"More than a Cause"
Acts 2:14a, 36-41; Ps. 116:1-4, 12-19; 1Peter 1:17-23; Luke 24:13-35
Dr. George R. Sinclair
Pastor
April 6, 2008
Ted Turner was in the news this week. The banner headline announced his apology for criticizing religion. The story within announced his $200 million partnership with Lutherans and Methodists to fight malaria.
I don’t know Ted Turner. I mean we’ve never met. So I can’t really say what’s going on in his heart, but something seems to be. He said he regretted having said any negative things about religion and called faith a “bright spot” in the world. That’s progress for a man who once said Christianity was “a religion for losers.” I’m sure there are many reasons why a man like Ted Tuner gives away a billion dollars, which he did ten years ago when he created his UN Foundation, but Ted sounds like a man in search of something more than a cause.
I remember the first time I ever saw Ted Turner. He was drunk and had just won the America’s Cup. His crew threw him overboard in celebration—Captain Courageous, they called him. He was a real loud mouth and ahead of his time—news 24 hours a day. He took a cable TV station and turned an entire industry upside down.
Some years later I saw Ted again when we lived near Atlanta. He owned the Braves and Ted was always doing dumb things like trying to coach. The few times I saw him he seemed to be having a good time. You know, he married Jane Fonda.
Back in the day, Jane wasn’t so popular despite her go-for-the-burn workout video. Hanoi Jane, voice of reason! She didn’t like the Braves’ cheer—the one those obnoxious folks in Florida also use when they’re drumming some last place team 60 to 0.
Anyway, when the Braves started winning baseball games, Atlanta fans got to using that same war-hoop and chopping the air the way the folks in Florida do. Jane didn’t like that, not the copy cat offense, but the slight against Native Americans, which of course meant that whenever she showed up at ballparks fans whooped it up all the more.
Once, Paula and I went to a heavyweight fight to see Evander Holyfield defend his title. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a Prize Fight, but they’re something else. There are folks who show up for those things you’ve never seen before—all that glitters is gold. I mean I’ve never seen so many stretch limos in one place. And one almost ran over Paula which is another story.
Anyway, we’re at this prize fight and you know how they do—they introduce former title holders, new contenders, and then of course the celebrities. In those days, Atlanta didn’t have many celebrities, but they did have Jane and Ted. So the announcer calls out their names and the place erupts—the Braves’ war hoop just for Jane. It was great.
Fame has a price and unfortunately for Ted and Jane it meant divorce—not that fame had anything to do with their divorce—maybe it did, maybe it didn’t—but their private life was played out in public and they went their separate ways. Ted sold his TV station and began buying up western states and raising buffalo. And Jane, well, a few years back she started quietly talking about her conversion to Jesus. And from the sound of it maybe Jesus is getting next to Ted too. “God,” Ted was quoted as saying, “wherever he is, wants to see us get along with one another and love one another.”
I want to say to Ted, “Brother Ted, come on in and join the party. God is closer than you think. Who do you think inspired you to care for those little children in Africa? You once said Christianity is for losers. You were exactly right. Jesus is for losers. He’s for all those little children dying from a fully preventable disease. He’s for all the losers your CNN money now helps. Jesus is right there, Ted. Jesus is for losers even for all that’s lost in you.
Jesus knows exactly what it means to lose. He’s seen it in the faces of hungry children. He has seen it in drunken sailors. He’s seen it in the sick, in the helpless, in parents who can’t do the first thing to change their child’s destiny. Jesus knows all about losing, not the pretend kind we call entertainment on lazy Sunday afternoons, but real losing—men who’ve lost their dignity because they can’t feed their families; women who’ve lost their honor because they’ve been sold into prostitution or raped. Yes, Ted. Jesus is for losers—he was a man despised and rejected.”
I don’t think Ted is all that far from Jesus. I think Jesus is walking beside Ted right now, just like he walked beside the disciples on the Emmaus Road, just like he walks beside us along our own Emmaus Roads.
Jesus doesn’t wait for us to come to church. He doesn’t wait for us to need him in a dark hour or last moment. Jesus is out there everyday, on the street, in your home, on the job, wherever you are, that’s where Jesus is going to be. He’s right there. You don’t have to go looking for him. He’s already come looking for you. He’s already walked up along side you. He’s there everyday, all day, calling you wherever you are—“Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe . . . Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”
It may not be nice to call us fools or slow of heart to believe, but that’s who we are. It’s a real problem. We have that problem—foolishness, slowness of heart. It’s a big problem, seeing the Suffering One beside us. Why does it always come down to suffering? Is there some grand design in the soul of God which requires suffering?
