Luke 24:1-12: Easter is Seeing the Unseen

When we celebrate Easter, we celebrate the reason for our hope.  Despite the yearly reminder of Jesus resurrection, we are often tempted to look for hope elsewhere.  Easter forces us to ask the question anew, with each passing year, where is our hope found? 

Sometimes upon asking the question, we realize that our hope is placed in things other than God.  We are tempted sometimes to look for hope in our rulers; kings, prime ministers, presidents, rulers of nations and shapers of our world.  It makes sense, at least according to how the world thinks.  After all, rulers have power.  They can conquer other lands, defend us from our enemies, build the roads, schools, and hospitals we need, and create laws to govern our society.  If we have a problem, surely they can find the solution.  This is sound logic until we realize that even good rulers are mere human beings.  To put it plainly, they die before they finish their work.  Alexander the Great conquered much of the known world, only to die before he could reign over his consolidated empire.  Our own history provides its own examples.  Abraham Lincoln was assassinated before he could bring the Civil War to an end, and guide us through Reconstruction.  FDR died before the war in the Pacific was concluded, leaving Truman with the decision whether or not to use “the bomb”.  We can even find examples in our Bible.  Think about how much the early church leaned on the apostles for a direct line to Jesus teaching.  The Gideons’ were not on the street-corners passing out Bibles in those days, so the first Christians relied on the apostles, those who walked with Jesus, to pass on his teaching.  It must have been terrifying for them to think of life without these leaders, as the church witnessed one after the other suffer martyrdom.  Even in the church we tend to put too much stock in our leaders.  We would be wise to consider the words of the psalmist, “Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.” (Psalm 146:3-4)

Maybe we have witnessed enough politics, both in Washington and in the church, that we no longer put a lot of trust in our leaders.  That does not mean that we don’t have other idols in which we seek hope.  How many of us place our wealth above all else?  If we simply see wealth as the ultimate source of security, that is enough for it to supplant God as the center of our universe.  On one level it makes sense.  After all, money buys us food, clothing, shelter, and helps provide the medicines many of us rely on for good health.  But Jesus warns us in that most famous of sermons, the Sermon on the Mount, that when we trust in riches, we trust on something that is temporal.  He reminds us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  (Matthew 6:19-21)  And it is not just that money is temporary, but that it also seeks to control us if we allow it, by making it too much of a focus in our lives.  Paul would write to his young disciple Timothy, “But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.” (I Timothy 6:6-10)  If our hope is in our wealth, then sooner or later we will be worshiping our wealth as the god of our life. 

Maybe we don’t trust in our leaders, or in our wealth.  Maybe we trust in our own power, whether it is ours individually or collectively.  Power does have a way of making us seem less vulnerable.  In Jesus’ day, there was something referred to as the Pax Romana, or “Roman Peace”.  In essence, it was a way of referring to the internal stability, and security from external threats that was a result of Roman military might.  In a post-Cold War, pre-9/11 world, American citizens had much the same feeling of peace and security.  However, a group of determined terrorists showed that no matter a nation’s military might, no country is invincible.  There are other issues with seeking hope in our own strength.  For instance, what happens when power is in the hands of the unrighteous?  Right does not make might, and often it is the righteous who lack the power.  Even if power is in the hands of the righteous, if such a group exists is highly debatable, power is never permanent.  There was a time when no one envisioned a world without the Roman Empire.  There was a time when the “sun never set on the British Empire.”  History tells us that if the Lord tarries, there will almost certainly come a day when America is no longer the world’s super-power.  If we live to see that day, will all hope be lost? 

David writes that “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” (Psalm 20:7)  Chariots and horses were the tanks and fighter jets of ancient times.  It would be easy to try to amass as many as possible as a source of strength.  And yet, David reminds us that the Lord our God is the only one capable to giving us hope.  He is the only one in whom we should trust. 

