Luke 24:36-49
It had been a wild ride just since dawn that day. They were
in mourning as the day began. Then they
began to hear the strangest stories, the first from those who had set out to
perform a final act of devotion to honor Jesus.
Now, some of the disciples actually claimed to have seen the risen
Jesus. As the two disciples from Emmaus
were making their report, “suddenly Jesus appeared among them.”
These disciples had heard the reports of the women and the
testimony of those they trusted, like Peter, and now Jesus stood before
them. Instead of immediately rejoicing,
they were frightened. Luke says, “They thought it was
a ghost.”
I’m not sure this passage is endorsing the existence of
ghosts; I suspect it is simply saying this was the first explanation the
disciples imagined. Remember, Jesus took
the disciples by surprise. Encountering
their crucified teacher was the last thing they expected, even though some had
reported seeing him. Nothing here
suggests they were experiencing some kind of collective vision born out of
wishful thinking.
When Jesus appeared to the disciples that Easter, he really
hadn’t
come to eat. He had a lot more on his
mind. Yet, the fact that Jesus ate that
bit of fish is important.
Eating that fish and showing them his wounds was a way of
saying, “Look, guys, you’re not hallucinating.
This is the real deal. I’m back.”
There must have been continuity between the Jesus they had
all known and this Jesus who stood before them.
As they say, he was the same but different. But there was no doubt Jesus was back.
As we listen, we can almost hear Jesus say...
“I’m back; My claims have been confirmed.”
The resurrection verified all he had said about himself.
Paul was speaking of the significance of the resurrection when he wrote the
Romans, [Jesus’] “...unique identity as Son of God was shown by the Spirit
when Jesus was raised from the dead, setting him apart as the Messiah, our
Master.”
Imagine someone trying out for the Reds or the Indians who
was so skinny he might be mistaken for a baseball bat, a fellow whose only
association with steroids was his inhaler.
Now suppose this fellow told the manager that he could consistently hit
the ball into the center field seats. We
could understand if the manager was skeptical and decided to teach the young
fellow a lesson by having him face the team’s best pitcher. So,
the pitcher let him have his very best fast ball, curve ball, and slider. Each time the unknown stranger sends the ball
into the seats. He verified his claims.
A man who made the claims Jesus did would have had to do
more than hit a couple baseballs.
Perhaps he could have done other things to verify his claim to be God in
the flesh, but the resurrection was especially linked to his claim to be able
to forgive our sins. Again, it was Paul
who spoke so directly to this point.
Writing to the Corinthians, who were questioning the resurrection, he
said, “…if
Christ has not risen, your faith is a vain thing—you are still in your sins.”
Because of the resurrection, we may have confidence in Jesus’ claim to be able to
deal with our sins.
“I’m back and Death has been defeated.”
Death has stalked humankind throughout history. Montaigne said it briefly, “All days travel
toward death, the last one reaches it.” Despite the loud
protests that death is just a part of life, most of us sense that death just
isn’t
natural.
Mel Brooks is hardly a theologian but he offers a realistic
view of what we think about death:
Why do we have to die? As a
kid you get nice little white shoes with white laces and a velvet suit with
short pants and a nice collar and you go to college, you meet a nice girl and
get married, work a few years and then you have to die! What is this? They
never wrote that in the contract.
Jesus proved what we long suspected but just weren’t sure about: death
is not the end. Jesus came back to
invite us to share the victory.
Because of Jesus’ victory, we have the strength to bear the loss of a loved
one. Because of Jesus’ victory, we can
hear the physician’s darkest diagnosis.
Because of Jesus’ victory there is hope God can transform our darkest hour.
"I'm back, proving
you can trust God's promises."
For the third time in this chapter, the disciples were
reminded they had missed the signals.
They had seized the promise of the Messiah but had missed the
details. Because of that, they failed to
see the ages old promise was being fulfilled in Jesus, even as he was dying on
the cross.
Now, once again, the Risen Christ was taking them back
through the Scripture to see that nothing of what happened to Him was
unexpected.
On a smaller scale, Jesus' victory over the grave reminds us
we can rely on God's promises. God's
promises of love, grace, forgiveness, help, and strength can be trusted. But there is an important point we shouldn't
miss. We're just as prone as the
disciples to misunderstand those promises.
When we stand on those promises, we better make sure what is being
promised. While God promises grace and
strength, none of those promises say we are immune from trouble. God's people have starved in famines, God's
people have become sick in epidemics, God's people have lost their jobs in hard
times. Yet, God's promise to love us and seek our best has never failed. A chorus says, "The God of the mountain
is still God in the valley...." The
Risen Jesus reminds us of God's trustworthiness.
As Jesus speaks of God fulfilling the ancient promises, he
adds a note that may have surprised the disciples. They were part of the fulfillment.
