Christian Counseling Service -- Devotions

The shape of Jesus

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

From Luke 24
On the road to Emmaus Jesus said to his two companions, "O how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

These appearances of Jesus after his resurrection take many shapes, as do those we experience ourselves. This time Jesus is pushing back on ignorance and fear, teaching his friends on the dusty road just how cosmic this moment is in the history of the universe. And of course, they were blown away.

"Were not our hearts burning within us?" they said to each other, returning to Jerusalem with shouting, and laughing, and tears of joy. That time of despair-turned-to-glory on the rocky, crooked highway with Jesus was the high point of their lives. They will never forget.

And of course, all of Jesus' appearances were like that. ARE like that. None of us forget. As the Psalm says and we repeat so easily, "This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it." Oh, yes! That might be every day in the neighborhood, and it is also and especially the day when Jesus comes and puts his hand on my head, and somehow I know he is there.

Thomas Aquinas, who re-discovered Aristotle in the 13th century, is famous for his unfinished Summa Theologiae. On December 6, 1273, after writing constantly for eight years, Aquinas stopped. For the second time in three months, Thomas went into ecstasy and tears before an icon of the crucified Christ. "I can write no more. After what I have seen, everything I ever wrote seems like straw." The appearance of Jesus silenced Aquinas, and in a freak accident he died a few months later.

You might say Jesus came out of the blue and touched Aquinas' mystical self. But in another famous work, Aquinas wrote four volumes persuading non-believers of God's truth, goodness and beauty in the world God made. In Summa contra Gentiles, "the universe comes into its own, no longer just a distraction for the soul, but God's basic means of communication with humanity" (Short History of Christianity, Tomkins, p. 120). In his short fruitful life Thomas met Christ visiting the crossroads of heaven and earth, within and without, in the created world and in his deepest self.

We are dust, and to dust we will return. But we are fearfully and wonderfully made, only "a little lower than the angels." If only we open our eyes, we will see Jesus.

Above me you are beautiful, Lord, and below me you are beautiful. All around me, Lord, you are beautiful, and not only beautiful, but true and good. Your mercy endures forever, and it pours on my head like honey. Even in my brief moment of time you open the windows and doors of your house and invite me to breathe in eternity.

Devotions Archive

The shape of Jesus

Wednesday, April 4, 2018