So what does all of this have to do with Easter?  We have looked at a lot of things that claim to provide hope.  Leaders, wealth, and even power are seductive options when considering where to put our trust.  The Resurrection however, reminds us that real hope is in seeing the unseen.  Our hope is found in what the women don’t see in the tomb.  The word find is used twice in the story; once it refers to a stone that has been rolled away, and once it refers to what they did not find- a body.  It was simply referred to as the body of Jesus when Joseph of Arimathea asked for it from Pilate, but when it cannot be found in the tomb, it is suddenly referred to as the body of the Lord Jesus.  Jesus has conquered death, and his lordship is now beyond dispute.  It’s a scene that transforms the women into angels.  The root word for “told” is the same as that of angel, which is from the Greek word for messenger.  While they don’t have wings, harps, or halos, these women return to the disciples to speak a word worthy of announcement by an angelic chorus.  It’s a word that sends Peter running to the tomb to see, or not see, for himself the truth of what he has heard.  Our encounter with the risen Lord must be a personal one.  Our faith cannot be sustained on the testimony of others, so like Peter we run to the tomb each year, to discover all over again that it is indeed empty.  It is true that unlike Peter, we cannot see the scene for ourselves, but then again, that has never been the definition of faith.  We have read our Bible from an early age, and whether it has sunk in or not, we have been told that faith is different from knowledge.  The author of Hebrews would say that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)  In some sense this makes it difficult for us, even more difficult than it was for the apostles.  Jesus acknowledges as much when he tells “doubting” Thomas, “You believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

The Resurrection invites us to enter the story of God’s goodness and work in our world.  It invites us to find our place in God’s story.  It challenges us to read the Bible, the story of Jesus Christ not as a history book, but as our story.  John Steinbeck provides some insight into how that might be done in a passage from his book The Winter of Our Discontent.  He writes:

“That Saturday morning seemed to have a pattern.  I wonder whether all days have.  It was a withdrawn day.  The little gray whisper of my Aunt Deborah came to me, ‘Of course, Jesus is dead.  This is the only day in the world's days that he is dead.  And all men and women are dead too…But tomorrow.  Just wait until tomorrow.  Then you’ll see something.’

I don’t remember her very clearly, the way you don’t remember someone too close to look at.  But she read the Scripture to me like a daily newspaper and I suppose that’s the way she thought of it, as something going on happening eternally but always exciting and new.  Every Easter, Jesus really rose from the dead, an explosion, expected but nonetheless new.  It wasn’t two thousand years ago to her; it was now.  And she planted something of that in me.”

Easter reminds us that God’s work is something happening eternally, always exciting and new.

The challenge of Easter is to see Jesus’ resurrection not just as an event that happened 2,000 years ago, but as something that is happening now, and to take that way of viewing the world, and to plant it in as many other people as we can through the way we speak, through the way we act, and through the way we love.  

Luke 2:1-20: You can relax, Christmas ISN'T over

Its two days after Christmas.  Women, and a few men, are exhaling, vowing to go nowhere near a kitchen for several days.  As enjoyable as Christmas is- the time with family, the meals, the exchanging of presents- we can’t help but feel a sense of relief when it is over.  And yet, is Christmas really over?  There might be a single day where we emphasize Jesus’ birth; His coming into our world, but that doesn’t mean that it should not be something we celebrate all year long.  That’s where the shepherds become important.  Luke actually spends as much time talking about the shepherds in the field, as he does Jesus in the manger.  Why?  Because how we respond to the good news of the incarnation goes a long way in determining whether Christmas is just another day for us, or whether it is something that shapes the way we live all year long. 

The first thing that the shepherds did is hear.  They heard that their salvation, our salvation, comes not from human might, but from God who has come to live among us.  Even in Jesus’ time, there was a temptation to see human might as the ultimate source of salvation.  Paullus Fabius Maximus, the proconsul (governor) of Asia, would say this about Caesar:

“(It is hard to tell) whether the birthday of the most divine Caesar is a matter of greater pleasure or benefit.  We could justly hold it to be equivalent to the beginning of all things...; and he has given a different aspect to the whole world, which blindly would have embraced its own destruction if Caesar had not been born for the common benefit of all.”

We hear the same thing now.  We are called to believe that the person in power, or the person trying to replace that person, will deliver us from all of our troubles.  Luke speaks to us a different gospel.  It isn’t one of human origins, but one whose good news begins with the divine.  You see, while Caesar might have ruled over the “known world”, Jesus is worshipped in every corner of the globe.  Caesar was worshipped as a god for decades, but Jesus has been praised as the Son of God for millennia. 

We hear that there will be salvation, and we also here that there will be peace.  Most importantly, we hear that the peace achieved by the Messiah will be for all.  One of the most famous prophecies dealing with the coming of this Messiah speaks of the ending of conflict, and the ushering in of an era of peace.    

“For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.  The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.” - Isaiah 9:5-7

We should read “among those with whom he is pleased” as an inclusive term.  In some versions it is translated so as to almost imply that the gift of the Messiah is only for those with whom God is pleased.  But the idea in the original text is that God’s gift of a Messiah is evidence of His favor towards humankind.  In other words God favors the entire earth, with the birth of Jesus the Messiah. 

