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May 16, l999 Luke 24:44-53
As members of the human race we experience similar significant experiences: everyone must know of a birth if not remember a birthday; most people remember their first love and a lost love; everyone knows how to behave at a wedding or a funeral; most of us remember our first job. Our problem is that the good times don't last forever and our lives unfold in ordinary days, routine events, and repetitious actions. Let us, therefore, turn to today's scriptures for some guidance about how to discover significance in the long pauses which add up to our lives. How to find the extraordinary in the ordinary. How to encounter God in the mundane.
Our reading from Acts alerts us to a significant event for the church and believers: The Ascension of Jesus…his final departure from his earthly role to his eternal existence. He left them, but he had promised he would return so his friends expected him to return and soon. But the Church has now waited close to 2,000 years. It has been a long pause between Jesuses. What did the writer of Luke Acts think the friends of Jesus should do while they waited for his return? They were not to do nothing. They were stupid to stare into a sky now empty. Get on with it. But with what?
At the climactic event told to us in Luke 24, Jesus delays his departure to conduct a bible study with his disciples. Hear again this portion of Luke 24: EVERYTHING MUST BE FULFILLED THAT IS WRITTEN ABOUT ME IN THE LAW OF MOSES, THE PROPHETS AND THE PSALMS. THEN HE OPENED THEIR MINDS SO THEY COULD UNDERSTAND THE SCRIPTURES. For Jesus the deliberate and common pursuit of understanding from the scriptures was the first task of those in the long pause. The interpretation of Luke 24 hangs on our acceptance of Jesus' insight that only those who understand the scriptures will believe in him and his resurrection. The interpretation of Luke 24 turns on this discernment: those who understand the scriptures rightly will understand the meaning and power of the Resurrected One. Earlier at Luke l6, Jesus made the same point. Remember how he told the parable of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke l6:l9-3l). This parable is usually received as an ethical teaching about the imperative of the rich to be generous or end up you know where. But it is also a reminder from Jesus on the need to study and discern the scriptures in order to find meaningful truth. When the rich man, already tormented in hell, begged Father Abraham to warn his rich brothers away from their greed, Abraham replied: "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." Now the scriptures which Jesus referred to were, of course, not our present bible since none of the New Testament had been composed. He was speaking of the Jewish scriptures of the Torah, the prophets, the psalms and wisdom literature. On June 7 (Nury, Margie Long, Richard Lee) several of us will take our new confirmation class to the Jewish synagogue to meet with Rabbi Daniel Cohen and his own Jewish confirmation class. Why? Because Christian confirmands need understanding that our faith unfolds from Jewish scriptures, the very scriptures which Jesus knew and taught. Jesus did what all of us when we turn to the scriptures: he read and interpreted the scriptures selectively emphasizing those portions which pointed to his own understanding and faith in God, and ignoring or reinterpreting scriptures which narrowed and dogmatized knowledge of God. Jesus liked the great stories from Genesis and Exodus; he knew, loved and interpreted the prophets so as to reveal the righteous fullness of God as Our Heavenly Father; Jesus emphasized the texts that focus on divine love and compassion and was largely indifferent to, or even put off, by those scriptures which judge, categorize and condemn others. The prophecies about the true Messiah engaged him and Jesus put a unique spin on the relatively few prophecies about the Suffering Servant as the key to his messiahship and the appropriate symbol for those who would take up His Cross to follow him; and he relied totally upon those texts pointing to the Resurrection as the ultimate revelation and confirmation of who God is. In Luke 24 Jesus mentions specific scriptural themes which address his identify: Did you hear those words: suffering, death, repentance and forgiveness of sins, and witnessing. I believe many people, both within His Church and outside of it, feel put off by these scriptural emphases of Jesus. The last two Sundays I had conversations with two men who were visitors to our worship. They came from opposite religious directions: one identified himself to me as a lapsed Christian; the other declared he became a born again Christian only two years ago. It turned out that neither was touched by our worship including the scriptures read. The lapsed Christian visited us on Easter Sunday and he told me: "Pastor, it's nothing against you, but I didn't like coming to church for the first time in l5 years and being asked to make a confession of sin. I was feeling down enough without your mentioning sin to me." I marvelled that a minute and half prayer of confession before Communion was what he remembered rather than the glorious scriptures of that day. Peter's embracing statement read from Acts 7 that the reach of Jesus is to all peoples and nations. Paul's challenge to the early church from I Corinthians to throw out the old yeast and celebrate Christ with the new yeast of sincerity and truth? And that Sunday we heard John 20 and the Resurrection story of the Fourth Gospel. The other visitor came last Sunday and over lunch he pretty well indicated that while the worship was okay it did speak to his personal spirituality. He remembered most intensely the day of his conversion and he measured everything else in terms of whether it affirmed his significant experience or not. I surmised that only selected scriptures and certain styles of worship did that for him. Self-absorption is the quality both men had. One was self-absorbed in self-pity; the other self-absorbed in self-confidence. But aren't they representative of many whom we would like to help through their self-centeredness to a fuller understanding of Christ in the scriptures? Those kinds of people rushed to Jesus. He attracted and dealt with the lonely, the victims, and the cocky. Why do they flee from us? How do we help those with a broken but not contrite heart move beyond victimhood to a humble and receptive attitude toward the scriptures and other aspects of Christian discipleship like prayer and worship? How do we assist those with one or another simple understanding of discipleship - whether it be their born again credentials or their absorption in tongues or their Pharaisaism of the Christian Right or Left - to some deeper, more profound discernment of the God and Christ of the scriptures? Exclusive claims about one's faith arise from selective readings of the scriptures inclined toward Pharisaic self-confidence, whether of the Religious Right or the Religious Left, which Jesus understood was the enemy of authentic spirituality. And so I heard in the skeptical voice of the lapsed believer sunk in his loneliness and suffocating in his own victimhood, as I heard in the assertive pre-occupation with having caught Jesus in his heart, the kinds of unhelpful ways to live the ordinary days and the evangelical challenge to non-dogmatic and open-minded congregations: how can we get through their, and often our own self-centredness to the marvelous, surprising and gracious God of the scriptures? We are trying to do just that in our current DISCIPLE program and in our Sunday seminar on SPIRITUAL LITERACY. And amazingly these groups are both serious and fun! When we study knowledge about God in the scriptures what we really want is knowledge of God. I believe Jesus felt that knowledge about God often comes before experience of God. Luke 24 tells us that once the disciples minds were opened to understand the Scriptures things started to make sense. And when things made sense, Jesus could charge his disciples to become witnesses. And they become effective witnesses in the many ordinary years of their lives which followed. In my own spiritual journey I have never seen Christ in the skies and I would be rather upset if I thought I had capture Christ in my heart. I do find Christ in the bible, I find Christ in the instruction and fellowship and loving work of the Church, I do find Christ in other people; I do find Christ in worship; I do find Christ in the ordinary, routine and long intervals of my life when my heart goes with God. The counsel of Jesus is clear and trustworthy here. We need to study and know the scriptures and seek to interpret them rightly. Those you who reject any serious commitment to the scriptures as part of their spiritual journey will in all probability be in the attitude of those who stood gazing into an empty sky. They will not understand, believe in, nor experience the truth and power of the Resurrection in their own lives. Those who seek the Lord both in their hearts and in the scriptures are ready to receive what comes next: Pentecost and the mission Jesus gives those who believe in him through the scriptures.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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