Sunday, April 6, 2008

3rd Sunday of Easter

Luke 24:13-35

 

WERE OUR HEARTS NOT BURNING?

 

In the early 1970’s the Jesus movement was in full flower in the Pacific Northwest.  Churches such as Maranatha in Portland were hotbeds of this movement—participants spoke of being on fire for Jesus.  Many in the movement had given up drugs and were now getting high on Jesus.  The focus was on accepting Jesus into your heart and developing a personal relationship with the Lord.  Praising the Lord was a prominent theme in worship.

 

Our high school class teachers at Mt. Carmel Lutheran Church had become involved in the Jesus movement.  One Sunday evening they took us to Maranatha.  During one two minute stretch the worship leader said “Praise the Lord” 32 times.  Now the Psalms are full of the expression “Praise the Lord,” and who can argue against the importance of praising the Lord?  But 32 times in two minutes seemed excessive, and it felt a bit manipulative.  It was as if someone was trying to get us hooked on Jesus.  It is not surprising that some of us raised in a more low key Lutheran context would be skeptical about getting hooked on or high on Jesus.

 

Many leaders in mainline traditions shared our skepticism.  The Jesus movement was criticized for being too individualistic, too emotional, too manipulative.  Indeed, there was some truth in these criticisms.

 

At the same time, however, a fair assessment will acknowledge that the Jesus movement saved a number of young people         who were on the road to hell or at least the path to destruction.  The Jesus movement also helped wake many up to the experiential side of faith.  A faith based on saying all the right words and believing all the right doctrines was impoverished or deficient.

 

One of my fellow seminarians told me that he had grown up Lutheran in Minnesota.  But in high school he gave up church and became heavily involved in alcohol and drugs.  “I was heading straight for hell,” he said.  Somehow he managed to get into college, but he was threatening to flunk out.  On a whim he went to a small group gathering of Christian students.  They were not officially part of the Jesus movement, but they focused on accepting Jesus into your heart.  At that very first gathering my friend experienced a profound conversion.  In seminary he shared some of the same concerns others voiced about the me and Jesus approach to faith, but he also was very aware of how his life had been transformed by developing a personal relationship with Jesus.  Ironically his conversion experience led him back into the Lutheran tradition he left behind.  What he brought to that Lutheran tradition was a renewed appreciation of the experiential, emotional side of faith.  In his seminary preparation he sought to integrate a religion of the heart with a religion of the mind.

 

Since the 1960’s Granger Westberg has been a prominent Lutheran voice for integrating the heart and the mind in our faith. Westberg was not a child of the Jesus movement.  He was a Lutheran pastor and a medical doctor.  He is recognized as a pioneer in wholistic health.  He served as a professor in medicine and religion at the University of Chicago and a professor in preventive medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine.  He founded the parish nurse program, from which we at St. Andrew have benefitted greatly.  His most well-known publication is a little book entitled Good Grief, first published in 1962.  This book is intended to guide people grieving losses through the stages of grief.  I provide copies to people who are grieving.  One of the key stages in the grief process is to express our emotions.  At the end of the chapter on expressing emotions Westberg writes: “For us to imagine we can live fully and deeply without emotion is pretty ridiculous.  We are not talking about emotionalism.  We are talking about the emotions which provide the motivation for everything we do.  One of the great faults of intellectual Protestantism is that it has tended to stifle emotion.  The Sunday services have more resembled a lecture series than a worship experience.  We must not and we need not apologize for emotion in our religious experience; nor need we apologize for it in our grief.  To bottle it up unnecessarily is to do ourselves harm.  We ought to express the grief we feel.  Some will be too embarrassed to grieve openly; but then they ought to go off by themselves and let their grief take its natural course in any of a variety of ways.”

 

A number of times in the history of Lutheranism people of faith have been awakened to a new awareness of the experiential, emotional side of faith.  Pietism emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries in response to an excessive religion of the mind in state churches.  Highly structured worship, right doctrine, and rationalistic thinking tended to hold sway in these state churches.  A reawakening to a religion of the heart was a needed corrective.  One of the great insights of the Pietist movement was the value of reading scripture as God’s personal word to us.  The Daily Texts , developed by Moravian Pietists, are an example of reading the Bible this way.

 

Certainly the biblical roots of the emotional, experiential side of faith run deep.  Our gospel text from Luke 24 is a prime example.  Two of Jesus’ followers are on the road to Emmaus.  They encounter the risen Jesus, but at first they do not recognize him.  They are surprised he does not seem to know all that has transpired in Jerusalem     concerning Jesus of Nazareth.  They share how they had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel—to set Israel free from Roman domination.  Those hopes had been dashed by his crucifixion.  But they also express how they were astounded when some women in their group of followers went to the tomb and did not find his body.

 

Jesus responds to them, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?”  Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interprets to these two followers everything about himself in scripture.  But still they do not recognize him.

 

Finally in the evening, sitting at the table with Jesus--as he takes bread, blesses and breaks it, and gives it to them--their eyes are opened; and they recognize him.  After he leaves, they say to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”  They recognize him in the breaking of the bread, but it is their burning hearts as Jesus opened God’s word to them that confirms their faith, that confirms the risen Jesus had been present with them.  That same hour they return to Jerusalem to share the good news with the eleven and the others gathered with them.  Their encounter with the risen Jesus had transformed them.  Their high hopes had been rekindled, although in a different way than expected.  With hearts on fire for Jesus, they are ready to be sent into the world to be witnesses of the risen Lord.

 

We too need our hearts set on fire for Jesus.  We need a religion of the heart to balance our religion of the mind.  We need to attend to the experiential, emotional side of faith.  But what if we have not had a dramatic, life-changing conversion experience?  What if like the two followers on the road to Emmaus we have had trouble recognizing the risen Jesus on our journey of faith?  What if it is a stretch to talk of our hearts burning within us or to speak of ourselves as on fire for Jesus?  Is there any hope for us?

 

In the Methodist tradition, which in part was a reaction against the Anglican Church, John Wesley often spoke of the heart being strangely warmed.  You may not have experienced your heart burning within you, but perhaps your heart has been strangely warmed at times—as you have listened to God’s word proclaimed, as you have sung an inspirational hymn, as you have received the bread and wine at the Lord’s Table, as you have turned to God in prayer, as you have heard the choir sing a moving anthem, as you have meditated on God’s word, as a brother or sister in Christ has been with you in a difficult time, as you have gathered with God’s people to celebrate the life and mourn the loss of a loved one who has died, as you have engaged in a mission project on behalf of someone in special need.  These moments when our hearts are warmed—are they not signs of the presence of the risen Lord among us?  Surely these moments transform us in our journey of faith.

 

When I was an intern pastor in Juneau, Alaska, an 80 year old evangelist named Brian Green came to town.  I was surprised to discover that he was an Anglican priest.  He could have been described as a high church Billy Graham.  He wore his clerical garb each day and gently chastised those clergy who were “out-of-uniform.”  His calling as an evangelist was to cultivate faith in Jesus Christ in both new converts and established Christians.  For people new to or lapsed from the faith, that could come in the form of a dramatic conversion experience.  But those who had grown up in the faith and had never really left the church were more likely, he said, to experience mini-conversions—definite moments in which the presence of Jesus is experienced and our lives are transformed.

 

One of the priorities for our new Associate Pastor will be cultivating small group ministry.  Gathering in small groups with brothers and sisters in Christ can provide us with opportunities to share the heart-warming moments and mini-conversions we have experienced.  Sharing such experiences can happen wherever two or more are gathered in Christ’s name.

 

As we move forward with ministry and mission at St. Andrew, each of us would do well to pay special attention to our mini-conversions and to those moments when our hearts are burning or at least strangely warmed.  Such conversions and moments are clues to what God is calling us to invest our hearts and minds in.  We do need people who are on fire for Jesus here at St. Andrew; but surely the risen Lord can do special things for and through all those whose hearts he has strangely warmed.

 

In Jesus’ name, AMEN.