They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
Luke 24:32
In an interview, or maybe a bit of stage banter, that I cannot now find, Bruce Springsteen talked about having played “Born to Run” almost every night for decades. He realized that he had put all of those people in all of those cars, but they never really got anywhere. It’s a song about breaking loose — from childhood, from the confinement of a hometown, from the expectations of adults — in pursuit of a dream. After a while, though, you want all those people in all those cars to get somewhere.
That place where they really want to go has a name. Maybe more properly, it’s a theological term and the kind of theological term that they tell you in seminary not to use in a sermon. It’s called the eschaton. The eschaton is the point toward which all of God’s work is moving. It is the fulfillment of all things. Eschatology is that part of theology which explores the purpose or end of all that God is doing in creation. If you want to scare people, you could talk about things like the rapture, but those are just things somebody made up a little more than a century ago. God’s purpose is not about selecting some things; it is about perfecting all things.
Clearly, we aren’t there yet. At least, it doesn’t feel like we are there. Everybody’s out on the road tonight and there’s no place left to hide from greed and global warming, from dehumanization and violence, from injustice and oppression. To quote Public Enemy’s Chuck D, “My wanderin’ got my ass wonderin’ where Christ is in all of this crisis.” The eschaton, it seems, has been delayed.
Unless it is for this that we have been born: to see the fullness of God’s love in each person, each moment, each mile of the road. Maybe all those people are in all of those cars to see that love, while wild, is very much real. The question is whether or not we are willing to be shown that truth. Are we willing to see the person travelling with us for who they really are? When our hearts are burning with all that has been and is being revealed to us as we tramp the road, we are at the same time in the place of fulness and joy that has been promised to us from the start.