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Ok. I admit it. I am a nerd. A nerd of nerds. I like science fiction in its various forms. I love immersing myself in fantastical worlds, floating in the fantasy for a bit, before emerging back to this world. And I loved the movie ‘Minority Report’.
In the movie, Tom Cruise is an officer of the Precrime Police Force. This division is created to stop crimes before they happen. The evidence the division uses are the predictions of three humans with precognitive abilities. They can tell that a crime will happen before it does. And then the division intervenes and stops the crime before it happens. Normally, the three precogs predict unanimously. But there are times when one of them predicts something different – a minority report – which is then discarded.
As I was reading for today’s message, I realized once again that we Christians have a difficulty admitting that our faith is based on a minority report. For example, while interpreting Luke’s statement “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself” one commentator concluded “The key to understanding the Bible is to see Jesus Christ on every page.”
I don’t know about this. I could point to the first 8 chapters of 1 Chronicles, where we just have lists of names and ask the commentator to show me Jesus in these pages. The expectation of seeing Jesus in every page of scripture is what I would call eisegesis – reading into the text – rather than exegesis – reading out from the text.
The former approach of reading into scripture leads to proof texting. We try to make our point by indicating a passage here or there, often out of context. A classic example is the use of Revelation 3.20. Jesus says, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.” And this has been used to evangelize people. But the text was addressed to a church – a group of Christians, a group of people who had already responded positively to evangelism!
Our passage for today is full of humor and irony. Jesus is the topic of discussion of the two disciples. Unrecognized by them, but known to us, he comes alongside and asks, “What are you discussing?” Did he secretly smile? Did he chuckle silently? Luke does not tell us. Then he asks them, “What things?” He is the center of what they are discussing and he feigns ignorance.
This gives the disciples the opportunity to tell him their perspective of things – of the great expectations they had of him and of how these expectations had been shattered. They had hoped he was the one who would redeem Israel. We had hoped. With what sadness did Cleopas say these words of hopelessness?
But not just that. With their hopes dashed, at the very least they should have been allowed to mourn. But no! The women came along and muddied the waters by claiming that their vision was reality. And despite trying to check on their story no one had seen Jesus. Dejected. Despondent. Despairing.
They had gone through unexpected loss but were not even allowed to mourn. How cruel could life be?
Jesus then gives his perspective without revealing himself to them. Pure logic his question is. Two kinds of prophecies exist in the scriptures about the Messiah. One kind, the majority report if you will, predicted glory and everlasting peace. The other kind, the minority report, predicted rejection and death.
If this is your scripture, then you cannot pick and choose. You need to accept all of it or not call it scripture. But logically, if the Messiah’s reign of peace was to be everlasting, then the rejection and death had to precede it! Otherwise, where would you fit the rejection and death? If you want glory and everlasting peace first, then it means you are rejecting some parts of scripture that speak about suffering.
Jesus was not going page by page, indicating to them which verses pointed to him. Rather, he was showing them that the only way the two strands of prophecy could be from the same loving God was if they accepted both suffering and glory with suffering preceding glory. Jesus was showing them and us that if we call this book our scriptures, then we must accept it all, struggle with the difficult parts, and not simply use a few proof texts to validate the points we make.
The problem is that we are also like the two disciples. We also have hopes that we project onto Jesus. We know he will return victoriously. But we want him to display the victory in our terms. Just take a look at various popular Christian novels about the end times and you will see this to be true. We want him to do at his second coming everything he resolutely refused to do at his first.
But Luke corrects us in this thinking as well. And often we miss the point. Luke tells us that the disciples recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread.
What do we conclude? That the act of breaking bread was somehow unique to Jesus? That is absurd. If you have to share a loaf of bread with others, the logical way is to break bread.
Some interpreters take this to be communion. But there is no mention of wine or of blessing. So this is not communion. In fact, it cannot be communion because Jesus at the Last Supper clearly stated that he would not have communion till he returned. So if this breaking of bread is not communion, how did the disciples recognize him?
The explanation is the simplest one, but it is mundane, probably the reason why we don’t hear of it often. We want esoteric explanations for our faith. But here the explanation is simple.
It is when Jesus broke bread and offered it to them that his sleeves rode up his forearms and they were able to see his wounds. And it was the wounds that told them that this person was Jesus.
Luke tells us this because Jesus’ character is unchanging. He will always be the Lamb who was slain. He will always be recognized by his wounds. Even after this passage, when Jesus enters the room, he shows them his wounds.
In 1 Corinthians, Paul mentions the triad – faith, hope and love. At the risk of being very crude, we could say that faith deals with what happened in the past, love with how we live in the present and hope with what we expect in the future.
Our creeds and our hymns and songs lay heavy emphasis on Jesus’ crucifixion. There is hardly a song we sing that does not mention Jesus’ death. We talk of his obedience, his humility, his sacrifice, his forgiveness, his healing, his love. But when it comes to the future – to what we hope for – it is different.
One person writes, “When Jesus returns to earth, the gloves will be off: no longer will he practice nonviolence or pacifism.” This person, writing about the peace that Jesus will bring says, “there will be peace for the simple reason that there will be nobody left to fight, all opponents having been slaughtered or subdued.”
Another person, writing about Jesus’ reign says, “There will be only ONE RELIGION during the Millennium. Those who refuse to worship Christ will be punished.”
A third writes, “If you were to read Revelation 19 starting with verse 11, you would find that the one who rides the horse is Jesus. Because of His great wrath all the wicked are slain and no one is left on the earth.”
Many more such hopes are there. Jesus, the one who refused to resort to violence in the past, is suddenly transformed to the greatest of warriors in the future.
Scripture surely tells us that Jesus will be victorious. But scripture does not tell us how. It is we humans who try to fill in the gaps by projecting our hopes and dreams. Just as the Jews of Jesus’ day could not see that the minority report had to precede the majority report, so also we today cannot envision Jesus’ victory in a manner that does not include violence.
But Luke tells us that Jesus was known when he broke the bread, when the disciples saw the wounds. Luke is telling us that, as long as we hope for a violent resolution to the problems of the earth, we will not be able to recognize Jesus. As long as we think that Jesus will be victorious by inflicting violence on this world, we will be blind to his ways.
Then we will be like the two disciples – in the presence of Jesus, but unable to recognize it, hearts burning but unable to put a finger on it. And then all we will have will be the words, “We had hoped.”