One of the curious patterns of the Teaching Life is a daily dynamic I have come to call mutinies and miracles. Which is to say: it’s not an uncommon thing in my life as a teacher to encounter, within a 24-hour span, a spirit of rebellion from one student then, a few moments later, transparency to the Holy Spirit in another. In my early days of teaching, I used to feel that the spiritual breakthroughs I had with some students were sullied by these blunt encounters with rebellion in others. But I’m not so sure anymore. I’m beginning to think there is a wisdom in this interplay of mutiny and miracle.
In any case, the pattern is a simple fact.
Take this past Thursday for example. My Bell 3 is my most spirited class, the toughest to corral as they file in from our rambunctious halls into the calm of the classroom. A couple months ago they were getting particularly out of hand, so I instituted a concept I call Temple Time. Temple Time happens in the first part of class – when we do our deepest dive into Scripture. It’s followed by 3 other sections of class in which I allow for levity; but during Temple Time I expect quiet, reverence, listening. I tell them Temple Time is no different than Church; it’s where we listen to God speak; it’s where we stop; it’s where we pay close attention.
It’s only half the class so, even for this spirited bunch, I feel it’s a reasonable ask. I know, if they dive in, it will bear fruit. But on this day, they don’t like it. One disrupter follows another. I have to dock 4 students, in quick succession, one point in Classroom Participation: this is the consequence for talking out of turn. O how the quills of the porcupine rise in opposition! A wave of mutiny shoots through the class: they mock me and my idea of silence. Even my 3rd best student in the class lends her voice to the din of discontent. That one hurt. I wondered how I should counter this wave?
Then a funny thing happens. We get to the Scripture reading. We read the story of the disciples of Emmaus. And the class suddenly falls completely silent; their voices remain in line for the rest of Temple Time. It was a curious about face.
But still, their earlier outcry stung; it echoed in my ears. It hurt. It made me sad. I found myself lamenting: must my efforts to instill a tranquil disposition of soul be ever met with disdain?
That was Bell 3.
Next up was Bell 5 – traditionally one of my tougher classes. This class meets right before lunch; the kids are restless; it’s a smaller class with lots of disruptive characters and a minor chord of disinterest, like a bass instrument, always humming in the room each day I teach. After the psychological bruise I sustained in Bell 3, I felt no particular eagerness for what Bell 5 would bring on this day. Particularly since the best student in the class was out, recovering from knee surgery.
Little did I expect a miracle, like a butterfly, was about to flutter into my classroom.
We were discussing the same passage: Jesus’ appearance to the disciples of Emmaus in Luke, chapter 24. I managed to stir up a bit of intellectual curiosity as to what Jesus does in this story. I assume you are familiar with it. Jesus, initially unrecognized by these two disciples as they journey to Emmaus, walks up to them and takes the time to patiently teach them how the Scriptures foretold, long in advance, Christ’s sufferings and resurrection. Then he draws them into the world’s second Eucharist – the blessing, breaking, and sharing of the bread at the dinner table. Spiritual light pours out upon the scene and the two disciples finally recognize him. But, in that very instant, Jesus becomes not-visible. He withdraws from their sight.
“Why reveal yourself only to conceal yourself?” I asked the class. What’s Jesus doing?
But before I even proposed this question, D. and H. simultaneously noticed, in the bread that was blessed and broken in Emmaus, an echo of the Last Supper. These were perceptive observations. From there we began to grapple with how it could be that these disciples saw Jesus, then all of a sudden didn’t see him. There followed a kind of Socratic dialogue with two young minds searching for the truth – the rest of the class all listening. They were all clawing their way up the path to understanding.
The exchange was breathtaking; it made me think of a similar exchange I once knew on a monastery hilltop in Italy: 20 monks sitting in a circle, summer breeze wafting through the trees, Jesus’s word relayed from one soul to another, human minds and hearts pondering, searching, sharing.
In a conversation I had with this same D last week about John 14, we had worked out that physical sight is a little like the USB cord that connects your phone to your car computer. If you have the wifi set up, that cord is no longer necessary and may even be a bit cumbersome. So it is, we said, with the need to be connected to Jesus physically. Once the soul discovers that Christ is Spirit and that the human soul can rest in Christ like a branch to the vine – we in him and he in us; once that interior, wireless, non-physical connection is established, there is no need for wires. There is no need for the physical.
To see Dave’s face light up as I reminded him of that conversation and how it applies to the Emmaus story! It was the light of the Spirit catching the edges of an unexpected 16-year-old intellect and heart – the way the morning sun sometimes alights, like pink embers, upon the delicate edges of the clouds at dawn.
In the radiance of that moment of insight, I summed up the passage like this: if God is Spirit, as Jesus says in John 4:24, then blessed are those who have learned to dwell in him, in the Spirit. You don’t need wires; the connection is fuller without them.
This insight explains both why Jesus withdrew from Mary Magdalene at the tomb (“Do not cling to me. . . I have not yet ascended to my Father. Jn 20:17) and why he disappeared from the Emmaus disciples as soon as they recognized him: because he was weaning them off the physical dimension in their contact with him. He was nudging them toward connection in the heart, toward connection in the Spirit.
The true vision of Christ, I told D., is a vision of the heart, a heart that dials into the heart of God the way a wireless device connects to the web. For such a heart, a physical connection is not necessary.
When the kids left class and I had some time to think, I tried to flesh out the comparison we had just pondered back and forth. It became clearer to me: Jesus insists in Jn. 4 and Jn. 14-17 that we have the capacity to enter into communion with the Trinity. This happens through the life of the Trinity dwelling in our souls. As we make this discovery, physical contact is not necessary. Sight is not necessary. The communion happens from within and blessed is he who enters into it.
So, yes, it makes sense that Jesus withdraws from the sight of the eyes at Emmaus: he is seeking to kindle the sight of the heart.
That is also why he can say to Thomas in John 20:29, in a verse we discussed at the end of class: ‘Blessed are those who have not seen but believe.’ The blessedness described here is not a consolation prize to those who have never seen Jesus. It is a descriptive fact of the human soul that abides, in the Spirit, in Christ.
God is Spirit and it is better to encounter him in the Spirit than in the flesh.
It was a remarkable exchange. A revelation of the living soul of my students on a day when their classmates showed me their raw humanity. I wonder whether this dynamic of mutiny and miracle in some way parallels the way the risen Christ tends to reveal and conceal himself. Maybe there is a deeper unity between these apparent paradoxes. Maybe I need to look for an underlying thread in my mutinies and miracles. Could it be that the mutinies are as much a path to love – an invitation to me to love – as are the moments when love and light illuminate the delicate clouds of my students’ souls?
I’m gonna say yes. The human soul is always there, waiting for God, worthy of love, whether it gives evidence of its readiness or not.
