This Sunday, many churchgoers heard the story of two disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, shocked by the recent crucifixion. Along their way, they meet a stranger with whom they travel and later share dinner. The disciples tell him what they believe to be the truth of the previous days’ events: A prophetic voice has died.

Flash forward two thousand years, to a time where cars, not sandals, are the primary means of transport, and television, not word of mouth, is the most efficient method of communication. In this fast paced world, the front-page story is the death of a different prophetic voice, a voice that prophesized not love and tolerance but hatred and violence. Many of those who celebrated on Boston Common, outside of the White House, and at Ground Zero—some drunk, others cheering “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” as if rooting for our country at an Olympic final—thought they understood what this death meant: an evil reign ended, hope for America’s safety renewed.

Over dinner, the mysterious man divides a piece of bread, and the disciples suddenly see everything differently: The stranger who traveled beside them was, in fact, the risen Jesus.

So if the disciples missed Jesus’ presence on the Emmaus Road, is it possible that we’re missing Jesus in Osama bin Laden’s death?

I should own at the start that this is an emotionally challenging question for me to consider, even as an Episcopal priest. I come from a New York suburb that suffered more casualties following September 11th than any other in the Tri-State area. For months, funeral cars lined the fronts of churches and synagogues as our community commemorated the dead or missing. Military aircraft flew over my parent’s home, causing plates and wall hangings to shake as if from an earthquake aftershock.

I told my mother, as we drove past that infamous plume of grey smoke, that I thought New York looked tilted without the Twin Towers.

So when I heard about Osama bin Laden’s death, I felt a relief that filled my eyes with tears and brought me to my knees. The ground was flat again. This was a sign of hope. I would go out to Boston Common, jump up and down, share in the carefree revelry.

But then I thought of that gunshot through the head, of children shrieking, of a wife defending her treacherous husband. I thought the smell of the Twin Towers’ smoke and our neighbor who came home with a soot-covered face and the humiliation I feel every time I remove my shoes at airport security and the faith that I argued with and struggled with and found solace in during the weeks after September 11th.

And it is from that faith that I find myself compelled to ask whether we’re missing Jesus in Osama bin Laden’s death.

President Obama called bin Laden’s death an act of “justice,” and yet Obama, a Christian himself, failed to mention that killing is a top ten violation, sandwiched between dishonoring one’s parents and adultery. Was Jesus there?

Several days later, college student Lauren Kolodkin published a commentary on CNN’s Belief Blog, where she wrote that, “The man who murdered thousands of Americans and instigated the war on terror is finally gone. And my generation celebrated.”

Yet the book of Proverbs says, “Don’t laugh when your enemy falls; don’t crow over his collapse.” (24:17)

Still later that week, an MSN poll showed 79% of people thought bin Laden deserved to die, as if those who enact great atrocities merit death while the rest of humanity does not. For the child who dies too young, death is an evil. For the innocent mother who dies at the hands of a drunk driver, death is a horror. But for someone like bin Laden, death is deserved.

And still the Bible says reminds us that we are all dust and to dust we shall return. If we are all to go the way of bin Laden, our only hope can be that we will not perish with the same violence or blood on our hands.

Are we missing Jesus in Osama bin Laden’s death?

Christians learned on Good Friday that Jesus’ heart broke for a broken humanity, so much so that He died on a cross to show that he felt, even embodied the suffering we all experience, and he rose to show that such suffering would not have the last word. Perhaps it’s fitting, then, that the disciples on the Emmaus Road realized his presence in the breaking of the bread, an act of dividing that ironically unites. In brokenness, Jesus creates wholeness, like Crazy Glue bonding a fractured dinner plate.

But sadly, looking for wholeness doesn’t seem to be the priority, even amongst our youngest citizens. After my CNN comments on bin Laden’s death were released, a reader contacted me with this story from her classroom:

“Today, I couldn’t feel happy when I heard 12 year old kids persist in calling each other cruel names and almost rising to violence during my math class. They literally went back and forth always trying to one-up the other in cruelty. They did not try to resolve anything. They just persisted in perpetuating hate. I tried to talk to them about how hatred doesn’t end hatred. I started to talk to them about how I was a little afraid that we might be retaliated against because we celebrated the death of an individual last night. I almost cried when they said, “But you feel better when you’re mean to someone. Revenge is good.”

Revenge is good.

Justice has been done.

Our generation celebrated.

By glorying in revenge, each of us overlooks the brokenness that created people who hijack airplanes, instigate wars, and ask our nation’s brightest and best to descend from a helicopter—dogs in tow—to murder a man.

So while killing Osama bin Laden may well have been the best of a number of very bad options, while it may have been the only way to hold a very violent man accountable, it is still an act that stems from brokenness, and brokenness can never be celebrated.

There are those four words cupped between the imperative to honor parents and avoid adultery, after all.

But revenge is good.

Justice has been done.

Our generation celebrated.

Have we missed Jesus in Osama bin Laden’s death?

The Emmaus story asks Christians to seek healing for their brokenness in ways they might have overlooked. How might that healing be sought? First, they are asked to gather with unlikely companions, to share a meal or a walk as the disciples did on the Emmaus Road. They are also called to intellectual and emotional humility, to realize that things may not be as they seem. Intellectual humility might involve admitting that there are ways of being and knowing and depths of any conflict that reach beyond even the brightest human mind. Emotional humility, in contrast, might involve searching our hearts for hardness and prejudice and handing those parts to God to soften.

Of course, it is up to our global community and not just the Christian one to work together to create a world less tilted than the one we currently inhabit. But if we’re willing to gather together and humbly consider that things may not be as they seem, then perhaps, like the disciples on the Emmaus Road, we may see reality, and we may see hope, just a little more clearly.

*This blog was based upon a sermon preached on May 8, 2011 at Christ Church, Quincy, MA.