I’ve been a minister for a while now, to the point that I can distill some of my pastoral wisdom into a few handy phrases.

Today’s scripture story is built on a premise some of us might have difficulty accepting. That is: that Jesus is the shepherd and we are the sheep.But nobody wants to be a sheep. In the United States of America, ‘sheep’ is a slur for someone who follows the crowd, someone who doesn’t know their own mind.

Do you ever feel, when you’re reading the Bible, like you’re looking through a telescope through the wrong end? Whatever you see looks impossibly remote and far away. It’s old news. It’s even less relevant than old news:  it’s mythology. I just told you that the people who first heard this story were Greek and Roman—that means that their referent for Deity were gods like Zeus, Aphrodite, Aurora—remember Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, who renewed herself every morning and was fond of taking mortal lovers? For centuries Greeks and Romans had been telling each other stories about gods coming down in disguise, hangingout with humans, playing practical jokes on them—so, the Emmaus story, with its case of mistaken identity and its congress between human and divine, would have been right up their alley.

The Lectionary reading this morning comes from the Gospel According to John, chapter 20, verses 19-31.  A whole week  has gone by since Easter Sunday.  But our reading picks up right where we left off last week - Mary Magdalene has been to Jesus’ tomb and discovered it empty.  She remained at the tomb weeping and searching for the body of Jesus and that’s when she saw the angels and Jesus appeared to her.  Jesus told her to go find the disciples and tell them the good news of the resurrection, which she did.  As this week’s reading begins, it is still the first Easter day.  Evening is now upon us.  Mary has delivered the Good News and the Resurrected Jesus is about to reveal himself to ALL the disciples – all of them except one.  Let us now hear the Word of God:

There’s something missing here, from the Easter Story.