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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
In today’s Gospel Reading there seems to be some question whether or not Jesus was indeed risen (Luke 24:34). Especially in the Reading’s first half, the resurrected Jesus emphasized for His disciples both His identity and His physical reality (Marshall, 900; Arndt, 494). Jesus’s disciples’ reactions to His resurrection seem to run the gamut: startled and frightened; troubled and doubting; disbelieving, rejoicing, and marveling. Certainly you and I can relate to their reactions, as we think about Jesus’s resurrection, what it means for our loved ones and for us ourselves. This morning we consider especially the first half of today’s Gospel Reading, and we do so under the theme “Resurrection Reactions”.
The disciples had been talking about all the events of Easter Day, especially what happened with two of them on the road to Emmaus, and how Jesus was known to them in the breaking of the bread (Luke 24:13-35). Then, as we heard the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke describe, Jesus Himself stood among them. As if Jesus’s appearance was not enough, He commands them to see with their mind’s eye from His hands and feet that it was He Himself, and He commands them to touch Him and see with their mind’s eye from His flesh and bones that He was not a spirit (or “ghost”), as they apparently superstitiously thought (Roehrs-Franzmann, 82), but that He was indeed physically present.
When Jesus Himself stood among them, He greeted them with “Peace”, but they had anything but peace! Startled and frightened, they were thinking that they saw a ghost, similar to their reaction when they saw Jesus walking on the sea (Matthew 14:26). And, similar to Jesus’s response in that case (Matthew 14:27), only more emphatically in this case, He pointed to His identity as God, but only after first confronting them over their being troubled and having doubts arise in their hearts (or “minds” [Marshall, 902]). In keeping with Simeon’s prophecy to the Virgin Mary (Luke 2:35; confer Just, 1038), Jesus revealed the apparently unspoken thoughts of the disciples’ hearts (or “minds”), which minds certainly were known not to reason well (Luke 9:47).
Left to our own devices, we certainly do not reason any better, for we share the same fallen nature as Jesus’s disciples. Even with our sanctified natures, too often we are as they were: startled and frightened, troubled and doubting. Secular superstition can plague us, and doubts can not only arise in our hearts or minds but also torture us, as if our sinful and redeemed natures were having an argument—even a formal philosophical disputation—within us. We may fail to recall Jesus’s victory over death, and we may fail to appreciate fully what His victory over death means for our loved ones and for us ourselves. Surely we sin in these and in countless other ways, and for any such sin we deserve nothing but present and eternal punishment—death here in time, and torment in hell for eternity.
As God through Peter in today’s First Reading (Acts 3:11-21) called the people astounded over the miraculous healing of the lame beggar to repent of their sin and turn again to God that their sins may be blotted out, so God through His Word calls us to repent of our sin and turn again to God that our sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. God enables us to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust Him to forgive our sin, and to want to do better than to keep on sinning. When we so repent, then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
God’s eternal Son, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, became flesh and bone in the womb of the Virgin Mary as the man Jesus, for us and for our salvation. As Peter’s “sermon” in the First Reading described, the Jews had delivered over and essentially killed Jesus, but it was for your sin and mine that Jesus was willing to go to the cross. Jesus lived the perfect life that we fail to live, and His death on the cross paid for our failure to live it. God the Father’s accepting Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf was clear in His resurrection, of which Peter and the others were empowered witnesses. Jesus’s death reconciled us to God, made peace between Him and us, transforming the common greeting of “Peace to you” to a life-giving proclamation: “Peace to you”. By faith in Jesus, we receive far more than the temporary physical healing that the lame beggar experienced, by grace through faith in Jesus, we receive the forgiveness of sins, and so we also receive eternal life and salvation.
In the Gospel Reading, Jesus went on to open His disciples’ minds to understand—and no doubt also their hearts to trust—the Scriptures. Overcoming their faulty reasoning, Jesus enabled them to believe and so be forgiven, as He enables us to believe and so be forgiven, overcoming our faulty reasoning, through His means of grace, His Word in all of its forms. We hear His Word of those who looked upon and touched Him with their hands read (1 John 1:1), and repentance and forgiveness of sins is preached. At the Font, the Word and water splash us in Holy Baptism, and we are made children of God, as today’s Epistle Reading described (1 John 3:1-7), experiencing for ourselves the kind of love the Father has given us. Privately confessing the sins we know and feel in our hearts, we seek out and receive Holy Absolution, having our pastor uniquely apply Jesus’s resurrection and its peace to us as individuals. And, at the table that is this Rail, in the Sacrament of the Altar, we eat bread that is the Body of Christ, and we drink wine that is the Blood of Christ. As Peter said in the First Reading, heaven did receive Jesus, but Jesus is not confined to heaven, and so He can be and is truly, physically present here, in the same supernatural way that He came and went from among the disciples in the days between His resurrection and ascension (Luke 24:31).
Even after Jesus emphasized for His disciples both His identity and His physical reality, they were still disbelieving, especially of His words, for joy and marveling (confer Acts 12:14). Apparently, Jesus’s resurrection at first seemed to them too good to be true, perhaps the way that we might hesitate to believe extraordinarily good news (Arndt, 475), and perhaps also as we might hesitate to believe extraordinarily bad news. But, while they were still disbelieving for joy and marveling, Jesus asked for, took, and ate a piece of broiled fish—something spirits (or “ghosts”) were not thought to be able to do. The Lord Jesus helped His disciples’ unbelief, and the Lord Jesus helps our unbelief, too (Mark 9:24). With daily repentance, we live in God’s forgiveness for such sins as our being startled and frightened; troubled and doubting; and disbelieving. And, by such forgiveness, He enables us to rejoice and marvel already now, until He fully grants us perpetual gladness and eternal joys.
Such are our “Resurrection Reactions”. Jesus rose, and we will, too. As we remain repentant, we can be sure that God will raise us to eternal life, with glorified bodies free from the suffering of this world, to spend eternity in His Presence, with all those who have gone before us and who will come after us in the faith. What St. John said in the Epistle Reading is true, that exactly what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him. Elsewhere St. Paul calls “foolish” questions about the kind of body with which the dead are raised (1 Corinthians 15:35), but with St. Paul we give thanks to God, Who gives us the victory over sin and death, through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57).
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +