I remember the first interview I had for a pastoral call. I had graduated from seminary and was sitting around wondering why the Holy Spirit had chosen to ignore all my finely-tuned seminary skills. No church call committees had phoned. No bishops were begging me to sign on. Not much of anything was happening and so I was particularly excited to have been invited to a congregation a little south of San Francisco to be interviewed. This was years ago and I can still recall it as if it were yesterday.

It was a disaster.

There I was looking so pious and priestly, clearly evidencing by my demeanor and charm what a wonderful pastor I would be for them...and I never even made it past the first question.

Of the six grim-faced folk who sat across from me that evening, the grimmest face opened and closed the proceedings with one question.

"All I want to know is this," he growled, "do you or do you not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ?"

I was expecting queries on my knowledge of Matthew, my memory of Luke, so this came out of the blue and broadsided me.

"Of course," I immediately thought, "after all, despite the seminary degree, I am a Christian."

But as I tried to formulate an answer, I realized that no matter how I tried, my words were less than my faith. For that gentleman, the answer was a simple yes or no but for me the yes was not near enough. There was so much more than that.

Try as I could, I was unable to express myself and after a few more polite inquiries, the interview ended and I drove home possessed with a curious and oddly comforting sense of failure. I continue to possess it today.

Emily Dickinson wrote, "The truth must dazzle gradually or every person blind." I find that insight enormously helpful in discerning what it means to proclaim the resurrected Christ. It is a gradual thing, a slowly revealing thing, a life-long process of disclosure. It is a way of life and it is in the living of that life that we discover the truth of the resurrection.

Remember that in the Biblical accounts of the resurrection, Christ is revealed only to those who followed. He makes no appearance to Pontius Pilate, the High Priest or the masses at Jerusalem. He appears only to the faithful who, in spite of their faltering and failures, have tried to follow in the path of the man of love. To them and them alone is given the insight of the resurrection. It is not a thing of knowledge. It is not something you understand once and then put on your bookshelf. It is a way of life and it is in the living that we discover the meaning...and each discovery reveals that there is so much more.

Faith is gradual, filled with a lifetime of small steps taken on a particular and always surprising path.