The second thing that the shepherds did is witness in two distinct ways.  First of all, they witnessed firsthand that God had indeed kept His promise.  The prophet Micah had spoken of the future birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem:

 “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days.  Therefore he shall give them up until the time when she who is in labor has given birth; then the rest of his brothers shall return to the people of Israel.  And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the LORD, in the majesty of the name of the LORD his God.  And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth.  And he shall be their peace.” - Micah 5:2-5

Now the shepherds knew that the word they heard from the angels was true.  It was not enough for them to hear about what God had done, they had to experience it for themselves before it could affect their faith.  Because they personally witnessed God’s goodness, revealed to them in the form of a manger, they were able to become witnesses themselves.  The shepherds, along with Anna, are the first evangelists.  The shepherds become to others, what the angels were to them, proclaimers of good news. 

Our journey is to go from being shepherds, to being angels.  Our word angel is derived from the word for “messenger”.  Once the shepherds experienced the newborn Son of God in a manger, they stopped being shepherds who had received the good news about Jesus Christ, and became angels who proclaimed the good news. 

Christmas may have passed, but the result of Christmas is as real every day of the year as it is on December 25^th.  Christ has come and lived among us.  May the good news that you hear lead you to the manger, not just in December, but throughout the year.  May what you experience there, lead you to become a messenger, an angel, boldly proclaiming the fact that our Messiah has been born.  May the sounding forth of that message bring the peace to our world that was inaugurated with the birth of Jesus Christ.   

Luke 1:26-38: Motherhood as an act of faith

So I realize that in order to catch up, I am going to have to post more than once a week.  I hope to be able to do that this week.  For now, I wanted to share with you some thoughts on motherhood as an act of faith.  I know it's a few weeks late in relation to Mother's Day, but perhaps that's a good thing.
I'll be honest, I struggled a lot trying to figure out what to preach on Mother's Day.  In my discussions with people who have been here a while, I learned that sometimes they had gotten a "Mother's Day" sermon, and sometimes they hadn't.  This being my first time preaching regularly, it was also the first time I had been confronted with the question; "how do we use a time like Mother's Day to reflect on faith?"
My mind went to Jesus' mother, Mary, the most famous of all mothers.  What can Mary's story teach us about faith?
As we study what is often referred to as "the Annunciation", or Mary's receiving of the news that she will give birth to Jesus, it is hard not to compare and contrast her reaction to that of Zechariah on hearing the news of John the Baptist's impending birth.  The two scenes come so close together that it's hard not to think that a comparison is called for, but while the scenes are close in proximity in Luke's narrative, they are also worlds apart when it comes to Zechariah and Mary's relative reactions.  If we had to wager a guess, we would expect Zechariah's reaction to be one of faith, especially taking into consideration his role as a priest at the Temple.  Indeed, it is in the holiest of spaces at the Temple where Zechariah receives the news that his wife, Elizabeth, will give birth to John the Baptist.  And yet, we see that his response is one of disbelief, a far cry from the faith we would expect from a priest in service to God.
Cut to Nazareth, where a very different figure receives very similar news.  While the messenger is the same,  in this instance the recipient of the news is a teenage girl rather than a Temple priest, and an unmarried teenage girl to boot.  So imagine our surprise when on hearing the news from Gabriel, including how exactly everything would happen, Mary responds with one of the simplest and yet most faithful statements ever spoken: "Behold, I am a servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."  Despite the fact that the news would cause Mary a lot more difficulty than it would cause Zechariah, we see her much more willing to embrace her role in God's plan.  I have no doubt that she had to be thinking of the nine months that she would spend literally sharing her body with another living being.  Perhaps of greater concern would be the social repercussions when she, a teenage girl yet to be married, turned up pregnant.   
I think all of these things crossed Mary's mind, even as she uttered the words that cast her as a key player in the greatest drama in history.  It teaches us several things of great importance.  The first is that faith can be found in the most unexpected of places, even when it is found wanting in the very place we go expecting to find it.  Secondly, motherhood in and of itself is an act of faith.  At a time when women, specifically mothers, are under increasing pressure to have careers of their own, I think we can learn something about the value of intentionally entering into motherhood from Mary.  It is true that God isn't in need of any more women to give birth to the Messiah, but that doesn't diminish the potential of each child to one day make a lasting impact on the community around them.  Mary raised Jesus with the expectation that He would play an indispensable role in God's plan.  While our children might not grow up to redeem humankind, that shouldn't preclude us from expecting that each one of them will play an important role in spreading the good news of what Mary's child accomplished in His death, burial, and resurrection.  If we raise them properly, it will be a message carried not only on their lips but also in their hearts, born out in their actions for the world to see.   Finally, we learn from the example of Mary that our role in God's plan will most assuredly cost us something.  For Mary, it cost her the pain of childbirth, and the respect of her community.  It is easy to forget that Mary was probably the recipient of judgmental stares and hushed whispering for quite some time after Jesus' birth.  By saying yes to God, Mary was agreeing to endure all these things so that she would have the honor of giving birth to and nurturing the world's Savior.  Do we, with the faith of Mary, say yes when God asks us to play a part in His divine plan?  Do we, like Mary, willingly accept the cost of proclaiming the gospel, both in word and deed, to those around us?  Can we with sincerity of heart say: ""Behold, I am a servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."?  

