How Faith, Hope, and Love May Abide (February 3, 2019)

Readings

1 Corinthians 13

Luke 4:14-30

How may faith, hope, and love abide?

First, I think that it may be important for us to have some definitions in common – the meanings of faith and hope and love. For the purposes of this sermon, therefore, let me just observe to you that when I say “faith and hope and love,” I am meaning this:

Faith = I am bound to you, either by promise or by grace.
Hope = Better things are coming, and redemption is near.
Love = Unconditional, undifferentiated embrace with no requirement of reciprocation.

When I started researching for this sermon, I was intrigued by the insight that the name of the town where Jesus’ home was throughout most of his ministry, Capernaum, is a word in Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) now associated with chaos and meaninglessness. I was fascinated that he should have moved from Nazareth to Capernaum, from the place where he spent his childhood to that haven of insanity.

And then we read the passage Erick and I just shared with you from Luke... and you have to realize that Nazareth was pretty crazy too. So, what Jesus proposed to do was to introduce the God who first ordered creation to the chaotic world in which we live. Into this world he would bring

Faith = I am bound to you.
Hope = Better things are coming.
Love = Unconditional, undifferentiated embrace with no requirement of reciprocation.

But because “the greatest of these is love,” that’s where I am going to try and concentrate most of our focus, today.

Faith = I am bound to you.
Hope = Better things are coming.
Love = Unconditional, undifferentiated embrace with no requirement of reciprocation.

It’s kind of nice to have so much in our readings concerning love, here so close to Valentines Day. I can’t find evidence that that is why we just read 1 Corinthians 13, but it feels almost as if we’re reading this in order to prepare for February 14.

Love, Paul argues, is the necessary basis of every spiritual gift he has mentioned in chapter 12. He continues by asserting that, if you have any spiritual gift but you lack love, then you don’t actually have the spiritual gift. If all that is happening is some kind of personal gratification or reward, then what you have cannot possibly be love.

Love is a divine quality, rooted in the Holy Spirit – chesed, lovingkindness – a product of grace, a byproduct of promises kept, pointing toward a potential in human beings that we rarely achieve.

Love (what Paul called, agapé) is the stuff of heaven, abundantly available on earth, and fundamentally irreplaceable, but scarcely employed.

When it happens, it is so unusual that it stands out. Being selfless and unconditional, it is starkly different from what one is accustomed to seeing produced from out of human beings. When love is accomplished successfully, it draws amazed attention. For example, the real estate developer Candice Payne in Chicago, this past week, recruited other merchants to provide housing to people who had been living in tents but whose propane fuel had run out. Together, Ms. Payne and those other citizens put up eighty or so people in sixty hotel rooms on the South Side. She and her husband paid for a third of them... and not just for one extremely cold night but for three.

That’s a nice example of how to remedy a situation in the immediate. But what if you know that remedying the immediate doesn’t actually fix the problem? What if you know that the problem really is rooted more deeply? You know, the old metaphor of pulling drowning people out of the river and then realizing that the solution is to prevent them from being thrown in, in the first place..?

In Utah and New York City, and other places, agencies are dealing with a level of homelessness in our country the rate of which is only exceeded by that which existed during the Great Depression. There are two prominent ways of dealing with homelessness: Housing Ready is the most common, but there’s also a new concept called, Housing First.

Housing Ready provides homes to homeless people who have undergone training on how to maintain a healthy and stable household. They learn skills like balancing a checkbook and cooking simple meals and interviewing for jobs, sometimes responsible parenting, and those sorts of things. Some are given avenues toward becoming sober. There will usually be some transitional living situation provided as a first step toward affordable or even free housing. But the idea is that, once you have completed such life skills development, then you can qualify for a place to live. Such programs can have as much as a 40% success rate among the chronic homeless, but it is usually considerably lower both for the chronic and the persistent homeless person.

Housing First puts people in stable housing situations regardless of whether they have been taught or acquired life skills for stable living, before their drug or alcohol use is abated, providing condoms and clean needles if needed, even before their mental health care may have been normalized for them. St. Louis journalist Aubrey Byron reports that a Housing First program in the state of Utah reduced chronic homelessness there by more than ninety percent in the decade from 2005 to 2015. It hasn’t had a similar effect in other homeless populations, such as those who are persistently homeless – say, for more than three months but less than a year – but the results of this type of intervention for the lives of chronically homeless people, newly housed after perhaps dozens of years, are really remarkable over the long term. They are shown to result in sobriety, lower per capita living costs (most notably because of a lesser need for emergency services and intervention of law enforcement), stabilized mental health, and reunion with estranged family.

Housing First requires a strong investment of volunteer and professional attention and time in those being housed, but as the Utah-based initiative’s founder Lloyd Pendleton likes to say,

I have learned over and over again that when you listen to somebody’s story with an open heart, walk in their shoes with them, you can’t help but love and care for them and want to serve them.

Now, the model isn’t a panacea. It has a magnificent success rate for the fifteen percent of homeless people who are the chronic homeless. But it’s an amazing start.

Persistently homeless people benefit from somewhat different approaches. Utah’s latest initiative for persistent homelessness, which they are boldly calling “Homes Not Jail,” was begun in 2017 by the state with the cooperation of a major shelter in Salt Lake City. It’s still too early to estimate its level of success, but you get a sense in the naming of the project what will be the measure of its success.

Just to make sure you’re remembering with me, here are our definitions again:

Faith = I am bound to you.
Hope = Better things are coming.
Love = Unconditional, undifferentiated embrace with no requirement of reciprocation (which provides a basis for the other two).

In consideration of Paul’s encouragement to other Christians to practice the unconditional love they have received from God, and to base their faith and hope upon it, it should come as no surprise that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the Mormon church, has been a major funds provider and advocate for these initiatives in Utah. The Mormons are proving to be significantly pragmatic in their approaches to homelessness and addiction, not placing restrictions, impediments, or expectations upon the recipients of their benevolences.

I wonder what it could be like for UCC churches to associate and move ahead in a similar way for the benefit of our own communities...

Can we love like that? Would it be possible for us, even as individuals, so to set aside our concerns about appearances, or our presumption about others’ laziness and lack of motivation or lack of will, that we might love others in the way that God loves us?

Think about that!

There is something in the way that God has acted toward us, something in our life that has caused us to perceive God’s favor, something in what we have been taught (maybe) that says that God loves everybody and therefore God loves us.

Even if we are not entirely satisfied with the present outcomes of our lives or the circumstances in which we may be living at the present, there has been a time, a blessed time that we cherish, when the goodness, the love of God was so readily apparent that we ended up here.

Or else, we’ve been told that if and when we’re in trouble, we ought to show up here, because this is where God will be. This space and this place, what I say, what we do, how we experience time here are designed to mitigate, to remove the usual daily obstructions and seemingly endless distractions of our attention from the Source of blessing.

We know that, and this is why we are here.

So, what about not only here? If

Faith = I am bound to you.
Hope = Better things are coming.
Love = Unconditional, undifferentiated embrace with no requirement of reciprocation.

then, mustn’t there be some kind of something that we could do that would move those qualities of faith and hope and love from within these walls to beyond them!

This is a challenging proposition, I know, because when we read that story from Luke, about when Jesus upsets those other worshipers from his hometown, we may be led to wonder at just why they got so angry. But it has something to do with what he was saying to them.

When he says, “This prophecy is fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus directs the attention of his audience to the Isaiah scroll he has just read, about the year of the Jubilee – the poor have good news, the captives are released, the blind now see, the oppressed are free.

But they don’t listen, fixated as they are on what has become of their native son.

So he points out to them that they have become distracted from the message of the prophet: They are potentially the fulfillment of God’s longing for all people to enjoy the benefits of the earth’s abundance.

You’ll recall, they had just requested that he do among them the kind of things that he had done in other places, especially in Capernaum where he had taken up residence. His response, which was based on what he had just read to them from the prophet Isaiah, was to say, in effect, that he didn’t belong to them; his hometown was heaven. And so was theirs. And if they would just act like it, imagine what would be possible! He was proclaiming the Good News, and this was to be good news for everyone.

Because heavenly love cannot be localized. What we do here on Sunday mornings celebrates faith, hope, and love that have to abide as heaven abides – in, with, and through the earth. What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, as they say, but what happens in First – that stuff of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit – must not stay here. How may faith and hope abide without love? And how may love possibly abide in just one place?


I want to go back to what I said at the beginning of this little talk and reassert it, because it really is at the heart of what we are about – as individuals, as an organization, as the Church – and that’s love. Love is the necessary basis of every spiritual gift. If you have the gift but you lack love, then you don’t actually have the gift.

If all that is happening is some kind of personal gratification or reward, then what you have cannot possibly be love. The people around us, the community around us have to see some benefit from what happens here. Or else we’re useless. “If I have the faith that removes mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give everything away, even give my life away, but I have no love, nothing is gained.”

So, how shall any of these abide – faith, hope, or love?

I promise you, the only possible way is that we keep returning to the Source of all three, and that we return persistently to the One who introduced us to them in the first place, introduced us so that they consisted of reality and meaning.

This is how you do it. You find it here and then share it. You take it out, and then you bring it back, over and over again.

What We Say (sermon, September 16, 2012)

[Our seminarian, Reina Ueno, a native of Sendai, Japan, was the reader of scripture for the morning's service. To hear her reading Isaiah 50:4-9 and James 3:1-12, please listen to the audio version of this sermon.]

The scriptures we have heard today I think are unusually apropos of our particular moment in history.

Furthermore, for a church in a denomination which asserts that “God is still speaking,” these readings are pointedly significant.  And to have them spoken among us by one whose first language is not English I think may add light to just how important what we say can be.  Then to be aware that the language in which the letter of James was written was not English but Greek, and that even though translated from Greek into English, the letter (by evidence of some untranslated Hebrew or Aramaic words in it, such as Gehenna) probably was collected from sermons preached in Aramaic by James full of the Holy Spirit, it is entirely fitting to our purposes today that a non-native English speaker should be working so diligently to make James's message understood.

As to this moment in history...

Of course what I am referring to is, when an anti-Islam radical in Hollywood made a scandalous motion picture about the Muslim prophet – of whom their holy book and tradition insists that no image (graven or otherwise) shall be made. Muslims with perspectives similarly limited as the radical producer’s reacted violently.

I have heard speculation that the producer of the film is probably a Coptic Christian with an agenda to humiliate Muslims as he remembered having been humiliated for his Christianity growing up in Egypt.  But he ought to have resisted the temptation to do what he did.  “Not many of you should become teachers,” the apostle James once said, “for you are judged more severely.”  What that producer expressed in fourteen minutes... what he said incited violence to the extent that innocent and genuinely good-hearted, helpful people got killed.

Now, the fact that good people got killed indicates that what you say may not be the only concern we ought to have as we seek to restore the whole, which of course is the focus of our new Sunday School curriculum.  No, also, what you do is significant, and next week’s sermon is titled, “What You Do,” so I’ll get to the murderous mobs next week (I imagine that will still be timely.).  What we say is enough of a topic, for now.

Over time, we have always acknowledged that things we say carry weight, even power.

Christianity includes a very important clause, in the law on which our practice of faith is based, namely the commandment, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

That law is in our holy canon, because we know deeply – having as one of our myths of creation a story in which what God says causes things to be – words have power.

That law (“You shall not bear false witness.” (Exodus 20:16)) is there, because we affirm in that creation story, that words have power.

That law (“You shall not bear false witness.”) is there, because the power that words have originates with the speaker.

That law is there, because we who speak claim to be people of an invisible Creator whom we give substance!  We are God’s physically existing representatives, and when we misrepresent God by saying something as scandalous as to disrespect someone else’s religion, someone else’s prophet, we invite God’s judgment upon us and the world’s judgment upon God.

Even if some members of that religion deserve to have God’s judgment brought against them because they once persecuted you simply for being a follower of another faith tradition, our law says that it does not give you the right to bear false witness against them.  The things one knows to be untrue, and the things one only speculates are true, and the things that one just really, really wishes would be true – all of which appear to have been contained in the testimony made against Islam in the fourteen minutes of video available about that crazy movie on the internet – are false witness, once you say them.

“Brothers and sisters,” James said, “not all of you should be teachers.”

What we say as people of God – and by virtue of our baptism, there is never a time in our lives when we are not the people of God – what we say has potential for a profound effect, to do what God’s words can do – to bless or to destroy.

What we say may not only have a profound effect on others; it can affect us, too.  Words are powerful, and at their best our words give sound and substance to a silent Spirit waiting to be revealed.

