An Important Resurrection Message

Ever wonder why Jesus visited the two men on the road to Emmaus after he rose? In my imagination, he had an important message to deliver.

 

Friday morning

Golgotha

 

Three men have just stumbled a half mile to the top of a bleak, skull-shaped hill. They’re beaten, exhausted, and bloodied. They’ve been whipped and flogged. One of the three wears a crown of thorns. A crowd has gathered, including several women, distraught and in tears. Some Roman soldiers push the crowd back while others prepare the killing site of the three condemned to die.

 

One of the men clenches his teeth and spits a curse at a soldier. The soldier laughs and then unfurls a quick jab into the man’s mouth with the butt of his sword. Blood pours out, red and thick, similar to the stripes on his back. Another two soldiers shove him face down into the dirt. 

 

His name is Dismas. A ‘violent insurrectionist’ they’ve labeled him. A rebel. He hears the sharp clang of a sledgehammer hitting metal. His partner, Gestas shrieks in ear-piercing agony. Dismas knows the hammer will come for him soon. Between him and Gestas, a third man, the one crowned with thorns, is stretched across his wooden cross. 

 

The man beside him shouldn’t be there, Dismas thinks, it should be another member of his gang, Barabbas. But he’s been set free. This man suffers in his place.

 

Dismas only has a free moment to think before the hammer is upon him. His mind goes to the foiled plan. It was perfectly thought-out and would have surely succeeded. Attack the outpost at night, eliminate some Roman guards, and make off with a supply of weapons and food. The weapons were critical for the next and larger attack. But the assault was thwarted. The Romans were ready and reinforced. His band of thieves were surrounded and captured in seconds. Someone had ratted them out. 

 

The man in the middle howls in pain as his wrists are pierced with spikes. Dismas jerks his head in his direction. Beyond the man he sees Gestas being lifted up, the post landing with a thud in its deep hole. He is filled with fury.

 

In his anger, Dismas spews venom and hatred at the man next to him. “You fool! You could have avoided this!”

 

The man turns to Dismas with compassion. “So could have you, friend,” the man whispers through his agony.

 

Suddenly Dismas thinks of his brother. The conversations. The invitations. His brother had pleaded with him several times to leave his life of rebellion and follow a rabbi named Jesus. His brother used words like miracles, messiah, and the Kingdom of God. He said that this Jesus was the one of whom Moses and the prophets had spoken. Dismas wanted none of his brother’s delusions. In their last meeting, his brother told how Jesus both gently forgave sins and spoke more powerfully than anyone with a sword or spear could ever hope to. Dismas released him with a wave of his hand. He had an attack to prepare. 

 

The hammer has arrived. The spike shatters bone as it slices through his wrist. The pain feels like lightning coursing through his body. One more in the other wrist and then one in his feet. Seconds later he’s lifted up. He’s about to pass out.

 

From the height of the cross, Dismas scans the crowd for his brother.

 

Of course he’s not here, Dismas thinks. He’s scattered like all the others. 

 

The sky is darkening. The wind is picking up. Dismas hears the man in the middle ask for forgiveness for his killers. Those in the crowd, the Jewish rulers, and the soldiers themselves take this as their cue to sneer and mock him.

 

And then Gestas joins in. “Aren’t you the Messiah?” He yells at Jesus. “Save yourself and us!”

 

Dismas turns his face away. Then looks toward Gestas. His eyes fixed and intense. He has one last act of defiance. But it’s not for the Romans. It’s for his old friend. “Don’t you fear God?” he yelled. “Since you are under the same sentence? We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve.” He looks at the man next to him. “But this man has done nothing wrong!”

 

Then his insolence melts to surrender. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

 

Dismas watches as Jesus turns slowly toward him. “Truly I tell you, today, … .”

 

The words feel like cool water washing over him. His eyes close. For a moment he can’t feel any pain. Only peace. And then he thinks again of his brother.

 

 

Sunday

On the road

 

Three men are completing a seven-mile journey along the dusty path from Jerusalem to Emmaus. Two of the men Cleopas and his cousin Jude, are dejected, hopeless, and afraid. They’ve been emotionally beaten and shattered. Their spirits are crushed. 

 

The third man had joined them mid-walk. He asked what they had been discussing. Cleopas, his face downcast, explained about the death of their long-hoped-for redeemer and his now empty tomb. The new journeyman wasn’t moved by their sorrow. Instead, beginning with Moses and the prophets he explained to them what was in all the scriptures concerning the Messiah.

 

They reached the village at nightfall and so Cleopas invited the third man to stay in his home. They reclined around the table, while a light meal was prepared. 

 

Cleopas still couldn’t shake his grief. His guest then spoke up. “Friend, what troubles you? Has not our discussion brought you some peace?”

 

“Yes and thank you for your wisdom. But there’s more. My brother was also executed. On a cross, next to our rabbi, Jesus.”

 

The man looked at Cleopas with deep compassion. He was about to say something when the food arrived. “I have a word for you, but first we must give thanks for this meal.”

 

As Jesus broke the bread, suddenly both men recognized Jesus. They jumped up and exclaimed with joy, “Rabbi, it is you!” They ran to Jesus, hugging him, nearly lifting him off of his feet. 

 

After a few joyous moments, Jesus said that he needed to depart. “But before I do, Cleopas, you must know something.” He pulled Cleopas toward him, placing his hand firmly on his shoulders. 

 

“Yes, Rabbi.”

 

“It’s about your brother. Your eyes are not the only pair to be opened. Up there, with me, he knew who I am.”

 

“What are you saying, Rabbi?”

 

“Cleopas, truly I tell you. Dismas believed! You have nothing to be sad about. As surely as I am alive before you, because he believed, he is not dead. He is in paradise!

 

Then, without another word, Jesus disappeared from their sight.

 

Cleopas and Jude stared, dumbfounded, at each other. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road?”

 

“What does this mean?” Jude asked.

 

“It means …” Cleopas answered. “… That we’re going back to Jerusalem!”

 

They quickly hurried out the door. With Jude ahead of him, Cleopas paused and thought of his brother with a smile.

The Thrill of Hope

 “Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

-- Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption

 

I uncharacteristically embraced the Christmas spirit much earlier this year. Usually I find myself in late-December, stuck soaking up the California sun, trying to magically conjure up some Christmas flair. But today wraps up my third week in full holiday mode. The decorations were up before the Heisman winner was announced and the gifts were online ordered before Michigan fired its football coach. Oh, and the carols have been a-playing for weeks.  

 

Christmas carols are marvelous. I love all the songs from Burl Ives to Carrie Underwood, from the exclamations (Angels We Have Heard on High! and Joy to the World!) to the questions (Mary Did You Know? and What Child is This?). However, my all-time favorite is still O’ Holy Night.

 

O’ Holy Night contains the one of the greatest lines this side of “in a galaxy far, far away” ... 

 

... A Thrill of Hope … A Weary World Rejoices.

 

A thrill of hope … it’s a line that melts my heart every December. Because I remember a time long ago when I had lost my hope.

 

Interestingly enough, an atheist, Frenchman Placide Cappeau, originally wrote O’ Holy Night in 1843 as a poem called Midnight, Christians to celebrate the renovation of the town organ in Roquemaure, France. A few years later, composer Adolphe Adam put the poem to music. Then in 1855, American minister John Sullivan Dwight created the song we know based on Cappeau’s text. 

 

The poem originally said, “The entire world thrills with hope, on this night that gives it a Savior.”

 

Cappeau was thrilled by hope, but what thrills you? An amusement park ride? A promotion? A quiet night with your significant other? Zooming down a winding mountain road? Short lines at Costco? 

I find watching talented performers extremely thrilling: a dancer, a singer, a skater, an actor, an athlete, or a musician. I find the opening to U2’s Where the Streets Have no Name completely thrilling. A sunset. Standing on the edge of a cliff in Zion National Park. Laughing with a Mozambican child. Walking down the aisle with Beautiful Karla. All so thrilling. 

 

Are you thrilled by hope?

 

I am. Because it can be gone in a flash.

 

And can our world be any wearier? There is the constant threat of terrorism. Natural disasters pockmark the planet. Wars and the rumors of wars highlight the news. Social injustice. Human trafficking. Poverty. Racism. Homelessness. Religious persecution, mass shootings, and cancer.

 

We live a world that appears to be unfixable. 

 

And yet, 2,000 years ago, a young couple settled in for the night in a remote stable of a tiny town, in a little country surrounded by a sea of Roman oppression. As darkness fell, the world paused and held its breath … like I do before Mike Trout goes back to the wall, or before The Edge plucks that first note, or before Simone Biles takes flight … everything appears to stop … and wait.

 

Like the shepherds in the field waited …

 

Like the angels waited to take center stage …

 

Like the young couple waited in the stable … 

 

And then the crowd goes wild because the catch is made; the gymnast sticks the landing, the guitar solo echoes through the arena, an angel appears …

 

… and the baby Jesus takes his first breath. 

 

Eons ago, I found myself without hope. It was a lonely bottom-of-a-pit kind of place. I adamantly believed that the rivers of troubles in my life weren’t going to part and the walls of my problems were not going to tumble. 

 

Thankfully, God brought me out of that pit. In doing so, he not only restored my hope, he super-sized it. And now, hope is what gets my feet out of bed. It’s what moves me to help orphans in Africa and to raise money for clean water wells. 

 

My heart breaks for people who go through life without the hope that Jesus brings. Sure, there’s the amazing realization that through Jesus we gain forgiveness of sins, reconciliation with God, and eternal life. At times those truths can feel a bit abstract. But as with love and faith, hope is tangible. It pulses in your heart. 

 

A pastor I read named Paul David Tripp says that we as humans are hard-wired to hope. And that what you hope in will set the course of your life. That for hope to be hope, it has to fix what’s broken. Hope is not a situation, or an expectation, or a possession. 

 

Hope is a person: Jesus.

 

 I’ve discovered firsthand, that Andy Dufresne was right. He may not have had a Jesus-filled hope, but, nonetheless, I know that hope, even when you feel hopeless, never dies.

 

Hope tells me that we don’t have to look to governments and politicians to fix this weary world. Hope says that the baby who was born in Bethlehem is the one who will restore this world to the way it was meant to be. Because that is why he came. To fix hearts through forgiveness, reconcile relationships, and to return the world to the way it was at the beginning – free of pain, and worry, and evil, and even death itself. 

 

For me that is thrilling. To think that the world’s weariness will one day cease and that all that will be left is the rejoicing.

 

Merry, Merry Christmas everybody.

Finely Tuned Gratitude

Some new cars these days don’t come with AM radio. Which is okay, because I don’t use it any way. But, for years, going back to my youth, AM radio was a staple. As a kid, the voice of Detroit Tigers’ broadcaster Ernie Harwell rocked me to sleep. And on frosty Michigan mornings, the local radio news brought shouts of joy with school snow-day announcements. Later, AM radio was for morning news. I remember waking up on a Tuesday in September to a report that a plane had just crashed into the Twin Towers. And no Los Angeles commuter could do without “Traffic on the 1’s” that declared sig-alerts on the 91 or the 405. 

In the past, presets and push buttons were preceded by a round dial. Remember the static you’d hear moving the red line between stations? Pinpoint accuracy was needed to match up the line exactly right to get the station of choice. One fraction of a millimeter to the left or right and clear reception morphed to something sounding like Apollo astronauts trying to connect with ground control.

 

Practically every scientist (of faith and non-faith) alike agree that our universe is fine-tuned with the same pinpoint precision needed to find your AM station. The radio dials of the cosmos are perfectly tuned to the right station in order for the universe, our galaxy, our sun, our planet and life itself to exist. Christian scientists (and no, that’s not an oxymoron) are convinced that God is the one turning the dials. Picture a control board with hundreds of dials and knobs that represent different parameters of physics. God has masterfully orchestrated those controls that allow each of us to be living on this round rock hurtling through space on its yearly lap around the sun. 

 

In his book, Is God Real?, author Lee Strobel interviewed one of the world’s leading physicists, Michael G Strauss, PhD, who recounts numerous examples of the universe’s fine tuning. Referring to the control board analogy above, Strauss says, “if any of those hundreds of dials are turned slightly to the left or right, --poof! Intelligent life becomes impossible anywhere in the universe.” 

 

It’s a mind-blowing chapter that Strobel makes easy for a non-scientist to understand. Here are a few examples of God’s fine tuning: 

 

The amount of matter in the universe – “too much matter and the universe would collapse. Too little and the stars and planets couldn’t coalesce.” 

 

The strength of the strong nuclear force – “this gives us the periodic table of elements. 

If the force were two percent stronger, there’d be no hydrogen. A five-percent decrease and we’d have no hydrogen.”

 

The ratio of the electromagnetic force to the gravitational force is fine-tuned to one part in 10 thousand trillion, trillion, trillion.

 

Our sun is the right kind of sun and Earth is in the perfect place in the right kind of galaxy for any life more complex than bacteria.

 

The many just-right parameters that allow Earth to support life – “the distance from the sun, the rotation rate, the amount of water, the tilt, gravity that lets gases like methane escape but allows oxygen to stay.” 

 

On that last note, another scientist set the number of conditions needed for life at 322. 

 

Strobel asked Strauss what God can logically be like if he is the most likely explanation for our universe and planet. He replied with an eight-fold answer: God is transcendent, immaterial, timeless, powerful, intelligent, personal, creative, and caring.

 

The chaos in the daily news might cause you to doubt the existence of a personal and caring God. But if I look away from the headlines and focus on creation around me, I can only stand in awe that the Earth is filled not with chaos, but with so much finely tuned order. 

 

Beautiful Karla and I recently hiked in Big Sur. We parked on Highway 1. Fifty yards to the west the jagged, rocky coast was battered by foamy, crashing waves. The sea was a deep, cobalt blue. Otters swam in the kelp forests and pelicans scanned the water for lunch, flying in a perfect V formation. To the east, we hiked into a densely wooded canyon along a meandering stream and through a towering redwood forest. Both unseen from the road. Drivers zoomed by on the highway totally unaware of the magical beauty of the canyon nestled a few steps away. 

 

It was some seriously finely tuned beauty.

 

In the same way as a radio and the universe have been finely tuned, I think it’s important to fine-tune our gratitude.

 

Like cars speeding by on the highway, we can tend to zip through our days focused on the chaos in our lives: the worries, the problems, and the anxieties. Slowing down to fine-tune our gratitude helps bring order to the chaos. Finding time for solitude and silence have been massively helpful to me in managing life’s pressures. These moments of quiet are essential. In the morning before the family awakes. Driving to work. A walk around the neighborhood or along the beach. 

 

During these times I try to fine-tune my gratitude. I like to pinpoint the things for which I’m thankful and then try take thanksgiving a few layers deep. I see not just the trees, but the various shades of green. Have you even been thankful for chlorophyl and photosynthesis? Not just the flowers, but the dozens of differences among them. Not just my health, but my eyes, and all the parts and inner workings going on to allow me to see the words on this screen. How about pollination, the water cycle, and the various spices that combine to make today’s stuffing, gravy, and pumpkin pie so delicious? 

 

I think they’re all gifts of God’s grace.

 

Try it yourself. Make a list of the top 10 things for which you’re thankful. Then, add five items under each 10 that are also deserving of gratitude. Pretty soon you’ll have a finely tuned list of 50 things. A flow-chart of thanksgiving. 

 

The photo above stops Thomas Merton’s quote short. It should read, “To be grateful is to recognize the love of God in everything He has given us – and He has given us everything. Every breath we draw is a gift of His love, every moment of existence is a grace, for it brings with it immense graces from Him.”

 

Sounds like Merton, a priest and author, knew something about finely tuned gratitude.

 

Here’s hoping you do too.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!