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We're on a journey to amaze us, you and I. The Church in this season tries to figure out how to fit all the astounding glory of easter into the human vessel into corporate human endeavor. In

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the afterglow of easter, the crucifixion has come and gone, and the resurrection, the Cross, We understand we are too familiar with human cruelty. The resurrection remains something of a mystery. And so here

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we are now, reaching, grasping, trying to make sense of the mystery, straining to hear its call, and putting one ft in front of the other. In a very real sense, we are

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all on a journey to amaze us. We are here because we have glimpsed in the crucified and risen christ something we have longed for, Something has awakened in us, even if we cannot name it definitively

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. Our hearts have surely burned within us, yours and mine, and likely Opus and his unnamed friend . We are walking from Jerusalem to amass from a place we thought we knew into an unknown place.

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And if we are honest from the jesus, we thought we knew and wanted toward one with whom and toward whom he is much more mysterious than we're comfortable with. We recall times not that long ago when

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christ seemed to speak much more clearly when the big stories about who we are as a nation, as a people as a church were spoken unambiguously and vivid colors, most often in red and blue, but

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mostly white colors, spoken loudly to all the world , spoken in grand stories about how things were. They simply were. We knew beyond doubt and this word proclaimed loudly echoed in the canyons of our egos

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confirming our location at the center of the world. I was baptized at the age of 12 in the Mississippi Church of Christ I grew up in of course baptism was an option that was ever present in my

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mind from an early age since there was an invitation to baptism at the conclusion of every worship service without fail. So over the years I saw my aunt Joyce get baptized, I saw my third grade teacher

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get baptized, I saw my county commissioner get baptized and one by one I saw all of my cousins and friends get baptized and each week for a year I squirmed through each service too distracted to track the

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sermon or appropriately contemplate the Lord's supper or even draw funny pictures of our hooked nose preacher to share with my sisters. All I could think about was whether this was my day to be baptized, I had

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rehearsed it in my mind hundreds of times you see baptism in that place and time marked my introduction into the american white southern middle class. Once baptized, I could now pray at family gatherings, I was

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promoted to a sunday school class led by the preacher . I had to watch my language, which was not hard because I only knew to cuss words. I had to tighten my shoelaces a bit tighter comb

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my hair and extra time before leaving the house and remember to say thank you for that extra helping of mashed potatoes. For my 12 year old self baptism held little mystery or surprise, nothing shocking or strange

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. It was a step, an important step along the path that lay before me as an american white Southern mail. But we are on a journey to a mass away from that place we knew assumed and

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hoped for. We had hoped he was the one to redeem Israel by which we mean, of course the good people, the right people, not those others. And so now we are sad and confused

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, shaken, unsettled, grieving that our jesus has died. The women and the angels say he lives again. But but all we can feel is our fear and desperation. If the church is in decline

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, If we can no longer trust our neighbors. If our border fences do not any longer hold back the tides of chaos. If America is not great . If women no longer want us to hold open

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the door, if we can no longer tell even the color or gender of our bank teller, then who are we? And from whence comes our salvation ? We had hoped he was the one to redeem

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Israel, The 1 to redeem us. Yet the women and the angels say christ lives. We're on a journey to amaze you and I. And we walked together, we drop one dusty foot in front

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of the other onto the sunbaked path. We walk together like Klopas and his plus one. We are consumed by our grief at the passing of our world that we barely notice the stranger in our midst and

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the stranger speaks, but we do not hear a comprehend. Surely this cannot be the christ, since we do not recognize him, this cannot be the christ. He looks almost nothing like the man we

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voted for wrote into our school textbooks saying romantic praise choruses about are framed on our Cindy school wall. The stranger looks nothing like our buddy, our general or are self help coach or what we find rummaging

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through the cellars of our egos. Nevertheless, we keep walking the stranger and us and we do not turn back to Jerusalem. The way back holds only memories and broken promises. We're on a journey to

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a May issue and I and the stranger not purposefully with direction. Mostly because we do not know what else to do. So we walk, we show up for class, we keep office hours, we

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turn in papers, we eat, we drink sometimes too much, but food has lost its taste. Food and drink, classrooms and papers are after all chains of causation molecules colliding. And so are we

