1. Please pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock, and our Redeemer. Amen., The message from God’s Word this 3rd Sunday of Easter is taken from Luke 24:36-49, it’s entitled “Jesus’ Resurrection Signals Our Own Resurrection,” dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2. After more than a year of facing our collective mortality as human beings, the promise of a physical resurrection is welcome news. It’s hard to miss Luke’s emphasis on the physical nature of Jesus’ resurrection today. It’s also hard to ignore the disciples’ difficulty believing what they saw. The two go together—Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead and His disciples trying to understand what has happened. These emphases are distinctly Lukan, which matters especially since we looked at John’s account of the same event last week in John 20:19-23.
3. Luke’s context is also unique. Unlike John’s Gospel, where John takes us straight from the empty tomb to the locked room with the disciples, Luke details Jesus’ detour on the Emmaus Road. This encounter provides the background for this week’s reading.
4. In Luke 24:36 we have our crucified and risen Lord and Savior Jesus talking with two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. The disciple named Cleopas and his unnamed companion had just experienced an unexpected encounter with the risen Lord on the road and in the breaking of the bread at table (Luke 24:13-35). After their eyes opened to see Him, they immediately retrace their seven-mile journey back to Jerusalem and find the eleven disciples of Jesus. As they are recounting their experience, Jesus does it again. He appears out of nowhere and interrupts them here in our text: “Peace be with you.” I can imagine the Emmaus disciples thinking, “See! We told you!” But if they thought it, Luke doesn’t tell us they said it.
5. Instead, they together with the eleven disciples were skeptical. Luke records in chapter 24:37, “...they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit.” Luke records in chapter 24:41 that even after seeing His hands and feet they, “...disbelieved for joy and were marveling.” Their disbelief was understandable. Jesus had been dead. There was no mistaking it. But now He stood among them. Apparently, modern skeptics in our scientific age were not the first to have trouble believing a body could literally rise from the dead. So, also did the disciples—and they were there in person!
6. But Luke is absolutely clear, the resurrection was real, and it was physical. Notice how many physical details he includes. It begins with Jesus’ own words in Luke 24:39: “See 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.” Then, Luke describes Jesus’ actions in chapter 24:41-43: “And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.” If simply hearing from Jesus and looking at His body were not enough, Luke goes on: “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and He took it and ate before them.” Luke’s message is clear. This was no spiritual or metaphorical resurrection. The body which had been dead was now alive and well—even a little hungry.
7. But what does Jesus’ bodily resurrection from the dead matter for us? Jesus’ physical resurrection was good for Him, but unless we have some advantageous connection to Him, the historicity doesn’t matter much. This is where some attempts to demonstrate proof of a physical resurrection fall short. Even with all of the historical evidence of the empty tomb, the benefit of Jesus’ resurrection for anyone beside Himself would still be a matter of faith. This is why it’s important for us to remember that the physical resurrection of Jesus signals our own.
8. Luke’s emphasis on the physical reality of Jesus’ resurrection emphasizes our own bodily resurrection from the dead. The Bible teaches us that Jesus’ physical resurrection is only the beginning. Throughout the Scriptures we read Jesus is the first to be raised. 1 Corinthians 15:20 says, “20But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” St. Paul also writes in Colossians 1:18, “18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.” Acts 26:23 tells us, “23that the Christ must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the Gentiles.” After Jesus will rise all who die in Him. St. Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:23, “Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Our Epistle reading points in this direction, too. When Jesus returns John writes in 1 John 3:2, “We shall be like Him.”
9. In other words, the physical resurrection of Jesus signals our own. How important the resurrection of the flesh is! Christ was raised in the flesh of our flesh. We will be raised in this same way. And yet, we have no experience with resurrections, or at least we think we don’t. How many resurrected people have we seen? How many empty tombs have we peered into? Of course, at one level the answer is quite simple. We have seen none. We have never peered into an empty tomb. But, we Christians have seen right to the bottom of the tomb of death to see it emptied by the life of Christ.
10. Take this illustration of a new baptismal font in a Christian Church made of a single block of black granite. It stands about three feet high and is two feet square. The walls of the font are about five inches thick. The baptismal font is fed with fresh water from a natural Artesian spring below the church in which it stands. It is continually filled with water as the pressure of the spring flows the water gently over the sides of the font as a sign of divine generosity. When you look down into the baptismal font, it is a black hole. You don’t see anything but the empty tomb. Oh, yes, it is a tomb. But it is ever empty. It is an empty tomb. Filled with water. Filled with Christ in connection with His Holy Word.
11. Baptism puts us into a tomb that God keeps perpetually empty. We are placed there into the death of Christ (Romans 6). We Christians are an exhibit for the empty tomb. We have plunged into the death of Christ. Jesus rose from the dead. We rise with Him. He is the type of death and life. We are the antitype of death and life. We are His shape. When we look in the mirror, we see a resurrected person. What we see there will be raised on the Last Day. We Christians have seen resurrected persons every day. Those resurrected persons are us.
12. After more than a year of facing our collective mortality as human beings, the promise of a physical resurrection is welcome news. But, our Christian hope isn’t based on inoculation or herd immunity. It’s not subject to the vicissitudes of variants or vaccines. Instead, we find hope and strength in the promise of our own physical resurrection. Furthermore, this promise invites us to live courageously. If the pandemic doesn’t get us, something else will. This doesn’t lead us to be careless or cavalier, but rather confident and caring toward others. This promise frees us to serve others in word and deed, to sacrifice for others, and put their physical needs ahead of our own. Luther’s explanation to the 5th Commandment comes to mind. God says to us in the Fifth Commandment, “You shall not murder.” (Ex. 20:13) In explanation to this Martin Luther writes, “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and support him in every physical need.”
13. When we are raised on the Last Day it is in flesh of our flesh. Our flesh will not be some airy-fairy insubstantiality, but the re-created flesh created first in the Garden of Eden. God doesn’t raise phantoms or ghosts, but real flesh and blood people. Jesus especially emphasized this after His resurrection in our text from Luke 24:39, “See 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" (Lk 24:39). So, on the Last Day we will have flesh and bones; touchable and all, and yet unimpaired by sin and death as it is now. We will be resurrected persons. Jesus’ resurrection signals our own resurrection! May the Holy Spirit enable us to believe in this promise and give of ourselves in service toward others, so all might come to believe in the resurrected Lord and receive their own physical resurrection at His return. Amen. Now the peace of God that passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus until life everlasting. Amen.
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