"Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?"
Every now and then, when you’re tired, or you’ve worked too hard, or there’s been a lot of stress ... every now and then, do you get a strange, tight feeling in the chest? Do you sometimes feel peculiar, a little nauseated maybe? Do you wonder whether maybe you are sicker than you think?
Or do you just dismiss it. Oh, it’s just heartburn. It’s just last nights’ pizzas, with anchovies, and two liters of soda, and chocolate ice cream to chase it. It’s nothing, just indigestion, just heartburn.
Well, I believe that your cardiologist will tell you not to ignore those symptoms if they persist. That cramped sensation in the chest, that shortness of breath, that tingling in the arms, that might mean a whole lot more than you think. That might mean a serious or even fatal heart attack is coming. And you don’t know. You don’t know how to read the symptoms, unless you are a physician. You don’t know how to diagnose your heartburn.
And most of us indeed do not know how to diagnose our spiritual heartburn. We do not understand our own feelings. We don’t know what is happening to us spiritually. We only know that we feel something, and it isn’t good. We only know that we have some sort of spiritual sickness, some kind of spiritual anxiety. But we don’t know what it is. We don’t know how to diagnose our own spiritual heartburns.
Two men went for a walk one day, just to clear the air, just to rearrange their troubled minds. Two men went for a walk one day, feeling tense, troubled, anxious, upset. They knew they felt something. But they didn’t know exactly what it was. They needed an interpreter. They needed someone to point them to the truth about themselves and their feelings.
These two men had seen their world turned upside down. Completely out of joint. The times had made no sense. These two men, and others like them, had pinned their hopes on a man whose life was so genuine, whose teachings so clear, whose love so wide open… they had pinned their hopes on him, and had hoped that he would have all the answers for what ailed them and what ailed their world. They had felt that now, at last, the desire of all nations had come, and there would be an end to the absurdities with which they had had to live.
But it had all come crashing down just a couple of days before. Their friend had been carelessly and cruelly put on the garbage heap. Executed, like a common criminal. Hung out to dry, so to speak, with ordinary thieves. With scarcely a moment’s notice, with nothing like a fair trial, with no due process. Just shot down, in the prime of life, and for no good reason.
It was absurd. It was meaningless. It was beyond understanding. And the feelings it had kicked up, they did not know how to deal with. They had never felt such despair, never known such distress.
Two men, on a walk, to clear their heads and to feel their feelings. But how could they? Who would interpret their feelings for them? Who would diagnose their heartburn?
And there was more. In addition to the loss of their friend, they had to deal with something else. Now there was a rumor that he was no longer in the tomb where they had so lovingly laid him. Now there was a story that in fact he was alive! Some of the women in their group had said it, some insisted they had even seen him. But what were they to make of this, these men on the road? Not only was it a question of whether they could believe it, intellectually. It was a question of whether they could handle it, emotionally. To have their feelings so toyed with, played with. To be up, hopeful, but then down, despairing – did they dare to hope again? Did they dare to expect again that anything good would come from this world? How did they know what to feel? Who would diagnose their heartburn?
As I work with people, I find that there are two burning issues that everybody raises, deep down in their feelings. There are two questions that everyone, in one way or another, raises, and raises in their hearts. These are heart questions, feeling questions, not intellectual ones. These are not issues for which we are ever going to find hard and fast, airtight answers. But they are the questions around which our lives are lived, and unless somebody will diagnose our heartburns, unless somebody will help us make sense of them, we are going to live without hope and are going to stagger around in a daze.
Those two questions, those two issues, are: "What is this world coming to?" and "What do I do with my life?" "What is this world coming to?" and "What do I do with my life?" Can you begin to sense the feelings in those questions? Do you know them as feeling issues? As a pastor I find that a good deal of my energy as a counselor is helping people acknowledge their feelings. You come in to tell me what is going on in your life, and you speak about "I did, I said, I thought". But I want you to identify also what you feel. What is that down at the core of your being you feel? My guess is that it revolves around these two things: "What is this world coming to?" and "What do I do with my life?"
The message I want to communicate this morning is: Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, can interpret and shape your feelings about these questions. Jesus Christ, the risen Lord, is the one who has given you these feelings, and who has responses to them. What I would want you to hear above all else this Easter Day is that Jesus Christ, the living Savior, is able to diagnose your heartburn.