Jesus said to them, "... repentance
and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem. You are
witnesses of these things." This
leads us to the next truth Jesus underscored when he told the disciples
"I'm back."
“I’m back and I have something for you to do.”
Several times after the resurrection Jesus reminded his
disciples they would be carrying his story to the whole world. It was something they couldn’t keep to
themselves. Jesus’ story would be “…preached in his name
to all nations, starting at Jerusalem.”[1] Luke told the story
of the earliest days of that adventure in the Book of Acts. It only begins to tell of the church's
determination to take the story of Jesus to the whole world.
The reality of the resurrection pushed those story-tellers
into an often hostile world. Easter
gave his people a reason to cross deserts, mountains, and oceans telling his
story.
Within a few decades,
Christianity had spread throughout the Roman world and beyond. They would not promise riches to those who
believed. They would not promise earthly
power. They would not promise a life
without problems. No they would promise
the forgiveness of sins, made possible by God’s own actions on our behalf.
They would make this promise as they told the story of Jesus, a man who
had defeated the power of death.
“I’m back but I’m not staying. And that’s okay because I have a Gift for you.”
Jesus never claimed to be back for good. While scholars may debate whether this
episode is meant to be the prelude to the Ascension or Jesus simply returning
to heaven at the end of the first Easter, it's clear the post-Resurrection
appearances would end. Yet, he said he
never would leave his people on their own, like "orphans," as he says
in John.
They would not have to carry out the work he had given them
in their own strength. He said, “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.” [2] Jesus audience would have recognized what he meant by the
Father’s promise. He was
speaking of the Holy Spirit. In the Old
Testament, the Spirit seemed to come for a specific task and then depart. Yet, the Messianic Age would see the
permanent presence of the Spirit.
The fulfillment of that promise was so crucial that Jesus
told his disciples to “wait” in Jerusalem until the Spirit came on the infant
church. As great as the task was, they
were not to begin until the church had received the Spirit. He gave them a challenging commission--they
needed to get busy--yet Jesus seemed to be saying, “Hurry up and wait.”
The disciples were probably eager to get to work but they
must have known how important Jesus’ Gift was. Do we?
Today, in the American church at least, there’s little real
growth; church attendance has remained the same for decades and may be
declining. There are some churches
reaching new people but they're rare.
Even among the mega-churches, those churches where thousands attend
every weekend, most of the growth is “transfer growth,” in which men and women—families—raised in smaller churches join these large churches because
of the programs they offer.
Of course, smaller churches also benefit from transfer
growth as the disenchanted members of other small churches look for something
more to their liking or newcomers to a community look for churches like those
they left behind.
In both large and small churches there is very little “conversion growth,” growth due to the
conversion of those who have had little or no pervious contact with the
church. The average age for baptism in
the Southern Baptist Convention is very young, suggesting that we’re simply baptizing
those born to families who are already in our ranks.
Yet, outside the West, in the Global South, in sub-Saharan
Africa, and in parts of Asia, the church is growing rapidly. Why?
In each place, the church is utterly dependent upon the Spirit—like the church in
Acts.
Why aren’t we more like the church in the Book of Acts? We can’t claim it was
easier for those early Christians. After
all, their founder had been executed as a criminal, both the secular and
religious authorities opposed them, the culture was filled with competing
religions, some with requirements far less demanding than repentance and
commitment. No, it wasn’t necessarily easier
for those early Christians.
There may be a number of differences between then and now
but one must be the role the Holy Spirit played in the lives of Christians.
The late John Stott wrote about the significance of the
Spirit in the life of the early church:
“Without the Holy Spirit, Christian discipleship would be
inconceivable, even impossible. There
can be no life without the life-giver, no understanding without the Spirit of
truth, no fellowship without the unity of the Spirit, no Christlikeness of
character apart from his fruit and no effective witness without his power. As a body without breath is a corpse, so the
church without the Spirit is dead.[3]
Compare that with a statement by one modern church leader
who commented that the early church needed the Spirit because it did not know
about mass marketing techniques like we do.
Let's be wise and not spurn the Risen Christ's Gift.
CONCLUSION
When Jesus left his disciples, he left them very different
than he had found them three years before.
In fact, he left them very different than they had been only hours
before.
He left them with a confirmed faith. He was who he said he was.
He left them with a wondrous Gift. If this Gift were fully appreciated, they
would have a unity, an integrity, and a power that would cause the world to
wonder.
He left them with a great task. They had a reason for being.
He left them with a reborn hope. They knew that one day the Jesus who had left
them would come once again to say, "I'm back."
[1] The Holy Bible : New Century Version , Containing the Old and New
Testaments. Dallas, TX : Word Bibles, 1991, S. Lk 24:47
[2] The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Lk 24:49).
Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
[3] John Stott, The Spirit, the Church, and the World:
The Message of Acts, Downers
Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990, p. 60.
