From now until Pentecost, we are wondering what difference Easter makes in the lives of real people. People like us. And I don't mean the cumulative effect of chocolate eggs and marshmallow Peeps. Believe it or not, the scriptures today say the difference Easter makes shows itself first in public worship and then in changed lives. Wouldn't that be what you'd expect of your pastor-worship is a consequence of Easter? Is this harping, or is this really what the scripture lessons give us?

Look, for instance, at the gospel lesson. It's about the difference communion makes in how we live. My first grown up experience of the Emmaus story came when I had the nerve to call the author of a book I'd just read, so we could talk about it. That's less gutsy than you think when you know that my friend was in his class, and she egged me on. I used her name, and Fr. Ed invited me over. I'd meant to talk about ministry with people with disabilities, but he talked about communion as more than bread-and-juice. I'd grown up with a Baptist understanding of the Lord's Supper, that the bread and juice were symbols we ate. Fr. Ed, with a Catholic understanding, said that the risen Christ was present at the meal, whether we believed he was in the elements or at the table. His point was that, if we cared enough to baptize people with disabilities-and there was a time when disabled children were not baptized because the Church wasn't sure they could be completely human-if we cared enough to baptize, we must live with the consequences of baptism.

When I served as chaplain at St Coletta's, I had a practical experience in limiting the consequences of baptism. The local bishop was quite conservative and, unlike in some areas, he didn't permit non-Catholics to receive communion during the Mass. My supervisor himself had been excluded from communion by the bishop for not toeing the party line, so not wishing to get either of us in trouble, I asked whether I ought to receive communion during my farewell Mass. He said, "Our residents have been excluded so much because of their disabilities that they are very sensitive to the exclusion of others. How would it look to them if their chaplain were excluded from communion?" Sometimes God's grace can only come through at the broken places.

Father Ed told me the meal at Emmaus was the first real Eucharistic meal because the risen Christ was present. As a stranger. The two deeply disheartened disciples are trudging the road home. We may as well leave town-Jesus is dead. We'd put all our hope in him. Now there's nothing left in Jerusalem. Pick up the pieces, go back home. Start over. Get used to being Rome's slaves again, just when we'd caught our first whiff of freedom. Now a stranger joins us, overhearing our bitter words, broken hearts, shut down and closed-in world. Rather than the cloying "I know just how you feel" or the pugnatious "It's just as well-no one beats the Evil Empire." Instead, the stranger points to where God has been all along. Where God has always been working for our redemp-tion. About the time we realize this is our story, that we aren't just hearing the hope in our story, we're experiencing it, the stranger disappears. Only then do we see who he really is. Only then do we see we can't live without the hope he offers. Only then do we know we must take the risk, stake our whole life on what he told us. It's either death by inches, death by suffocation, death by stuck-ness, death by no courage. Or life by hope. Life by freedom. Life by letting go of the way things have always been.

Last year at Summer Conference, I took a class on church conflict. The teacher, a licensed mediator who spends his retirement mediating church disputes, told us the first day that, whenever churches fail to effectively address a concern, the problem always moves into allegations of sexual misconduct. Not matter what the real controversy is. After two days I finally asked him about our denomination's perennial controversy over ordination of homosexuals. "Does that mean," I asked him, "that we're avoiding a more fundamental issue, that we're using homosexual ordination to distract ourselves?" He paused not even a heartbeat. "Yes."

This week I talked with a colleague whose congregation is always in controversy. As soon as things start to go well-membership growing, pledges up, effective programs, spiritual lives of individuals transformed-as soon as things go well, a fight erupts. Often the fight goes to the presbytery's judicial commission-the church equivalent of filing a lawsuit. Lately, things had been going well, and the pastoral staff thought the problems had been addressed. Then, sexual misconduct by an elder is discovered. No one denies it, appropriate actions are taken, but the matter won't rest there. Controversy disrupts the church. When my friend agreed with the Summer Conference teacher's theory, that sexual misconduct charges mask the real problem, I asked what might be the real problem-at least in that congregation-but my friend's answer came for the whole Church. The response was, "We're shutting out the Holy Spirit."

Can humans thwart the work of the Holy Spirit? Is the only proof of this that we argue about sexuality? My friend's theory is that the Holy Spirit will not be stopped in the long run, but in the short run, congregations and individuals keep the Spirit at bay by not being willing to live with the consequences of baptism. We restrict how we will let people respond to God's call. Hell-bent as we are on "decently and in order," we control how individuals live into the consequences of their baptisms. In Acts today, we read that the newly baptized believers were "devoted to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers." In modern practice, this is worship, group Bible study, potlucks and communion, prayer partnership. Those, and everything that supports them, are the consequences of baptism.

My friend's church has an urban ministry for seekers who come to learn about Jesus. They sing, share worship styles, dialogue, but their worship doesn't look like our staid Reformed movement around the Word. It gets unconventional in their services. They worship with people from a Muslim sect that sees Jesus as their faith leader. Unchurched people come because Jesus modeled compassion. There are even Presbyterians who worship with them.

For the last week the world has mourned Pope John Paul II. As his potential successor is discussed, Protestants have been publicly judgmental about the Roman Church limiting how people live into the consequences of their baptismal vows. Women are forbidden and celibacy is required for the priesthood (whether or not one has the gift). So, my friend and I talked about our ordination vows this week. Deacon, Elder, Minister -we all vow to embrace the whole of scripture. But, truth be told, we don't always "approve" of what scripture contains. Even Ministers. There are texts that I find downright objectionable, that I don't agree with. But I've promised to believe the whole Word of God. What helps me is something that I learned in construction. A construction contract is defined by the plans and specifications. Once the contract is signed, the owner is entitled to receive what is contained in those documents. The contractor may not like to provide everything that's called for, may find things not as profitable as they had come to hope, but the promise is for what's in the contract documents for the agreed-upon price. Problems arise because things aren't always so clear that everyone agrees as to the contract's meaning. In the practical application, things need interpretation. Just like scripture.

By virtue of our baptisms, Christians commit to allowing the Holy Spirit to work in the practical application of our lives. Our contract document is scripture, as interpreted within the faith community and by the confessions. But even the confessions acknowledge that changing conditions call for changing interpretation of the contract documents, and the confessions have the contradictions to prove it. The Holy Spirit is free to move and work and change us. We might not always agree with either tradition or new insights, but in the end, we've agreed by virtue of our baptisms, to be open to God working even in us.

This is what the writer of Acts means when he says, "the promise is for you and for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord calls to him." That means God is in charge. And God may call strangers into our community-strangers not like us who suddenly become close-and then we need to be open to what the stranger may teach us, both in the interpretation of scripture and in the breaking of bread. That's the real Lord's Supper: when scripture is opened and the risen Christ is present as we break bread. And that will make a difference in your life. Thanks be to God.