1.
Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen. The message from God’s Word this 3rd
Sunday in Easter is taken from Luke 24:36-49 and is entitled, “The Body of Christ,” let he who has
ears to hear let him hear.
2.
Author
and undertaker Thomas Lynch describes a problem as well-meaning onlookers at
funerals attempt to console the grief-stricken. Lynch describes how often he
hears someone tell the weeping mother or father of the child who died of
leukemia or a car accident, "It's
okay, that's not her, it's just a shell."(1) But the suggestion that a
dead body is "just" anything, especially in the early stages of
grief, he finds more than problematic. What if, he imagines, we were to use a
similar wording to describe our hope in resurrection—namely, that Christ raised
"just" a body from the dead. Lynch continues, "What if, rather than crucifixion, he'd opted
for suffering low self-esteem for the remission of sins? What if, rather than
'just a shell,' he'd raised his personality say, or The Idea of Himself? Do you
think they'd have changed the calendar for that? [...] Easter was a body and
blood thing, no symbols, no euphemisms, no half measures."(2)
3.
On
the cross, we find our Lord Jesus whose self-offering transformed all suffering
and forever has given us victory over death. On the 50 holy days of Easter that
follow a dark and Good Friday, we find the very figure of God with us,
a body who cried out in a loud voice in the midst of anguish, on the brink of
death, "Father, forgive them for
they know not what they do." Precisely because the cross was not empty,
the coming resurrection is profoundly full.
(1) Thomas Lynch, The
Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York: Penguin,
1997), 21. (2) Ibid.
4.
And
we need those words of absolution from our Lord Jesus who says, “Father, forgive them for they know not what
they do,” for we do not often treat our bodies and the bodies of others as
God wants us to. The Apostle Paul tells
us in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “19
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you,
whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price.
Therefore honor God with your body.” What we do to our own bodies and the bodies of our neighbor can
also affect our relationship with God. Jesus said in Matthew 25:40, 'I tell
you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine,
you did for me.'
5.
How do you treat your body? Do you treat it as a temple of the Holy
Spirit that Christ paid for with the death of His own body on the cross? Do you overuse alcohol, have impure thoughts
and desires about someone else. Do you
live with someone of the opposite sex outside the bounds of marriage and so
dishonor the gift of marriage that God has given to us. Do you approve of those who practice
homosexuality, even though the Bible calls it a sin? Are you viewing pornography on the internet, or
approving of those who do? Are you
harboring hate in your heart against someone else, remember Jesus’ words in
Matthew’s Gospel that anyone who hates his brother is guilty of murder. How are you talking about your neighbor to
others? Are you defending his body,
speaking well of him and explaining everything about him in the kindest
possible way? We hurt the body of those
God has placed in authority over us under the 4th commandment when
we disrespect our parents, our pastors, and bosses at work. How do we treat the body of our loved one who
is dying, they’re also a sinner for whom Christ has died, what about the
unborn, do we stand up for them as those who can’t speak for themselves? We all need to repent of these things and
remember that these are sins for which Christ laid down his life for in order
to make both our bodies and souls holy for God.
6.
Luke
24:36–49 says, “36As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood
among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” 37But they were startled and
frightened and thought they saw a spirit. 38And he said to them, “Why are you
troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39See my hands and my feet,
that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and
bones as you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his
hands and his feet. 41And while they still disbelieved for joy and were
marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” 42They gave him a
piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate before them.
44Then 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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
45Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, 46and said to them,
“Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise
from the dead, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are
witnesses of these things. 49And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father
upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
7.
When
we read the resurrection story in the four Gospels, in the first chapter of
Acts, and St. Paul’s testimony in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, we can’t fail to see
that Jesus went to a great deal of
trouble to convince His disciples that He had truly risen from the dead. We see this especially in our Gospel text
this morning. There are certain points
in the life of our Lord Jesus that are of ultimate importance, so much so that
we devote a large part of the church year to their consideration. Events like the birth and death of Jesus and
above all, His resurrection from the dead.
No one who is ignorant of the resurrection or who denies it has a true
understanding of the life and work of Christ.
We may then say that the foundation on which the Church rests is the
resurrection of Christ.
8.
Notice
here in Luke 24 how Jesus goes out of His way to assure the disciples that what
they are seeing is not a ghost or a figment of their imagination. He does this in two ways. First, he point out that, unlike a ghost, He
has a body. And even though it’s a
glorified body, it’s the very body that 3 days earlier had been crucified on
the cross for our sins, as the scars in His feet and hands make clear. Then, to make assurance doubly sure, He asks
for something to eat. Jesus eats it
before the disciples eyes--again to demonstrate that His is a body with the normal
needs of a body and doing the things a body normally does. As CS Lewis has suggested, Jesus’ resurrected
body would a cast a shadow in the sunlight and make a noise as it walked across
the floor.
9.
And Jesus also gives to His
disciples the scriptural proofs for his resurrection. He makes clear to His disciples that
everything that happened to him from the manger, to the cross, to the empty
tomb was foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus shows that He is the promised
Messiah. He was demonstrating that His
death and resurrection were the fulfillment of a long range plan of God going
all the way back to eternity. Through
Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection the Scriptures had been fulfilled.
10.
But, our Lord does more than give
empirical or scriptural proofs for his resurrection. He gives us the capacity to receive and
believe that evidence. Luke 24:45 says
that, “Jesus opened their minds.” Evidence is necessary for faith, but it’s
not sufficient for faith. There must be
something to believe, but we can’t by our own reason or strength believe it. The Holy Spirit must open our understanding
to believe that Jesus was crucified on the cross for our sins and raised for
our justification.
11.
It all rests on our Lord’s
resurrection from the dead. St. Paul
sums it up when he says, “And if Christ
has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1
Cor. 15:17). “And if Christ has not been
raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor.
15:14). No resurrection--no Savior
and no salvation. No resurrection--His
work ended at the grave. No
resurrection--no Gospel. In fact, no
revelation of God. The Bible then
becomes a collection of myths. No
resurrection--no Church, only a community of deluded fools.
12.
But, Christ has shown us over and
over again in the Scriptures that He truly has risen from the dead. Christ is risen, He’s risen indeed,
Alleluia! Jesus has even ascended into
heaven to prepare a place for us. And He
tells us, “Because I live, you also will
live” (John 14:19). Jesus has
established His kingdom here on earth, and by His Gospel He draws us into the
Church until our faith comes to completion and we inherit our place in His
eternal kingdom of glory. “Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:57).
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