Gentle Reader,
I had some time for writing this week, but needed to give it over to working on writing a couple of essays for a doctoral program application. So here is the final of three sermons from Luke 24 that I had the privilege of preaching. May the Lord grace you with a special sense of God’s love today.
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I told you last week that I love stories. With his permission, I’d like to tell a little story about Chris and I. We’d been married for, I don’t know, maybe three days when this happened. Setting up house in a converted garage apartment rather than going on a honeymoon because we had nothing. Chris was busy doing something, I honestly don’t remember what, while I was emptying the garbage can. I neglected to put a new bag in said can. When Chris discovered this, his response was to tell me that I had no respect for him. I am positive that I looked at him for a long moment and then asked, “What are you talking about?”
This obviously devolved into the first meaningless argument of our marriage. Of course I respect Chris! As he does me. We weren’t actually arguing about that, or about the garbage can. We were simply caught in that adjustment period when you have to figure out how to live with this other human being, an idea that seemed romantic but then, you know, reality hits and someone is leaving their socks on the kitchen table…Chris…and someone else can’t function when anything out of place…me…and you’re sharing four hundred fifty square feet…and your parents tell you there’s no take backs.
We laugh about this now. We are both oldest children, and so we are both always right. We bicker. But one of us usually pauses and asks some version of the question, “Is this a garbage can fight?” And we move on. Nearly eighteen years and some actual trouble and suffering later, we know how important it is to let those small things go. To really not make Mt. Everest out of a pair of socks. Lest you think we’re marriage experts, we’re not always successful at letting those small things go. But God is faithful to us. Faithful to chip away at the rough edges each of us has. To help us see each other as God sees us.
Neither Chris nor I gives marriage advice because we believe you’ve got to be in the thirty-plus years together range before you’ve got much to say, but we can tell you that marriage – just like parenting, just like friendship, just like being with coworkers, just like being part of a church family, just like any kind of relationship – it’s only successful when it’s understood as a continuing journey of learning to place ourselves and our story within the context of the story God is writing. And the great thing about the story that God is writing, is that while none of us is the main character, each of us has a place in the plotline.
Last week we began to consider the ways in which the very first believers discovered that their stories only make sense within the bounds of God’s story. We met Cleo and Bob on their walk to Emmaus, and eavesdropped on their unexpected conversation with the Risen Christ. He kindly, lovingly, and with a little humor, takes the time to help them make connections, to help them understand just exactly what the events of the previous holy week mean. We saw how the resurrection of Jesus is the central event that places Cleo and Bob in a position to be challenged, changed, and consumed by a new narrative. So it is the same for their friends, huddled together in a room somewhere in Jerusalem. As we continue on today in discovering what it meant for these first believers to come to grips with the fact that they are resurrection people, we will find that God will challenge and invite us to let go of other stories and to give ourselves over to the story God is writing.
We are back in Luke 24 today. As you find the passage, I want to encourage you to really just dig in. Oftentimes when we read Scripture, we can kind of read in this flat, or unimaginative way. Just concerned with the facts. And the facts do matter, but these are real people here. This is the Real God. This is a real event. So place yourself in this scene. What are you hearing? What are you smelling? What are you seeing? What emotions stir in your heart?
Hear the word of the Lord.
While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”
– Luke 24:36-49 (NRSV)
This the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
We pick up right where we left last week. “While they” – Cleo and Bob – “were talking about this” – their encounter with the Risen Christ – the Risen Christ appears in the room. And I really mean “appears.” In John 20:19 we read that the doors leading into this room are closed. I would completely freak out. I’m sitting there with my friends, having a conversation and bam – Jesus. If you tell me that you wouldn’t freak out – you liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie. This is wild. Nobody has ever done this!
The disciples encounter the real Jesus Christ in a way and in a place that they do not expect to see him, just like last week. There is noise, chaos, in this room.
That’s why Jesus’ first word to them is “peace.” They don’t expect God to come to them in this way. We don’t always expect God to interact with us in the ways God does. But there’s nothing to be afraid of when we are in the presence of God. It might be wild, like this. But we don’t have to cower in a corner. Remember, to fear God isn’t to be scared of God. It’s to respond to God with respect, reverence, and awe. It’s to love God wholeheartedly and wholemindedley and wholelifedly.
