It is Easter day in the gospel this morning.  I mean, the funny little scene with the two walking disciples and Jesus takes place on the day of the resurrection.

 Peter has just found the tomb empty. Jesus has risen, and the question hangs in the air-Where is he?

          Well, it turns out he’s on the road to a town called Emmaus, which is just outside of Jerusalem, and it looks like he’s playing tricks on two apostles as they walk along. 

          Jesus somehow joins the two as they go. 

          I wonder, did he just appear out of nowhere riding in on the wind, or did he run to catch up?  I don’t guess it matters, but I wonder anyway.

          I also wonder why these two disciples didn’t recognize Jesus.  Did he disguise himself, or did he fog up their vision so that they couldn’t discern his true identity?  Again, I don’t suppose it matters, but I wonder anyway.

          The three of them must have walked a long way together because as the gospel goes,

“[Jesus interpreted all the things about himself in the scriptures beginning way back with Moses and moving through all the prophets.]” (And you all think I am a scattered, far-reaching teacher!)

          I wonder, after that lengthy Sunday school session, didn’t the two apostles at least begin to wonder, who in the world their verbose companion was?

          The story goes that Jesus stayed with the two through supper, he blessed and broke the bread gave it to them, and then he vanished.

          I wonder did the two apostles fall flat out of their chairs when Jesus suddenly disappeared, and did his lightning fast vanishing act leave a smoke cloud in his place when he left?  I don’t guess it matters, but I wonder about all of these things anyway. 

In sum: I wonder what it’s like to be in the presence of the risen Christ.

          For the apostles what was it like, and for us, what does it feel like to be immersed in the presence of Jesus resurrected?

          For the two apostles hindsight is perfect vision, and when Jesus is gone they look at one another and say, “Man I knew that was him!”

          And isn’t that how our lives go so often?  We wonder and wonder where God is present, and we wonder and wonder what God’s presence would feel like, and it’s only after we live through this and that experience, and then look back, that we awaken to the presence of God hanging in the smoky atmosphere of the stories of our past.

          I believe that, that is a piece of the point of this morning’s gospel appearance of God.  Whether we recognize him or not – the Risen Jesus is present in the atmosphere of our lives today, and his presence envelopes and covers us over like fog covers over a damp day.

          So, you’ll love this, a covering fog is my image of God for today.

          I ran through a covering fog last Saturday.  I ran in a trail race in the woods of the Prentice Cooper Wilderness Area in Chattanooga.

          It was a rainy muddy day, and the entire forest was thick with fog.  You science minded folks know that fog is tiny droplets of water hanging in the air, so in a sort of a way, the fogged over woods was like a forest submerged in a floating ocean come ashore.

          At first, the soaking wet blanket of fog made me think, “Boy this is going to be a difficult run.”  But the lead runners took off fast at the start, like we were running a one hundred yard dash instead of a 6.5 mile slog in the mud, so very quickly I was forced to forget about the fog and focus instead on the winding trail tricky as it was, littered with roots and rocks.

          A few strides into the run my eyes and senses adjusted to the conditions, and by the one mile mark, I was soaking wet and moving fast up the trail.

          Kristin was with me, and she had her camera.  It obviously was not a great day for taking pictures, but she snapped a shot of me crossing the finish line just for fun.

          By the time we got back home to Athens, in the early evening, the weather was clear and pleasant. 

          I didn’t think much more about the fog until Saturday night when Kristin pulled the race pictures up on her computer.          She called me to look.

          The pictures are not at all clear.  There is a shot of me crossing the finish line.  I am a hazy smoked-over figure in mid-stride.  The background of the photograph is all washed out and cloudy white.  The forest trees are a mess of grey blurry lines.  The entire scene is saturated in a fog of water that comes off like smoke.

          I was genuinely surprised by the foggy photograph because I had adjusted to the fog so quickly during the run that I wasn’t conscious of it as I ran.

          Nonetheless, the fog was there covering over the whole morning – the proof was in the picture.  Seeing the photograph was like an awakening.

          “Was it really that foggy?” I asked. 

          Kristin assured me that it was indeed that foggy and shivering cold and raining wet.

          “Was it really that foggy?”

          Over and over again we ask similar questions about the presence of God. 

Is God really hanging around this place?

 Is the risen Christ really risen and running the roads around here?

          I think yes, but not perhaps in the way we think he should, or in the way we would like for God to be present.

          My two year old daughter has started taking me and Kristin on tours of our house.  She comes to me with her hand held out and says, “Daddy, come with me.”  Then she takes my hand in hers and leads me off to her room to play, or to the place where Kristin keeps the chocolate.

          It sure would be nice if God came to us like that, saying, “Hendree, come with me.”  And then led me, like Gracie does, to wherever he wants me to go. 

          But that’s not how God operates. 

          At least, I have not found God to be like my pushy toddler leading and directing all my decisions and movements.  Rather, I find God a foggy presence; a presence that we have to awaken to; a presence that rather than slapping us in the face, slowly grows and wells up in us as an internal burning in our hearts.

          That’s what happened with the two apostles, right?  They realized that they had been in the presence of Jesus Christ by some warming of their insides, which came gradually washing over them like a fog rolling in off the water.  (“Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road,   while he was opening the scriptures to us?”)

          They awakened to his presence, and realized only after he had gone, that he had been with them all along as they made their journey.

          I wonder if they ever came to realize that he remained with them even when they could not see him.  I wonder, how well aware we are of the presence of God hanging all around us.

          I fear that we get to caught up doing two things that blunt and blind our vision for the presence of God.

          One, we simply don’t pay attention.  We get running too fast down the trail, and we don’t take notice of the foggy presence of Jesus Christ all around.  

          And two, we are too busy trying to figure out what God has caused to happen and not happen, like car wrecks, and hurricanes, miracle cures, military and athletic victories, and random accidents, and we miss the real God who is present in our lives not as some puppeteer, cause and effect agent, but rather, is present as holy companion, source of life, comfort and hope.

          I think the psalmist had a sense of the presence of God as a covering fog.

          What is the most famous, well known, psalm?  The best known is the 23^rd psalm, right?  How does it go?  Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil…

          Why?  Not because you protect me from bad luck or enable me with good fortune, rather, I fear nothing because you are WITH me.  You comfort me.

          And that is the gospel for this Easter season- God is covering over this place with the ever-enveloping presence of the Risen Christ.

          Now, may our earnest Easter prayer be that our eyes grow wide open to see God who is all around us; and may our hearts become inflamed for feeling the presence of our God who is all around us.  May we, like those traveling apostles, awaken to the presence of the Risen Christ who is indeed all around us!