by Steve | May 20, 1990 | Archive - 1990
Archive: We Must Surrender Ourselves
By E. Stanley Jones
May/June 1990
Good News
Why is God so cruel? Why does he demand so much of us? In demanding self-surrender, is God being cruel or consistent?
God obeys every law he demands of us. He especially obeys and illustrates the law of finding his life by losing it. This principle is at the very heart of the universe. One verse vividly proclaims that fact “the Lamb who is at the heart of the throne will be their shepherd and will guide them to the springs of the water of life” (Rev. 7:17 NEB). That phrase, “the Lamb who is at the heart of the throne,” is the most important of any verse in Scripture, or in literature anywhere. Show me what you think is at the heart of the universe and I will show you what will be at the heart of your conduct.
Call the roll of the answers of philosophy and religion as to what is at the heart of the throne of the universe, and what answers do we get? Justice, power, law, indifference, question mark, favoritism, something that cannot be wangled, the non-manipulatable, the ground of our being. Nothingness. Not one could rise to, or could dare think of, self-giving, sacrificial love, “the Lamb” being at the heart of the throne. That would be unthinkable; it could only come as revelation. The Word had to become flesh; we had to see it in the Lamb, God on a cross!
The unimaginable revelation is this: God not only redeems in terms of Jesus Christ, he rules in terms of Jesus Christ. The Lamb is at the heart of the throne, not merely the cross! Does God rule from a cross? Then the cross is final power and not only absolute goodness. Is this a stray thought woven into the fabric of Christianity or is it the warp and woof of the whole? This verse lets us see that it is at the very basis of the Christian faith: “Therefore, my brothers, I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to him: a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1 NEB). The word therefore is the pivot upon which this whole epistle turns from doctrines to duties, from what God has done to what we are to do. And what has he done? The whole of Romans up to the eighth chapter is an exposition of what God has done to redeem us. The following passage lets us see what he has done: “Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that is God’s own proof of his love towards us. And so, since we have now been justified by Christ’s sacrificial death, … For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, … now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. But that is not all: We also exult in God through our Lord Jesus, through whom we have now been granted reconciliation” (Rom. 5:8-11 NEB). Also: “He did not spare his own Son, but surrendered him for us all; and with this gift how can he fail to lavish upon us all he has to give?” (Rom. 8:32 NEB). Put with the above this: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19 NEB). Put these passages together and they spell out the astonishing news: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.
So self-surrender is at the very heart of God. When he asks us to surrender ourselves he is asking us to fulfill the deepest thing in himself and the deepest thing in us. It is not only the deepest in God – it is also the highest in God. God was never higher than when he gave himself for us. If there were a cosmic newspaper announcing: “GOD THE CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE GIVES HIMSELF TO REDEEM A PLANET CAILED EARTH,” the universe would gasp in astonishment. That would be news. It would set the standard for life in the universe. We must do what God does, surrender ourselves. If we do that we are in harmony with the universe. If we go against what God does, make ourselves the center of life, then we are running athwart the universe; we have nothing behind us except our lonely wills; we are estranged and out of harmony with the universe and ourselves. We have saved our lives and have lost them.
So Paul says, “Therefore, … I implore you by God’s mercy to offer your very selves to him: a living sacrifice.”
Why by God’s mercy? Is he implying, “God have mercy on you if you don’t?” I think so, for life says so! All the problems of human living come out of self-centered living. Center yourself on yourself and you won’t like yourself. And no one else will like you. A psychologist says, “It’s a million chances to one that the self-centered are unpopular.” With whom? First, with themselves. They do as they like and then don’t like the self they are expressing. But when you try to digest selfcenteredness the stomach turns sour. You are made for outgoing love, not ingrown self-preoccupation. Neither can you as a person digest it, nor can your relationships.
This law of saving your life by losing it is not based on God’s whim, nor even upon God’s will – it is based on God’s character. That is the way God is, and that is the way God acts, and if we act otherwise we are at cross-purposes with God and consequently get hurt. For you cannot be at cross-purposes with reality and get away with it. You don’t break this law, you break yourself upon it. It registers its consequences within you. You are paid in your own person the fitting wage of such perversion, the perversion of making yourself God instead of surrendering to God.