This peaceful greeting doesn’t completely get them off of the freaked out track, though. “They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” Which is interesting. It’s reasonable that they don’t expect Jesus to just appear in a closed-door room, but they’ve been told, at this point a few times, that Jesus is alive. So why are they about to call in the Ghostbusters? Why do they continue to not get it?
Because they’re human. And they need God’s help. I honestly think it’s that simple. They, like can we be, are slow learners when it comes to things that matter most. They, like we, need God to come and turn on the mind and heart light. And so again I am amazed at the grace and patience of Christ. He invites them to examine his body. To look at the holes in his wrists and his feet. (Hold onto the fact that Jesus does this for them, because our friend Kenn Longson will share more thoughts on this next week when we meet a disciple who misses this whole thing – a disciple we often misjudge). As we saw with Cleo and Bob, Jesus wants them to understand. He meets them where they’re at – in this case, quite literally – and gives them what they need.
Let’s just sit with what it is that they need for a moment. Jesus invites them to examine his body. This means he has a body to examine. This might seem real simple and obvious, but just stay with me. He’s got skin. He’s got bones. Teeth and eyes and ears and leg hair. And when they are still freaked out, when they still don’t get it, he asks for a snack. Because ghosts don’t eat. This is a physical resurrection, not just a visionary experience that his grieving friends are having.
You may notice that this is something I continue to highlight. Jesus has a body. Had a body then, has a body now. This matters. If there is no body, if this is a ghost or a hallucination, then Jesus is not Lord and we remain hopeless. Our faith hinges on this. I cannot overemphasize this. Without the actual death and the actual resurrection of Jesus, there is no salvation for us. I nudged you to look at 1 Corinthians 15 last week, because it’s a chapter that lays it all out. This week I nudge you to look at Romans 4 and 5 for added context and information. Creation is physical. We are physical. God made the physical. God redeems and restores the physical. We do not have permission to value the spiritual over the physical. We recognize the interconnectedness of our body, mind, and soul as God’s brilliant design. We remember that what God made is good, and not something from which we seek to escape.
Jesus lived the holy life of love that we would not choose to live and could not choose to live in our own strength and is our model of what it is to be truly, freely human. Jesus shows us how and who we can be by his grace. Jesus died a death that he did not deserve because he chose to be the once, for all sacrifice for us, in order that we might become those people, by his grace. Jesus’ resurrection is the eternal signal that sin and death, that which distorts what God created, has been defeated. The physical world that God made, including our bodies, will be renewed. We’re not going to become funky spirits floating around on clouds when we enter eternity. God made us human, and we will remain human, but instead of brokenness and disease we will have wholeness. Jesus is the First Person, Only Enabler, and the Great Evidence of that promised renewal.
There’s about a thousand weeks of sermons here on the physical, literal resurrection and why it matters. There are hundreds of theological books written on this topic. We have barely scratched the surface. In fact we haven’t even scratched it all. So for now, we simply trust that this is the way God intends for it to be. Because, as you’ve heard me say and as I continually learn, God is God and we are not.
Jesus emphasizes this relational, organizational fact by doing for the group in the room what he did for Cleo and Bob. “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.” Only God can do that. Only people who honestly seek God, by the grace of God, will discover truth. Again, Jesus wants them, and wants us, to understand. It’s their joy, and our joy, to keep learning and growing together. By the presence and guidance of the Spirit, what has been hidden or misunderstood becomes clear as mind-and-heart darkness is swept away in both a moment and across a lifetime.
And then they, and we, get to do something with all of this learning. We’re not just gathering facts. We are being transformed, and transformed for a purpose. To be and to do something new. To be witnesses. The language here is judicial. When Jesus is using a courtroom term; someone giving testimony in a trial setting. They will be witnesses in the court of public opinion. As are we. People who don’t know Christ have every right to ask questions of us, and not only the informational kind. Those on the “outside,” so to speak, have every right to expect that our talk and our walk be aligned. That when we say, “Jesus lives and lives in me,” that that actually makes a difference. That we aren’t like everyone else in the way we conduct business, use social media, approach the issues of the day, or in how we treat each other. They have every right. We make significant, earth-turning claims and there has to be evidence of the presence of Christ within us. We call that holiness.
Holiness isn’t about sticking to the right side of the rules list. It’s not about what you wear, what you eat, what you drink. Holiness is about fully surrendering to God.
And it was at this point that I got stuck as I worked on this sermon. I wasn’t sure what the bridge was to get from here to there, to link the beginning to the end.
This didn’t fully come together for me until I drove home from district assembly a couple days ago. I found myself praying for all of us here, and just thanking God for each one of you. And I literally felt an ache in my chest, what I can only describe as an expansion of my heart, like the Grinch on Christmas Day, and I experienced just a drop of the great, everlasting affection God has for you. You are so loved. And because you, because we, are so loved, because we are aware of the greatness of God, of the majestic mercy of God – we have got to remember that it’s not about us. We’ve got to repent of the times when we make it about us. This passage is not ultimately about the disciples. They are not the main character. This is about Jesus Christ.
We cannot put ourselves in the title role. And that’s a struggle! We slip so easily into it. And then because we’ve got the positions wrong, we give precious minutes to complaining about this or that thing that doesn’t really matter. Grumbling when things aren’t exactly as we want them – because we’re in charge. Others should surrender to us. Because it’s about us. Right?
Let’s remember today that it’s about God. It’s about surrendering to God. Each of us is going to do that a little differently and that’s okay! Beautiful, even. If we learn to really embrace that truth within this congregation, we will be set free of the burden of being stressed out or upset when things aren’t done exactly the way that we would do them or prefer them, because we’ll see that the other person or people loves God and is doing their best to honor God. And that’s what matters. That’s what matters.
We must also learn to really embrace this truth without this congregation, when we go through those doors and back out in the world that God loves so dearly. Surrender to God does not only happen here on Sunday. Worship is not just music. It’s not just the sermon. In fact, worship neither begins nor ends here. God is to be at the center of every moment of our lives. We are to be motivated by the extreme grace and love of God. We get to go out there into the community and share the truth and forgiveness of Christ with everyone in our words and in our actions. We don’t go as judges or attorneys sent out to prosecute the world. We don’t expect people who don’t know Jesus to live like they do. We don’t grab a megaphone and start sharing our own weird opinions about life, the universe, and everything. We don’t box Jesus into a few hours on Sunday morning. Jesus gets every single moment of every single day. We get to be conduits of the unending love of God.
If these first believers stayed in the doubt and the unbelief, if they remained wrapped up in their own opinions and preferences, then they’ve missed it. God didn’t want that for them. God doesn’t want that for us. God doesn’t want us to stay caught up in distractions or divisions, but instead wants each of us individually and us as a congregation to be caught up by Christ. By the story of redemption.
It’s hard to make that shift. It’s hard to set down our personal megaphones and pick up the one that amplifies the Gospel. But as God helped these first believers, God helps us. We don’t have to try and do this in our own strength or power. Jesus says, “I am sending upon you what my Father promised.” And I’m going to leave that as a little teaser. Little sneak peek. What did the Father promise? What is Jesus sending? A lot of you probably know the answer, but we’re just gonna leave it hanging today.
God, the Main Character, aids these first resurrection people in shifting beyond their silly garbage can fights and their disbelief, in flipping from a chapter of confusion into one of clarity. One of mission. One in which their new identities will build until the change in them is too blatant to miss. They are free to live with God, and to live as God wants them to live. They have peace not because their circumstances are ideal, not because they have dominance over their culture, but because Christ is risen. Present. Because they surrender to God.
We have peace only when we surrender. We are separated from the people sitting in this Jerusalem room by centuries, cultures, and languages, but our hearts need calming just as theirs did. Our minds need focusing illumination just as theirs did. Our mission is the same as theirs. The calm and the focus and the mission come only through surrender to Jesus Christ. We find our identity only in Jesus Christ.
We are not the Main Character. We are resurrection people. We can never be the same again.
I end by asking the same questions I asked last week: What chapters does God want us individually and us as a church to move on from? What does it look like for us to be resurrection people? Take those questions to God in prayer. If God asks you to let go of something today – do it. Trust that God is good and God will never ask anything un-good of you.
GRACE AND PEACE ALONG THE WAY,
MARIE
Image Courtesy of Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov