This week a professor mine from
Augustana shared an opinion piece on Facebook, which had been printed in the New York Times and was about the
Catholic Church and modern apologetics. My professor pointed out a line where
the author said, “Traditional apologetics has started
with metaphysical arguments for God’s existence.” Now, that was a lot of big
words—and I hated when my seminary professors would say things like that and
not explain them—so I’m not going to do that to you. In layman’s terms the
author was claiming that defenses of the faith (what we call “apologetics”) have
traditionally started by first arguing for the existence of God. At first blush
that makes a lot of sense; it’s very scientific; it doesn’t assume anything,
least of all that there is a God of the universe. But what if I told you that the idea
of starting by proving God is a completely modern notion that would have seemed
absolutely strange to almost anybody not born in the last four hundred years?
As
my professor pointed out the 11th century monk, Anselm, didn’t start
out by arguing for God’s existence, he started with prayer. Then there was Thomas Aquinas
(who is the founder of a good deal of the Catholic Church’s theology), who started
not with proving God but with “the church and sacred doctrine.”[1] This
idea that the only responsible belief is one that starts by arguing for God’s existence is actually a pretty new concept, but it
is also a deeply engrained one. The default for people these days is to say: Prove it. Whether in economics or
politics or sports or religion, if you’re going to bring me over to your point
of view you had better prove it! And we assume that everybody in the history of
the world has had that same default.
But
it’s just not true.
These
days many people believe that the only acceptable starting place is an
open mind to all the possibilities so that we can figure out for ourselves how
and why things work the way we do. The modern world loves sight, smell, hearing,
taste and touch—we value our senses probably more than any people in the
history of the world—because they provide us with evidence.
So, you know what
story the modern world hates? The road to Emmaus.
When
the disciples were walking along the road that led to the town of Emmaus they encountered a man walking with
them, but whatever they saw in that man was obviously only a shadow of reality.
I struggle to imagine exactly what they saw that day. Imagine a person walking
next to you who you have been thinking about quite a lot; in fact, you haven’t
been able to think about anything other than him for several days. Now, imagine
talking with him, even telling him a story about himself, and imagine telling
him that he must be the only person in town who hasn’t heard this story. Then, imagine
him turning around and telling you things about the scriptures, things Jesus
used to say, things that sound wise and deep beyond reckoning, and still, you do
not know who it is who is talking to you.
Modernity
only offers us two ways to explain this story: Either the disciples were really
dumb or the story is a lie. Only a perspective guided by our faith offers anything different.
The
Emmaus road story is a story about the resurrected Christ, but the purpose of
the story is not simply to tell us that he looked different after rising from the
dead. In fact, I think he looked exactly the same. This wasn’t Jesus wearing a
mask. If that were it then even the dumbest disciple would have figured out the
ruse by about the time he started telling them about the scriptures. It wasn’t
a change in Jesus—that’s our default; we assume that we stay the same so any
change must be in the other person. But it wasn’t that. The reason the
disciples couldn’t see Jesus was because their faith could not interpret what
their eyes were seeing. Before Jesus’ death, the disciples had no problem
seeing the person of Jesus, because they weren’t looking for anything
exceptional. If there is a consistent thread in the disciples’ conversations
with Jesus pre-crucifixion it is constant underestimation. They had a serious problem accepting
some of the things he was saying—none of them really understood resurrection
from the dead.
On the road to Emmaus the disciples have a problem seeing Jesus Christ in this traveler they have met because their eyes are working as they always have. They don’t see Jesus because they aren’t looking for him. When they come across this man on the road they saw the same Jesus they had always seen, but their minds rejected that reality. Jesus hadn’t changed; their expectations had. Instead of the truth they imagined a far more plausible situation: clearly the man was a stranger unaware of the events in Jerusalem. Clearly, the man was not Jesus. This was not a problem with sight; it was a problem with faith.
On the road to Emmaus the disciples have a problem seeing Jesus Christ in this traveler they have met because their eyes are working as they always have. They don’t see Jesus because they aren’t looking for him. When they come across this man on the road they saw the same Jesus they had always seen, but their minds rejected that reality. Jesus hadn’t changed; their expectations had. Instead of the truth they imagined a far more plausible situation: clearly the man was a stranger unaware of the events in Jerusalem. Clearly, the man was not Jesus. This was not a problem with sight; it was a problem with faith.
The author of that opinion piece on the
Catholic Church approached theology with the same presuppositions. He believed
that all people must start with the question of God’s existence, just as the
disciples believed that they could interpret the world
through their sight. That works for
awhile. In fact, sight seems to make the world clearer; until, that is, we come
across something we don’t believe. To assume that apologetics
starts by arguing for God’s existence is to assume that faith is only justified when
it is an academically responsible thing to have, when in fact Jesus taught us
that it is the other way around. We start not on the road, because we will not recognize Jesus on the road. Instead
of the road, we start where Christ promises to be revealed to us fully—in the
breaking of the bread, in the pouring of the wine, and in baptism. Only after
the breaking of the bread does the opening of the scriptures (and the meeting
on the road) make sense. Only then do the disciples realize what should have
been plain to them all along—it was Jesus.
This
matters profoundly for us, because there are many people out there who think
you are a cretin for being here in church and believing what you believe, and
their arguments are pretty compelling to the modern world. Prove it, they say. Prove that your God is any different from a
floating genie up somewhere beyond Mars. And you know what? That question is a
trap, because you can’t start where they want you to start—your faith does not
start where modernity wants it to start. Faith starts not on the road of your daily lives; faith starts in the breaking of
the bread, in the revelation of God in the sacraments. It starts in baptism and
communion, the places where God promises to reveal God’s self to us. God will
meet you out on the road, but you won’t have any clue what God looks like until
you experience the breaking of the bread.
So,
here’s the irony: I’m the Lutheran pastor telling the Catholic blogger that it
starts with the sacraments. Still, I know I’m not alone in this. If we start on
the road we will always be like those disciples who are utterly confused by the
man walking on their side. He looks like a man, walks and talks like a man, but
there’s just something about him—they couldn’t quite put their finger on it.
You can’t start on the road of life, because Jesus will meet you there and you
won’t have a clue what is going on. So, what you receive today in Holy
Communion is a gift to see the world with different eyes. You receive Christ—not some theory or theology
but the actual presence of Jesus Christ. It isn’t that hard—bread, wine; body,
blood. Jesus Christ, given for you. Not controlled by me or the church or any
other power of this world; just Christ’s body for you.
Once
you have that bread and wine, then—only then—will walking down the road be an eye-opening experience. Then you will see the real Christ everywhere that you go. Nothing about Jesus will have changed, he has been walking by your side
the whole time, but when you start in the right place the senses no longer
obscure the reality. When you start in the right place what matters is not
proving God’s existence, but experiencing the Jesus who has already been made
known to you.
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