So surrender to God is not merely a religious doctrine, it is a life demand. The rest of Romans 12:1 says that offering “your very selves to him: a living sacrifice” is “the worship offered by mind and heart.” Note “mind,” or as the King James Version says, “your reasonable service.” To surrender to God is “reasonable,” the sensible thing to do. From the moment you surrender to God, life takes on meaning, goal, purpose, a sense of going somewhere worthwhile – life adds up to sense.
The article is excerpted from Victory Through Surrender by E. Stanley Jones, copyright 1966, Abingdon Press. Used by permission.
by Steve | Mar 13, 1990 | Archive - 1990
Abortion: The UMC is ‘Falling Short’
By Steve Beard
March/April 1990
As thousands of marchers descended upon the Mall to protest the 17th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, pro-life clergy and laypeople met together for a worship service in the chapel of the UM Building across the street from the Supreme Court Building on Capitol Hill. The January 22 meeting was sponsored by the Taskforce of United Methodists on Abortion and Sexuality( TUMAS)a, church-wide, national, pro-life organization.
In his message the Rev. Paul Crikelair of Elverson, Pennsylvania, told worshipers that the UM Church is in “desperate need” of a “new vision” on abortion. Citing biblical passages from the Psalms, Isaiah and Exodus, Crikelair spoke of God’s vision for creation, His faithfulness and His protection of the innocent.
“All human life is worthy of protection. All humanity is created in the image of God,” he said. “What a calling! What a challenge! What an opportunity! What an invitation to the United Methodist Church!”
Crikelair referred to the unborn as “the most vulnerable, the most defenseless, the most victimized, the most precious of all the segments of humanity” and described abortion as a death “that is uglier, that is more violent, more despicable than any other form of death man has ever invented.”
The crowd of nearly 4O was a welcome sight to taskforce director Steven Paul Wissler of Ephrata, Pennsylvania.” For years many of the concerned evangelicals who had a pro-life concern read the handwriting and simply left the denomination, feeling they couldn’t make any constructive effort,” he says. But now, Wissler notes, TUMAS is committed to getting the UM Church into abortion-prevention ministries that promote “the adoption option instead of the death option, abortion.”
First of all Wissler wants to see UM Church school materials reflect the church’s teaching on the “sanctity of unborn human life.” By not translating that teaching to UM youth, he believes that the church is “falling short on the witness scene to people who will be in positions to make critical values.”
Secondly he thinks that the church should do more to publicize the 15 UM homes and facilities for unwed mothers: “To our knowledge, up until we took the survey last year these things have been in obscurity. The pro-choice political emphasis has obscured this ministry. We want to bring that to the front burner and do all we can to make it known to pastors.”
Thirdly he wants TUMAS to help pastors find the theological and pastoral emphasis in the pro-life message so that they can teach and preach without feeling like a “stigmatized, pro-life extremist.”
“It’s written into our Discipline that we cannot affirm birth-control abortion, and we utterly reject gender-selection abortion. That’s something on the books, explicitly. And you look around and we are not having the whole-hearted response.”
Wissler sees his mission, and that of TUMAS, as “simply bringing our denomination up to the speed of the rich theological, life-saving, redemptive ministry that should have been the church’s all along had it not been obscured by pro-choice politics.”
Until the formation of TUMAS, the UM Church was the only mainline denomination without a nationwide prolife organization. The grassroots organization plans to establish TUMAS chapters in the West Michigan, Western Pennsylvania, North Carolina, East Ohio, and Holston Annual Conferences. Presently the two-year-old, unofficial network has a mailing list of 2,500 for its newsletter, Lifewatch.
Last year while the taskforce held its eucharistic service the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights ( RCAR), whose offices are located in the UM Building, held a press conference to reiterate its support for abortion rights. This year instead of holding a news conference RCAR released a statement in which executive director Patricia Tyson claimed that the “fundamental right to abortion and religious liberty is under greater threat than ever before.” She went on to say, “The members of RCAR deplore the insidious chipping away at abortion rights that has been taking place over the past 17 years.”
Tyson’s statement denied the validity of “anti-choice rhetoric” directed toward gender-selection and birth control abortions.” The recent attempts by anti-choice legislators to ban abortions as il method of birth control,” said Tyson, “is absurd and unfounded.”
RCAR’s statement also declared,” The religious community will not stand idly by and allow the anti-choice movement or state legislators to decide whether or not women have the right to abortion.” The UM Board of Church and Society and the Women’s Division of the Board of Global Ministries are listed as members of RCAR.
– Steve Beard
by Steve | Mar 4, 1990 | Archive - 1990
Archive: God Beckons ‘Come Near to Minister to Me’
If the Lord is to be lord worship must have priority in our lives. The first commandment of Jesus is “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). The divine priority is worship first, service second. Our lives are to be punctuated with praise, thanksgiving and adoration. Service flows out of worship. Service as a substitute for worship is idolatry. Activity may become the enemy of adoration.
God declared that the primary function of the Levitical priests was to “come near to Me to minister to Me” (Ezek.44:15). For the Old Testament priesthood, ministry to Him was to precede all other work. And that is no less true of the universal priesthood of the New Testament. One grave temptation we all face is to run around answering calls to service without ministering to the Lord Himself.
A striking feature of worship in the Bible is that people gathered in what we could call only a “holy expectancy.” They believed they would actually hear the Kol Yahweh, the voice of God. When Moses went into the tabernacle he knew he was entering the presence of God. The same was true of the early church. It was not surprising to them that the building in which they met shook with the power of God. It had happened before (Acts 2:2; 4:31). When some dropped dead and others were raised from the dead by the word of the Lord the people knew that God was in their midst (Acts 5:1-11; 9:36-43; 20:7-10). As those early believers gathered, they were keenly aware that the veil had been ripped in two and, like Moses and Aaron, they were entering the Holy of Holies. No intermediaries were needed. They were coming into the awful, glorious, gracious presence of the living God They gathered with anticipation knowing that Christ was present among them and would teach them and touch them with His living power.
How do we cultivate this holy expectancy? It begins in us as we enter the Shechinah of the heart. While living out the demands of our days we are filled with inward worship and adoration. We work and play and eat and sleep, yet we are listening, ever listening, to our Teacher. The writings of Frank Laubach are filled with this sense of living under the shadow of the Almighty. “Of all today’s miracles the greatest is this: to know that I find Thee best when I work listening. … Thank Thee, too, that the habit of constant conversation grows easier each day. I really do believe all thought can be conversations with Thee.”[1]
Brother Lawrence knew the same reality. Because he experienced the presence of God in the kitchen, he knew he would meet God in the Mass as well. He wrote, “I cannot imagine how religious persons can live satisfied without the practice of the Presence of God.” Those who have once tasted the Shechinah of God in daily experience can never again live satisfied without “practicing the Presence of God.”[2]
Catching the vision from Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach, I recently dedicated one year to learning how to live with a perpetual openness to Jesus as my present Teacher. I sought to allow Him to move through every action—these fingers as I wrote, this voice as I spoke. My desire was to punctuate each minute with inward whisperings of adoration, praise and thanksgiving. Often I failed for hours, even days, at a time. But each time I came back and tried again.
That year did many things for me, but the one I shall mention here is that it greatly heightened my sense of expectancy in public worship. After all, He had graciously spoken to me in dozens of little ways throughout the week; He will certainly speak to me here as well. In addition, I found it increasingly easier to distinguish His voice from the blare and circumstances of life.
When more than one or two come into public worship with a holy expectancy it can change the atmosphere of a room. People who enter harried and distracted are drawn quickly into a sense of the silent presence. Hearts and minds are lifted upward. The air becomes charged with expectancy.
