-        April 25, 2010

“They Disbelieved for Joy” (Luke 24:36-46)

Dr. Dan Ivins, pastor

            Having just returned from a painful journey, tasered and tenderized it’s good to be back home. You can only hold your life in suspension for so long. Libby and I are overwhelmed at your compassion for us through this difficult time. A difficult time is a good time for Easter! Some of us are a lot like the earliest disciples, pondering the things we've heard, and wrestling with trying to make sense out of nonsense; attempting to explain the inexplicable. But Christianity stands or falls on Easter. Is it just a long ago myth, a seasonal rite of springtime, or does it mean something important to me today?

            Luke tells us that the disciples were frightened and confused. They weren't hampered, by "post-modern" doubts, but they had to confront their own first century brand of disbelief. Both their heads and their hearts needed help. No one then or now can explain the resurrection. The best anyone can do is describe our experience of it. The disciples experienced Jesus' presence as mysterious but real. It eludes human perception, and yet is no human fabrication.

            The Easter season is when we focus on the dozen or so appearances of Jesus and the way it pulled his followers lives out of the mire of Good Friday. Luke goes into great detail to define the nature of Jesus' resurrection. He tells a story of two disciples, whose “eyes kept them from recognizing him” on the road to Emmaus, even though their “hearts mysteriously burned within them.”  Then when he follows with a glimpse of a growing little community of questing, wondering believers, we're reading about ourselves, too --listening for God's call in the midst of life’s subtleties. This is where we find Jesus’ disciples post-Easter. 

            The Emmaus road story is our story, because the people in it never arrive. Emmaus is everywhere and nowhere, a metaphor condensing the earliest years of Christian thought and practice into one parabolic afternoon, to show why God’s church continues against-all-odds, and why the One who died will not go away. It’s not a story for the fainthearted. It’s more about pounding hearts, broken hearts, burning hearts. It stands as a reminder that "to believe" is not just a matter of the mind, but a matter of the soul. For what we believe is what we give our hearts to.

            When we meet the disciples on the road, it is evening. Friday was too fresh. The crucifixion was still real. And the Resurrection, just a rumor, a curiosity, an idle tale. And yet when the Stranger joins the disciples on the road, it’s clear that the possibility of resurrection intrigued them. They’ve been talking about it for hours, debating the theological nuances of an empty tomb. Buried beneath their verbal skirmish, there’s a deep yearning and a holy hunger for assurance.

            Intertwined with their hope is their skepticism; their need for God to be real and present. But what’s real is the baggage of their doubts that impede the fervor of their faith.  So they fail to recognize Jesus. But after inviting the familiar Stranger into their home for supper, Cleopas and his buddy realize it’s Jesus, but not until he “broke the bread.” Then he vanished. 

            They rush back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples but Jesus beat them there. "While they were still talking, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.'” “You would’ve thought he said, “Boo!” instead of “Peace.”  But he really spooked ‘em! They thought he was a ghost! But when he identified himself by his wounds, they knew it was no ghost.  Jesus is in a room full of skeptics. His own disciples, but skeptics nonetheless. And he’s very patient with them.

            Their slowness to believe gives us pause, but all the gospels report it. I mean they were there! Thomas demanded proof, Matthew is the only evangelist that says they “worshiped” him up in the Galilee, and then added, “but some doubted.”  How could they doubt?

            This is when Luke forever captures a remarkable mix of feelings and perceptions, a unique expression found nowhere else in the Bible:  “they disbelieved for joy!”  How do you disbelieve for joy? Recently my wife and I “disbelieved for shock.” When you receive terrible news, anyone can understand that. But the coupling of disbelief with joy is an attempt to describe their ambiguity over Jesus’ continuity and discontinuity. They take him for a Gardener and a Stranger.

            I counted 34 times in the Bible where people “sing” for joy or “shout” for joy. But this is the only time when anybody “disbelieved for joy.’’ You get the feeling that Jesus can’t win for trying. Unbelievers disbelieve because bad things happen to good people. Believers disbelieve because good things happen to themselves. What’s a messiah to do?  To get the people to quit looking for one perhaps? And that Jesus -- you know what he said? While they’re busy disbelieving, he wants to know “What’s for supper?”  The least he could do is to sit down and explain the miracle of the third day; calm their troubled hearts; clear their befuddled minds.  But Jesus threw them a curve.

            In the midst of the disciple’s mixed-up feelings and emotions, the risen Lord rises to speak. In hushed in anticipation, they eagerly await his teaching, wisdom, compassion and clarity. And Jesus goes, “So, ya’ll got anything good around here to eat?” And they gave him a piece of “broiled fish,” and he woofed it down.

Don’t misunderstand. This is no spiritual eating of spiritual food. They didn’t watch the fish go down His spiritual throat and drop into His spiritual belly like a living x-ray. He ate, and I wouldn’t be surprised if after he ate, he wiped his mouth and burped real big and said, “Man, that’s just the way I like it!”

