O God of mercy, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.  Amen.

       I wonder if you’ve ever noticed that, as a Church, we give ourselves fifty days for Easter compared with forty days of Lent. During The Great Fifty Days, there is no fasting, no mourning, just alleluia after alleluia after alleluia. I suspect that we have ten extra days in Easter because we need more time to really get it –to believe the truth of Easter. We get Lent –the need for discipline, fasting, sacrifice (we don’t always do it, but we get it –we believe it). We get Good Friday. We know sin and its consequences in our lives. But The Great Fifty Days of Easter is just the opposite. It’s a little bit crazy to believe that the Lord is risen, to get that love is bigger than death every time, that the promise is for us and for our children and for all who are far away, as the writer of Luke/Acts tells us. It’s a little bit crazy to believe that we have all that we need to love one another deeply from the heart, as the writer of 1 Peter tells us. It’s a little bit crazy. Easter can be hard to believe.  
       So we get some extra time and a lot of stories about experiences of the Risen Lord. Last week we heard the story about Thomas wanting his own encounter –indeed, insisting, on seeing and experiencing the Risen Lord himself in order to become believing. Last week we heard an invitation from Jesus –an invitation for peace –and invitation to become believing and while we’re becoming believing, to go out to serve others for the sake of the One who came to serve.
       This week we hear the story of two on the road to Emmaus. They were not insisting on anything. They weren’t looking for resurrection. They were grieving. They were overwhelmed with sadness, with a sense of betrayal by their leadership, and probably considerable shame at the events that had taken their mighty prophet away from them. I imagine that they felt utterly deflated and defeated. I imagine them walking along wishing that the road would just swallow them up. This is a story about the reality of resurrection even when we don’t know it, we can’t imagine it, and we certainly are not looking for it. This is a story that invites us to recognize when the Risen Lord is right in front of us.
       To recognize. The plot of this story turns on the Greek word “epiginosko” –to recognize, or more literally, to learn to know. To learn to know. When Jesus first came near, the two walking away from Jerusalem had not yet learned to know him in a new way. It reminds me of a time when I didn’t even suspect that the Risen Lord could be right in front of me –I had not yet begun to learn to know in a new way.
       Ten years ago, I started going to Suffolk County House of Correction with some other “churchladies” every Monday evening to offer a program called “Art & Spirituality,” where we and a bunch of incarcerated women make greeting cards for people we love. A large part of the inspiration behind the program came from a woman named Sheila who I’d gotten to know through a course I’d been teaching at the prison called “Tools for Survival.” She had shared with me the cards that she made for her children out of scraps of paper and “paint” which she made by dipping M&M's in pill cups with a little water in them. The result was a collection of miniature cards with exquisite enameled pictures with messages that said “I love you” and “I miss you.”
       I was so moved by her determination to communicate with her children, despite the obstacles –no coloring supplies –no markers or crayons or paper or scissors or glue. It’s against the rules for inmates there to have any of those materials in their units. No colored pencils or pens. No colored paper. No color. The mere suspicion that a woman might have colored pencils can (and does) lead to shakedowns where cells and personal belongings are ransacked –torn apart in the search. Sheila used food for paint, toothpaste for glue, cotton from swabs for snow. She cut the cards out from bits of scrap paper with fingernail clippers, making beautiful scalloped edges. She painted with toothpicks. Since her artwork was contraband –she made her expressions of her love for her children before dawn so they wouldn’t be confiscated. She told me that she didn’t even know where all of her eight children were, but she was determined to find a way to communicate her love for them. I became determined to start a program that would provide real art supplies, a time for conversation, a way for incarcerated women to develop their sense of spirituality, a way for them to practice their prayer for others, and a practical way for them to communicate with their families and friends.
        It took several months. I organized volunteers. I raised money. I got clearance and won approval from the sheriff for the program. I was feeling pretty good. I couldn’t wait to get in there especially to let Sheila know what she had inspired. On our first Monday night, I hoped that she would be among the women allowed to come to the program, but I didn’t see her. I asked about her and learned that she was going to be released in a few weeks. I was told that she would come to the program the next week.
       Eager to see her, I walked into the prison lobby the following Monday and was startled to see Sheila in regular clothes in the waiting area. It was after dark -- 7:00 p.m. on a very cold November night. She had on a thin T–shirt and jeans –what she had been wearing when she was arrested a year–and–a–half before. She didn’t have a coat. She saw me and came over to tell me that she had been released ahead of schedule, and before she’d been able to make any arrangements for a place to go. She was pretty worried. She didn’t have any money or anyone to call. The utter depravity of the situation –the enormous sinfulness of a system –a society -- that has so little regard for the dignity of human beings, so little regard for the basic needs of human beings, was overwhelming. And my inability to fix anything was overwhelming. My colored pencils and paper –my new project -- suddenly seemed ridiculous –so puny –and I felt completely helpless. I couldn’t give her money prison program volunteers are forbidden to have personal contact with inmates and exmates. I didn’t even know where to suggest she go for warm clothes and shelter at 7:00 p.m. on that Monday night.
       I felt so sad and helpless and ashamed. My eyes filled up with tears. All I could manage to get out was, “Sheila, I am so sorry.” She said, “Just a minute, I want to give you something” and she started digging in her brown paper bag of personal belongings. She pulled out one of her greeting cards. She said, “I want to give you this to remember me by.” I took the card. I could hardly see her through my tears. Then she put her hands on my head and said, “God bless you, Pam.” And I recognized the Risen Lord. Through my tears, I looked right into the eyes of Jesus. And then he vanished from my sight.
       Was not my heart burning within me while Sheila was talking to me, while she was opening the scriptures to me?  Yes.  And it was in her sharing, her radical hospitality in that prison lobby, in her compassion, in her blessing, that my eyes were opened and I learned to know in a new way.  I learned to know the Risen Lord in that moment in the lobby of a prison in South Bay.  It’s a little bit crazy to believe that the Risen Lord appeared to those two who invited the stranger to stay with them, and it’s a little bit crazy to believe that the Risen Lord appears in the turbulence of our own lives.  But I am learning to know that it is true.
       That’s not the end of the story of course. The experience of the Risen Lord is never meant to be a private gift or a purely personal experience. The command to go and tell is explicit in so many other places, that it’s clear that it is implicit here. In case we’re not entirely sure, Jesus appears in the very next scene of Luke’s narrative to explain, “that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in the name of the Christ to all nations...You are witnesses of these things,” go out and preach the Gospel, using words if necessary (to paraphrase St. Francis). “The promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away.”Jesus told them to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit. We don’t have to wait. We have already received that gift. We have everything we need to learn to know -- to recognize -- the Risen Lord. We have everything we need to go and tell.