Church of the Holy City

Amazed and Confused

Confused and Amazed
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
March 31, 2013
Easter Sunday

Luke 24:1-35 Psalm 136

The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ brought wonder, joy, and bewilderment to His followers. While He lived, His teachings astonished His listeners because they had never heard such wisdom spoken with such authority. They were astonished by the miracles He performed. But the end of His life and His resurrection confused and amazed His followers.
Consider what Luke tells us about the apostles on the road to Emmaus. We first learn that as they walk they are discussing everything that had happened. They are trying to make sense of it all. How could this powerful God-Man have been sentenced to death, and been killed by the Romans? What are we left to do, now that our Master and teacher is gone? We are then told that the apostles’ faces are downcast. Of course they would be. Jesus Christ, whom they hoped would deliver Israel from Roman rule, instead was a victim of the Roman judicial system.
But there was also an element of amazement and confusion in what they were discussing. For they say that some of the women they know went to the tomb and found it empty. And as was the case with Jesus’ birth, these women had a vision of angels bringing them good tidings of great joy. That is, they told the women that Jesus is alive.
So these apostles had much to discuss indeed. Their understanding of scripture did not tell them how to interpret these happenings. Their Messiah was here, but He didn’t deliver Israel from the Romans. The Messiah had been executed, which was just wrong. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Then Mary Magdala had actually seen Jesus alive and had told the other disciples about this. Again, no Old Testament literature that they knew of talked about the death and resurrection of the Messiah. So there was much to discuss. There was much to try to figure out. The disciples were sad, amazed, and confused.
This is their state of mind when Jesus appears to them, and walks with them on the road to Emmaus. Jesus teaches them on the way. Luke tells us that, “Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself” (Luke 27). What Jesus was doing was opening to them the internal sense of scripture. When Luke says that Jesus began with Moses and all the Prophets, he means the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, and all the Prophets. This means that the story of the people of Israel and the poetry in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, and the visions of Daniel and the others are all about Jesus.
Having heard this long Bible exegesis, the apostles now have scripture explaining the events they have witnessed. They now understand Jesus’ birth, His miracles, His death, and His resurrection. And when Jesus breaks bread with them, as He did at the last supper, they finally recognize that this wise man on the road is none other than their beloved Jesus Christ. They now recall that as Jesus walked with them and opened the Scriptures to them, their hearts were “burning within us.”
Why did they not notice the burning of their hearts when they were walking? Why were they kept from recognizing Jesus? Why didn’t they notice that this man walking next to them knew an amazing amount about the Bible and about Jesus’ life and mission? Why did they not recognize that this stranger was the only one who seemed to know the answers to all the questions they were discussing?
Maybe they were simply too amazed, confused, and sad to lift their eyes to Jesus and to believe what Mary Magdala had said. There they were, trying to figure things out, and all the while, the man they were trying to figure out was right there, walking beside them. Jesus calls them “foolish and slow of heart.” They are foolish by their lack of understanding of the Bible, and slow of heart because they are not paying attention to the burning hearts they have inside them as Jesus walks next to them.
We can be similarly foolish and slow of heart at times, I think. The miracle of the resurrection is that Jesus and God are one as the soul and the body are one. The infinite Creator God is united fully with the Divine-Human Jesus Christ. Jesus is Very God and Very Man, the creeds say. This means that the risen Jesus can walk next to us just as he did with the apostles on the road to Emmaus.
This means that we have the potential to feel Jesus’ presence in us as the burning heart that the apostles speak of. Our hearts can burn within us as we feel the resurrected Jesus near us. This may happen as we are reading the Bible. Or perhaps, when we are in prayer. Or when we are talking with another person and we are lifted above the worries and anxieties of this world.
The truth is that Jesus is always present. Deep within the recesses of our souls, God is present. But we are not always aware of this presence. We block this God-spark with selfish anxieties and worldly concerns. These distractions drag our consciousness away from our essential nearness to God. When this happens, we do not feel that nearness to God. We do not feel that burning of our hearts within us.
The miracle of the resurrection is that God and Man are fully united. This union of God and Man in Jesus Christ happened gradually over the life of Jesus. We see union when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain top in Mark 9:2-13. In fact, the great Renaissance painter Rafael painted the transfiguration with Jesus up in the clouds–arms uplifted. At first I thought that this was a painting of Jesus’ ascension up into heaven. Another place in which Jesus’ union with God is spoken of is John 10:30, where Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” And we see Jesus’ full humanity when He prays on the Mount of Olives, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” This very human Jesus is said to be strengthened by an angel. And this very human Jesus prays even more desperately, “And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 42-44). And with the resurrection, full union with God occurs. So Jesus can say, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:17).
The miracle of Christ’s union with God, so that God is Man and Man is God, has special meaning for each one of us. For Just as Jesus grew closer and closer to God and God to Him over the course of His life on earth, so we follow a similar pattern in our life on earth. We will find periods of closeness to God and periods of obscurity from God. And as we are refined as in an alchemist’s crucible, we grow more and more intimately united with Jesus. Our hearts grow more fiery with God’s Holy Spirit and our minds understand truth more accurately with God’s illuminating light. The worldly distractions that dim our feeling of God’s presence break apart and we are filled with the sunlight of the soul.
God united fully with the Divine Humanity of Jesus Christ. We unite with Jesus. Even as God is in Jesus, so Jesus is in us. Jesus says, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you” (John 14:20). This one line sums up the glorification of Jesus and our regeneration. The glorification of Jesus is the process by which He is filled with the Father. And our regeneration is the process by which we are filled with Jesus. The Greek Orthodox Church calls this process theosis, or divinization. It is an ancient tradition that speaks about our ascent to God and God’s descent into our souls. Regeneration, theosis, or divinization, the result is the same, summed up in that one line from John, “I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”
As we drop the anxieties and worries of life in the world, and trust in God’s love and care for each one of us, we will feel our hearts burn within us as the apostles did on the road to Emmaus. They did not realize that they felt the heat of Christ’s love as they walked because they were too confused, bewildered, sad, and anxious. But when they calmed down and broke bread with Jesus, they saw the risen Christ for the first time. Having listened to Jesus open the Scriptures to them, they then understood. Their confusion was dispersed. They were left in amazement and joy. So may we be, when our hearts burn within us as we open our hearts to Jesus.

PRAYER

Lord, we are overflowing with joy this Sunday morning when we contemplate your glorious resurrection. You lived a fully human life. You knew birth, you grew into manhood, and you died, as every human will. And yet unlike any human, you rose from the dead body and soul. And in your risen divinity, you can come to each one of us as a human and as our God. You came to the earth when the earth had forgotten about you. You suffered at the hands of evil and sin. And you forgave. Come to each of us, as we pray to you this morning and every day. Walk with us as you walked with the apostles in ancient days. And lead us in the pathway that will bring us home, to your eternal and heavenly home.

And Lord, we pray that you bring peace to this troubled world. May those who harbor ill will for their neighbors learn to understand and see the fellow humanity that they share. May those who strive against each other see that they are like in their wishes and in what they want for their land and nation. And may warring factions find their way to peace.

Lord, we ask for you to heal those who are sick. As you worked miracles of healing when you were on earth, how much more can you work healing miracles now that you have risen and have all authority in heaven and on earth.