I’ve heard the fundamentalists’ spin on the necessity of suffering and I don’t buy it. I don’t buy the notion that Jesus got whacked because God’s justice demanded it. I don’t have any use for a god who kills his son to satisfy some arbitrary, ethereal notion of justice. That’s not what the Bible means when it says Jesus died in our place. We confuse the meaning of the Messiah’s suffering when we tangle it up with twisted notions of divine retribution, as if God has a blood lust that must be satisfied and only when satisfied will God love us. That’s not what Jesus means when he talks about the necessity of the Messiah suffering, not at all.
The necessity of his suffering is more like what a mother feels when she sees her child drowning. She jumps in. She does what is necessary to save the child. It’s that kind of necessity that drives Jesus to Jordan’s waters.
“Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things?” The things referred to are the things Jesus suffered—betrayal by his friends, persecution from his own people, torture, capital punishment for a crime he didn’t commit; and, most importantly, suffocating doubt that his cause was lost, that he was God-forsaken. Was it necessary that the Messiah suffer these things? Yes, it was necessary because we’re drowning children. Our indifference put him there, our despair drove him to Jordan.
For years, scholars have tried to locate Emmaus. I’m sure there once was a village by that name. But you don’t have to have a map to find Emmaus. Fred Buechner is right when he says Emmaus is “the place we go in order to escape—a bar, a movie, wherever it is we throw up our hands and say, “Let the whole damned thing go hang. It makes no difference anyway.”
“Emmaus,” writes Buechner, “may be buying a new suit or a new car or smoking more cigarettes than you really want, or reading a second-rate novel or even writing one. Emmaus may be going to church on Sunday. Emmaus is whatever we do or wherever we go to make ourselves forget that the world holds nothing sacred: that even the wisest and bravest and loveliest decay and die; that even the noblest ideas that men have had—ideas about love and freedom and justice—have always in time been twisted out of shape by selfish men for selfish ends.”
Emmaus is less a place than a state of mind. Emmaus is why Cleopas and the other disciple leave Jerusalem and walk away from hope. It is why when Jesus stared them flush in the face, they “stood still, looking sad.” It was more than sadness. It was bitterness. “Are you the only idiot who doesn’t know what’s happened?” That’s a loose translation, but it captures how Cleopas and the other disciple felt. “We had hoped Jesus was the one to redeem Israel but he only managed to get himself killed. We were sadly mistaken. Jesus was a loser.”
It was then that Jesus told Cleopas and the other “it was necessary” for the Messiah to suffer. Luke doesn’t tell us which scriptures Jesus interpreted to help them see that his suffering “was necessary.” We don’t get the slightest hint. I wish Luke had said. But he doesn’t. Instead he tells us, “Beginning with Moses and all the prophets [Jesus] interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scripture.”
That sounds pretty inclusive—“all of scripture.” Luke means of course the Old Testament. “It all points to this, to a Messiah who suffers and that through this suffering Messiah God redeems not only Israel, but every nation under heaven.” God’s love is just like that. God’s love is just that—the Messiah who by necessity goes down to Jordan.
Cleopas and his travel companion finally reach Emmaus. They get there and it’s something like mid-afternoon. Remember it’s still Easter. It’s still the first day of the week. They get to Emmaus and the funny thing is Jesus keeps going. He walks on. And they’re like, “Wait a minute, fella. Uh, it’s late. Why don’t you eat with us? Have some supper. Stay with us.”
So he does. Only the guest becomes the host. And when he’s at table he takes the bread, blesses it and gives it to them and their eyes were opened and “they recognized him.”
That’s it. That’s as much as they or we get—“They recognized him.” The One who had joined them on the Emmaus Road was no other than the Crucified. “They recognized him.” That’s all they got and that’s all we get, but it was and it is enough. It has to be enough because as soon as we recognize Jesus he vanishes. He disappears.
God moments are fleeting. They never last, but then they don’t have to—“were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road while he was opening the scriptures to us?”
God moments never last, but we always hear Jesus. God moments may not be plentiful, but we always hear Jesus. He calls us all of the time, just like he’s calling Ted Turner. “Yeah, Ted. I’m with losers. You were right about that buddy. Come and join me. Buy those bed nets. Spend every dime you have and then some. ‘Cause that’s where you’ll find me. Give yourself up, Ted. And when you lose yourself, you’ll find me, ‘cause I’m everywhere. I’m where there’s peace. I’m where there is love. I’m where there is hope. Come walk me, Ted, ‘cause I’m walking with you. And I want to break bread with you so your eyes will be opened and you will recognize me.”
The voice you hear, the one that won’t let you turn away from human sadness and sorrow and suffering, that’s the voice of Jesus. He’s saying, “I’m right here. Look at me now. Come to me. And I will in no way cast you out. Visit me and stay with me and we will live together forever.” Amen.