A resurrection story from the supermarket ...

Dr B needs bananas to get his potassium levels up so I called in on the supermarket, on my way back from the hospital. I didn't expect it to be a place where I witnessed resurrection.

At first I hardly recognised the man in front of me at the checkout but I noticed that his eyes were not bloodshot and his hands clean.Then I looked at what he was buying and compared it with what he had been buying 7 and 8 years ago. In those days he was grief-stricken, his beautiful brilliant partner died in an instant from a brain hemorrhage. For the funeral he had drunk heavily, her high-class parents from the other side of the world had found it hard to say much to him. They blamed him for being alive when she was dead, but politeness forbade them from ever having to do something so common as actually say that. They were tearlessly grief stricken.
His shopping in those months and years afterwards was always made up of baguette and large quantities of alcohol, and only that. I would see him regularly at the supermarket and try to offer to listen. Once even drinking a beer in the local bar with him, he more or less ran away. The pain too great. The drinking and drugs had begun before his lover the beautiful physicist had died. I remember her name and the Bible text I preached on and the sad tension of the funeral.
I had not seen him for a long time and certainly did not expect to witness the resurrection so clearly in the contents of his shopping, good food for two adults and a baby, no alcohol. He kept the queue waiting because he'd forgotten to weigh the broccoli. Instead of being irritated I just smiled and as he left wished him "bon weekend". He recognised my voice, turned round, saw he did know me, smiled and simply said "je vais bien" - I'm well - and went on his way.
All this week Christians in many parts of the world have been reflecting on the Emmaus story for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and in particular on the call "you are witnesses of these things". The Emmaus story recalls how it was in the breaking of the bread that the disicples witessed the resurrection and the scales fell from their eyes. On my Saturday night shop it was in the weighing of the broccoli that I witnessed resurrection.