Do We Believe It?

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 116
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31
Last Sunday, we considered Jesus’ resurrection from the dead and asked the question, “But did it happen?” We looked at some of the evidence presented in Matthew’s account of the first Easter Sunday. That evidence, it seems to me, supports what we Christians say about Jesus: “He is risen, risen indeed!” This Sunday we come to another question: Do we believe it?

Do we believe that Jesus, sinless God in the flesh, rose from the dead? That isn’t just a question of fact. Many believe it’s true that Jesus rose from the dead. But they aren’t believers.

A friend of ours wanted her brother and his family to get involved in a church, knowing what a difference her own church had made in the lives of her husband, children, and herself and how in a bad news world, involvement in the church helps us hold on tight to the Good News about Jesus.

But she was frustrated by her brother's response. “Look,” he told her, “John 3:16 says that whoever believes in Jesus has eternal life. I believe in Jesus. I believe He rose from the dead. Why do I have to mess with the Church?”

I suppose all of us wonder about that sometimes. But our friend’s brother was confusing two different meanings of the term, “believe.”

One meaning of belief is to simply accept the facts of a case. Even Satan believes that Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus rose from the dead; that doesn’t mean he’s in the Kingdom of God. It doesn’t make him a believer.

When the Bible and the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds use the words, “We believe…” or “I believe…,” much more is meant than just, “These are the facts.”

For the Christian, to believe in the God revealed in Jesus Christ and to believe in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is to say:

• We entrust all our lives, all our past sins, all our present fortunes, all our future, into the hands of one person alone. 
• We don’t entrust our lives to ourselves, our efforts, or our understanding. 
• We don’t entrust our lives to our country, our political philosophy, our families, or our ways of life. 
• We entrust ourselves to the God revealed in Jesus Christ alone. 
• We trust that Jesus alone can bring us into the presence of God, that the risen Jesus alone can bring us forgiveness of sin, that the risen Jesus alone will one day make our dead bones rise to new life in the eternal presence of our God. 
• And we trust that Christ instituted the Church to help us believe in Him even as the devil, the world, and our sinful selves strive to drive us away from Christ. 

Do you believe this?

1 Corinthians 12, verse 3, says that no one can confess that Jesus is Lord—in other words, confess that Jesus is the ultimate authority over our lives and over the universe itself—unless the Holy Spirit empowers us to believe it. Belief in Jesus, is a gift, something we can’t manufacture.

In The Wizard of Oz, the Cowardly Lion tried to talk himself into courage. It didn’t work. Nor can we talk ourselves into believing in the risen Jesus.

But we can decide to be open to the gift of faith. This is true of all gifts, when you think about it. A gift is offered, but we must decide whether to take it.

When Ann and I were engaged, her stepfather offered a bucket of golf balls to me. I had no need of golf balls and, probably from pride, didn’t want to be seen as grasping for his charity. I told him, politely, “No, thanks.” He raged at me for “looking a gift horse in the mouth.”

People can look the gift of faith “in the mouth,” too, refusing it, just as our friend’s brother did. It’s part of the gracious, loving nature of God that He will not force us to entrust ourselves to Him. And though it breaks His heart, God lets us say, “No” to Him, giving us the final say over whether we live with Him or live in hell.

This has always been true. In the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve the freedom to say no to Him and the life He offered. They misused that freedom, submerging the whole universe (and you and me) into the bondage to sin from which we cannot free ourselves. (A bondage from which Jesus alone can free us.)

To Abraham and Sarah, God gave the freedom to trust in His promises of a son and a nation of descendants. Sometimes they trusted in God. Sometimes they didn’t. When they decided to trust God, even when adversity struck, they lived in the calming, empowering certainty of God’s presence. When they decided not to trust God, chaos inevitably broke out.

Through Read the Bible in a Year, we’ve seen that this same story played out in the history of God’s people after God freed them from slavery in Egypt; it’s because Israel decided with depressing frequency to walk away from God that what should have been an eleven day journey in the wilderness took God's half-believing chosen people forty years to complete!

