I suppose this week I will be both
preaching and laying a bit of foundation for some upcoming new things at
Advent. Our Gospel lesson in Luke
certainly lends itself to both. What is
happening? The Apostles and disciples
are trying to figure out the Resurrection of Jesus? Are we
dreaming? Is He a ghost? Have we lost our minds? You can well imagine how you would have been
at that time, too. Remember, we are the
descendants, spiritually speaking if not genealogically speaking, of those who
saw Jesus raised from the dead. As
astonished as we might have been at the parting of the Red Sea, the casting out
of demons, the healing of lepers, or the restoration of sight to the blind, the
idea of the dead coming back to life would have blown our minds, too! So, as they are struggling with the meaning
of this event, Jesus appears amongst them, teaching them and us about its
significance.
First, Jesus has a real body. It is a real body that can be touched, felt,
and seen. It is a solid body that still
retains the marks of His Crucifixion.
For those of you who expect to be raised as some ethereal spirit,
floating on clouds playing a harp, Jesus’ Resurrection indicates to us that we
will have real bodies. Why? He is the first fruit of the Resurrection! If you and I are the second and third fruits,
our bodies should be like His.
To be sure, His body is similar but
different than what the Apostles experienced in their travels with Him. He is able to hide His identity from those
who knew Him best as He encounters them outside His tomb or on the road to
Emmaus. He is able to travel vast
distances almost immediately. He can
enter through locked or even shut doors.
But some similarities, though, remain.
He can eat. He drinks water. Notice He does not drink wine from the Cup of
Joy until His kingdom is established forever.
He can lay hands upon and touch those in His presence. He seems even to breathe, or at least exhale
when it comes to bestowing the Holy Spirit upon those in His presence.
This
eating and drinking also serves another purpose. It was axiomatic in the Ancient Near East, as
it is today on shows like Ghost Hunters, that ghosts are incorporeal. They cannot eat or drink. So, when Jesus asks for a piece of fish or
bread or a drink of water in the Gospel stories, that is His testimony against
the rumors that He was a ghost, that He was a figment of their imaginations,
that He was the shared experience of a mass hallucination. Those who encountered the Risen Jesus ate
with Him! Those who encountered the
Risen Jesus drank with Him! Those who
encountered the Risen Jesus touched the marks of His wounds!
As shocked or awed as we might be at any
miracle in the Bible, this is The Miracle which distinguishes our faith from
all the other thoughts, ideas, religions, and spiritualities of the world. Like you, I watched all those specials on
television in the lead up to Easter.
Pundit after pundit, “expert” after “expert,” gave all kinds of excuses
for why Jesus could not have come back from the dead. He must
not have really died. His disciples
likely stole His body. My favorite, The Apostles and disciples came up with this
idea as a way to gain prestige, power, and wealth. LOL As
if Peter, John, Mark, James, Mary, Martha, and all the others were suddenly
elevated socially, financially, or in power because they said they had seen the
Lord. Their testimony earned many of
them death and derision. There was no
powerful Church of which they could seize control. All they seized was the scorn, the plotting,
the persecuting, and their own death at the hands of the Roman Empire.
Wonderful philosophies and religions
populated the ANE, great Rabbis had taught wonderful wisdom, but nobody claimed
to be raised from the dead. It was so
far outside the human experience it is no wonder that people scoffed at the
idea. The intelligentsia of the day
mocked the Christians. The political
powers of the day laughed at them even as they used them to cover their own
failures. The religious elite derided
them for the very notion that a god could love people or die for them, let
alone be brought back to life. Those
events might happen in mythology, but never in real life!
The Resurrection, for us, is the
cornerstone of our faith. If it is not
true, then Paul is right, we are to be most pitied. We have been giving of our time, our talents,
and our treasures for something pretend.
If the Resurrection is not true, we should be pitied as fools. How many people have sacrificed their lives
believing in its truth? How many people
have sold all their possessions and headed to leprosariums, to orphanages, to
AIDS clinics, to foreign lands in service of a lie? How many?
What causes people to have the confidence to face even death, trusting
that God will redeem them or their situation?
The Resurrection. If God can
conquer death, all our other troubles pale by comparison.
And make no mistake, this is a challenging
claim to accept. Some of you sitting
here today may believe that the Resurrection was a spiritual thing or a
hallucination. You may not yet be sure
what to make of it. You are not
alone. Peter, James, John, Thomas, Mary,
Martha, Mary and countless others did not believe until they saw, until they
touched. One thing none of us can deny,
they sure acted as if they believed in His Resurrection. Look at Peter today in Acts. Less than a couple weeks ago, Peter was
denying that he knew Jesus, even as Jesus faced His accusers before the
Sanhedrin. Like the others, Peter was
hiding in a locked room. He was still in
a shut room. But His encounters with the
Resurrected Jesus changed him forever.
That same coward of Maundy Thursday healed a cripple on the steps of the
Temple in Jerusalem in the name of Jesus!
For that horrible crime he was hauled before that same group that
condemned his master. How does he
react? Does he cower? Does he deny his Master now? No, he proclaims the Gospel of Christ
crucified and Resurrected. Better still,
Peter tells them all that they sinned against God by putting God’s Anointed to
death. And what can they do, if they
realize their sin? Repent and turn to
God, that their sins might be forgiven through the death and Resurrection of
Jesus Christ! Who speaks that boldly for
an idea? Who gains that kind of courage
for a philosophy? This is no momentary
courage either. What Peter experienced
transformed his view of God, of life, of everything! What, but the Resurrection explains that
amazing change? What but the
Resurrection explains his eventual willingness to go to Rome, to preach the
Gospel, and to die there, crucified upside down?
If Jesus’ Resurrection is true, there are
some amazing implications. Would God
raise a liar, a blasphemer, a sinful man from the dead and so honor him? Of course not! Only His Anointed, His new Adam, His Beloved
Son is worthy of such an honor. But if
Jesus was really raised from the dead, then all that He taught must be true! That’s one of the reasons why we call the
Resurrection the capstone or cornerstone of the faith. Everything else in His teaching hangs upon
the truth of His raised Body. And this
gets me to the foundation we will be laying here.
After eating and showing them His wounds,
what does Jesus do? He teaches
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. If we were
reading from one of those red-letter Bibles, these words would be in red
because they are Jesus’ words. And
Jesus, as He was for those three years or so worth of ministry among them,
continues to teach. What does He tell us
is this passage? That the law of Moses,
the prophets, and the psalms spoke of Him.
What you and I call the Old Testament, Jesus says speaks of Him. Next time you are at home, look at your
Bible. Mark the page between the Old and
New Testaments. Notice how much is written
in the Old Testament. That leads me
back, of course, to the second important point of Luke’s Gospel for us this
morning.
Why do we study the Old Testament? Why should preachers preach on the Old
Testament? Because it contains roughly
2/3 of the total revelation that God gave us.
Put in a different way, 2/3 of the character and life of Jesus is told
to us in the Old Testament. Ever hear
that nonsense that the God of the Old
Testament is a God of wrath; the God of the New Testament is a God of love
or justice or some other
attribute? Could such pithy statements
be more wrong? Here’s Jesus, raised from
the dead, teaching His disciples that the law of Moses, the prophets, and the
psalms speak of Him. It makes sense,
though, when we think about it. Does God
show lots of mercy in the Old Testament?
You bet. Does God show lots of
wrath in the New Testament? Maybe we
should ask the Guy who was scourged, mocked, beaten, and crucified for us about
His perspective on the loss of God’s wrath in the New Testament. But we do not study the Old Testament,
preachers ought not preach the Old Testament, without the focusing lens of the
Cross and Resurrection of our Lord Christ.
If we try to read the Old Testament absent that lens, we may well miss
the very lesson intended by God. We may,
you might say, get focused on the wrong thing.
Great,
Brian, it makes sense for His disciples to study that stuff, but how can
we? He’s not among us. We cannot see His wounds; we cannot watch Him
eat. True enough. Jesus is not present with us as He was with
His disciples. Does that mean we are
consigned to grope in ignorance when we study the Old Testament? Of course not. The same Jesus who demonstrated to His
Apostles and disciples that He was raised from the dead, the same Jesus who
taught that the Old Testament was about Him is the same Jesus who promised that
He would be with us forever, even unto the end of the age. Yes, those of us who believe without seeing
are blessed, but that does not mean He is not with us. In fact, when we pray before Bible studies,
what do we ask? Don’t we ask Him to be
present with us or to send His Holy Spirit among us so that we might understand
His word better? And where two or three
are gathered in His name, where does He tell us He will be? In the midst of them! Do you think He is lying? God raised Him from the dead, so He must be telling
the truth! And so we study the Old
Testament, alongside the New, expecting Jesus to be in the midst of us,
teaching us as He did those first disciples, opening our minds to understand
the Scriptures properly.
Both the Resurrection and the teachings of
and about Jesus give us our assignment and the third focus from Luke this
morning. You are witnesses of these things.
Brothers and sisters, why are you here today? Is it because you just love to drive around
Nashville and Brentwood in torrential downpours? Is it because you are getting too much rest
and needed an activity to fill in your schedule? Is it because you haven’t had enough church
potlucks yet in your lifetime? Is it
because you are convinced that your pastor’s body must reflect the Resurrected
body we are all promised? Why are you
all laughing? In all seriousness,
though, my guess is, if we went around the room and allowed each other to
answer that question, all of us are here because somebody in our lives
testified to the truth of the Resurrection and invited us to come as a
consequence of that accepted testimony.
Maybe it was a loving mother or father, who incarnated the role of the
nurturing mother or Loving Father in your lives. Maybe it was a joyful aunt or uncle who lived
as if they were simply passing through this land. Maybe for you it was a friend, a co-worker, a
workout partner, a bridge partner, someone who simply lived their life as if
they believed these words of Jesus, as if the Resurrection of Jesus, was
true. Maybe it was a stranger, maybe it
was someone on television, maybe you were out driving around and saw three
signs telling you to go to church. And
you wanted that Peace, that Joy, that Hope that Christians are promised and
that Peace, that Joy, and that Hope by which they are called to live their
lives.
Brothers and sisters, you and I and all
who gather each and every day throughout the world and even throughout time to
worship and praise God for the saving work He has done in our lives are called
to be heralds of the Resurrection in the lives of those who have not yet
accepted His loving embrace. How we
testify to that Resurrection differs from denomination to denomination, parish
to parish, individual to individual. But
make no mistake: we are all commanded to witness to His Resurrection. It is not an optional opportunity. It is, to use the example from earlier, a
red-letter-command by Jesus. Jesus has
shared with each one of us this incredible treasure, this Truth which
philosophers have sought, this Wisdom that sages have sought, this Love which
spiritualists have sought throughout history and commanded us not to hoard it,
but to share that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in His
name to all nations. You may not be
called to preach to the Sanhedrin as did your brother Peter, you may not be
called to anoint His feet as did a sister so long ago, but you are called to
witness to those in your life. You see,
just as someone shared His love with you; you are called to be sharing His love
with someone who comes after you. You do
not need theological training; you are not disqualified from the command because
of your profession or heritage or even the past sins in your life; all you need
is a love of Lord Christ and a willing and obedient heart.
In my first few months here at Advent, a
number of you have approached me about your fear of witnessing to Christ. I get it.
We are planted in an area where some of our brothers and sisters are a
bit more “in the face” of non-Christians (and even Christians of the wrong
denomination). I get it. I am here to remind you this morning, though,
that you are no less prepared and no less equipped than any of the fishermen He
called, any of the women He accepted as disciples, the blind to whom He gave
sight, the cripples to whom He gave the ability to walk, the Samaritan woman to
whom He asked for water and to whom He offered Living Water. There is no “perfect time” to share His
love. Moments of despair and mourning,
moments of joy and celebration, moments of anxiety and peace provide an
opportunity to witness to His Resurrection, to His forgiveness, and to the Hope
He offers. I know a few of you were recently
nearly overcome by the idea that Jesus went to the Cross for each one of us,
that had we been the only ones in the world, still He would have died for us. As amazing as that sounds, consider this, He
has chosen you to be His witness. In the
courtroom of public opinion, Lord Jesus has asked you to testify as to who He
is and what He has done. You and I have
a role to play in the building of His kingdom.
You and I are called to witness to those not yet in the kingdom one
person at a time, one individual at a time.
It may sound crazy to others; heck, it may sound crazy in our own
ears. But in His infinite wisdom, that
is how He has chosen to spread His news and His love. As crazy as it sounds, look at where that
message has gone. It spread from
Jerusalem to the Mediterranean to the rest of the world all the way down to you
and me. It has crossed oceans, language
and culture barriers, social strata, and who knows what else. And now, now it falls to us, in the company
of the Holy Spirit, to witness to His Resurrection in our lives, at work or school,
at play, in health or sickness, at church or out in the world. All He asks of us in return is that we lend
our voices, our lives, our testimonies, that others might share in His
redeeming grace.
Peace,
Brian†
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