But church people over the past many decades have begun to stay away in droves.  Christian communities have seemed more interested in delivering a good message than in allowing that message to activate with power.  We struggle as faithful people to demonstrate the power we have experienced God’s word to have in our lives.  I witness daily the perseverance with which you all endeavor to make your lives resonant with the power you have found in the word you have received.

It’s the word of life, and it has restorative potential.  What choice do we have but to respond, thus demonstrating that not all church people are hypocrites!

To the end of presenting a new and vitalized word for others to speak, theologians will revise concepts of the divine, or propose new interpretations and patterns of those concepts, in order to get to the heart of God’s pure message.

The Rev. Dr. Charles McCollough at work

Our friend Charles McCollough is here, this morning, with the express purpose of visualizing God’s word anew, through his sculpture.

Our friend Libby Reimers is encouraging us to invite others to re-envision their search for faith in a Wednesday morning series, starting October 10.  In that study, some very creative writers and illustrators and videographers invite us to consider our beliefs in new or innovative ways.

Because what we say about God and ourselves in relationship with one another gives the rest of the world a pretty strong impression about who we are and what ends we are seeking to accomplish.  And it says profound things about how we think of ourselves.

What we say as people of faith (and there is no time in our lives, once we have joined the church by baptism that we are NOT people of faith) will provide a centerpoint of focus for those who do not somehow know God.  It will further provide a centerpoint of concentration for those who are seeking to know God more fully and are trusting us to be accurate representatives... people like our children and others with formative minds and hearts.

What we say is important.  “Not all of you should be teachers,” said James.  “You bring greater judgment on yourself.”

But what choice do we have?  What choice is there?  Words have power, even if we don’t want to use them as if we were teachers.  We serve the word of God – Christ the word – spoken from the start of creation and still being spoken today.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Chief Rabbi of Great Britain Jonathan Sacks has said,

The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation, speaking our fears, listening to the fears of others, and in that sharing of vulnerabilities, discovering a genesis of hope.  

He has used as evidence the parents in Israel and the Palestinian territories whose children have been killed in violent conflicts there, seeking reconciliation for the sake of future generations of children and for the continuation of their homeland in peace.  When they have been able to be vulnerable with one another, they have found new ground and invited others to it.

Perhaps on what you would consider a more mundane level, but which affects me greatly as a minister, if divorcing couples can talk together, maybe with a moderator present, and take the time really to speak from the heart and to listen from the heart, respecting and not insisting on one’s own way, the parting can be peaceful.  Thus, Rabbi Sacks has further observed, "It’s when you can feel your opponents’ pain that you're beginning the path to reconciliation."

We can underestimate sometimes just how crucial it can be to actually listen to somebody and to make yourself heard.  The premarital course of study that I share with couples includes a section that I emphasize probably more than they care to perform.  It’s called Assertiveness and Active Listening, and through it what I try to do is to strengthen the couples’ understanding of the importance of stating their hopes and dreams and feelings, and the equal importance of paying attention to what the other says.  It is the discipline of echoing what the other has said and checking in with the speaker that one has understood, and only then offering back one’s own feelings and thoughts, constantly checking in with the other about the vicissitudes of the human conscience and heart and spirit, until new ground is reached or familiar ground affirmed.  If we lose that, if we fail to allow the other to say what they need to say, if we fail to allow their words to have the power that they can have with our own, then we weaken and disrespect the other.

This way of speaking and hearing affirms what we all insist is true about the power of words, and as a fellow person of faith I think Rabbi Sacks is right.  If we can simply learn to practice respectful patterns of speaking and listening, affirming our own and others’ power of words, the world will be a better place.  "The greatest single antidote to violence is conversation."

Maybe the best we can do is to try not to forget how much power our words may have... and how important it can be to say them rightly, properly...  Maybe the best we can do is to live our speaking as Reina was having to live it a while ago: endeavoring to say the English words that represent the Greek words that represent the Aramaic speaker who sought to represent the heart of God.

We will not necessarily say our words with the same kind of precision that a foreign-born reader might be seeking, but we will be endeavoring to represent faithfully to our world One who speaks beyond words and, perhaps through us, with words, in Christ’s name.

Sensational Faith (sermon, Mothers Day, May 8, 2011)

The audio version of this sermon is available at http://tinyurl.com/3d55trk
To begin, let me tell you that this past Thursday I preached in the chapel at Eden Seminary a sermon based on  1 Peter 1:17-23, which brings forward much theologically about spiritual rebirth, but which also attributes to God the Father the capacity of giving birth.  Not wanting to limit the power of God, I posited that we need to be about the business of recognizing that God is also Mother, if God is giving birth to all of us.

Today, I want to address the story of the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35), which brings up some of the issues that we will have to be ready to wrestle with, if we are to find new and appropriate ways to refer to God, given our modern conditions of living in a democratic society in which people are to be recognized and respected as equals.

In this story, we meet two disciples, the name of one of whom is Cleopas (or Clopas, who is often speculated also be Alphaeus with his name spelled differently from one Greek testament to another). More precisely, these two are probably the parents of a disciple, James the Less, who in one gospel is referred to as James son of Alphaeus. The reason I speculate that they are James' parents is because in one of the gospels there is a Mary wife of Clopas standing at the foot of the cross with Mary Magdalene and Jesus' mother and aunt (John 19:25), while in the others "Mary the mother of James the younger and Joses" is identified as being there (Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:56, Luke 24:10), and in Mark 16:1 a certain "Mary mother of James" approaches the tomb with Mary Magdalene and discovers that a resurrection has taken place.

So, if one of the travelers is Cleopas and the other unnamed, chances are that Mediterranean modesty is prevailing in the story, and the author is choosing not to mention that the other is Cleopas' wife.

Anyway, here's the story... Two disciples of Jesus, at the end of one incredible, jarring weekend, are on their way home to recuperate.  And as they walk back, they meet another traveller going the same way.  This fellow traveller asks them what’s up, and they wonder at the fact that he hasn’t heard the news about what has happened to all those Galileans who rolled into town, last Sunday.  So they tell him about it, and he says something like, “Oh, that!  Well, don’t you know that that was bound to happen?”

And the first traveller says, “You mean, because the Romans are a violent police state who will not put up with rousers of the rabble?”

And the third traveller says, “No, that’s not what I mean.  I — ”

And the second traveller says, “You mean, because the temple authorities are vicious, cowardly people who cannot bear that someone would challenge their monolithic power?”

And the third traveller says, “No, that’s not what I mean either.  I — ”

And the first traveller pipes back in and says, “You mean, because the mob in Jerusalem is no different than the mob in Rome and, as we learned with Julius Caesar, will blow in whatever direction the popular wind seems to be blowing?”

And the third traveller says, “No, not that either.  I — ”

And the second traveller interrupts once more to say, “You mean, because. . .  I think we’ve run out of becauses.  What do you mean?”

And the third traveller says, “I mean, if this Jesus of yours was who he said he was, that is the Messiah, then what happened to him is exactly what should have happened. . . at least, according to what the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings say.  Listen. . .”  And with that began a conversation which made hearts to burn in the breasts of their bearers.

Farther along their way, the three travellers come to a place in the road where the third says that he has to go another way, on to his own home.  But the other two are so rapt by what he’s been saying that they insist he not go on yet but join them at home and have a meal with them.  Besides, dusk is coming upon them, and it will soon be too dark to travel safely.  And so, apparently convinced, the third turns aside with them.

They arrive home and prepare dinner.  And the conversation continues.  The stranger asks them to tell him more about Jesus of Nazareth and his teaching, and they do.  And he remarks and seems to marvel at the wisdom of the carpenter of Nazareth.

When finally the meal is served, the common bowl is placed at the center of their table, wondrously aromatic.  The two are famished, and they assume that their seven-mile colleague must be also.  The two ask the one if he wouldn’t mind saying the blessing over the food.  The first takes the loaf and blesses it saying the Hebrew grace for bread, “Baruch atto Adonai elohenu, melech ho’olom, ha-mo-tzee le-chem me’en ho-o-retz.”  He breaks the bread, then, and offers each a piece.  They watch in awe as he sets the bread before them.

They’ve seen and heard this before: on a plain with thousands of people but only five loaves and a couple of fish; in countless dining rooms; and just three nights before at their last supper together with...

The first of them, finding his voice, says, “Hey, wait a minute!  I know you!”

