Too Good to Be True

David Orendorff · Luke 24:13-43 · April 30, 2006

It is said that to each of us comes a vision, usually when we are young or an adolescent, of what we might become, of what our power might be. We vision being a fireman or a teacher, a lawyer or a mother. And then later to many of us comes the harshness of being and our visions grow weary, wither, turn cynical or die.

Today's scripture is of dying visions.

Earlier in the evening, three days after the crucifixion, after the apparent end of the vision, two of the disciples were walking to Emmaus, a small town outside Jerusalem, and a stranger joined them. The stranger spoke of God's promises and their hearts burned as old visions struggled for new life. But then they remembered the one who first fired their hopes was crucified, dead and buried. The promise of God was now just empty words.

When they arrived at Emmaus they invited the stranger into a place of rest. He came and he sat to supper with them. And when he broke the bread and drank the wine, he was no longer a stranger, but their master, their teacher, their beloved. And then he was gone.

They rushed back to Jerusalem to tell the others who were still hiding in fear. To the frightened and lost men and women of Jesus, the two tell what it was that happened to them, how they spoke with the Lord on the road to Emmaus but did not know him until he broke bread and drank wine.

While they were telling this, Jesus appears among them. He says to them, "Peace", probably in Aramaic, "Shalom", which is a greeting meaning good health, prosperity, being spared of violence, friendship and trust in God. It is a common greeting and wish for someone you love.

But they were troubled by Jesus' presence, after all he was supposed to be dead and they think they are seeing a ghost. Jesus asks them, "Why are you troubled, and why do questions rise in your hearts. Did you think that my life was over and that your lives were over? Yet here we are eating fish together."

Visions they thought were dead were raised by God.

There is a game I used to play with youth groups, you've probably played it. You asked this question, "What would you do if you knew that you only had 24 hours to live?" It is a way of asking what is most important to you, what gives meaning and joy to your life? What is your shalom?

I always got a variety of answers. A common one was “I will party the whole time.” Some of the youth, usually boys, wanted to find a fast car. Occasionally, someone would talk of wanting to be alone to remember their life, to meditate and to pray. I am sure there were unspoken answers that they thought I was too innocent to understand. Usually the answers had to do with spending the last hours with friends and with family -to remember and to say over and over, “I love you” and then to repeatedly here “I love you.”

One day, while hoeing his garden, Francis of Assisi was asked what he would do if this were the last day of his life. Francis answered, “I would finish hoeing my garden.”1Quoted from “Homiletics” April-June, 1994, p. 14

John Wesley was once asked, “If you knew the second coming of Christ was tomorrow, what would you do.” This is essentially the same question. Wesley replied that he would do with his tomorrow what he had already planned to do, visit a friend and preach that night in a nearby town.2Ibid.

Francis and Wesley find death to be just another moment of life.

John Shea writes:

The human heart is continually concerned with the status of what it cherishes in the face of the destructiveness of life. It is fearful that what it prizes will be swept away. We know our love does not match our power. If we could, we would; but we cannot. When we hear that divine love and power suffuses and supplements our own, our fear of loss subsides. We are capable of changing the panicky and self-defeating ways in which we live and relate. This possibility makes us, as Luke's story suggests, “incredulous for sheer joy.” The risen reality of Christ communicates a joy we cannot believe. We cannot believe it because it is the fulfillment of our deepest desires. Quite simply, it is too good to be true.3John Shea, The Spirit Master, (Thomas More Press, Chicago, 1987), 71

That God overcomes even death is too good to be true.

Above my computer at home, where I write my sermons hangs this print of Pablo Picasso. It is Picasso's response to the 1937 bombing of Guernica by German fascists in support of Spanish fascism during the Spanish Civil War. Guernica was a small town of 3,500 residents in northern Spain. It was indiscriminately bombed and the painting shows twisted and broken bodies, animals screaming, and gives a feeling of general horror, destruction and chaos.

On the left is a mother crying over the dismembered body of her baby. In the center is a horse screaming, and below it a pile of body parts. On the right is someone being burned alive, reaching for salvation where there is none.

Before I go any further I must tell you that I am not an art historian nor am I noted for my interpretation of art. Never-the-less, as depressing as this picture “Guernica” is, I find in it four symbols of hope, four places in which Picasso looks through life's holocaust to offer grace.

The most obvious to me is the brightly burning light in the middle of the ceiling. Even in the midst of terrible suffering and destruction the light of justice, the light which displays the truth, (for me) the light of God still burns brightly.

There is also a floating figure, almost like the wind (the spirit), which blows in the door holding a lamp to assist in the illumination of all. God again burns bright, by the Holy Spirit, the truth of suffering in our world.

In front of the door is a woman, looking toward both the brightly burning bulb and the fragile lamp. She sees beyond the carnage that surrounds her and she moves herself toward the light. It is another sign of hope among us.

But the most subtle and profound part of this picture for me has to do with the theme of resurrection. At the very bottom of the print is a severed arm, still grasping a broken sword. Almost lost in the carnage, is a flower, growing from the sword and the hand. In some miraculous way, a flower grows even from death.

Picasso preaches the gospel. No matter how bad things get, no matter what terror comes to us, there is the light of God, there is resurrection and there is hope. Even at Guernica, there is God and there is new life.

George MacDonald writes it this way:

Yestereve, Death came, and knocked at my thin door. I from my window looked: the thing I saw, The shape uncouth, I had not seen before. I was disturbed -with fear, in sooth, now awe; Wereof ashamed, I instantly did rouse My will to seek thee -only to fear the more: Alas! I could not find thee in the house.

I was like Peter when he began to sink. To thee a new prayer therefore I have got That, when Death comes in earnest to my door, Thou wouldst thyself go, when the latch doth clink, And lead him to my room, up to my cot; Then hold thy child's hand, hold and leave him not, Till Death has done with him for evermore.

Till Death has done with him? Ah, leave me then! And Death has done with me, oh, nevermore! He comes -and goes -to leave me in thy arms, Nearer thy heart, oh, nearer than before! To lay thy child, naked, new-born again

Of mother earth, crept free through many harms, Upon thy bosom -still to the very core.4George MacDonald, from Diary of an Old Soul, quoted by Job and Shawchuck in A Guide to Prayer, (Nashville: Upper Room, 1983), 150-151

I affirm Paul's writing to the church in Rome when he says, “We know that in everything God works for good with those who love God, who are called according to God's purpose.”5Romans 8:28

In the moments when life is as hard as Guernica and confidence lives in some far place, I struggle to hold steady to this faith. It is on the roads to Emmaus in the days of weary and dying visions that we watch for the stranger to warm our hearts with the promises of our all loving God. It is in the days of a deep soul hunger that unexpected grace feeds us the bread and the wine and we are again laid naked and new-born upon the bosom of God. May every resurrection come quickly!

Amen and Shalom.