BEING OPEN TO THE LIVING WORD
Luke 24: 36b-48
April 14, 2024
Back in the day, my home church made a commitment to try to get over half of the congregation biblically literate. So they launched the Bethel Bible Series. It was a two-year commitment on a Wednesday evening, one year was Old Testament and the second year was the New Testament. I was in college at the time and because I was in college and working part time, I opted to go to class, but not do the “homework”. The first time around, I audited the class sort to speak.
One Wednesday evening Betty called on me to read Psalm 137. I had seen the movie Godspell and loved it. As I began reading the words, “On the willows there we hung up our harps. For there our captors asked us for songs, and our tormentors asked for mirth, saying, ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’” I stopped cold. All I could hear in my head was the lyrics to the song, “On the Willows” from Godspell. At that moment, scripture came alive for me. Those words touched me and had new meaning within the context of scripture.
To understand the post-Easter stories, we have to go back to the Thursday and Friday texts of Holy Week. The friends, family, and followers of Jesus had experienced a tragic change in their lives. Jesus had been betrayed by Judas, one of his disciples. He was arrested, beaten, sentenced to death, and crucified. This was all very public and witnessed by many. After he died, Joseph of Arimathea had taken Jesus’ body and had laid it in a rock-hewn tomb. This was also verified by reputable women who had followed Jesus with the twelve disciples. Without their rabbi, friend, and leader, the remaining disciples, family, and friends of Jesus were thrown into a state of transition. They were grieving, confused, and afraid.
Before they really had a chance to catch their breath or gather their thoughts, God intervened, and another drastic change took place.
In Luke’s version of the resurrection story, the women gathered again after the sabbath to go to the tomb and anoint Jesus’ body with spices. As in Mark’s story, the stone was rolled away. When the women went into the tomb, they did not find Jesus’ body. Instead, they encountered two men in dazzling clothes who told them Jesus had risen. These men also recalled the words Jesus had told them previously. Hearing Jesus’ words reinterrogated to them and remembering when Jesus had first spoken them, Jesus’ words came alive to the women. They had new meaning. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women ran to tell the eleven and the rest, but their words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.
Also, on the morning of the third day, two followers were leaving Jerusalem and walking toward the village of Emmaus. A stranger joined them, and they conversed about all that had taken place in Jerusalem regarding Jesus of Nazareth. As they walked along, they told the stranger how the women had gone to the tomb that very morning to find the stone rolled away and the tomb empty, but they had also seen two men in dazzling white that told them Jesus was alive. The two men told the stranger that some had gone to the tomb and found it just as the women had said. In response, the stranger, who was Jesus, interpreted to them the things about himself in the scriptures.
As it was getting near evening and it was not safe for anyone to walk the roads alone, they invited the stranger to stay with them. While sitting at table together, the stranger took bread, blessed it, and broke it and gave it to them and their eyes were opened and they recognized Jesus in their midst. They looked at each other and said, “Were our hearts not burning when he was opening the scriptures up to us?” At that moment, the scriptures came alive to them; the scriptures took on flesh and had new meaning. Like the women, the two men, returned to Jerusalem to tell the eleven and the others that the Lord has risen.
As we begin our text for today, the good news of the resurrection for the disciples had only come from statements from others, credible others, but none of them were one of the eleven. What were they to make of it all? It was these things they were discussing when Jesus suddenly stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Scripture records, “They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” The next line always jumps out at me. “He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?’” I just really want to shout out loud, “Really Jesus? Why do you think?”
The eleven disciples had every reason to be afraid. Because they were followers of Jesus, the eleven were fearful of facing imprisonment or worse from the authorities. They were fearful because what they were seeing and being told was not making any sense to them. They were fearful because they were not sure what they should do next, stand firm, run away, or hide out until things calmed down. They were fearful because who comes back from the dead, right?
The Lord gives us what we need when we need it. What they needed was reassurance. Jesus first showed them his hands and feet. Jesus even invited them to take a closer look. “Touch me and see, for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” For all their joy, they were still disbelieving and wondering, but what Jesus did next was ingenious. He asked for something to eat and ate a piece of fish in their presence. That probably lowered the tension in the room a lot. 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.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, 46 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 47 and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
Slowly, things began to make sense to the eleven. All those scriptures that they had learned and recited from when they were young took on new meaning. They now saw things in a new way; they even began to see themselves in a new way. They were no longer followers of Jesus; they were witnesses to what God had done in Jesus. New understanding, new life, new purpose, that’s resurrection.
What I learned in seminary is still the way I put together a worship service all these twenty-six years later. It all begins with the reading of the assigned scriptures for the week and allowing myself to be open to what they have to say. Sometimes I start out in one direction, as I did with this sermon, and find that I have to start over in a new direction. Scripture dictates and frames what is said in every worship service. It is scriptures’ witness that Christ is risen. So, if Jesus is risen, then the words that have been written about him and the parables and stories he told are also alive and relevant to those who read them in every generation. The old words are the new words. The Good News remains constant.
The testimony of scripture on this third Sunday of Easter is still, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!” While we were not there, we have the faithful witness accounts of those who were. We also have the meal through which Cleopas and his companion recognized the risen Christ when they were at table together. Today, we too will break bread and share the cup together. It is Christ’s promise that where two or three are gathered in his name, the risen Christ will be in the midst of us. May we open ourselves up to the words of our liturgy, our hymns, our scripture, and our communion invitation, and may God breathe resurrection and new life into us through them.
On this communion Sunday, I leave us with the 4th verse from Brian Wren’s hymn, “I Come with Joy.” And thus we meet and better know the Presence, ever near, And join our hearts and sing with joy that Christ is risen here, that Christ is risen here. Amen. ( CCLI# 991857)