Every day, we have a choice, a decision. We must choose whether to be open to the gift of an ever-deepening faith that the God we meet in the risen Jesus offers us or to close our wills to Him, ignore the clear teachings of Scripture and go our own ways. Do we truly believe in the God Who raised Jesus from the dead?

In the Old Testament, Joshua, the man God chose to replace Moses as leader of the Israelites, confronts the people with a decision. “Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve,” Joshua told them, "...but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord."

That is the decision that each of us must make: Whether to believe, trust, and serve the one and only God of the universe or not.

Each of our Bible lessons for today address this reality.

In the first lesson, part of Peter’s Pentecost sermon delivered ten days after the risen Jesus had returned to heaven, Peter confronts his fellow Jews with the truth that Jesus, according to the plan of God laid out in the Old Testament, though sinless, had died for the sins of all and had risen from the dead, an event he, along with 500 of his fellow Jesus-Followers, could vouch for. His sermon was a challenge for them to decide whether they would believe that the God of promise had fulfilled the promise of new life for all who believe in their time. “Do you believe it?” Peter asked.

Psalm 16, from Old Testament times, challenged the people to believe that those who ran after other gods or ways of life were led only to trouble, but that those who trust in God are never abandoned. “Do you believe it?” the Psalmist asked.

Peter, in our second lesson, writing to Christians in Asia Minor and other locations—people who faced daily persecution for their belief in the risen Jesus—challenged them to make the decision to trust that their faithfulness would result in “indescribable and glorious joy” when Jesus returned to bring an end to the life of this world and fully establish the new heaven and new earth of which all Christians will be citizens. Peter asked again: “Do you believe it?”

Our Gospel lesson ends with what I call John the Evangelist’s mission statement—the reason why he wrote the Gospel and really, the whole reason the Church and individual, ordinary Christians like you and me tell the world about the risen Jesus. Take a look at John 20:30-31:

Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life his name. 

“Here is the evidence for the new life with God that only comes to those who believe in the risen Jesus,” John is saying. “Do you believe it?”

Do we believe it? How we answer this question day-in and day-out is important not just for our lives beyond the grave. It’s important today.

On February 25, a dear friend of Ann’s and mine died. Ron Claussen was the pastor of a neighboring parish when we arrived at our first call in northwest Ohio in 1984. Later, Ron became a member of the congregation I served, Bethlehem Lutheran Church near Okolona.

But to describe Ron simply as a neighboring pastor or a parishioner doesn’t quite give you the right idea of who he was for so many people, including my family. Ron was, quite simply, one of the greatest people and greatest Christians I have ever known. He was certainly the finest pastor I ever met. Everything about him, including his wonderful sense of humor, displayed the risen Jesus Christ. When someone was hurting, no matter the time of day or night, Ron was there. I loved him more than I ever was able to tell him!

But there’s more to Ron’s story. In the 1950s, during his teen years in Nebraska, Ron was among the last people to be afflicted with polio, just before the first polio vaccines came out. Polio, for the benefit of you young people, is a horrible virus that, without the vaccines we now take for granted, can bring about total or partial paralysis and can cause bones and muscle to shrivel and atrophy. Polio can do other horrible things to the body of someone who suffers from it. That Ron contracted polio when he did was a horribly, tragic occurrence that would impact the rest of Ron’s life. Its effects would have destroyed or embittered many people. But it did neither to Ron. I spent many hours with Ron, but I never once heard him complain about his circumstances. He radiated the certainty that can come to those who follow Jesus!

The reason for this is simple: Each and every day of his life, Ron made a decision to trust in Jesus and to live for Him alone. You see, when we decide to open ourselves to the gift of faith in Jesus Christ, the joy and hope of eternity inevitably spills over our everyday lives. We know that already we have what Peter describes as “the outcome of…faith, the salvation of [our] souls.”

Deciding to let God build faith in the risen Jesus within us helps us face each day with confidence, joy, and hope.

We know that with Christ by your side, even when the world turns against us, we will prevail.

We know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We know that we can love as we’ve been loved, forgive as we’ve been forgiven, be as patient with others as God is with us.

Through Jesus, you can can know that God is with you always and that, one day, God will welcome you into eternity with Him.

Do you believe all of this?

Then live it! Amen!

One and Only Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (April 6, 2008)

[Each week, I present at least one of these "passes," designed to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for worship. Because we use the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) associated with the Church Year, most of the lessons addressed in these passes are the same ones most Christians read and consider on succeeding Sundays. So, I hope others will find these brief looks helpful, too.]

The Bible Lessons:
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm 116:1-4, 12-19
1 Peter 1:17-23
Luke 24:13-35

The Prayer of the Day:
O God, your Son makes himself known to all his disciples in the breaking of bread. Open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in his redeeming work, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

General Comments:
1. This week we come to the Third Sunday in Easter. As I've pointed out before, every Sunday is a little Easter on which we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. But this season remembers the forty days during which the risen Jesus appeared to believers before ascending to heaven. Ascension Day is followed, ten days later, by Pentecost.

2. Two of our texts for this week were written by Luke the evangelist, the lesson from Acts and the Gospel lesson from Luke. As I pointed out last week, all of the first lessons for the Season of Easter come from Acts, a Biblical book that records the history of the Church from Jesus' ascension until about 60AD.

3. A few common threads one can see in the appointed lessons, apart from the common authorship of two of them:

• Both the concluding verses of Peter's sermon on first Pentecost, from Acts, and the Psalm emphasize the willingness of God to hear us when we call. In Acts, Peter, no doubt drawing on personal experience, tells a crowd of His fellow Jews the repentant can call on God and be saved from sin and death. The anonymous psalmist of Psalm 116 says that he will worship the God who hears when we call Him in our distress.
• Both the psalmist and Peter in 1 Peter 1:17-23 address the question of where God is in our suffering.
• Peter, of course, figures in three of the lessons: as preacher (Acts), author (1 Peter), and corroborating witness of the resurrection (Luke).

4. But the Gospel lesson also suggests that the God we know in Jesus Christ shows up in unbidden ways. There, the risen Jesus simply appears with the two grieving disciples heading for Emmaus.

5. Nonetheless, the lesson also shows us that there are certain reliable places where we can always count on meeting Jesus: in God's Word and in the breaking of the bread (Holy Communion). More on that later.

6. Acts 2:14a, 36-41: This concludes a sermon that will more fully absorb us on Pentecost Sunday. Peter's sermon presents both Law and Gospel: On the one hand, he indicts the crowd for its complicity in Jesus' crucifixion. On the other, he tells them that they can repent and, believing in Jesus, have a right, restored relationship with God.

7. Psalm 116: This psalm has given inspiration for many Christian songs, hymns, and liturgical pieces through the centuries. The psalmist concludes that the goodness of God and God's willingness to hear us when we call is one indication of why and how much we need to worship and praise God.

The word worship is the contraction of the Old English term, worth-ship. In worship, we declare the worthiness of God: worthy of our praise, glory, honor, and complete submission.

8. 1 Peter 1:17-23: An old hymn declares, "I am but a stranger here, heaven is my home." Followers of Jesus Christ see themselves as aliens and strangers to this world. Our real home is with God in eternity.

That means that we are to travel lightly, not putting too much stock in the stuff of this world. Despite its allurements, Peter says, we dare not be sidetracked. We need to live in awe of and trust in the God made known in Christ.

9. Why? Because, Peter says, we have been bought not with jewelry or gems, but with the blood of Christ, an unblemished Passover lamb sacrificed for all and Whose death and resurrection bring everlasting life to all who repudiate sin and follow Him.

10. What Peter demonstrates is that the life, death, and resurrection was not, after many divine failures, the culminating attempt by God to save humanity from sin and death. As Jesus taught the disciples on the road to Emmaus in our Gospel lesson, from the beginning it was always God's intent to save fallen humanity by means of Jesus' cross and resurrection. Jesus was always God's Plan A for redeeming sinners. All the law and the prophets pointed to this.

11. Luke 24:13-35: In discussing the Gospel lesson here, I'll just touch on a few questions it raises. The first, for me anyway, is why the two disciples--one of them, we learn later, is Cleopas--didn't recognize Jesus? Associated with this is the question, who or what "kept from recognizing" Jesus?

Explanations of this abound. I personally don't believe that it was God Who prevented recognition and that what primarily prevented that from happening was their own grief and disbelief. The disciples had seen Jesus die. Some of their number had lain His body in the tomb.

Repeatedly, we saw how the disciples placed their hope in Jesus based on what blessings they thought He could bring were He to bounce the Roman occupiers and the selfish local religious and political leaders out of power.

In spite of what Jesus had said repeatedly and in spite of all that the prophets had said, Jesus' first followers couldn't recognize Him in the resurrection.

12. How did they recognize Jesus? Interestingly, it didn't happen as He explicated the Word of God for them. It happened in the breaking of the bread, something He did in a characteristic way, as seen in the obvious parallels between Luke 9:16, 22:19, and 24:30 (Thanks, Brian Stoffregen).

In one of his books, The Third Peacock: The Problem of God and Evil, Richard Farrar Capon speaks of Holy Communion as "the hat on the invisible man." We can't see the risen Jesus today on earth, but, using Martin Luther's phrase, "in, with, and under" the bread and wine of Holy Communion, Christ has promised that we can "taste and see" the goodness of the Lord. Even when this world and our faint faith prevent us from seeing Christ, we can recognize Him in the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

This doesn't mean that the Word is inferior to the Sacrament. Far from it! In fact, the Sacrament is "the Word with skin on it," something we can actually see, the tangible presence of God in our midst. But, as was true of the disciples, we only know the God-Man Jesus when we see Him because of the Word about Him, from Genesis to Revelation.

In other words, it was after the two disciples heard the Word and experienced Jesus in the breaking of the bread that they recognized Him. (The word in Greek which we translate as recognize is epignoew, literally upon knowing. And, upon knowing Who this mysterious stranger who made their hearts burn with awe and wonder, the two disciples no longer see Him. But, certain that Jesus had, in fact, risen, they make the trip back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples.)

With both the Word explicated by Jesus and the breaking of the bread, the disciples experienced God coming close to them and their hearts burned within them.

13.Why, if it was so dangerous to be out at night in first-century Judea, did the two disciples tear back to Jerusalem after they recognized Jesus? It's simple: Jesus' resurrection had changed everything! The risks that once would have seemed daunting, now seem worth taking. Jesus had confirmed what they never could have believed on their own steam: Jesus had conquered sin and death and was alive for all eternity! They needed to tell the others that the tale brought back from the tomb by the women was true: Jesus had risen and they had seen Him!

Besides, when you know the truth of Jesus' resurrection, you're inclined to do goofy things. In John's Gospel, we're told that the aimless disciples, led by Peter, decided to go out fishing one day. Stripped down to his altogether on what had been a futile venture, when Peter spotted the risen Jesus on the shore, he put on his clothes and jumped into the water. Who adds clothing to take a swim?

How many risky or goofy things might we do as Christians if we really believed that Jesus is risen and alive?

[UPDATE: One other thing that has struck me as I've continued to consider this passage is how much we don't know. According to John Pilch, for example, visitors to modern Israel will likely be told by tour guides, of six different locations for Emmaus. Fact is, we don't know where it was. The disciple called Cleopas in our text is mentioned in no other place. And we never do get a name for the other disciple Jesus encounters on the road to Emmaus.

I take some comfort from this. On the first Easter Sunday, Jesus did appear to disciples whose names we know: Mary Magdalene and Peter, for example. But he also appeared to these two anonymous disciples, two forlorn figures who found it hard to believe what the women of their company had told them about an empty tomb and a risen Savior. That tells me that the Risen Lord of all creation cares about anonymous people who live in anonymous places.]