Here is a practical handle to put on this idea: Live throughout the week as an heir of the kingdom, listening for His voice, obeying His word. Since you have heard His voice throughout the week you know that you will hear His voice as you gather for public worship. Enter the service 10 minutes early. Lift your heart in adoration to the King of Glory. Contemplate His majesty, glory and tenderness as revealed in Jesus Christ. Picture the marvelous vision that Isaiah had of the Lord “high and lifted up” or the magnificent revelation that John had of Christ with eyes “like a flame of fire” and a voice “like the sound of many waters” (Isa 6; Rev.1). Invite the Real Presence to be manifest; fill the room with Light.
Next, lift into the light of Christ the pastor and persons with particular responsibilities. Imagine the Shechinah of God’s radiance surrounding him or her. Inwardly release them to speak the truth boldly in the power of the Lord.
By now people are beginning to enter. Glance around until your eyes catch those who need your intercessory work. Lift them into His presence. Imagine the burden tumbling from their shoulders as it did from Pilgrim’s in Bunyan’s allegory. Hold them as a special intention throughout the service. If only a few in each congregation would do this, it would deepen the worship experience of all.
This article is excerpted from Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster, copyright 1978, Harper & Row, San Francisco, California. Used by permission.
[1] Frank C. Laubach, Learning the Vocabulary of God (Nashville: The Upper Room Publishing Co., 1956), pp. 22-23.
[2] Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God (Nashville: The Upper Room Publishing Co., 1950), p. 32.
by Steve | Mar 3, 1990 | Archive - 1990
Archive: Can Somebody Find a Way to Clone This Guy?
By Dierdra DeVries Moran
If we had more people like Gus Gustafson, the Church would have fewer problems.
“I’ll be a preacher! I’ll be a boy preacher! Why, I’ll start right now!” said a teenaged Gus Gustafson, the man they now call Mr. UM Layman in north Georgia. He wanted to drop out of high school and go to Bible school when he met the Lord at 15. “How can I get this good news out to more people?” he wondered. He didn’t expect a call to be a layman.
That’s okay, though. He didn’t expect to get pneumonia one Christmas either, and that was probably one of the best things that has happened to the United Methodist Church in recent years.
“I was getting up at midnight, one o’clock, two o’clock …. It was a horrifying experience for me. One of those nights I just prayed, ‘Lord, if I have to wake up, help me to turn this to something worthwhile. Let me turn it to You some way.”
Apparently, God had been waiting for just such a request. Gus would make notes each time he woke up, and when he’d begin to wear out, he’d just push away the pencil and paper and go back to sleep. Out of those wee hours Discover God’s Call, the organization for laypeople searching for God’s call on their lives, was born.
It all began on a farm in Nebraska years ago. Gus’ parents were committed Christians with one heart’s desire: to lead each of their six children to Jesus Christ. “It still makes my backbone tingle when I try to repeat it,” says Gus about the day he met the Lord. He was sitting in the rear of his church cutting up with a group of boys when the Swedish evangelist who was preaching pointed his finger at them and said “Young men, stop that noise back there and hear what God has to say to you. This may be your last chance.” When the invitation came Gus crawled over the other boys’ knees and went to the altar. “That’s where I met the Lord, and it was the real thing.” His voice cracks as he repeats, “It was the real thing.”
After an energetic attempt at going into the ministry Gus settled down to hear the still, small voice of God tell him, “I want you to serve me in everyday life—where the temptations are the toughest.”
And face tough temptations he did. Gus signed on with a national advertising agency (and a group of partying coworkers) as a copywriter. “I stayed away from their cocktail parties,” he said, “and was just trying to learn to survive.” Next, Gus joined the army. He served overseas for some years and came out with five battle stars. Upon returning to the states Gus embarked on a long career selling prefabricated houses, first for a large company in Toledo, then in Mississippi, then in Alabama and finally in Georgia. It was there that he and his wife, Estelle, opened their own business. About 15 years later he sold his company, and it was then, when most men would spend their well-earned retirement days on the golf course, that Gus really began to take off.
‘The day I got the check [for the sale of his company] I went home and started writing a book, I Was Called to Be A Layman.”
A short time later Gus remembered the notes he had made while suffering from pneumonia and shared them with a few friends. “This is just what our church needs!” said an excited Charles Kinder, head of the Foundation for Evangelism. Gus’ friend Ross Freeman (then secretary of the Southeastern Jurisdiction) confirmed it: “You need to go back and have more pneumonia!”
