The Invisible Christ
Sermon delivered at Kippax Uniting Church, 23 April 2023
Luke’s gospel tells the story of two disciples walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus on the day Jesus rose from the dead. Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him (Luke 24:15-16). This inability of his friends who knew him personally to recognise the risen Christ indicates that Jesus was in some way invisible to them, that the disciples simply could not see him in his glorious reality.
Why this would be is what I wish to talk about today. Jesus Christ represents the powerful saving force of God. The love and grace and humanity of Christ incarnate the presence of God in the world. This message of the truth of the kingdom of God confronts the false stories of the kingdoms of the world. Human thought is so conditioned by our worldly situation that the voice of God can barely break through. There is something so unacceptable about the transformative liberation preached in the Gospels by Christ that his society resorted firstly to crucifixion, and then to blindness in the face of the resurrection.
A first level of difficulty appears in the Gospel teachings to love enemies, to be poor in spirit, to be generous to those who are least and to care. These involve too much personal energy for most people to give enough time and attention. The Christian message sounds impossible, a transformation of values to bring in the reign of God. When the impossible ethics are wrapped in a seemingly impossible literal story, the broader society sees a lack of coherent vision within Christianity.
And so, when Christ walks with the disciples to Emmaus, after hearing their stories of the cross, he responds, “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, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.” (Luke 24:25-27)
Here Jesus suggests the visible events of the resurrection point to deeper truth of the nature of God that is revealed in prophecy. His statement that the cross was necessary for his glory rests upon the interpretation of scripture, of how the need for a Messiah was a central idea in Judaism, and how he had fulfilled this vision, how redemption and salvation emerge from suffering.
In this conversation Jesus calls the foolish disciples slow of heart to believe. Many of us may have wished we might have been a bystander listening to the discussion on the road to Emmaus, as Christ brought together all the scriptures to explain their inner meaning. The nature of God as Father of the world, exercising patient love for the flourishing of life, is a story that rests upon the heart to believe.
It is quite a challenge to try to reconstruct what Jesus may have said, and easier to blot out this question at the core of faith. The Old Testament prophets provide a vision of the necessity of a messiah, so the interpretation by Christ of the prophetic explanation of the world must have sought a coherent justification of his identity as only Son of the Father.
My view is that a central part of this Christology of Emmaus, this personal explanation by Christ of his own necessity, rests upon a deeper ancient cosmology that is now only dimly seen. Astronomy was central to ancient religion, with the visible heavens seen as the orderly presence of the power and glory of God. Reconstructing how Christ saw his own divinity therefore can place the gospel message against the possible visions of the stars in the prophetic tradition.
In the Lord’s prayer, Christ tells us to pray that the will of God may be done on earth as in heaven. One way to read this is to ask how the will of God is done in the visible heavens of the Sun and stars. The spangled night sky is vast, stable and orderly, combining the seemingly unchanging stars with the constantly changing planets. Finding the order in the cosmos is the central goal of astronomy.
For Christ, this visible cosmic order of the heavens could have provided the source for reflection on how our chaotic planet could aspire toward participation in the cosmic order of grace. The eternal stability of the stars reflects the infinite and eternal stability of God, against the fragile and confused mentality of humanity. If our minds could reflect the grandeur of the heavens, we could begin to fully understand what it means to be made in the image of God.
The Christian story is about how we connect with God. As such it differs from astronomy which only describes the universe in factual terms, without asking how the human soul connects to the universe as a source of meaning and value. Our connection to the universe should be understood as a big part of our connection to God. Stories in the Bible show God is deeply mysterious, revealed in creative harmony and beauty. Our connection to grace, to the orderly harmony and beauty of God, begins with our connection to the presence of God in our natural universe.
