April 22, 2007 Sermon

Burning Hearts
Luke 24:28-35

The State of California reserves a passing lane on its freeways for carpool vehicles. Only vehicles with two or more passengers may drive in them. Drivers in the state with the nation’s busiest roads covet those lanes. Last year the Department of Motor Vehicles offered permits to drive, alone, in the carpool lane to 85,000 owners of hybrid cars. (That may sound like a lot of permits, but California has an estimated 132 million vehicles.) Hybrid cars use a combination of gasoline and electricity. They take better care of the environment. California decided to promote environmental stewardship with an incentive people would really want.

It worked. In order to drive in the commuter lanes a vehicle must have either more than one rider or a permit sticker on the bumper. The Kelly Blue Book, the “Bible” of car pricing, shows that in California a hybrid car with one of those 85,000 commuter lane permits on its bumper sells for $4,000 more than a hybrid without the sticker. The people of California have decided via the open market that driving in the commuter lane is worth $4,000. Getting places faster excites them that much.

We cannot always predict what will turn a person’s heart—nor to what extent—nor even in what direction. Seek those things that turn your heart to the peace of Christ. Let Christ warm your heart.

We continue today with the story of how Jesus spent Easter evening, the last hours of the day on which he rose from the dead. Last week we read how Jesus joined two men walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus, a village on its outskirts. They did not recognize him. They spoke of how confusing the events of the past several days had been, how this Jesus, whom they had hoped would be the Messiah, had been crucified instead. But that very morning, some women from their group had gone to his tomb and found it empty. A “vision of angels” had told them Jesus had risen from the dead. The men did not know what to do with this information. Jesus had called them foolish and reviewed what the Old Testament—their scripture—had to say about the Messiah.

As we rejoin this story the men still do not know Jesus. The day has ended; they have reached Emmaus. They urge him to spend the night with them. He agrees, and they share the evening meal. We use Luke’s words describing what happens next in our communion liturgy: “As he sat at the table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them.” Luke continues, “And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.” These followers of Jesus finally know him when he reenacts his own death on the cross. He breaks the bread, which he had told his disciples symbolized his body, and they get it.

Jesus vanishes and the men say, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?” These men experienced a powerful inner response when Jesus helped them understand the truth about himself as revealed in the Bible. Their hearts burned because Jesus gave them deeper insight into his own purposes. Then, as he performed the act he had made a sacrament during his Last Supper, as he broke the bread, they finally knew him.

The Presbyterian Church ordains pastors to the ministry of Word and sacrament. We follow the pattern set by Christ, in which he used both word and sacrament, scripture and broken bread, to open his followers’ eyes. If, like me, you feel you need all the spiritual help you can get, you will take this to heart. We need Word (Bible) and sacrament to get our hearts warmed up and drawn closer to Jesus.

Last week we celebrated communion. This week we celebrate baptism, the other sacrament Jesus called into being. Experience these sacraments with head and heart. Use every human faculty to draw from them their full impact. Think about them, by all means. Ponder what Christ has done for us. But do not neglect your emotions. As you taste the goodness of the bread and cup, as you see the love the parents have for their baby, let your heart burn within you. Do not let the other side of the Presbyterian tradition, the cold rationalism, cut you off from your heart. Do not let the questions your head asks about believing in an unseen God cut you off from your heart. Do not let the pain you and others experience in this world cut you off from your heart. In a fallen world, saturated with suffering, we all the help we can get to keep on walking with Jesus. Listen to your burning heart.

On Monday we watched in horror as the events at Virginia Tech unfolded. We now know that one broken, angry young man killed thirty-one students and faculty before committing suicide. We will learn more in the days to come. One incredible story has already come to light. Liviu Librescu, 76, a holocaust survivor, taught engineering science and mathematics at Virginia Tech for 20 years. A Romanian Jew, Librescu spent part of his boyhood in a concentration camp. When World War II ended he stayed in Romania, married, and had children. After living in Israel from 1978 to 1985, the entire family emigrated to Virginia.

On Monday morning, at Norris Hall on the Virginia Tech campus, the gunman chained the door to a classroom and executed the instructor and all but one student in the room, a young man who played dead. Then the gunman removed the chain and started down the hallway. Occupants of other classrooms had heard the gunshots. Some tried to escape through the hall. He shot a number of them. Liviu Librescu stood in the doorway to his classroom, blocking it with his body, and shouted over his shoulder for his students to jump out the window. As they all escaped, the gunman reached the door and shot Librescu repeatedly, killing him. This story comes from emails several students sent to Librescu’s wife, emails that corroborate one another.

So we have a man acquainted with suffering from childhood, a man well beyond retirement age yet still teaching because of his commitment to the role knowledge can play in bettering this fallen world, a man intentionally sacrificing his own life in order to save the younger lives of his students. There is something deeply Christlike in the actions of this Jew. If that does not warm your heart, what can?

Charles Wesley started Methodism when he felt his heart “strangely warmed” by the Holy Spirit. Literally millions have drawn closer to Christ because he paid attention to his heart as he walked through one of the worst neighborhoods of London. The poverty and spiritual emptiness he saw moved him. He “heard” God speaking through his heart and he answered the call.

Agnes Bojaxhiu, an Albanian girl, felt the call of God in her heart at the age of twelve. She waited until she turned 18, joined a convent, and learned how to teach at a Catholic girls’ school. She taught in Calcutta, India for the next 18 years. But the incredible poverty she witnessed outside her school’s walls moved her heart so deeply, she felt called to apply to the Pope to start a whole new order of nuns devoted to ministry to people so horribly diseased nobody else would touch them. Literally. Thus was born The Missionaries of Charity, through whose work the world would come to know its founder, now known as Mother Teresa.

Charles Wesley, Mother Teresa and Liviu Librescu show us how God can work through people whose hearts tell them to take sacrificial, Christlike action. Let your own heart be warmed by their example. Let it come to know Christ through Word (scripture) and sacrament. Come to know the peace of Christ even in the midst of poverty, disease, and school shootings. Minister in the name of Christ through the power of his Spirit, which you can feel in your heart. Respond to the burning God places in you. God will call us all soon to help build our building. You will feel it. Respond. God calls us now to minister to people who will never set foot inside those walls we will raise. You can feel it. Respond. Let us pray.