then, in 42:6-11, he remembers what it was actually like, being in the presence of God. He is a long way away from Jerusalem, in the land of Jordan or up on Mount Herman. He knows that in theory YHWH is there with him, even in exile, and he can pray to YHWH, but still the poet feels as if he is a very long way off, that his enemies oppress him and people taunt him, “‘Where is your God?” There is no evidence of the presence of YHWH. So the poet longs to be back in Jerusalem, where one could sense God’s presence and grace where everyone was caught up with worship and adorations again the poet reminds himself that he must hope. (Telling yourself to hope is not, incidentally, the same as hoping; but if it is all you can manage, it is a good deal better than nothing.)

Then, in what we call Psalm 43, but which is actually the third and last stanza of the same poem, the problem comes more into focus. The psalmist is not just geographically distant from the home of God, he is surrounded by people whose whole way of life is radically opposed to God. They are ungodly, deceitful, and unjust. He is powerless before them, and God seems to have abandoned him. It is at this point, the low point in the whole poem, that he prays:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

He is far away from Jerusalem and needs to be led back with joy, like Israel in the wilderness being led by the pillar of cloud and fire, the strange symbolic presence the living God. “Light and truth” are what you need, not just when your intellect is curious and needs stimulating, but when your whole being is lost, downcast, depressed, and thirsty for God. Then he returns once again to the refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (43: 5)

I want you now to hold this poem in your minds as we turn to the New Testament. We will use the language and imagery the poem supplies as the visual backdrop, or perhaps the musical accompaniment, to the story we are now going to examine, the story of the two disciples, on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35.

I should like first to consider the background to the events that Luke describes here. It is the afternoon of the first Easter Day. All sorts of strange things have happened in the morning—rumors of visions and of an empty tomb-and the disciples still have not a clue as to what is really going on. As the day wears on, two of them set off to go home to Emmaus. They are joined by a mysterious stranger, who engages them in conversation about the new events. If we are to understand this section historically, it is vital that we grasp the central point stated in verse 21. “We had hoped,” they say, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Where were they coming from? What was their problem?

They had been living out of a story, a controlling narrative, a “metanarrative,” as we might say. This story was built up from historical precedents, prophetic promises and of course from the songs of the Psalter. The Exodus was the backdrop. God’s subsequent liberations of his people from various foreign power, formed successive native layers all pointing in the same direction. When pagan oppression was at its height, Israel’s God would step in and deliver her once more.

Why are you cast down, O my soul

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.

In particular—and this is perhaps the most important point to grasp—most first-century Jews believed that the Exile was not yet really over. Yes, they had come back from Babylon, geographically. But the pagans were still on top: first Persia, then Greece, then Syria, and now Rome. No sensitive or intelligent Jew would have dreamed of asserting that the promises of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest had been fulfilled in the various paltry “returns” that had taken place. Israel still needed “redeeming”—which, in their language, was an obvious code for the Exodus. The Exodus was the great covenant moment; what they now needed was covenant renewal. So we may imagine that when they prayed Psalm 43, they had this situation in view and some very clear notions as to what they were hoping for: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me? … O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; … Why are you cast down, O my soul … Hope in God!

The Hebrew Scriptures thus offered to Jesus and his contemporaries a story in search of an ending. Jesus’ followers had thought that the ending was going to happen with Jesus. And clearly, it had not.

How had they thought it would happen? The pattern of messianic and prophetic movements in the centuries either side or Jesus gives a fairly clear and consistent picture. The method and the means would be quite simple: holiness, zeal for God and the Law, and military revolt. The holy remnant, with God on its side would defeat the pagan hordes. Thus it had always been in scripture, and thus, they believed, it would be when the great climax came, when Israel’s God would become King of all the world. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The two on the road to Emmaus had been doing what the psalm told them to do: Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

The crucifixion of Jesus was therefore the complete and final devastation of their hope. Crucifixion is what happens to people who think they are going to liberate Israel and find out, too late, that they are mistaken. It is not simply that Jesus’ followers knew from Deuteronomy that a crucified person was under God’s curse. Nor was it simply that they had not yet worked out a theology of Jesus’ atoning death. The crucifixion already had, for them, a perfectly clear theological as well as political meaning: It meant that the exile was still continuing, that God had not forgiven Israel’s sins, and that pagans were still ruling the world. Their thirst for redemption for God’s light and truth to come and lead them had still not been satisfied. All of this we must, as historians, hold in our minds if we wish to understand the story of the road to Emmaus at its most basic level.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and New Testament scholar, herewith

We knew what to do. My brother and I had done the drill in our heads before. We had a travelling kit of embalming supplies: gloves, fluids, needles, odds and ends. We had to explain to the security people at the airlines who scrutinized the contents of the bag, wondering how we might make a bomb out of Dodge Permaglo or overtake the cabin crew with a box marked “Slaughter Surgical Supplies” full of stainless steel oddities they’d never seen before. When we got to the funeral home they had taken him to, taken his body to, the undertaker there asked if we were sure we wanted to do this—our own father, after all?—he’d be happy to call in one of his own embalmers. We assured him it would be OK. He showed us into the prep room, that familiar decor of porcelain and tile and florescent light—a tidy scientific venue for the witless horror of mortality, for how we slip from is to isn’t.

It was something we had always promised him, though I can’t now, for the life of me, remember the context in which it was made—the promise that when he died his sons would embalm him, dress him, pick out a casket, lay him out, prepare the obits, contact the priests, manage the flowers, the casseroles, the wake and procession, the Mass and burial. Maybe it was just understood. His was a funeral he would not have to direct. It was ours to do; and though he’d directed thousands of them, he had never made mention of his own preferences. Whenever he was pressed on that matter he would only say, “You’ll know what to do.” We did.

There’s this “just a shell” theory of how we ought to relate to dead bodies. You hear a lot of it from young clergy, old family friends, well-intentioned in-laws—folks who are unsettled by the fresh grief of others…. It is proffered as comfort in the teeth of what is a comfortless situation, consolation to the inconsolable. Right between the inhale and exhale of the bonewracking sob such hurts produce, some frightened and well-meaning ignoramus is bound to give out with “It’s OK, that’s not her, it’s just a shell.” I once saw an Episcopalian deacon nearly decked by the swift slap of the mother of a teenager, dead of leukemia, to whom he’d tendered this counsel. “I’ll tell you when it’s ‘just a shell,’” the woman said. “For now and until I tell you otherwise, she’s my daughter.” She was asserting the longstanding right of the living to declare the dead dead….

So to suggest in the early going of grief that the dead body is “just” anything rings as tinny in its attempt to minimalize as it would if we were to say it was “just” a bad hair day when the girl went bald from her chemotherapy. Or that our hope for heaven on her behalf was based on the belief that Christ raised “just” a body from death. What if, rather than crucifixion, he’d opted for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of sins? What if, rather than “just a shell” he’d raised his personality, say, or The Idea of Himself? Do you think they’d have changed the calendar for that? Done the Crusades? Burned witches? Easter was a body and blood thing, no symbols, no euphemisms, no half measures. If he’d raised anything less, of course, as Paul points out, the deacon and several others of us would be out of business or back to Saturday sabbaths, a sensible diet, and no more Christmases.

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Thomas Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade