Coupled with this great disappointment was the confusion that the women’s report of the empty tomb had brought. Still focused on a prophetic Jesus who was “mighty in deed and word,” the disciple-community failed to remember one telling aspect of all prophets’ mission: the suffering and rejection that go hand in hand with living a prophetic life.
Jesus went gently with these two “foolish” disciples,65 even though they had forgotten all His previous warnings about a suffering, dying Messiah who would bring redemption to the world.
A JOURNEY TOWARD NEW UNDERSTANDING
Walking this Emmaus road now became a journey toward a new state of comprehension. Jesus walked those two disciples through the Scriptures,66 using the Torah itself to testify to a tradition of a “suffering Messiah.” Jesus showcased on this Emmaus road the SERT (Scripture, Experience, Reason, Tradition)67 journey that all future followers would have to take: finding reasoned validation for faith from biblical texts and traditions as well as from personal experiences of the resurrected Christ.
As the travelers approached Emmaus, the narrative tension heightened when Jesus walked ahead of them as though He were going on. But the story continues because there was an invitation to fellowship. “Stay with us,” the two disciples urged their new friend, the unrecognized risen Jesus.
The slender thread that held the three travelers together was suddenly strengthened by being woven into a tablecloth. The invitation to “table” together kept Jesus in their midst. Perhaps these two disciples had retained some of what Jesus had earlier spread before them after all.
The Eucharistic “Last Supper” comes quickly to mind.68 While it became the central celebration of the church community, what happened next is most similar to the feeding of the multitude.69 Before that miraculous meal there was hazy comprehension of who Jesus was, among both His followers and the uneasy civil authorities.70 Immediately afterward Peter recognized and confessed Jesus as “the Christ of God.”71
Similarly, at this evening meal, Jesus morphed before their eyes from invited guest to host: offering the blessing for the bread, breaking it, and distributing it. His closed-eyed tablemates now had their eyes pried open, and they instantly recognized the One before them.72 Truth is recognition. Jesus surprises us with what we already know.
But as suddenly as recognition came, the recognized vanished, leaving two stunned disciples at the table, staring at one another. The paradox of knowing and not knowing, of particularity and universality, was once again demonstrated in Jesus’ postresurrection appearances. Jesus revealed Himself to the disciples, then vanished from their sight almost in the same moment. In a mysterious way, by Jesus’ physical absence—by not clinging to Him,73 as Jesus instructed Mary Magdalene and here as He disappears just when He appears—we are able to enter into a deeper presence of Him that holds on to us and draws us into His resurrection life. There is a breathlessness to it all, as we are always catching up to Jesus. He is always ahead of us. He always goes before us.
A simple loaf of bread, broken at a roadside table after a dusty day on the road, becomes a miraculous feast when it is shared with the risen Christ. The Emmaus road disciples were the first to experience the postresurrection transformation of bread at the table to the bread of life. But every time any disciple of the risen Lord breaks bread with loved ones, that same miracle occurs. Where two or three are in relation with Me, Jesus promised, there am I also.74 In fact, until we live out what we are talking about, we stumble through life in confusion and uncertainty.
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We must keep the soul terribly surprised.
—WIDELY ATTRIBUTED TO EMI LY DICKINSON
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Until we live out of redemptive and reconciling relationships and not merely theorize about them, our eyes won’t be open: “He was known to them in the breaking of bread.”75 Jesus is discovered in acts of relationship and reconciliation. The resurrection gives us not so much new insights and a Christian worldview as it does new relationships and a Christian “world life.” Enacted truth through embodied relations is what gives life and power to previous experiences of God.
The story of the risen Christ in Luke 24 throws us back to Genesis 3 immediately after Adam and Eve fell. Notice the wording in Genesis 3:7: “Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” Compare it with Luke 24:31: “Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him.”76 A reasonable allusion: Jesus, in His resurrected state, has reversed the Fall.
Note also that the disciples didn’t say, “Did not our heart burn within us when He broke the bread and ate with us?” Rather they said, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?”77 In our own personal narratives, we tend to remember more what we anticipate than what we actually experience. Childhood memories are not of the ripped-off wrapping paper or the too-stuffed belly. They are of the pile of pristine packages awaiting Christmas morning, or of the heavy-laden table decked out with favorite foods and goodies. The Emmaus disciples—like all disciples since—recalled best those moments just before their eyes were opened to the truth and their spirits recognized Jesus.
Jesus mandated that they return to Jerusalem, and then He left. The action was no longer around the table, but back in Jerusalem. Yet even then, the action was not theirs, but God’s—and it is not ours, but God’s. The action is not initiating something for God but becoming part of God’s initiatives in the world. We’re on the road again.
On the road back to Jerusalem from Emmaus. On the road from Jerusalem unto the uttermost ends of the earth. On the road of resurrection faith, where being faithful means trusting and obeying without being told things; and being road-ready, even when you’re living in transition, moving in the shadows of understanding, and walking in dark valleys of despair and uncertainty; where time spent on the road with Jesus is not actualizing ourselves but releasing and unleashing His resurrection energies.
MOVING UPWARD AND FORWARD
The Emmaus disciples left “that same hour” on that enchanting “third day.” The two travelers hustled off to where the disciples and their companions were hiding out—once again excitedly discussing events all along the way. But instead of “sadness,” there was ecstasy. They recalled how their hearts had been “burning within”78 as they listened as Jesus “opened the Scriptures” to them.79 They remembered how their “slow” hearts80 had beat faster with a cadence of hope as they began to hear a song of new possibilities and dreams. When they arrived at their destination, they found a galvanized group of disciples celebrating a truth corroborated in cobblestone: “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”81
Paul said Jesus appeared to more than five hundred of His followers82 before He left His marching orders on the hilltop to go (missional) into all the world and make disciples (relational) of all cultures (incarnational), baptizing in His name and teaching His story.83
Both the journey (the way) and the journey’s end at table talk with Jesus (the truth) were necessary for the risen Jesus to be revealed to His missionizing disciples (the life). The ascension chapter in the Jesus story moves Jesus not just upward but forward, toward a new heaven and a new earth and God’s kingdom come on earth, as it is in heaven.84 No-Name Saturday and the ascension teach us that heaven is not just a reality outside of creation.
When Jesus said, “I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth,”85 He was referencing the prophecy of Daniel: “I saw someone like a son of man. . . . He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world.”86 So He told them to return to Jerusalem and stay there until there was a baptism of wind and fire to go with the baptism of water.87 For even “cradle Christians,” there comes a time when the “baptism of water” must turn into the “baptism of spirit,” when conversion through the involuntary coercion of parental loins turns into the leonine conv
iction of personal choice.
John the Evangelist said there were three witnesses to Jesus on earth: the water, the blood, and the wind.88 Water for cleansing, blood for drinking, wind for resurrecting.89 Next, we’ll look at Acts to see the story of what happens when the wind mixes with the water and blood.
PENTECOST
While Jesus ascended into heaven in bodily form, He descended from heaven in the Spirit on the day of Pentecost.90 The Emmaus walk is the journey that conveyed the disciple-community into its new identity as the body of Christ. The bride conceived on the cross when the last Adam’s side was split, then quickened in the Upper Room when the resurrected Christ breathed on the disciples, was brought fully to life on Whit Sunday, the seventh Sunday after Easter, also called Pentecost, from the Greek for “fiftieth.” As Joshua continued Moses’ work in leading the people into the promised land,91 so the Holy Spirit continues Christ’s mission in the life of the church. The Spirit is the ultimate egalitarian—knowing no age, gender, geography, or social class,92 poured out on everyone who “calls on the name of the LORD.”93 In the New Jerusalem of Revelation, all divisions are obliterated . . . whether it be Hebrew and Gentile, holy and unholy, male or female, light or dark.94
Jesus was taken up into a cloud on the Mount of Olives. But He made it clear that His physical absence means a spiritual presence that takes on a physical form: the church. The church isn’t divine, of course. But it’s united with Christ as His body, sharing His life. And His body, empowered and emboldened by the Spirit, would be able to do things that Jesus didn’t do and harness energies of holiness that we didn’t know existed. Jesus is the “Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.”95
The private experience in the house became public, a reversal of Babel, where everyone heard each other in their own native tongue. The coming of the Spirit is a multisensory experience, replete with features that often show up with God’s self-revelation—wind and fire.96
Jesus’ spirit constructed a new creation of humanity. In the beginning, God breathed the divine spirit into Adam and created humans in God’s image. By breathing His Spirit into this new community, Jesus recreated humanity afresh in His image. In John 20:22, Jesus breathed on His disciples, an allusion to God breathing into Adam in Genesis 2:7.97 This new humanity would be a community with a particular kind of spirit, the spirit of Jesus Christ. The church is Jesus’ continued presence in the world, tongued with fire and driven by wind.
The church does not exist for itself but exists for four major purposes:
1. to be a bride who loves Jesus Christ as He loves her
2. to be a house for God the Father to dwell in and find rest
3. to be a body through which Jesus Christ may express Himself visibly in the universe
4. to be a family for the Father’s pleasure and enjoyment
This is the narrative we find in Genesis 1 and 2 (before the Fall occurred), and it is consummated in Revelation 21 and 22 (after the Fall is erased). It is the storyline of God’s neglected and forgotten “eternal purpose,” wherein Jesus Christ is the Bridegroom for the bride; the foundation, cornerstone, and capstone of the house; the head of the body; and the firstborn of the family. To obtain a bride for the Son, a house for the Father, a body for the Son, and a family for the Father is the grand mission of God—and it is fulfilled in His church. And the Holy Spirit of God has come to make it all a reality.
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We can say where the Church is, but not where she is not.
—RUSSIAN THEOLOGIAN PAUL EVDOKIMOV 98
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When the Spirit descended, the disciples were gathered to keep the Jewish feast of Shavuot, commemorating the bestowal of Torah on Moses. Fifty days after hiding in fear while Jesus was hanging in agony, these same disciples fearlessly proclaimed the gospel to Jewish pilgrims visiting Jerusalem for the annual Shavuot festival. Threatened with death by the same people who killed Jesus, the disciples preached on, and on, and on. James was the first to be killed, slain with a sword by King Herod Agrippa.99 Except for John, they all would be persecuted or martyred, most in other countries (in keeping with the Great Commission).
From the middle of the second century there has been an early baptismal creed that concludes with these words: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, and the church.” You can’t separate the Spirit and the church: when you get the Bridegroom you get the bride. You can’t adequately follow Jesus without being part of a shared-life community that lives and gathers under the headship of Christ. The Christian life was never meant to be lived in isolated individualism; following Jesus has always been a corporate experience. And it always will be.100
THE JESUS COMMUNITY
“Do not call anyone on earth your father,” Jesus said.101 At Pentecost Jesus gave us a new and better bonding than conventional family: koinonia. Koinonia is like a patchwork quilt—every patch is different, but they are all sewn together into an artistic pattern. Koinonia is community, not conformity. Koinonia is anathema to individualism, but advancing of individuality. Evangelism is not convincing people that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. One does not become a Christian because one is convinced. One becomes a Christian because one is convicted to change (repent and believe in Jesus) and to connect to a community. This community (koinonia) is held together by the power of the Spirit, not by the agreement or even agreeableness of its members.
To be “in the body” (koinonia) is to be more than “in touch.” To be “in the body” is to be in sync because we are in Christ . . . even though we are all different members of the same body. By being members of the body of Christ—“as the body is one and has many members . . . so it is with Christ”102—we participate in the temple ownership, since Christ is Himself the fulfillment of the temple and therefore the restoration of our fallen state and the fractured relationship between Creator and creature.
The new covenant is more than a Jesus veneer to the old covenant. People want stone tablets they can cling to and brandish, but Jesus wants to be written and beat in our hearts. Which will it be? A heart-of-stone Jesus or a heart-of-flesh Jesus? A stone-tablet Jesus or a living-stone Jesus?103 When Jesus cuts a covenant in our hearts, He carves a new channel through which God’s energies flow.105 The cutting of the new covenant on the cross is symbolized by the curtain rent in two. Jesus is now the new High Priest who can enter the temple at any time, and He has pulled down the curtain separating us from the presence of God.
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I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
—THE LORD GOD 104
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A free church, like a free nation, is bound to be full of things and people we don’t like. The right hand and left hand may be going in opposite directions at the same time, but we share the same mind and mission of Christ.
We love the church. And so does our Lord. In fact, the church is His chief passion. For that reason, the Scriptures say that Christ “gave Himself for” her,106 “purchas[ing]” her “with His own blood.”107 We are living in a day when God is seeking to restore her glory, making the Son preeminent in and through her. The will of God, we believe, is that every expression of the body of Christ on earth today would become a spiritual “Bethany,” where Jesus is welcomed, received, and is running the show . . . a place where He can lay His head and find rest.108
CHAPTER 16
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The Return of the King
Behold, your King is coming,
Sitting on a donkey’s colt.
—JOHN 1 2: 1 5
MANY CHRI STIANS, ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO LIVE IN AMERICA, are obsessed with the second coming of Christ. Various interpretations surrounding the whe
n, where, and how of this incredible event have spawned endless divisions among Jesus’ followers. In fact, some Christians are so fixated on the second coming of Christ that they haven’t given sufficient time to understand His first coming.
In this chapter, we will explore the return of Christ in a way that transcends classic interpretations. Rather than enter into the eschatological wars that have raged over the last two hundred years, we will focus our attention on how the First and Second Testaments harmonize in telling us what God has in store for the future as it concerns His Son.
GOD’S PLAN FOR PLANET EARTH
As we saw in the beginning of this book, God’s intention from the beginning was to bring heaven and earth together. It was to expand the garden of Eden to the rest of the world. Consequently, God’s intention is centered upon earth. God loves the earth and regards it highly. After God created the earth, the Bible says, “God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.”1 Contrary to what many believe, Scripture teaches that the earth will exist forever.2
Although the Bible speaks of a new heaven and a new earth,3 the foundation of the earth will never pass away. The Lord is not going to do away with the world of space, time, and matter. Instead, God is going to renovate the earth, judge all things by fire, and burn up certain of its elements.4
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