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? The only thing surviving the disenchanted blast is our will, which sometimes seems to run on its own power. He must be dead. No matter what the women and angels say without God, nothing is

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good. And we are not grateful yet. We keep walking Putting one ft in front of the other and the stranger speaks and we listen without hearing because food has no taste and words have lost their meaning

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and our ears have lost their hearing. We are drowning in our disappointment. Our sorrow mostly we are drowning in our drowning. We're on a journey to amaze you and I and the stranger mostly. We're

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walking away from Jerusalem and not really toward anything and for no purpose at least no one can remember why It is a walking journey, putting one ft in front of the other. Those ahead of us are

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walking. Those behind us are also walking. Some are faster, and so we speed up, some are slower and so we slow down. We cannot even negotiate a pace that is our own. That

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is our own. The mere burden of ourselves is too great for us now, so we cede it to anyone who will carry it. We are exhausted by the burden of creating ourselves a new in each

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moment of writing ourselves onto the screen of the universe or on facebook or declaring ourselves or promoting ourselves of listening for each whisper of novelty and hoping that this would be me only to find our own shadows.

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And we are exhausted. But we are walking because we do not know what else to do. Mhm . We are on a journey to me. Yes , you and I and the Stranger. But since

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walking is exhausting and we cannot do it forever. And since we do not know what else to do , we stop. And the stranger stops too. Only now he does not talk. He picks up

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the bread, blesses it and breaks it for us . And in this moment the bread he breaks does not seem for us like the bread of sameness we ate in Jerusalem when we had hoped he was the

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one to redeem. Israel back when we knew who was who and what was what, when we knew what It meant to salute the flag, when we imagine terrorism and our own emptiness could be vanquished at

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the cash register by consuming it is the same bread , but somehow it is different. The stranger gives thanks over the bread and wine we eat and we taste the body in the blood and we taste the

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goodness of life, of God and neighbor, of welcome of unity and peace. And now the bread we eat and the wine we drink is the garden god set for Adam and eve. The bread that

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Abraham and sarah set before the angels. It is the table of mary and Martha of Zacarias, the wedding party at Qena, the loaves and fishes for the 5000. It is the Passover feast. It

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is the last supper and it is the final feast when they shall come from north, south, east and west to table together. All feast at which the stranger is present as guest as host as meal

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. When I was finally baptized in my church of christ, I was able to eat and drink the cup of blessing and I was told to think really hard about jesus when the crackers and cup was passed

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, and later the methodist told me that it was the real presence of christ, whatever that means. And later still I forgot about the bread and wine . I didn't reject it, I just forgot it

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. I had thought long and hard enough I had consumed the body and blood of christ. The bread and cup was an idea and I got it. It was food and I consumed it. It was

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a compass and I had followed its north. I reasoned from where I stood those still eating mystical bodies and drinking mystical blood, where curiosity, those praying were stranger. Still those who whose hearts were warmed

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by the galilean were simply and pitiable. E quaint . I did not know the power of the food Still. The stranger offered bread and wine. He blessed and broke it and gave it to the to

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wanderers at Amelia's. In the 1980s, Chile's government under Augusto pinochet forcibly in turn or disappeared 80,000 people and tortured as many as 30,000. The government said that torturing it's own citizens was to get information from

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the enemies of the state. But in reality, torture became a kind of ritual, a liturgy which serve to in fact create enemies because the state needed enemies to justify its total power. In reality,

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armed resistance to the regime was practically non existent victims of torture were silenced, their voices and their very personhood disarticulated by the trauma. Parties, unions, cooperatives, women's groups based communities, all were dismantled

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and disappeared. Anything that stood between the atomized individual and the power of the state was dismantled, liturgies are about configuring bodies in space in order to tell stories with them. So soldiers marched in the street

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while people applaud and wave flags high national holidays are observed in chile, putting bodies in the street told a story. We claim the right to be here . If the pinochet regime liturgy was one of scattering

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the contrary christian liturgy was embraced as one of gathering a sort of eucharistic counter politics of the body of christ. Now, torture of course, is largely absent from american domestic life. Nevertheless, there is

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a kind of fragmentation and atomization of social life in the United States. It is a reality that pastors confront on a daily basis and it is a reality that threatens the very coherence of the body of christ

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community is at best a lifestyle option. And we live in a society of strangers where interpersonal relationships are mediated By presenting claims of formal rights against one another . Very little stands between the individual and the politics

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of the state. When the poor are not being fed, the churches can often think of nothing better than to lobby the state Legislature. Now this is not an appeal to get the government off our backs

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and let the market decide for We must have fair government policies to provide safety nets for the vulnerable and these are worth advocating for. But in reality, the ideology of the free market is a far greater

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threat than an overweening power of the state to the true freedom of the Church to live the gospel. The market has been the most powerful solvent, dissolving all types of constituent of community, because it evangelize

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is the person to believe in the absolute and final sovereignty of individual choice. This is why in pinochet's chile Chicago economist, Milton Friedman oversaw the dismantling of every type of workers organization, the privatization of Social

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Security and a host of similar reforms aimed at the atomization of the body politic. In the United States , market ideology is built around the sovereignty of individual choice. What is supplied, we are told is

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based on what individuals demand. The tragedy is that we have been trained by the market. That desire is self validating, and so we become incapable of escaping the confines of ourselves. The landscape of post

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modern spirituality is one of lonely and isolated individuals fabricating their own small gods. Many churches hope only through church growth strategies to market their spiritual wears better than the competition and lure a few more religious consumers through

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their doors. If genesis is to be believed from a primordial unity and harmony among creatures and between creatures and God, the fall takes the form of the scattering the strife between man and woman and humans,

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and creation soon spreads to all creation. The whole earth cain kills Abel Noah's generation is sunk in violence , and the residents of bible are scattered abroad for their pride. The scattering of Genesis 11 then gives

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way to the beginning of the gathering in Genesis 12 , when God begins to call a people through Abram people for whom all peoples of the world will be blessed. And the culmination of this story is the

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completion of Israel in the body of christ, into which all, all the scattered are gathered in a final way. Overcoming atomization then, is a matter of taking the reality of the church as the body

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of christ into this world. Did jesus welcome friends and strangers to the table, thus joining us with them and him forever. For paul, this was more than a mere metaphor, so seriously did he

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take it? That he believed those Corinthians who were taking Eucharist without discerning the body, we're getting sick and dying. The christians at current thought that the humiliation of the poor by the rich was unrelated to

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the celebration of the Lord's supper, paul told him otherwise. Here we see, that the Eucharist not only produces unity but requires it. The Eucharist is not just a balm for the soul, it is

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a public act of the church that disciplines the bodies of its members through the action of the Holy Spirit . The one body of christ is formed in which the sufferings of others become my suffering, and simultaneously

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the sufferings of christ himself. It requires making the body of christ through concrete practices, making making christ visible in chile. This began by the simple act of making the Church a place where people could gather

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at a time when secular organizations of any kind fell under the suspicion and ban of the state. The Church used its moral authority to offer workers, cooperatives , soup kitchens, women's groups, legal assistance for

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victims of oppression, job training groups for relatives of political prisoners and much more despite the harassment. This invited the Church understood that being an alternative social body was the realization of the Eucharist, the Eucharistic imperative

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to be what we receive, to become the body of christ and allow others to feed on us. There is nothing more real than the body of christ . The Eucharist is not simply an idea to be

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applied to political issues. Rather, the Eucharist makes the Church itself a political body. The Church practices the politics of jesus when it becomes an alternative way of life that offers healing for the wounds that divide

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us in chile and the United States and Pakistan and throughout the world, to belong to the body of christ, is to transgress national boundaries and to witness to what God has done in christ, to gather

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all people and so we are on a journey on the road to amaze you and I and the stranger and our broken world. And it is a journey away from Jerusalem, away from death from what is

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passing away to what is alive in the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup. Our eyes are open to the reel and we are gathered and the bread we we break, we are joining

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to the christ body and to each other with the poor and the persecuted. We do not merely consume , but we are being consumed into christ and we become food for the world. The body of christ

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is given life here at the table in our joining together with God with the poor, in the eating and in the drinking it is the counter politics to wall building, to torture and commodification and the consumption

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of all things. Here we do not only eat , but we are eaten consumed into christ with each other in the world. Here our eyes are opened and here we find joy and we find our home

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and it is where a new world will be born . Indeed has been born on this road to um