Luke 24:13-35: recognizing Jesus

I talked a little bit in part one of this post about how Jesus is hard to recognize sometimes.  His disciples, who spent three continuous years with him, failed to recognize him at first on the road to Emmaus.  Eventually though, their eyes were opened to the identity of this stranger in their midst.  What led them to recognize him?  They recognized him in the breaking of the bread.
How fitting that Jesus' disciples recognize Him as they are gathered around the table.  This happy coincidence allows us to actually participate in the story, for we to gather around a table regularly with Jesus present.  I would suggest that we can learn a few things from the disciples experience with the resurrected Christ that can inform our own efforts to discern Christ in the breaking of bread.

• First of all, the fact that they recognized Him in the breaking of the bread implies that in some way His actions were familiar to them.  Perhaps it's the way he prayed.  Some suggest that the very actions of taking, blessing, breaking, and giving bread recalled to their minds Jesus' miraculous feeding of the 5,000.  Others suggest that it evoked in their memory a much more recent event, when the disciples had gathered together with Christ to celebrate the Passover.  Regardless of what it was that triggered their memory, it seems to me that the existence of those memories is the key.  In other words, the disciples had spent a lot of time with Jesus in the past three years and despite their failure to recognize Him at first, it was those memories of their time shared together that eventually reminded them of who he was.  It begs the question, how much time do we spend with our Lord?  At some point in our lives we will all fail to recognize our Savior.  Do we share enough time with Jesus to ensure that even in our weaker moments, eventually our eyes will be opened to who he really is?  
• Each week when we gather at the table, we are reminded of the characteristics of Christ, of His very nature.  We are reminded that we serve a God who will give everything, who has given everything, to redeem us.  Not even His own body and blood are too steep a price for our reconciliation.  Some might argue that we diminish the power of the story if we tell if every week.  I understand their concern, but I would suggest that we don't celebrate Communion every week, rather we do it every seven days.  It may sound like six of one, half a dozen of the other, but I think how we approach our time at the table contributes to how meaningful that time is.  I like to compare the Lord's Supper and its spiritual necessity to water and its physical necessity.  Many see water as being a rather dull beverage.  Indeed, when I am just sitting around, I want something that tastes a lot better than water.  In those times, I am not looking for something to replenish me, I am looking for something that dazzles my taste-buds.  However, in those times when I am really working out (which isn't as easy as it used to be), nothing will do but water.  There were many a day in high school when all of us would gather around the water fountain after a long run or a tough track work-out.  We didn't want sweet tea (shocking I know), and we didn't want Coke.  Oh, those are good when all you want is something that tastes good, but I wanted something that would really quench my thirst, I wanted something life-giving.  If we find our time around the table dull is it because it is in fact dull, or is it because our lack of spiritual exercise has us looking for something that delights the taste-buds, and not something that replenishes the soul?  
• Finally, I think it's appropriate to note the disciples travel itinerary.  We find them at the beginning of the story leaving Jerusalem heading towards Emmaus.  And yet, after their encounter with the resurrected Christ their plans change, and by the end of the passage they are returning to Jerusalem.  An encounter with Jesus quite literally changed the direction of the disciples lives.  Little did they know that very soon God would unleash the Spirit on Jesus' disciples gathered in Jerusalem.  It is true that our change of direction will not be physical in nature, but it should be just as real.  When we encounter the risen Lord, does it change our plans, does it completely reshape the way we live our lives?  Or, after our experience with Jesus do we continue walking down the same road, in the same direction that we were headed all along?  