And the second of them says, “Yeah, you're — ”

And the third of them vanishes.

I just have to wonder... How is it that when these two disciples see Jesus, they do not recognize him?  I mean, according to John the evangelist’s telling of this story, beyond the recognizability of Jesus’ face, there were also his wounds still visible in the resurrected body that would have indicated to them who he was.  Granted, this is Luke’s version of a post-Resurrection story, but surely, you cannot hide wounds like those.

Now, maybe Jesus was wearing a hood, gloves, and shoes, but even if that is the case how do we explain that Resurrection Jesus can be both walking with these two and – on this same night – be in Jerusalem consoling the Ten gathered in the Upper Room?  A resurrected body is still a body, and a body cannot be in two places at once.  Maybe when he disappears from Emmaus, he shows up in the Upper Room, but trying to come up with explanations misses the point.


Resurrection Jesus in this story of walking along the Emmaus road is like Resurrection Jesus with Mary Magdalene or Resurrection Jesus with Thomas — unrecognizable as himself until he does something familiar.  I don’t know how she mistook him for the gardener; I don’t know why Cleopas and his traveling companion (probably his wife Mary) didn’t recognize Jesus on their walk.  I don’t know how Thomas could have been doubtful and could have thought that that figure before him on the second Sunday could have been someone else.

What I do know is, in John Mary hears him say her name.  At this sojourn on the way to Emmaus, Jesus breaks bread, the same way he had done, three nights before, when he said, “Whenever you do this, remember me.”  And Thomas, though he may not have recognized the man, recognized the wounds and actually put his fingers in them.

Here, I have managed to identify (oh, I think) five different ways for us – if we cultivate for ourselves a relationship with Jesus – to recognize that we are not alone, and that we travel not only with those obviously on the journey with us, but that we have Christ as our companion.

Such a time will arise when we like Thomas are willing to look upon another’s sufferings, wounds, and scars, and to know the truth.  There Jesus is.

Such a time will arise when another allows us to touch those same wounds and scars, and to comprehend the full power of recovery and restoration.  That is what resurrection bears in its fullness – completeness, even despite great pain.

Such a time will arise when we like Mary are in our own misery, despair, and loss.  If we will but listen and pay attention, someOne will be saying our name comfortingly, assuring us not that our woe is unwarranted but that it will not defeat us.  The Resurrection is real, and Christ is risen.

Such a time will be found in more mundane times, such as when we sit down to a meal, break bread (oh, when we break bread!) and smell the richness of the moment, taste its wonders!

Oh, and one more!  Such a time will arise when we are engaged in discovering, uncovering, and recovering what all This means — this faith, this hope, this love.  We will be in probing conversation about our experiences in light of the Bible – the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings – and our hearts will burn.
It is when Christ offers us the obvious for recognition’s sake, that we know “that’s the One,” “Christ is here right now!”

Sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing – our senses and our sensations inform us of our relationship with the One who unites us with God.  For us, the depth of believing doesn’t necessarily come from good Bible study or unquestioning obedience to God’s will or the best practices of stewardship or even regular attendance in worship; it comes from our attention to our relationship with Christ, from allowing our attention to be drawn toward Christ.

On Ash Wednesday, I smudged foreheads and the backs of hands with a blend of burnt Palm Sunday palms and olive oil (BTW, hang onto your Palm Sunday branches until next Fat Tuesday, when I’ll burn them).  I did a footwashing demonstration with a few readers on Maundy Thursday, and then with Linda Smith anointed the lot of you with oil scented by frankincense and myrrh; plus, I sprinkled everybody here on Easter.  I raise the elements during communion, not in order to mark the moment of transubstantiation but in order to take a moment to pause as Christ paused in blessing at the table in Emmaus.

Faith is not just in the head, not just in the heart.  Christian faith is designed to be in the hands, in our noses, in our mouths, in our eyes, our ears.

Emmaus is not bound to one location, nor one time, anymore than our experience of faith is limited to what we perceive with one sense!  Emmaus is here in the heart.  And everywhere, we are meeting that mysterious stranger (in hood and gloves and shoes), our hearts burn as we talk about the book, our eyes are opened when we smell the meal and break the bread, and we meet the traveler again familiarly when we gather to share and gain experiences.