Resurrection, Unfiltered

The pair of disciples were digesting the morning’s mind-boggling news as they walked the seven miles northeast from Jerusalem to Emmaus that same afternoon. The resurrected Jesus sidles up to them at some point on their journey, but they don’t recognize him. Some translations suggest that God prevented them from recognizing him. The New International Version simply says, “but they were kept from recognizing him.” (Luke 24:16)

Whether it was God supernaturally obscuring their perception or their own biases that fogged their view, it seemed that the Jesus who joined them looked and sounded different than the One they’d loved and lost to crucifixion three days earlier. Resurrection made beautiful his once broken, tortured body.

This beautiful stranger pressed the two with questions about what they were expecting in the wake of their Rabbi’s death. He then talked them through Scripture’s story with the authority of someone who inhabited every jot and tittle. When they arrived in Emmaus, the two disciples invited theiro traveling companion to join them for an evening meal.

The moment he blessed wine and bread, they recognized him. He then disappeared from their sight, leaving them only with the lingering experience of their hearts on fire with new life as they walked and talked with him earlier that afternoon.

How could they miss someone they’d been following for some time and thought they knew well? One possibility is that God himself obscured their vision for a time in order to bring things into greater focus for them. But there is another possibility I’ve been pondering – one that asks some pretty uncomforable questions about the ways my own biases and preconceived notions about God obscure my perception of him.

1 Corinthians 13:12 tells us that while we’re here bound in space and time on earth, we see the Eternal as though we’re looking at a dim mirror, but promises that we will see him face to face in the end. I believe some of the filters we or those around us may carry make that dim mirror even hazier. Here are a few examples of the filters I’ve used without realizing it or have seen deployed by others:

• When I try to view Jesus through the lens of Charismatic Christian Nationalists who embrace the notion of the Seven Mountain Mandate, I will only see him when I look at those in places of power in our culture. I won’t be able to see his humility.

• When I try to view Jesus through the lens of Fundamentalism, I will see him only when I color in the lines and follow all the rules, written and unwritten, of that subculture. I won’t be able to see his mercy.

• When I try to view Jesus through the lens of Christian European history and Western culture, I will only see him if I am looking for a blonde haired, blue eyed Gentile guy in a white robe. I won’t be able to see him as a Jewish man.

• When I try to view Jesus through the lens called Inspirational Motivational Speaker, I will only see him if I am looking for a Ted talk. I won’t be able to see his divinity, or live in light of his resurrection.

On the road the day of that resurrection, the two disciples were looking backward toward the Jesus they’d known before, not the Jesus who was present with them as they walked toward Emmaus. I am heartened by Jesus’s patient teaching of them as they journeyed, and awestruck when I think about what they must have felt when they saw clearly who he was as he broke bread and blessed wine together with them at the day’s end.

Each one of us carries bias blind spots. Acknowledging this reality is where health and healing begin. It takes courage to ask the One who gave sight to the blind to remove the filters from our vision – especially if we aren’t even cognizant of what they are.

If you pray this kind of prayer, buckle up: God will use all kinds of methods to remove those filters from our eyes including a jolt of revelation, suffering, our willingness to hear the stories of those on the margins of our society and give attention to the theology and experiences of those from other church traditions and cultures. To see the resurrected Jesus more clearly will change the way we see and relate to the world he loves.

Which will change us, likely in ways we can’t imagine. We might discover our assumptions about church, family, culture, or politics have shifted. We might find new ways to serve, or find that our comfortable old habits or alliances are disrupted or transformed.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus told his friends: ^“But blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear. For truly I tell you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.” (Matthew 13:16-17) May God give each one of us the gift of seeing the Jesus more clearly in these days when our religious filters are so well practiced that we miss him when he is walking next to us in this very this moment.

I CAN’T EVEN.

As the author of Ecclesiastes observed back in the days when books were written on scrolls, there is no end to the creating of books. Some estimates have the current total of new books released each year at more than one million titles just in the U.S. Publishers Weekly covers the publishing business, and reviews just a small fraction of new releases in every possible genre launched into the ocean of book-words each week. Thus, a review in PW is a big deal to an author.

Downsizing: Letting Go of Evangelicalism’s Nonessentials got a positive review in PW a couple of weeks ago. Here’s a sample of what they said: :

In this erudite survey, Van Loon takes a hard look at what’s worth keeping from the last 50-odd years of evangelicalism. Rooting her account in minister Phyllis Tickle’s notion that the church undergoes a “rummage sale” roughly every 500 years to excise “theological garbage,” Van Loon considers the merits and drawbacks of parachurch ministries (“specialist” Christian organizations that foster community in ways traditional churches sometimes can’t) and the prosperity gospel, which she contends is rooted in a “core yearning for security” that power-hungry preachers have twisted into a transactional, “Christian-ish” version of the American dream.

I tackle a whole lot of other, different Evangelicalisms in the book, including Dispensational Fundamentalism, Second- and Third-Wave Charismatic renewal, the Church Growth Movement, the rise and return to litrugical forms, home schooling, and more.

Downsizing is meant to be a provocative conversation-starter about the occasionally good and too frequently awful movements within Evangelicalism during the last half-century. This is a conversation that includes those who are still in the Evangelical world, those who’ve shaken the dust from their feet as they’ve exited it, and everyone else who is trying to make sense of how we got to this crossroads moment in the church. This conversation needs you!

The book releases August 19th, but if you preorder now and sign up for what I’m calling a “low commitment launch team” (meaning one exclusive online event you can attend if you want - that’s it!), you can read an advance preview of the book and be ready to have some in-real-life conversations with your friends, book group, or people at your church when the book releases in a few months. Use one of the buttons below to preorder:

Take a screenshot or picture of your receipt, and you can sign up for this low-commitment launch team using the button below. Click the button and you’ll get all the low-commitment details.

Wendell Berry’s beloved poem “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front” contains much wisdom, and these lines, which are good coaching for the hard days in which we’re living:

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts…

Practice resurrection.

God’s shalom to you, friend.

Image: Rowan LeCompte (American, 1925–2014) and Irene Matz LeCompte (American, 1926–1970), Third Station of the Resurrection: The Walk to Emmaus (detail), 1970. Mosaic, Resurrection Chapel, National Cathedral, Washington, DC. Photo by Victoria Emily Jones.