I
Notice that the two men on the road to Emmaus had feelings about the first question, "What is this world coming to?" They were trying to put together meaning around all that had happened in the last few days. They were trying to grasp, not just with the mind, but with the heart, what God was up to. Because there are times when unspeakable tragedy just calls for us to cry out for God to explain, for God to intervene. When the heavens seem silent, and it appears that God is doing nothing, then, if you and I are honest about it, we feel. We feel some anger, we feel some despair, maybe we feel some unfaith. And we need someone to diagnose that heartburn.
Just a few days ago, a plane slammed into a Croatian mountainside, taking to their deaths thirty-three of this nation’s best and brightest. Who could not feel for them and their families, who could not feel for the nation as we saw them brought home only yesterday? Didn’t you feel the issue, "What is this world coming to?"
Just a few weeks ago, a gunman sprayed a Scottish gymnasium in a rain of bullets, and destroyed more than a dozen children, plus their teachers and himself. And it seems totally absurd, doesn’t it? It seems altogether meaningless. And something in us cries out why? Some sort of heartburn in us asks for diagnosis.
On and on we could go. I commented to someone the other night that it seems as though every year at this time there is some unspeakable new tragedy to add to the lengthening list. That April is the cruelest month of the year. Roosevelt in Warm Springs, Martin Luther King in Memphis, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hanged just before the end of the Second World War. It is as though the craziness that killed our Christ is destined to be acted out, year after year, in unending struggle. And if you feel anything, you feel the issue, "What is this world coming to?"
But men and women, the living Christ, whom they did not even recognize, testified to them and interpreted to them why this must be. The living Christ shared with them that in our human freedom, we are going to deal in death. We are going to deal in destruction. That’s just the price of freedom. But the living Christ also taught them by his presence that death is not the end, that injustice does not have the last word, that might does not always make right, and that absurdity is not the final reality. The living Christ diagnosed their heartburn, spoke to their anxiety, and assured them that one day, one day, God would have the final word, God would gain the last victory. The risen Savior gave them assurance that in the last analysis, it is not the forces of evil which hold sway, but it is the sovereign will of God, and He shall reign forever and ever.
When you begin to feel the question, "What is the world coming to?" know that in Christ God has assured us that the day of victory will come, and all the ends of the earth shall know.
II
But there is that second question, that nagging one, that persistent one, "What do I do with my life?" This is the one that dogs the footsteps of so many of us. Young people who just flounder from day to day. People in mid-life who wonder if they made some wrong choices, and it’s too late to change. Older people who think it’s all past them now, and that the mistakes of the past can never be corrected. This one really gets down into the gut level, doesn’t it? "What do I do with my life?"
But I will tell you that when Dr. Jesus diagnoses this heartburn for you, and you know that you are in the presence of the living Christ, when it finally seeps down, way down, where the real self is, that He is alive, then you know what you must do with your life. Then you know what matters to you and where your life is to be invested.
These two men, on the road to Emmaus, going somewhere, just to clear the air, these two men, that same hour got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the others, their companions, their friends, and that bore their witness. Loud and clear, with confidence they bore their witness. "The Lord has risen indeed". The Lord has risen indeed.
Oh, are you wondering what you should do with your life? Are you asking, not with your intellect, but with your heart, what your life is all about? Are you raising the ultimate questions about your life, your energies, your very heart and soul? Then know that you are hearing the living Christ, that Dr. Jesus is diagnosing your heartburn, that he is calling you to be a part of what He is about.
Do you feel the injustice of this world? Then that is the living Christ calling you to be a drum major for justice.
Do you feel the hurts of a sick humanity? Then that is the risen Savior calling you to be a healer and a peacemaker.
Do you feel the pathos of human ignorance? Do you feel the hopelessness of broken families and shattered dreams? Then that is the Christ, who is present, who walks the journey with you, calling you to labor with him that all might fulfill their God-given potential.
Most of all, do you feel the pain and the agony of human sin? Do you know that because all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, the cross was necessary, suffering is necessary? Do you understand and feel it, that because none is righteous, no, not one, the Christ must suffer and die? But the Christ is raised to new life, and He wants to bring others into new life with him. The Christ is raised to new life, and He wants to give you that new life too. Do you feel something, deep down, about sin and failure and despair? Then that too is Dr. Jesus, diagnosing your heartburn, and offering you His risen life.
"What is this world coming to?" The victory of our God. "What shall I do with my life?" Give it to Christ, so that I might share in victory. Give it to the risen Lord, so that I too may rise with Him.
"Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road?" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
