Lydford Parish and Community Magazine
April 2012
A Brazilian businessman Alvaro Weyne had £10,000 in cash and cheques and decided that the safest place to hide it would be in his office waste bin, because no one would think of looking in there. He was right. While he was away from his desk the cleaner came in and emptied the bin without giving it a second glance.
Life is like that sometimes, isn't it? You think you've got something precious and all of a sudden it's gone. But life is not always like that, as Enrico, a Brazilian pauper, discovered. One day, Enrico, scavenging a city rubbish tip, picked up a small plastic bin-liner from the top of the new pile of refuse which had just been dumped. He opened it up, and to his great surprise and joy, there inside it was £10,000! He ran home to his wife and family, bought them all new clothes, had a celebration meal and put down a deposit on a house away from the slums.
Sometimes life can do things like that to you. You think that life has given you little, that you've got nothing precious at all, that the good things you once had are lost, and suddenly, without any warning, you are surprised by joy.
I love the story of the two disciples on the Emmaus Road. It's the story of two people who are suddenly surprised by joy. At the start of the story they are two men defeated - they thought they had something precious, and all of a sudden it was gone. All they had with Jesus, all the warmth and wonder they'd shared with him and the others, had been taken away by the brutal forces of government and military, who had killed him as an agitator, an enemy of the state.
By the end of the story they were two men exploding with warmth and wonder again, realising that the stranger they had been sharing their troubles with, the guest at their table, had been Jesus himself. They recognised him in the breaking of the bread. As the crumbs fell to the table, they were surprised by joy:
Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight [writes Luke]. They said to each other, Were not our hearts burning within us whilst he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?
This resurrection story shows us that Jesus is a God who wants to surprise us with joy.
That expression, Surprised by Joy, was coined by the 20th-century Christian writer C.S. Lewis. He made it the title of his autobiography, where he talks about his early days as an athiest, someone who disbelieved in God and went out of his way to avoid God. But, looking back, he knew God was after him. Gradually he came to admit that God was God, and knelt and prayed: he said that "perhaps, that night, [he was] the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." He began to attend church and to read the gospels. They started to make sense to him. Lewis had acknowledged God; now God was after him to acknowledge his son. The subject was on Lewis's mind constantly.
In a now famous passage of Surprised by Joy, Lewis related his final step into real joy: "I know very well when, but hardly how, the final step was taken. I was driven to Whipsnade one sunny morning. When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did."
The journey to Whipsnade Zoo was Lewis's Emmaus Road. It tells us that Emmaus Road experiences still happen in our day. They might happen to us.
Writer Terry Lindvall says that ‘C.S. Lewis was drawn into the kingdom of God by joy - by a taste of this blessed fruit and divine gift. Joy was the divine carrot that persuaded such a self-proclaimed donkey as Lewis to plod down the road toward Jerusalem. It was the soft, disturbing kiss of God that unmade all of Lewis's world. Joy compelled Lewis toward the resurrection laughter of Easter.’
I wonder if you are on the way to an Emmaus experience? Of course, you won't know if you are, that would be impossible - you couldn't be surprised if you did. But these stories tell us that Jesus brings joy to those who set themselves out on journeys. Who are making their way to Emmaus. Or Whipsnade Zoo. We don't know what joyful surprises Jesus has in store for us. But we can expect joyful surprises if we are on the way.
Remember that the first followers of Jesus were not called Christians. They were called the People of the Way. Jesus had said, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Now, if you are on the way then you're on a journey. And if you are in The Way of Jesus then as you travel through life then you are on a resurrection road, in the company of a God who always wants to surprise you with joy.
NOTE
This article is based substantially on a sermon preached in Liverpool in 2005.
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