Latah Valley

Watch Scene 20 of The Prestige

Read Luke 24:13–35

There’s a moment in every magic trick when we think we know.   There’s an instant in the middle of the theatrical production—what magicians refer to, in three acts, as the Pledge, the Turn and the Prestige—when certain, savvy members of the audience think that they’ve spied something.   It could be a trap door in the flooring of the stage, a thin wire that hangs from the rafters… Whatever that ordinary thing is—every illusionist from Houdini to David Copperfield makes his living by concealing that thing, or at least by preventing us from seeing that secret thing or at the very least, by skillfully disguising the technique by which the entertainer does what he or she does.  

 

In other words, magic is nothing more and nothing less than adroit, masterfully choreographed, deception.   And if we think that we’re onto the inner workings of a magic trick, guess what?   The magic is over, and you might as well save your money and skip the performance.

 

Well, believe it or not, I’m wondering this morning if the vast majority of folks in North America don’t have the same posture toward faith in the risen Christ.   I’m wondering if a large percentage of people think they’ve seen something, something that drains all the magic out of church…

 

I had an “Aha!” moment like that when the congregation I attended with my mother invited me to confirm my baptism.   I’m not saying that this church made people disappear or that its pastor pulled rabbits out of his hat.   But in late May of 1978, my older sister and her husband had asked me to go with them to Disney World.   The trip unfortunately would coincide with the Sunday which had been scheduled for confirmation. 

 

So, with the minimal application of the right parental pressure, we moved confirmation up a few weeks, made the caravan trip from Pennsylvania to Florida and convened at Cinderella’s Castle in Magic Kingdom just in time.   Looking back now, that easy maneuvering, that rearrangement of commitments, spoke volumes to me about whose magic had already been figured out and whose hadn’t.   Alice, a fellow ninth grader told me how she envied my trip and how I would miss all those days of school.   And then, just as we entered the sanctuary to answer the traditional questions which are posed to confirmation graduates, she mentioned envying one more thing.   What Alice told me that she envied had been my faith in Jesus; she said that she was just being confirmed because her mother would “die” if she didn’t go through with it.   Alice whispered that atheism actually made more sense to her and that her baptism, as an infant, and her participation in this aspect of worship had all been part of the show.  

 

You see, everyone (I think) has a moment, a moment when we’re tired of pretending, a moment when we’ve seen the man, working the levers behind the curtain or seen the strings attached to the angel’s halo.   Everyone has a moment when the magic goes out of the room.   But what if I were to tell you that Luke 24:31 is not, and cannot be, one of those?   And what if we were to learn together how the “vanishing” of Jesus “out of their sight” is really something more than magic?!!!

 

 

Let me explain the difference.   Magic, as it’s popularly conceived, has pure entertainment value.   People pay good money to see magic because they don’t know and they don’t want to know how a trick happens to be pulled off.   Another more ancient understanding of magic, however, involves the manipulation and control of things, powers and persons so that we get what we want.   Now, in the Harry Potter genre of stories, there are good witches and bad witches.   Good witches want good things.   Bad witch want bad things.   Yet, both kinds of witches cast spells and wave their wands because they themselves want to re-arrange the fundamental elements of the Universe.  

 

By contrast, faith in the resurrected Christ differs from ways of Harry Potter and Houdini in this way:   as soon as we recognize the fullness of Jesus and his ultimate claim upon the world—in that very mysterious moment—he’s gone!    Then you saw him and now you don’t.   In fact, based on the Luke 24 encounter, I would argue that any person who claims to be experiencing Jesus right now—that person—is really only just now able to articulate and to emote what had been experienced seconds, minutes, months, years and decades ago.  

 

 

Douglas Coupland tells about a busload of special needs children who had pulled to the side of a California highway.   They were there, observing a blue heron in the distance as it scavenged for fish.

 

 

Anyway, as Coupland also decided to rest at the edge of these wetlands, another kind of bird—a raptor, some kind of hawk or falcon—also began perform as if on cue.   The mentally handicapped teenagers were totally enthralled, utterly mesmerized, until suddenly the hawkish animal swooped incredibly close.   Coupland describes fiddling with his camera at the time and then, without warning, these sharp talons reach down and rip into the author’s scalp.   His head is bleeding drops of blood when almost immediately the entire crowd of spectators comes to hug him.   The assorted Downs Syndrome and retarded adolescents groan awkward words of compassion and sympathy while one petite girl dabs his had with a tissue.   

 

Now, I’m telling you about this moment because Coupland says that during it, he didn’t know what to think or what to feel.   It was only afterwards in the car, during the rest of his drive, that he began to appreciate the magic.  

 

Then you saw him and now you don’t.   And perhaps when we don’t see Jesus—perhaps in those retrospective moments—the Spirit of Christ helps us to interpret rightly and magically what it is and who it is we are seeing. 

 

Robert C. Roberts, in his book, Spiritual Emotions, defines our feelings as neither arbitrary, nor irrelevant to our rational thought process.  He says they are “concern-based construals.”

 

 

So, for example, when we hear that Cleopas and the other disciple stand still, “looking sad,” in verse 17, it’s clear that they have construed Jesus of Nazareth as a person who has suffered terrible things in Jerusalem, but that they also construe the “Messiah” as someone who does not suffer and does not die.   These travelers construe things, events and persons in this sad way because they are busy trying to fit Jesus into their individual and collective life stories.   And notice how when “Jesus himself” draws near he permits them to feel this way and then proceeds to pick and to claw and to scrape at the false and incomplete way they construe things.   He nudges them with questions, with conversations, with Bible Study, with appearing to be going further and finally with the breaking of the bread.   He engages in all of these ordinary practices, but nothing seems magical until he’s “vanished out of their sight.”

 

I mentioned last week how Latah Valley was going to launch this new and illustrious ministry.   I called Mission Muffin, and it consists of folks like us visiting the House of Charity on Thursday morning and giving away freshly baked, homemade chocolate chip, blueberry and banana nut muffins.   Well, a few days ago, I did just that and if you want to know what it was like, you just have to schedule some time and do it yourself.   You see, in months past I had gone into the chapel and started singing, or I had read the Bible and asked a bunch of questions.   But something nagged at my spirit and I think I found out what it was.   The homeless people outside that enclosed chapel don’t believe in the magic of the resurrected Christ.   They imagine him to be another means of mind control or a way that we might have to keep the rowdy vagrants in line.   But I now know that Jesus show up at the House of Charity.  Suddenly I recognized him as the stubbly bearded guy in the army boots.   And just as soon as I saw him, he smiled and vanished.  

 

And the man at the table told me he’s allergic to banana nut.  

 

Amen.