He was probably, as always, wearing a bow tie and an enormous smile when, a few weeks later at a Discipleship Celebration weekend at his church, Gus felt the Lord tug at his heart. ‘The Lord has spoken to me,” Gus told a roomful of people. “I’m going to do what it’s going to take to do it.” And the rest, as they say, is history. Just ask Gus.
“It’s been one miracle after another,” he says. Discover God’s Call is “setting revival fires all over the place.” When asked what his dream for the organization is, Gus quickly responds “One sentence. To bring renewal to the United Methodist Church.” You wait for him to say more, but he means it. Next question.
Gus rattles off story after story of what God has done in the lives of people who have attended the Discover retreats. For example, a woman quite critical of her church’s Sunday school program went to a Discover God’s Call weekend and returned to her church with a call to be a teacher. The Sunday school (as well as the church) hasn’t stopped growing.
A skycap in a black church in Atlanta went to a Discover God’s Call weekend and received a call to do a lay witness mission in his church (unheard-of in black churches in that area). The church’s attendance (mostly professionals—CPAs, upper-level management, etc.) has doubled. Gus emphasizes, “And here’s this skycap leading the church!”
That’s what happens, Gus says. “When the Lord takes hold of someone and they have a call, it’s amazing what they can do. It’s amazing.”
The program is sponsored by the Foundation for Evangelism and done in consultation with the General Board of Discipleship. The Discover God’s Call experience starts at home, where, for 26 days, the “discoverers” spend 30 minutes each day with the resources provided by the program (including a search book, Gus’ book I Was Called to Be A Layman, and the Bible). At the end of those 26 days the discoverers meet for a weekend retreat. There they meet as a group and later break off into smaller “search groups” of four people and one leader. The discoverers also spend time alone meditating on what the Lord is saying to them. By the end of the weekend each person will know what God’s call on his or her life is.
The plan is lay renewal. “You can’t pick up a book on renewal that doesn’t say the same thing,” says Gus. “Renewal has to come from the laity.
“The Lord has called us,” says Gus. “He’s put us on stage. Discover God’s Call is one of the things that God has put into the United Methodist Church today for bringing renewal. It’s powerful. In it are the seeds for renewal.” Gus and his wife, Estelle, have been married for 47 years. “She has worked right alongside of me,” he says, “and she’s my best critic.”
Gus has been the national director for Discover God’s Call, and Estelle has been the treasurer and registrar. They will soon be handing the baton to Chuck and Fern Davis of Wheaton, Illinois. He and Estelle will spend a good deal of their time doing fundraising for Discover God’s Call. (The ministry is financed entirely by donations.)
One of the keys to Gus’ success is prayer. Through it Gus found God, received his call to be a layman (though he had dreamed of being a preacher), authored several books, raised four children and founded Discover God’s Call. (Not to mention the little “day-to-days” that Gus regularly brings to the Lord on his knees.) Others notice Gus’ dependence on prayer: “He takes prayer seriously,” says one UM pastor. “He often calls me with an idea, and it’s usually an idea that has come out of a time of prayer.”
The other key to Gus’ success is his love for people. “He’s Mr. Warmth,” said our photographer after having spent an evening with Gus and Estelle. For a few shots Gus donned a bow tie and told Greg, “My bow tie is my trademark.” But even when he’s not wearing a bow tie, he is wearing an ear-to-ear smile. That’s probably more truly his trademark.
“If there were more big-hearted people like Gus in the UM Church, we would have no more problems,” said an active UM layman. With a gleam in his eye he continued, “Could somebody find a way to clone this guy?”
Discover God’s Call has seen people from 19 different states participate. Of course, Gus hopes that one day the program will reach into all 50 states. “Our 1000th person will go through in our next retreat,” says Gus excitedly. “I praise the Lord that He has gotten Discover God’s Call started. It’s powerful, and we haven’t even seen the full dimensions of it yet.”
Maybe not, but it’s easy to see the dimensions of what God can do with a man willing to answer when He calls. Just take a look at Gus Gustafson.
