When It Dawns on Us

I feel a little self-conscious about this admission, but I just bought tickets to see John Mayer in concert and I could not be more excited. Well, that’s not entirely true; it could be better. When I was looking at seats, I realized quickly that my budget means I will be enjoying the view of a jumbotron at a 45-degree angle, a hundred yards from the stage. Nevertheless, awash in a sea of anonymity, I get to be in the same room as arguably the greatest guitar player of my generation. While I don’t expect to be transformed by the experience per se, I do expect to be moved.Jesus could have performed his awe-inspiring post-resurrection appearances to sold-out crowds at outrageous prices, but he came instead to an intimate few. And that made all the difference. Luke reminds us that "God raised [Jesus] on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead" (Acts 10:40–41). Those happy few who ate and drank with a resurrected Jesus. That sounds to me like a perfect description of life in the everyday at St. Patrick! But it’s not really so romantic an image when we think about all the brokenness that we have to bring to that table to be healed.Maybe we fear the exclusivity of those appearances, perhaps because we feel we might be the ones who are left out of the VIP room. But the way Jesus comes to these few should actually bring us the hope that our own promised encounters with the risen Lord will happen in the same way: not as an anonymous part of a dazzled crowd, but in truly intimate moments that heal our deepest wounds. We begin this Sunday with the gradual unfolding of the death of darkness, before the eyes of a few of Jesus’ closest friends.