TITLE: “The Divine MUST”

In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.  Our text for this morning is from the Gospel lesson just read, Luke 24.  The theme for this sermon is “The Divine MUST.”

Jesus’ disciples are afraid.  They are afraid that Jesus has not risen from the dead.  They are afraid that He is still in the grave, and that they have wasted the last three years of their lives.  Indeed, they are afraid that they got it all wrong!  So they are cowering and wondering, what will be next?  Where do we go with our lives?  What is to happen to us, now that our hope is gone?

We can understand that fear.  That fear comes right up to you in the face of death and disease.  That fear grips you when you don’t know what to do, when you don’t know which way to turn in your life.  We have all been there.  Everything seems to be moving along in life, and then something happens that shakes you up, and it forces you to ask some hard, painful questions.  How can God let this happen?  How can He let them die?  How can He let this happen to me, or to my friends or relatives?  It’s not fair!  And that fear, that doubt is what Satan will use to get at you.  Make no mistake about it.  Satan wants to use your doubts and fears to drive you away from our Lord and His Word and Sacraments.  How many people do you know who have forsaken the faith because something bad happened to them?  There are people here in our midst at Messiah that never darken that door because something terrible happened to them, and they just couldn’t take it.  They couldn’t handle the doubt and the fear.  Satan is working on them to drive them away from Jesus.  That doubt is eating at them, and perhaps it eats at you sometimes.  Oh yes, we can understand this fear that the disciples had.

Then Jesus appears in their midst and says, Peace be to you.  We heard something like this from the Gospel of John last week.  Jesus gives them peace in the midst of doubt and fear.  He wants to bring their doubting hearts back to Him, but they are still afraid.  Jesus wants to give them the peace which only He can give.  Jesus wants to give them the peace of knowing that He is risen from the dead.

But what do they believe?  Think back to the text.  They believe that they have seen a spirit, an apparition.  Now that’s an odd thing for our ears, isn’t it?  We don’t think of spirits as being real, just like we don’t think of Satan as being real.  Satan is the strange guy with the horns that comes out on Halloween for us.  He’s not real.  He isn’t trying to hurt you, is he?  Well, the disciples believe that when Jesus came to them, that Satan was trying to play a trick on them.  They believed that a spirit had come to torment them.

Jesus, however, will have none of their unbelief.  He cannot bear to let their unbelief stand in the face of resurrection joy.  So what does He do?  First of all, He shows them His hands and His side.  He risen from the dead, but the scars were still there.  The wounds were still there.  His work was done, and the memory of that work remains in His flesh to the end of time.  He shows them His hands and side to prove to them that it was He.

I think sometimes in our desire to focus on the joy of the resurrection that we often try to forget Good Friday.  We want an empty cross, because we don’t want to be reminded of the pain and suffering of Jesus.  But remember the words of Paul, we preach Christ and Him crucified.  Jesus resurrection means nothing without His death.  That is why it is so common in Lutheran churches to have crucifixes.  We preach the crucified and risen Jesus.  They go together.  The joy of the resurrection can only be seen in the light of the cross.  So Jesus shows them His hands and His side.

Then He does something that may seem a little strange.  He asks if they have anything to eat.  They gave Him some broiled fish and some honeycomb.  And He ate it.  Jesus was not a spirit.  He wasn’t some kind of ethereal being that didn’t have a body.  He wasn’t a hologram or a TV show.  He is real.  He walked among them, and ate and drank with them.  And remember, Jesus was always showing Himself and His true nature to His disciples by means of food and meals.  How many times did He eat with sinners?  How many times did He gather the crowds together and feed them?  And of course, Jesus revealed His true nature as the divine banquet host at the Last Supper.  Somehow resurrection joy and food seem to just go together, don’t they?

Jesus then gets to the point of His appearance.  He tells the disciples, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.  Jesus life is the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.  Not just a few scattered verses here and there.  The whole thing.  The entirety of the Scriptures are about Christ and His work of the cross.  One theologian put it this way: All theology is Christology.  Jesus is at the center of the Old Testament and the New Testament.  Jesus is at the heart of who we are as a congregation and as baptized Christians.  Many in the world today would try and have the church be something else, but for us Lutherans, it’s all about Jesus and His work on the cross.

But the disciples couldn’t see that.  So what did He do for them?  Then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures , and said unto them, Thus it is written, that thus it was necessary for Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  He opened their understanding.  Understanding the Scriptures doesn’t simply happen.  Jesus has to give it.  It is a gift that comes from outside of yourself.  Perhaps this comes from our scientific worldview, but we would like to make reading the Scriptures into a proof.  If you read the proof, you’ll get the evidence and that will be that.  But remember: Jesus’ disciples had the risen Lord Himself standing in front of them, and they still didn’t get it!  Jesus had to open their hearts and minds to understand the message of the Gospel.

So Jesus gives them and us the core of His message.  We could call it the Divine Must.  Jesus must suffer, die and rise from the dead on the third day.  It wasn’t one option among many.  It wasn’t one plan of salvation about several options.  Jesus’ death and resurrection were the only way that mankind could be saved.  As St. Peter said in our lesson from Acts: there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.  Jesus is it.  He is the way the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him.

That is the message of the Christian Church.  That is the message which got Jesus killed.  That is the message which made the apostles’ martyrs who died for the faith.  Make no mistake about it, friends.  This message is exclusive and all encompassing.  Either you believe in Jesus Christ as the only path to heaven, or you are going to hell.  This is a message of joy, but it is a message of great seriousness.

This message is so serious, in fact, that Jesus commissions the apostles to go into the whole world and preach this message of repentance to the forgiveness of sins to the whole world, beginning in Jerusalem.  Why Jerusalem?  Because the Jews needed to hear it first.  The people of God need to hear the message of Jesus Christ and the forgiveness of sins before anyone else.  It was true then, and it’s true now.  We don’t come to church to fulfill an obligation to God.  We don’t come to church finally even to praise God, although that is true in a way.  We come to church to hear the message of life and forgiveness and peace in Jesus Christ.  Because you need that message.  And so does your family, your friends, your neighbors, indeed the whole world. 

But that message of Jesus Christ can bear fruit in your life unless you are planted in Him.  People ask me from time to time how we can grow as a church.  Certainly we want to grow, but it isn’t a gimmick.  There is no fancy trick or nifty advertising that must happen for us to grow.  That’s not growth, that’s marketing.  In order for us to grow as a congregation, we as a Church need to be centered in Jesus Christ and the Gospel.  If you believe that Jesus is the only source of your life and hope in the midst of heartache and pain, if you believe that, you can’t help but tell others about that message.

So what does this have to do with you?  It means this for you: Jesus Christ died a horrible death so that you can live forever.  And to prove His love for you, He gives you His very body and blood in a wonderful meal.  Eat His flesh and drink His blood, and this will cause you to remember everything He has done for you.  Believe this message in the fact of doubt.  You don’t see the Lord Jesus in front of you like the disciples, and yet at the same time, you do.  For wherever His Word is preached and His Sacraments are given out, there is Jesus.  Jesus is not in the tomb, for He rose from the dead.  But He is right here, right now, in our midst, and He gives you life, and hope, and above all, He gives you peace.  Believe it, for the sake of His name.  Amen.

Todd A. Peperkorn, STM

Messiah Lutheran Church

Kenosha, Wisconsin

Easter III-B (May 7, 2000)

Luke 24:36-49

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Last Revised: May 11, 2000