[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).
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.]
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