February 19 Sermon

Luke 24:36-53

Jesus Appears to His Disciples

 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. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, 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.’

The Ascension of Jesus

 Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

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We're going to begin with one of those logic puzzles that you probably haven't done since you took the SAT.

Everyone knows that zombies love to eat what?

And in today's story, Jesus eats what?

Therefore, we can state that Jesus is not a zombie.

Now, this may sound silly, but part of the mission of the early church including convincing the world that Jesus Christ was not a zombie or a ghost, some figment of overactive imaginations that had returned from the grave to haunt them. We're so used to it today—we say that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. But when we stop to think about it—it's not exactly an easy claim for people to believe. And I doubt that it's easier to have someone believe it today than it was two thousand years ago. I have no doubt that many in the early church were simply discounted as crazy. Peter himself was accused of being drunk with wine on Pentecost. Why? Well, he was merely trying to convince a crowd that the Savior of all humanity, the one who was crucified on a cross, had risen from the dead.

Put yourself in the shoes of the disciples—you've watched Jesus be crucified. You're certain that he is dead. The Romans were not amateurs at crucifying someone. They had earned their masters' degree in killing their enemies, and they go extra credit for added brutality. There is no doubt that Jesus was dead.

These same men and women, the ones who watched Jesus die, were now standing in a room with the man. You'd think you were crazy, too. You'd think he was a ghost, come back to haunt you. You'd probably think anything except the truth—that he was raised from the dead.

But raised he was—he even asks for, and eats in their presence, some boiled fish, in the hopes that it will convince them that he is truly alive. The disciples, seeing him in the flesh, are able to be convinced. But then they are charged with going forth and convincing others that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and that he was raised from the dead. No easy task—if he is a ghost, or a zombie, or an imagination based on too much wine, then all of Christianity falls with that truth. If he's just a ghost, we believe in vain—for if there is no hope for life beyond death, if God is not stronger than death, than our faith is worth nothing.

But if Jesus Christ is who he says he is, and if he is raised like he proved to the disciples, than everything changes. For then death and sin have been defeated, and he is the Lord of life, and of life everlasting, and all who believe in him will have life in his name. Now that's something worth believing in, right?

But first he has to prove he is alive, and that he has defeated death. That is the purpose of the first half of this passage.

Having done that, he moves on to the next step—telling the disciples how they are to live.

These instructions are for us, too. Think about it for a moment—it's the only thing left, to tell us how to live, because we have nothing else left for us but life. We have no need to fear death—it has been defeated. Whatever fear we may have in our life is destroyed by the resurrection—we still hold on to some of it, but not because we need it—rather simply because we aren't quite able to wrap our minds about the truth of the resurrection for us today. The simple truth is that our resurrection life has already started—this life is our warm-up, the first round, for what is to come in eternal life. We aren't just waiting for the resurrection—rather, we're living so that we'll be prepared for the resurrection. The beauty and love and joy that you have in this life, in small and big portions, are hints of what is to come—they reveal God to us. It's why we're called to spread love and beauty and truth in this life—we don't have to resist them, but rather we celebrate them, because they're gifts of God. They are signs of life, and they are everywhere, and we are called to celebrate and embrace them, because they're all practice for eternal life. Death is defeated—we need not fear death, because it is gone. All that is left is life.

So Jesus tells us how to live.

And he gives us a pattern, a rhythm. He doesn't tell us exactly what to do on Sunday or Tuesday, he doesn't tell us what to say or where to go, but he gives us a pattern that we are called to model our life after. It's a simple, two step pattern, and if we live each and every day following this pattern, we'll be drawn closer to God and to the abundant life God has prepared for us.

Step 1: Verse 45—open your minds to the Scriptures. Grow in faith. Learn about God. Be led by the Holy Spirit as it says in verse 49.

Step 2: Verse 47—proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins, in word and deed. Proclaim Christ, constantly.

Step 3: Repeat.

This is the pattern of the Christian life. It's who we are as Presbyterians. Christ give us this simple gift and assures us that if we establish this pattern in our lives, we will grow as disciples.

When we talk about the growth aspect of it, we're talking about a lifetime's worth of work and investment into spiritual growth. We never stop growing. I'd like to say that there is some shortcut, some sort of workaround where we can get to where we need to be and finish growing—but there isn't. This is simply about establishing a rhythm in your life—it's about recognizing that you're never finished, and committing yourself to a lifestyle of habits that will help you grow spiritually. There is no substitute for putting in the time that it takes to grow in faith—we have to commit to spending time in prayer, in study, in reflection. It's the first stage of our faith, and if we shortcut this part, we don't get to reap the full rewards of the second half. We wait first. We grow first—and we do it waiting on the presence of the Holy Spirit. In our spiritual growth, we learn about God, and we learn about ourselves in relation to God. The Holy Spirit opens windows for us—but it's our responsibility to look through them and see what God has in store for us.

After we have invested ourselves in spiritual growth, then God leads us out into the world. We pray, we grow spiritually, and then we are led outward. If all we're doing is worshiping and fellowshipping together, we're missing half of the Christian life. We're not balancing ourselves. Christ instructs us to grow spiritually, and that should naturally lead us out into the world. The more we learn about God, the more we recognize that God is a God who is always reaching out. This should lead us to reach out, too. We should go out and proclaim God's name, his love, his grace. The more we grow, the more motivated we are to reach out. The more we reach out, the more we realize how much growth we still have to do. But our worship should lead us out into the world, to engage with our neighbors and those in need, so that our lives are about proclaiming Christ in all we do. As Christians, it is crucial that we engage in mission work in the world, telling the Good News in word and deed.

It's the rhythm of the Christian life. It's how Christ instructs the disciples, and it's how he instructs us. He will always be with us, he promises, but we are called to offer our lives back to him.

Let us pray