Dierdra D. Moran is assistant editor of Good News
by Steve | Mar 2, 1990 | Archive - 1990
Archive: How We Can Overcome Our Private Misery
By J. I. Packer
‘It belongs to true Easter faith to take to our own hurts the healing of the Emmaus Road’
On Friday afternoon they took Him down from the cross as dead as a man can be. On Sunday afternoon He walked most of the seven miles from Jerusalem to Emmaus with two of His disciples. He had broken through the death barrier and was alive and well once more on planet Earth. For 40 days before withdrawing to the glory where He now lives and reigns He appeared to those who had been His followers and friends. Why? Because He loved them and wanted them to have the joy of seeing Him alive; because He had to explain to them His saving achievement and their roles as witnesses to Him; and, last but not least, because some of them were in emotional and spiritual distress and needed the therapy that was uniquely His. All this is reflected in the Emmaus Road story (Luke 24:13-35).
Who were the patients to whom the Great Physician ministered there? One was Cleopas (v.18). The other, not named by Luke, lived with Cleopas, and it is natural to guess (though not possible to prove) that it was Mary, wife of “Clopas” (John 19:25) and mother of James (Mark 15:40) who was at the cross when Jesus died. (In that case Cleopas was Alphaeus, James’ father.) I shall assume that it was husband and wife trudging home that day. They went slowly (most people do on a long walk), and they were sharing perplexity and pain at Jesus’ death. Their spirits were low. They thought they had lost their beloved Master forever; they felt that the bottom had fallen out of their world. They were in the shock of a bereavement experience and hurting badly.
Now picture the scene: Up from behind comes a stranger, walking faster, and he falls into step beside them. Naturally they stop discussing their private misery, and there is silence. When we know that grief is written all over our faces, we avoid looking at other people because we do not want anyone to look at us, and I imagine this couple swiveling their heads and never facing their traveling companion at all. Certainly, “their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him” (v.16), so that had anyone asked them, “Is Jesus with you?” the reply would have been, “Don’t be silly, He’s dead, we’ve lost Him, we hoped He was the One to redeem Israel, but clearly He wasn’t; we shan’t see Him again—and nothing makes sense anymore.”
Stop! Look! Listen! Here is a perfect instance of a kind of spiritual perplexity which (I dare to affirm) every child of God experiences sooner or later. Be warned: It can be appallingly painful, and if you are not prepared to meet it, it can embitter you, maim you emotionally and to a great extent destroy you—which, be it said, is Satan’s goal every time. What happens is that you find yourself feeling that God plays cat and mouse with you. Having lifted you up by giving you hope, He now throws you down by destroying it. What He gave you to lean on He suddenly takes away, and down you go. Your feelings say that He is playing games with you; that He must be a heartless ogre after all. So you feel broken in pieces, and no wonder.
Examples are easy to find. Here is a Christian worker, maybe a layperson, maybe a minister, who takes on a task (pastoring a church, leading a class, starting a new work) confident that God has called, and who expects therefore to see blessing and fruit. But all that comes is disappointment and frustration. Things go wrong, people act perversely, opposition grows, one is let down by one’s colleagues, the field of ministry becomes a disaster area. Or here are a couple who marry in the Lord to serve Him together, who dedicate their home, wealth and, in due course, children to Him, and yet find nothing but trouble—health trouble, money trouble, trouble with relatives and in-laws, and maybe (the bitterest thing of all) trouble with their own offspring. What hurts Christian parents more than seeing the children whom they tried to raise for God say no to Christianity? But do not say that these things never happen to truly faithful folk; you know perfectly well they do. And when they do the pain is increased by the feeling that God has turned against you and is actively destroying the hopes that He Himself once gave you.
Some 30 years ago a clergyman’s daughter was attracted to a young man. She was a Christian; he was not. She did as Christian girls should do at such times; she held back and prayed. He was converted, and they married. Soon the man, who was quite a prosperous farmer, felt called to sell out and train for the pastorate. Hardly had his ministry begun, however, when he died painfully of cancer, leaving his widow with a small son and no money. Today she has a ministry to individuals which, without that experience, she never would have had; yet over and over she has had to fight feelings which say God played games with me; He gave me hopes and dashed them; He’s cruel; He’s vile. I expect she will be fighting that battle till she dies. These things happen, and they hurt.
See it in Scripture. Teenager Joseph is given dreams of being head of the clan. Furious, his brothers sell him into slavery to make sure this never happens. Joseph is doing well in Egypt as right-hand man of a leading soldier-politician. The lady of the house, perhaps feeling neglected by her husband as wives of soldiers and politicians sometimes do, wants to take Joseph to bed with her. Joseph says no, and this put-down from a mere slave turns the lady’s lust to hate (never a hard transition) so that she lies about him, and suddenly he finds himself languishing in prison, discredited and forgotten.
There he stays for some years, a model convict we are told, but with no prospects and with nothing to think about save the dreams of greatness that God once gave him. “Until what [God] had said came to pass the word of the Lord tested him” (Ps. 105:19). “Tested him”—yes, and how! Can we doubt that Joseph in prison had constantly to fight the feeling that the God who gave him hopes was now hard at work destroying them? Can we suppose that he found it easy to trust God and stay calm and sweet?
The heartbreaking perplexity of God-given hopes apparently wrecked by God-ordained circumstances is a reality for many Christians today and will be the experience of more tomorrow—just as it was for Joseph and for the Emmaus disciples. Back to their story now, to watch the Great Physician at work with them.
Good physicians show their quality first by skill in diagnosis. They do not just palliate symptoms, but go to the root of the trouble and deal with that. What did Jesus see as the root cause of this couple’s distress? His dealing with them shows that His diagnosis was of unbelief caused by two things.
First, they were too upset—too upset, that is, to think straight. It was beyond them to put two and two together. They had slid down the slippery slope from disappointment to distress, through distress to despair, and through despair into what we call depression, that commonest of 20th-century diseases, for which one in every four North Americans has to be treated medically at some point in life. If you have ever experienced depression or sought to help its victims, you will know that folk in depression are marvelously resourceful in finding reasons for not taking comfort, encouragement or hope from anything you say to them. They know you mean well, but they defy your efforts; they twist everything into further reasons why they should be gloomy and hopeless (“It’s all right for you, but it’s different for me,” and so on). They are resolved to hear everything as bad news. That is exactly what we find here in Cleopas’ narrative concerning the empty tomb. (It has to be Cleopas at this point; Mary would not be talking to a strange man, and the story is told in a male manner.)
“It is now the third day since this happened,” says Cleopas. “Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and [surprise! surprise!] found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see” (vv.21-24). (Implication: There’s nothing in this wild talk of His being alive; someone must have desecrated the tomb and stolen the body, so as to deny it a decent burial.) Thus, Cleopas announces the empty tomb as more bad news.
Yet over and over before His passion Jesus had foretold not only His death but His rising on the third day (Luke 9:22; 18:33; Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19). Straight thinking about the empty tomb, in light of these predictions, would have made their hearts leap. “He said He would rise; now the tomb’s empty; He’s done it, He’s done it, He’s done it!” But both were too upset to think straight.
This was due to the root cause of their unbelief which Jesus also diagnosed, namely the fact that they were too ignorant—too ignorant, that is, of Scripture. “O foolish ones”—Jesus’ tone is compassionate, not contemptuous: “O you dear silly souls” would get the nuance— “and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (vv.25-26). Jesus spent maybe two hours showing them from Scripture (memorized) that it was in fact necessary. That shows how He saw their fundamental need.
As ignorance of Scripture was the basic trouble on the Emmaus Road, so it often is with us. Christians who do not know their Bible get needlessly perplexed and hurt because they do not know how to make scriptural sense of what happens to them. These two disciples could not make sense of Jesus’ cross. Many do not know the Bible well enough to make sense of their own crosses. The result is a degree of bewilderment and consequent distress that might have been avoided.
Diagnosing them thus, Jesus did three things to heal this couple’s souls. First, He did what all counselors must do: He asked questions, got them to talk, established a relationship, and so made them receptive to what He had to say. His opening gambit (“Tell me, what were you talking about?” v.17) drew from Cleopas only rudeness (“Don’t tell me you don’t know!” v.18). Hurting folk often act that way, externalizing their misery by biting your head off. But Jesus was unruffled; He knew what was going on inside Cleopas and persisted with His question (“Do I know? You tell me, anyway; let me hear it from your own lips”). Had they declined to share their trouble, Jesus could not have helped them. But when they poured out their hearts to Him, healing began.
Then, second, Jesus explained Scripture— “opened” it, to use their word (v. 32)—as it bore on their perplexity and pain. He showed them that what had been puzzling them, the death of the One they thought would redeem them, in the sense of ending the Roman occupation, had actually been prophesied centuries before as God’s way of redeeming in the sense of ending the burden and bondage of sin. He must have gone over Isaiah 53, where the servant who dies for sins in verses 1-9 appears alive, triumphant and reigning in verses 10-12; He produced many passages which pictured God’s Messiah traveling to the crown via the cross and kept them in a state of dawning comprehension and mounting excitement (their hearts “burned,” v.32) till they reached home. Thus, healing proceeded.
The principle here is that the most healing thing in the world to a troubled soul is to find that the heartbreak which produces feelings of isolation, hopelessness and hatred of all cheerful cackle is actually dealt with in the Bible, and in a way that shows it making sense after all in terms of a loving, divine purpose. And you can be quite certain that the Bible, God’s handbook for living, has something to say about every life problem involving God’s ways that we shall ever meet. So if you are hurting because of what you feel God has done to you, and you do not find Scripture speaking to your condition, it is not that the Bible now fails you but only that, like these disciples, you do not know it well enough. Ask wiser Christians to open Scripture to you in relation to your pain, and I guarantee that you will find that to be so. (To borrow a phrase from Ellery Queen—challenge to the reader!)
Finally, Jesus revealed His presence. “Stay with us,” they had said to Him on reaching Emmaus. (What a blessing for them that they were given to hospitality! What they would have missed had they not been!) At the table they asked Him to give thanks, and as He did so and gave them bread “their eyes were opened and they recognized him” (v.31). Whether recognition was triggered by seeing nail prints in His hands or by remembering the identical voice and action at the feeding of the five thousand or four thousand, as some have wondered, we do not know; nor does it matter. Now, as then, Jesus’ ways of making His presence known are mysteries of divine illumination about which you can rarely say more than that as something was said, seen, read or remembered—it happened. So it was here; and thus healing was completed.
To be sure, the moment they recognized Him He vanished. Yet plainly they knew that He was with them still. Otherwise, would they have risen from the table in their weariness and hurried back to Jerusalem through the night to share their news? Sensible Palestinians did not walk lonely country roads at night, fearing thugs and muggers (that was why Cleopas and Mary urged the stranger to stay with them in the first place). But it is evident that they counted on their Lord’s protecting presence as they went about His business. “Stay with us,” they had said, and inwardly they knew He was doing just that. Thus, their broken hearts were mended, and their sorrow replaced by joy.
Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, is the same today as yesterday, and it belongs to true Easter faith to take to our own hurts the healing of the Emmaus Road. How? First, by telling Jesus our trouble, as He invites us to do each day. He remains a good listener, with what the hymn calls “a fellow feeling for our pains”; and only as we lay aside prayerless resentment and self-pity and open our hearts to Him will we know His help. Second, by letting Him minister to us from Scripture, relating that which gives us pain to God’s purpose of saving love. This will regularly mean looking to the Lord’s human agents in ministry as well as private Bible study. Third, by asking Him to assure us that as we go through what feels like fire and flood, He goes with us and will stay with us till the road ends. That prayer He will always answer.
“We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Heb.4:15-16, NIV). So wrote an apostolic man long ago to ill-treated, distracted and depressed believers. The Emmaus Road story urges us to do as he says—and it also shows us how.
J. I. Packer is a British theologian and well-known author. This article is reprinted from Christianity Today, copyright 1981. Used by permission.
