In Peculiar Treasures, Frederick Buechner writes:

“Sermonettes make Christianettes,” the saying goes, so Saint Paul kept talking till midnight to make sure they all got the word. Then he thought of a few things he’d left out and went on a while longer. He was so caught up in his own eloquence that he didn’t hear the bumblebee sounds that were emerging from a young man with his eyes more or less closed and his mouth more or less open who sat slumped over in the third story window. It was only a woman’s scream that alerted him to the fact that the boy had fallen asleep, and out, more or less simultaneously. When Paul asked his name, they told him it was Eutychus.

Everybody thought Eutychus was dead, but Paul said he’d see about that. Then he went back upstairs where, after a snack, he ran over his major points once more just to make sure. When he finally left on the early bus, they found Eutychus sitting up in bed asking for two over light and a toasted English.

This miraculous recovery, plus the fact that by then the saint was already well on his way to the next county, made them decide to throw a double celebration. Presumably somebody had the sense to suggest that this time they use the ground floor.

(Acts 20: 9 – 12)

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples
                                            a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine,
                                                                      of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined.
                                                     And he will swallow up on this mountain
                                                                                 the covering that is cast over all peoples,
                                                                               the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever;
                                                                                             and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces,
                                                           and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth,
                                     for the LORD has spoken.
                                                                                                        It will be said on that day,
                                                                                                         “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us.
                             This is the LORD; we have waited for him;
                                                                               let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

Thanks to a friend, Victoria and I have heard a number of writers read from their works. Several years ago we heard Christopher Buckley read AC in DC, a comic short story he’d written about the advent of air-conditioning in Washington. With Laurel and Hadi Bahar at this year’s literacy event, I noticed that Buckley had written a memoir and I asked Laurel what she knew of the book. Her brow furrowed. “He airs dirty linen,” she said, disapprobationary.

I google Losing Mum and Pup this morning and find Growing Up Buckley wherein Chris begins by describing his mother’s death in the hospital. Coming to the end of that description, he writes:

Soon after, a doctor came in to remove the respirator. It was quiet and peaceful in the room, just pings and blips from the monitor. I stroked her hair and said, the words coming out of nowhere, surprising me, “I forgive you.”

Not often do the words “I forgive you” cause a priest of the church to utter fecal indictments. My parents are both living. Their home is on Lake Gogebic in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, but they are with us now, here at the ready for the high school commencements of Gillian (Friday morning at the National Cathedral) and my nephew Sean Jr. (Friday night, in West Chester, PA). Dear reader: If ever I write a word about my mother’s deficiencies or my father’s, please. Come over to my house. There is a baseball bat in the carport shed. Get it. Find me. And knock my brains out.

Being a Christian, I stand under the authority of the divine law that enjoins us to honor our fathers and mothers. That is now an oddity, sheer mindlessness in this era of overweening self-analysis which eagerly and remorselessly begins by rooting one’s own problems in one’s parents’ shortcomings, thereby dismantling any honor supposed to attach to them. But for any serious Jew or Christian, a most solemn interdict lies across this path. “Honor,” the commandment says, and our Lord Jesus affirms, “honor thy father and mother.” And Jesus, quoting from Exodus 21:17, adds something not taught in Sunday Schools. “He who speaks evil of father or mother, let him surely die,” (Matthew 15).

What does this mean? It means this: Whoever it may be who bears the responsibility for pointing out to others a mother’s faults it is not her son.

Writing about my Great Aunt Mena recently, I used a biblical figure of speech, “singing the Lord’s song in a foreign land”. That phrase is used in Psalm 137, a prayer in a collection of prayers that, like the Bible, wasn’t written for children:

By the waters of Babylon,
there we sat down and wept,
when we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
we hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
required of us songs,
and our tormentors, mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
How shall we sing the LORD’s song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!
Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites
the day of Jerusalem,
how they said, ”Lay it bare, lay it bare,
down to its foundations!”
O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,
blessed shall he be who repays you
with what you have done to us!
Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones
and dashes them against the rock!

C. S. Lewis says this about Psalm 137. “I know things in the inner world which are like babies; the infantile beginnings of small indulgences, small resentments, which may one day become dipsomania or settled hatred but which woo us and wheedle us with special pleadings and seem so tiny, so helpless that in resisting them we feel we are being cruel to animals. They begin whimpering to us ‘I don’t ask much, but’, or ‘I had at least hoped’, or ‘you owe yourself some consideration’. Against all such pretty infants (the dears have such winning ways) the advice of the Psalm is the best. Knock the little bastards’ brains out. And ‘blessed’ is he who can, for it’s easier said than done.”

My fingers took a walk in the yellow pages. Sheds. Sheet Metal Working Equip. & Supls. Shelving … Ship Brokers. No Shepherds. Not surprising.

We used to live in Seekonk, Massachusetts. Across the street from our house there lived a family who kept all manner of things, nearly all of them broken down and rusting. Among the derelict air conditioners, wringer washers, tractors and bedsprings, they kept animals. Horses. Peacocks. Llamas. Ducks. Sheep.

So when I think of shepherds, I think of Richard and how he kept his sheep. He would feed them out of a baby bottle when they were newborn lambs. He would wade through snow up to his knees with bales of hay in each of his hands to feed them on bitter cold winter evenings in the barn. He would push aside the door, walk into the dark and turn on the light. He would shake out the hay and the dust would fly around in that incandescence. And there they were, his sheep, their foolish greedy comic faces lit like darlings.

Like sheep we get hungry, and hungry for more than just food. We get thirsty for more than just drink. Our souls hunger and thirst, and it is that hunger and thirst that makes us know that we have souls in the first place. That is part of what Psalm 23 means in saying that the Lord is our shepherd. It means that like a shepherd, He feeds us. He feeds that part of us which is hungriest and most in need of feeding.

Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away — and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

While the disciples were telling how they had seen Jesus risen from the dead, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.

Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you — that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgins name was Mary.
And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?
And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

My proposal to you is that we should not be frightened of the postmodern critique. It had to come. It is, I believe, a necessary judgment on the arrogance of modernity, and it is essentially a judgment from within. Our task is to reflect on this moment of despair within our culture and, reflecting biblically and Christianly, to see our way through the moment of despair and out the other side. That is why I want to talk to you about the resurrection and about the Emmaus Road story; that is why I want to do so through the lens of the poem that we call Psalms 42 and 43, which (despite its customary division in the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles) is actually a single poem, with its refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (42:11)

This psalm contains a magnificent prayer, which we do well to echo as we consider our own calling:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill.

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

Let me take you quickly through this poem, so that we see its shape and its thrust. The whole is about being in the presence of God. At its most obvious level, it is about someone who has experienced the presence of God in the Temple in Jerusalem. The poet remembers the excitement of being close to God and feels a deep ache and a sense of loss because he is not there any more.

So, in verses 1 to 5, he is in a state of what we might call depression. He is thirsty for God, like a deer in the desert longing for cool water. He finds himself in tears twenty-four hours a day. His memories of happier times only make him feel worse. All he can do is engage in an inner dialogue: Why are you so heavy? Hope in God—I shall again worship him.

Then, in 42:6-11, he remembers what it was actually like, being in the presence of God. He is a long way away from Jerusalem, in the land of Jordan or up on Mount Herman. He knows that in theory YHWH is there with him, even in exile, and he can pray to YHWH, but still the poet feels as if he is a very long way off, that his enemies oppress him and people taunt him, “‘Where is your God?” There is no evidence of the presence of YHWH. So the poet longs to be back in Jerusalem, where one could sense God’s presence and grace where everyone was caught up with worship and adorations again the poet reminds himself that he must hope. (Telling yourself to hope is not, incidentally, the same as hoping; but if it is all you can manage, it is a good deal better than nothing.)

Then, in what we call Psalm 43, but which is actually the third and last stanza of the same poem, the problem comes more into focus. The psalmist is not just geographically distant from the home of God, he is surrounded by people whose whole way of life is radically opposed to God. They are ungodly, deceitful, and unjust. He is powerless before them, and God seems to have abandoned him. It is at this point, the low point in the whole poem, that he prays:

O send out your light and your truth;

let them lead me;

let them bring me to your holy hill

and to your dwelling.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

to God my exceeding joy;

and I will praise you with the harp,

O God, my God. (43:3-4)

He is far away from Jerusalem and needs to be led back with joy, like Israel in the wilderness being led by the pillar of cloud and fire, the strange symbolic presence the living God. “Light and truth” are what you need, not just when your intellect is curious and needs stimulating, but when your whole being is lost, downcast, depressed, and thirsty for God. Then he returns once again to the refrain:

Why are you cast down, O my soul,

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,

my help and my God. (43: 5)

I want you now to hold this poem in your minds as we turn to the New Testament. We will use the language and imagery the poem supplies as the visual backdrop, or perhaps the musical accompaniment, to the story we are now going to examine, the story of the two disciples, on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24:13-35.

I should like first to consider the background to the events that Luke describes here. It is the afternoon of the first Easter Day. All sorts of strange things have happened in the morning—rumors of visions and of an empty tomb-and the disciples still have not a clue as to what is really going on. As the day wears on, two of them set off to go home to Emmaus. They are joined by a mysterious stranger, who engages them in conversation about the new events. If we are to understand this section historically, it is vital that we grasp the central point stated in verse 21. “We had hoped,” they say, “that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

Where were they coming from? What was their problem?

They had been living out of a story, a controlling narrative, a “metanarrative,” as we might say. This story was built up from historical precedents, prophetic promises and of course from the songs of the Psalter. The Exodus was the backdrop. God’s subsequent liberations of his people from various foreign power, formed successive native layers all pointing in the same direction. When pagan oppression was at its height, Israel’s God would step in and deliver her once more.

Why are you cast down, O my soul

and why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God; for I shall again praise him.

In particular—and this is perhaps the most important point to grasp—most first-century Jews believed that the Exile was not yet really over. Yes, they had come back from Babylon, geographically. But the pagans were still on top: first Persia, then Greece, then Syria, and now Rome. No sensitive or intelligent Jew would have dreamed of asserting that the promises of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the rest had been fulfilled in the various paltry “returns” that had taken place. Israel still needed “redeeming”—which, in their language, was an obvious code for the Exodus. The Exodus was the great covenant moment; what they now needed was covenant renewal. So we may imagine that when they prayed Psalm 43, they had this situation in view and some very clear notions as to what they were hoping for: Vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people; from those who are deceitful and unjust deliver me? … O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; … Why are you cast down, O my soul … Hope in God!

The Hebrew Scriptures thus offered to Jesus and his contemporaries a story in search of an ending. Jesus’ followers had thought that the ending was going to happen with Jesus. And clearly, it had not.

How had they thought it would happen? The pattern of messianic and prophetic movements in the centuries either side or Jesus gives a fairly clear and consistent picture. The method and the means would be quite simple: holiness, zeal for God and the Law, and military revolt. The holy remnant, with God on its side would defeat the pagan hordes. Thus it had always been in scripture, and thus, they believed, it would be when the great climax came, when Israel’s God would become King of all the world. “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.” The two on the road to Emmaus had been doing what the psalm told them to do: Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.

The crucifixion of Jesus was therefore the complete and final devastation of their hope. Crucifixion is what happens to people who think they are going to liberate Israel and find out, too late, that they are mistaken. It is not simply that Jesus’ followers knew from Deuteronomy that a crucified person was under God’s curse. Nor was it simply that they had not yet worked out a theology of Jesus’ atoning death. The crucifixion already had, for them, a perfectly clear theological as well as political meaning: It meant that the exile was still continuing, that God had not forgiven Israel’s sins, and that pagans were still ruling the world. Their thirst for redemption for God’s light and truth to come and lead them had still not been satisfied. All of this we must, as historians, hold in our minds if we wish to understand the story of the road to Emmaus at its most basic level.

Tom Wright, Bishop of Durham and New Testament scholar, herewith

My own experience in reading the Gospels was at one stage even more depressing than yours. Everyone told me that there I should find a figure whom I couldn’t help loving. Well, I could! They told me I would find moral perfection — but one sees so very little of Him in ordinary situations that I couldn’t make much of that either. Indeed some of His behavior seemed to me open to criticism, e.g. accepting an invitation to dine with a Pharisee and then loading him with torrents of abuse.

Now the truth is, I think, that the sweetly-attractive-human-Jesus is a product of 19th century scepticism, produced by people who were ceasing to believe in His divinity but wanted to keep as much Christianity as they could. It is not what an unbeliever coming to the records with an open mind will (at first) find there. The first thing you really find is that we are simply not invited, so to speak, to pass any moral judgement on Him, however favourable: it is only too clear that He is going to do whatever judging there is: it is we who are being judged, sometimes tenderly, sometimes with stunning severity, but always de haut en bas [‘from high to low’]. (Have you noticed that you can hardly free your imagination to picture Him as shorter than yourself?) The first real work of the Gospels on a fresh reader is, and ought to be, to raise v. acutely the question, ‘Who — or What — is This?’ For there is a good deal in the character which, unless He really is what He says He is — is not lovable nor even tolerable. If He is, then of course it’s another matter: nor will it then be surprising if much remains puzzling to the end. For if there is anything in Christianity we are now approaching something which will never be fully comprehensible.

_______________________________________________________

C. S. Lewis, in a letter to his brother Warnie, dated 21 March 1940, in The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, Volume II. See my next post to read the beginning of the same letter.

“I wouldn’t want to pose as a religious thinker,” he [Updike] says. “I’m more or less a shady type improvising his way from book to book and trying to get up in the morning without a toothache. At one time I held very strongly the opinion that Paul Tillich and religious liberals like him were traitors in the theological camp because they were trying to humanize something that is essentially nonhuman. They were trying to make Christianity less than a scandal, as Kierkegaard called it. Well, it is a scandal; it’s obviously a scandal because our life is a scandal.”

Though he was raised a Unitarian amid the Lutherans and Amish of southeastern Pennsylvania, Updike joined the more middle-road Congregationalist Church in 1959. Then, a year later, as he was writing Rabbit, Run, the awareness of time passing pressed so closely on him that he felt a constant “sense of horror that beneath this skin of bright and exquisitely sculpted phenomena, death waits.” It was a full-dress religious crisis lasting several months, and Updike says now that he got through it only by clinging to the stern, neo-orthodox theology of Switzerland’s Karl Barth. In Barth’s uncompromising view, reason can prove only that the nonexistence of God is absurd; the positive assertion, that God does exist, can come only by means of revelation.

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Time Magazine, April 26, 1968. When I posted the Tillich and Barth quotes this morning, I had no clue that Updike was dying today. The one Updike novel that has stayed with me the most? Easy. The Centaur.