{"id":2081,"date":"2008-04-06T10:20:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-06T14:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=2081"},"modified":"2022-04-09T10:21:05","modified_gmt":"2022-04-09T14:21:05","slug":"see-inside-for-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stephenhphelps.com\/?p=2081","title":{"rendered":"See Inside for More"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Those first disciples are pretty happy about Jesus\u2019 resurrection. The early church is pretty happy about resurrection. Maybe your church is resurrection happy. Maybe you too. It sounds like a good thing\u2014but we\u2019d better be happy for the right reason. How embarrassing it would be if a letter came to your house and you read it wrong and you started getting happy about what you\u2019d read wrong. What a reckoning is waiting for people who read wrong. Now I wonder, is the church happy about Jesus\u2019 resurrection for the right reason? This word\u2014have we read it right? If the Bible is to be our guide, then our resurrection joy needs to be rooted in the same reason for joy in Jesus\u2019 resurrection they moved in the early church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why were they so happy? It\u2019s not because his murder was so gruesome, and they\u2019re glad that he got over it so quickly. It\u2019s not because they missed him so badly and couldn\u2019t imagine their future without him, like a church forlorn after the beloved pastor is gone. And it\u2019s not because they expect him now to take an army against the hated Roman oppressor \u201cto redeem Israel,\u201d as the two put it when they were walking on the road, sad-looking. No, none of that. I would say, they\u2019re not really happy for him\u2014not in the way you might be happy for a friend who got promoted. \u201cOh Jesus, I hear you\u2019ll be sitting at the right hand of the Father for the next thousand years or so. I\u2019m so happy for you.\u201d No, they\u2019re happy for themselves. And that\u2019s the way it should be. Something within themselves has changed, almost beyond comprehension, and they are happy. Today, the church goes around shouting \u201cJesus is risen! He is risen indeed!\u201d and it sounds good, and maybe it is good\u2014but only if we are happy for ourselves because something within us has changed almost beyond comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What changes for those two who are walking on the road to Emmaus? It\u2019s pretty simple: the deaf hear and the blind see. Almost the first thing we learn about them is that \u201ctheir eyes were kept from recognizing him.\u201d Blind! And later, when Jesus calls them fools\u2014the word in the original is \u201cmindless men\u201d\u2014who never understood what the Bible is saying, he doesn\u2019t mean they never even heard it. He means that hearing and hearing, they never really listened, never understood. They were deaf! Their happiness is, I was blind but now I see; our ears were shut up, but now we hear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hear what? See what? You see, we\u2019re still not done searching for the church\u2019s real reason for happiness. To be sure if you were literally blind, you\u2019d be happy to see. But Luke isn\u2019t into telling literal stories. What do they see and hear clearly? Let the Bible be our guide. Let\u2019s go back, let\u2019s go way back to the terrible oracle of judgment pronounced by the prophet Isaiah in the sixth chapter. We did not read the best known verses of that glorious passage, so beloved of church-goers, in which we hear that the prophet\u201dsaw the Lord seated on a throne, high and lifted up\u201d and six-wing\u00e8d seraphs were chanting \u201cHoly, holy, holy.\u201d We skipped that\u2014 because, like happy talk, glory talk in the church is often chocolate to children; taste a little and they don\u2019t come down for their medicine. We read the medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prophet\u2019s lips have been cauterized with a coal of righteousness. He is ready and eager to bring glad tidings to the people. But the Lord hires him to say what! \u201cSay to the people, \u2018Hear and hear, but do not understand; see and see, but do not perceive.\u201d Well, that\u2019s our sad friends on the road to Emmaus. The Lord tells Isaiah to prophesy to \u201cstop their ears, and shut their eyes, so that they may not look with their eyes or listen with their ears, or turn or be healed.\u201d How long must I do this? How long, O Lord? \u201cUntil cities lie waste and the land is utterly desolate.\u201d Deafness and blindness are to be sent upon the people until the whole nation is ruined. If a doom like that came to pass, what happiness when the doom began to pass away! Well, a doom like that did come to pass on Jerusalem, not once but twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Luke\u2019s church first heard his gospel stories, the year was about 80\u00a0A.D. Just a few years before that, in 70 A.D, the Roman general Titus had attacked the city, intending once and for all to be rid of the Jewish people and their constant resistance to imperial domination. The whole city was burned to the ground. All that was left of the grand temple built by Herod the Great and his descendants over six decades was its huge foundation wall. The city lay in ruins, the land was utterly desolate and everyone was sent far away. Isaiah\u2019s oracle of doom had come to pass. Early Christians pored over the Old Testament, looking for prophecies that seemed to anticipate the coming of the Messiah. Without a doubt, Luke and his church believed that the destruction of Jerusalem was divine judgment. So when Luke tells this story, and men whose ears have been shut up finally hear, from whose eyes scales have fallen and they see, it means the fierce judgment of the Lord is done and the days of doom are over. The church\u2019s preaching is for new ears; communion in the breaking of the bread is for new eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This <\/em>is something to get happy about\u2014almost, but not yet. Looking at a destroyed city, and believing that worse has come to worst, is not yet the occasion for joy. If some in Luke\u2019s church were happy that Jerusalem\u2019s Jews had suffered disaster, woe to them who had no compassion. Some no doubt were immature like that, and today many Christians are still immature like that, happy to think they are right about Jesus and everybody else is wrong and doomed. I tell you I would not want to be caught dead in front of Jesus with that thought on my mind. If we want to understand the joy of Jesus risen, really, we have to take one more step back into the Old Testament story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recall why Isaiah spoke that oracle of doom on the people of Judah. What was it that the Lord had sought from them and failed to find? It\u2019s in Isaiah, Chapter 1: \u201cAh, sinful nation . . . your whole head is sick, and your whole heart faint . . . Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.\u201d Which they would not do, and so down came the doom. Therefore, on the day that eyes open new, even though they open on a wasted city; and on the day that ears hear at last, even though they hear terrible cries from suffering children in the desolated land, they are happy, resurrection happy, for the only good reason that the church ever has to be happy about the risen Lord. We are happy for ourselves, that we have changed. Not only do we see our ruined city, but in the Lord at last we see its people with eyes of love and wills that can act. Not only do we hear the cries of the ages to which we have been deaf, but we hear a commandment to love as we have been loved, and deep inside we know we can do it. We see inside for more than we ever knew we were ready to give. This is the change we have been waiting for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But is this real? Does this happen? If the doom is done, the sign must be just as Isaiah said, just as Jesus said, that the oppressed are freed, the orphan and widow defended, and the people pursue goodness and hunger for justice. That is the only good reason to shout Jesus is risen<\/em>! But in fact, God\u2019s children are still falling into poverty and disease and war, and people who can help mostly won\u2019t. I had the opportunity a few months back to work with a team from this Presbytery on rebuilding the wasted city of New Orleans. I had an eerie feeling as I walked around New Orleans\u2019 lower ninth ward where the houses had stood week after week under twelve feet of water. It seemed I\u2019d seen a city like this, lying waste without inhabitant, its houses without people and the land utterly desolate. Then it hit me: Buffalo, east side. And as I studied the causes of New Orleans\u2019 disaster, I saw that in both cities, as in countless other cities of our rich land, shut eyes and plugged ears have brought ruin to the streets. The price of two weeks of today\u2019s war waged on Iraq would have been enough to fix the levees in New Orleans. You may love that war, you may hate it\u2014but only liars claim there isn\u2019t enough resource in the land to fortify the levees, to pave the cities\u2019 streets, to build the schools, to welcome the prisoners home to families and jobs, to pay the teachers and bind up the wounds of the sick and uninsured. It\u2019s not money that\u2019s lacking. It\u2019s open eyes, open ears, open hearts. This nation is like a car in a skid heading for the cliff of injustice\u2019 doom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s only one reason to be shouting joy for Jesus\u2019 resurrection, and mostly, it seems to me, the churches have not read their letter right. The reason the Bible gives me for joy is when my eyes are open and my ears hear. If in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, \u201cthe first fruits of those who have died,\u201d as the apostle puts it, (1 Corinthians 15) then we who see that have been given \u201cbirth by the word of truth, so that we may become a kind of first fruits of God\u2019s creatures.\u201d (James 1:18) You see what they\u2019re saying! If he\u2019s not dead, you\u2019re not dying. If you have been given birth by the word, then you see that there is something in you that is not facing death, but life only. I\u2019m not talking about the hereafter. I\u2019m talking about what it would be like to live right now as if you had \u201cbeen to the mountaintop and seen the promised land\u2014and you\u2019re not fearing any man.\u201d Not afraid of your finances, not afraid for your job or lack of it, not afraid for your family, not afraid of the heedless governments that tower over the cities and make war upon the nations, simply not afraid of death. \u201cWhere, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not saying that the test of a Christian is that she feels confidence like this every hour or even every day. But I am saying that there is no great meaning to joy in Jesus\u2019 resurrection except when in the courage of God, your heart is burning within you as you hear, like you\u2019d never heard it before, that you can live into your worst fear like one who will never die. I am saying that being happy about Jesus\u2019 resurrection is like chocolate to the church unless your eyes are open and you read your life like one who is free, free at last, never to die, able to say with the great American visionary Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) \u201cwhile there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.'\u201d Are you happy? See inside for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

delivered at MacAlpine Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9Stephen H. Phelps 2008<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"