It amazes me all the ways that we can relate to a simple story about Jesus' disciples and their interaction with a Messiah who transforms death into life.  It was an event that led them to Jerusalem to fulfill their calling as the first messengers of the good news of Christ and His resurrection.  Do you recognize Jesus when you see Him, and if so, where is your encounter with Him leading you?

Luke 24:13-35: when Jesus is hard to recognize

I must admit that I struggled for some time trying to pick the right text for this past Sunday.  It is true that Easter helps narrow it down a little bit- something about the resurrection would be good.  But as ministers we are faced with a unique challenge when it comes to Easter and Christmas.  How do we bring an expected story in unexpected ways?  It was this struggle that led me to choose Luke 24:13-35 as the basis of my sermon.  It's a text about resurrection to be sure, but probably not the usual suspect when it comes to what the people are expecting to hear.  No empty tombs or angels arrayed in white here; simply a journey on a road leaving Jerusalem, with nothing but disappointment and disheartening experiences over our shoulders.
As I discussed my passage selection with another friend of mine in the ministry, he said something that confirmed my suspicion that perhaps there is something in this text that we as Christians need to hear, especially at Easter.  He said "most of us who have grown up in the church have had road to Emmaus experiences instead of road to Damascus experiences.  When we look back we see the Lord."  I think he's right.  There is something about this text that speaks to us because it reminds us that after the resurrection there is life to be lived, and work to be done. 
As the story goes, a pair of disciples are leaving Jerusalem after the events of the crucifixion and "rumored" resurrection.  During their journey to Emmaus the disciples fall in with a stranger, who unbeknownest to them, is actually Jesus.  In a bit of irony, the disciples express amazement at this strangers apparent ignorance of the recent days events, and they begin to actually recount to the risen Jesus all the things that have taken place in Jerusalem over the past week.  Their story is riddled with dejection, as they describe the high hopes that they had for their crucified master, even suggesting that he was the prophet like Moses that Israel had been waiting for, that he was the one who was to "redeem" Israel.  It seems to me that the disciples failure to understand God's working in the events that they describe is twofold.  First, they embrace the promise but not the pain of God's plan.  A brief glance at the career of Israel's prophets would show that while they brought words of hope (and sometimes judgment), they also paid a steep price to do so.  While it's easy for us to see their mistake, and perhaps even ask how they could be so blind, it isn't as easy to ask ourselves honestly whether we are guilty of making the same mistake ourselves.  Do we, like the disciples, embrace all of the promise but none of the pain that comes with following Christ?  The popularity of the "prosperity gospel" with so many Americans tells me that we do.  When we do embrace the blessings, all the while completely ignoring the pain that comes with discipleship, we only set ourselves up for crisis' of faith that loom on the horizon.  Make no mistake, ignoring pain does not abolish its existence as a reality in our world.  For that reason, we are better off to always remember that Jesus' call to take up our cross and follow him is a call composed of both promise and pain.  The difference, and this is the thing that makes the gospel the gospel, is that the promise will always outlive the pain. 
When I was a runner in high school, there was a saying that was popular in cross country circles.  The saying was "pain is temporary, pride is forever."  In other words, while it may hurt to push that extra little bit in practice, that pain will never outlast the pride of running faster than you have before (and hopefully faster than whoever you're racing that day).  I mention this because it leads us into the second mistake that the disciples made.  They associated Christ' crucifixion with permanent defeat, even seeming to give His death on the cross as the reason why he in fact would not be the one to redeem Israel.  There's that irony again.  The very thing that has led to the disciples deep depression over Jesus seeming failure to redeem Israel is in fact the very method by which Jesus would do just that.  Perhaps if I could borrow and edit the old phrase that was so popular when I was a runner, we could say that "the cross is temporary, but resurrection is forever."  Jesus sacrifice on the cross was an event fixed in time, and yet its salvific effects that find their expression in the resurrection are eternal.  We should note that the cross did have a major role to play in God's plan, and our instruction to take up our crosses and follow Christ ensures us that at some point we to will be made to suffer for our faith.  And yet, our pain will always be swallowed up in the victory that is Christ's resurrection. 
I can't really blame the disciples for not recognizing Jesus.  Never in their wildest dreams did they imagine that they would be following a crucificed Lord.  The question for contempory Christians is do others recognize in us their crucified Lord?  Do they see through our actions a God whose love is demonstrated in sacrifice?  Like the disciples who came before them it might not be what they are expecting, but I guarantee you it's what they need.