            They’re slowly but surely making progress. They still disbelieved but, out of joy and wonder, not fear. But they still think this is too good to be true. So Mr. Practical brings them back to the reality of life again in this world, with his shockingly down-to-earth, intensely pragmatic question. There’s nothing theological about it and it shakes off any other-worldly contemplations.  “What’s for supper?”

            One moment he’s a Stranger, the next moment “their eyes are opened,” and sure enough it’s Jesus! Still, they’re understandably startled. They haven't yet internalized the concept of a dead Messiah, now alive and appearing and disappearing at odd times and places.

            So Jesus gently reassures them and encourages them to touch him, to satisfy themselves that he has flesh and bones; most un-ghost-like. One day he’ll expect them to be eyewitnesses. So he gives them an eyeful! There he was, plain as day, physically present and they were in awe. This is not a hallucination.  Jesus' resurrected body has substance. Yet he’s not limited to the physical sphere. He could appear and disappear at will, go through unopened doors or be touched and eat fish, unfettered by space and time.

            The Shepherd stands before His sheep and gives them visual, tangible and audible evidence that he is who he is. He appeals to their senses. All so that they may stop disbelieving and believe, stop worrying and start living. Then Jesus took his disciples to Sunday School, "He opened their minds to the scriptures.  'This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.'" Remember? He appealed to their minds and their memories.

            What do we make of it? The Eleven disciples were eyewitnesses of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. They saw the nails pounded into his hands and feet, the spear thrust into his side. They were there, for awhile. Long enough to see that he was a goner. Then they scattered. Joseph and Nicodemus removed his body from the cross, tenderly washed off the blood, wrapped it with spices, and entombed it. They knew he was dead.  The best they could muster was to “disbelieve for joy.”

            Their reticence to jump on-board indicates that they had no hope of him being alive. The third day flew right over their heads. The chief priests and Pharisees took Jesus' prediction of his resurrection a lot more seriously than the disciples. Just to be sure, they had the tomb guarded to keep the body from being stolen and a claim of resurrection being made (Matthew 27:62-66). To no avail. Now the “cat’s outa the bag!” Jesus is clearly alive. His body bears marks of his suffering. But he’s more than that. He’s at home in the heavenly realm as in the earthly. He transcends the physical.

            So, what this mean for us is the same for us as it meant for them on the first Easter: it means we are not alone.  I am with you now and “lo I am with you always, even to the end.” You know, I'm just thinking as we walk this Easter road, we can either stand around feeling sorry for ourselves or just listen to his words, believe and do! Visit the strangers. Feed the hungry. Lift up the fallen, taste and see that the Lord is good! If he won’t give up on that bunch, he won’t quit on anybody, even if we give up on ourselves.

            The stranger on the road took the skepticism and the curiosity of the disciples and wove it into the fabric of scripture. And it lit a fire in their souls, that Peter referred to in Acts, when they were “cut to the heart,” and then reborn. They become those who give their heart to the holy -- and the exuberance of the church is unleashed like nothing before or since! Again and again in scripture, pounding hearts become burning hearts. And burning hearts become loving hearts. And that’s how God’s heart continues to beat.

             The one thing they had that we don’t have, is the visual. They saw him, but we cannot.  We see him in different ways though: in each other, in loving acts of kindness and courage. So, it falls to us to “believe without seeing.” “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” (John 20).

            And it so happens that’s how the bible defines faith: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1). So, maybe that’s why John tells us that even a face-to-face encounter is out of the question ... someday. If someday ever comes! “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). “No longer through a mirror dimly, but face-to-face.” (I Cor. 13).

            In the meantime, we live by faith, trusting the word of those who were eyewitnesses and by their testimony, we live with the possibility that the resurrected Christ is present with us. He may not give out any answers, but he always gives out the grace to know that we are not alone ... and therefore ... everything’s gonna be okay.

Providence Prayers. (May 25, 2010)

            O God, who chased away the gloom of the disciples with the good news of Easter and drowned the desert of their despair in a sea of grace, surprise us as we continue to move through this Easter season. 

            We give Thee thanks for being with us on the roads we travel. Forgive us when we see all the things in this world that drive us to the valleys of despair, and fail to see that “Thou art with us; thy rod and staff, they comfort us.”

            From a world that leaves us at the mercy of painful events, we worship the God who turns crosses into crowns. When our hopes are crushed by the baffling experiences of life, grant us the grace to be open-minded learners in spite of it. 

            As Jesus did whatever it took to help turn the vanquished into victors, even so enable us see the Risen Lord, walking the roads where we live, facing our lives shoulder-to-shoulder.

            Walk beside the sick who are despondent in their pain; the lonely who think no one cares whether they live or die; walk beside those whose wounds of body, mind, or spirit are not yet healed.            Walk beside us in this church.  Help us to recognize Thee in the Stranger among us. Enable us to make Thee known not only "in the breaking of the bread" but in the sharing of it. We invoke Thy power to overcome strife, to endure suffering, to rise above affliction and to pass through death and beyond. 

            In the spirit of those who shared the journey on the road to Emmaus, we want to believe. "Help our unbelief!"  Or at least "disbelieve for joy!” In the name of him who comes alongside of us, even though we don't always recognize him, we pray...Amen.