Sermon for Easter 3B, April 19, 2015

Text: Luke 24:36-49

            Beloved in Christ, one of the serious dangers the church has always faced is to make Christ less than He really is. Most people don’t have a problem with believing in a God who is all-powerful. They do have a problem with believing in an all-powerful God who gets so much into the muck and mire of our life that He will take on our human nature. Most people don’t have a problem with a holy man who spouts off pearls of great wisdom. They do have a problem with a holy man who is also true God. Most people don’t have a problem with the idea that something in a human being survives death—a soul or some such thing. They do have a problem with someone rising from the dead and continuing to exist in body as well as soul. In short, most people don’t want a real Lord God in the flesh. And once He has been killed off, they don’t want Him back in the flesh again. They don’t want Him standing authoritatively in their midst.

            But we in the Christian church want no other Jesus. When the disciples thought that Jesus was merely a ghost, they were frightened. Only when they realized that it truly was the risen Lord were their hearts calmed. A ghostly Jesus terrifies. A risen Lord in the flesh brings comfort.

            Think of the comfort that our Lord brings and think of the comfort that some people would substitute. Every so often you hear people say after a loved one has died, “As long as we remember them, they will live on in our hearts.” That sentiment is cold comfort. After all, we are all forgetful. Does that mean that whenever we forget our loved one, even just for a while, they have ceased to exist? It’s a ridiculous and cruel notion. And if we believed that about Christ, it would give us no hope.

            After all, we want more than just memories. We face flesh-and-blood problems. We need a flesh-and-blood Savior. We need a Savior who was so flesh-and-blood that He could march into death to deal with our very real sins. And we need a flesh-and-blood Savior who has risen again to give us forgiveness and new life. We need a flesh-and-blood Savior who will continue to work in and through us, as He daily forgives our sins and guides us in paths of righteousness. An idea or a memory is not enough for us Christians. Anything less than the real Jesus—the real God in human flesh—won’t cut it.

            But where do we meet this risen Savior? I think most of us would naturally think of the Lord’s Supper, where our risen Lord gives us His very body and blood under the bread and wine. Most certainly He is there—in the flesh. He is there in perhaps the most powerful way that we can imagine. He brings His very body and blood that won our salvation. He not only shows His body and blood to us, but He gives us these very things for us to eat and to drink, to assimilate them into our very being, so that He and we can be closely bound for all eternity. But it is not a dead Lord who does these things, but the very much alive Jesus Christ. For just as it was the living Christ who instituted the sacrament on Maundy Thursday, so it is the Christ who lives again who continues to serve as our host at this most holy meal. Here we encounter Christ as in no other way—as host and banquet—as we come with hungry souls in weary bodies.

            Not that that is not the only place we encounter the risen Lord. No, when we were baptized, we were united in a very real and powerful way with His death and resurrection, yes, with Christ Himself. But today’s Gospel reminds us that we encounter our risen Lord in another way, namely, through the Scriptures. The Scriptures are about Jesus Christ from beginning to end, from Genesis to the Revelation. And when those Scriptures are read, the Holy Spirit brings us fully into the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ.

            But you may say, “Is the Old Testament about Jesus? After all, He hadn’t been born then.” But from beginning to end, the Bible is about Christ. He was there when we were created, for He, the Father, and the Holy Spirit held a special conference before creating us and they agreed, “Let us make man in our own image.” And as soon as mankind turned to sin, His birth was foretold. He would be the “offspring of the woman.” Since nothing was mentioned about His being an offspring of a man, one could already understand that He would have no earthly father but would be born of a virgin. He would come to “crush [the devil’s] head,” even though it would come at the great pain of having His heel bruised.

            With the dawn of every new era, there would be a further prophecy given about what He would be like. After the flood, Shem was told that he would be the ancestor of Christ; several centuries later, Abraham was told the same; and then Abraham was told that this blessing would come through Isaac, not through Ishmael. Generation by generation this promise was passed down: to Isaac, to Jacob, and then to Judah. Before Jacob died, He foretold how Christ would come from Judah, but only when Judah would lose total control over its people, which occurred when Pilate took away the right for the Jewish council to hear capital cases. (Even in exile, the Jewish community had retained that right.)

            Now as we turn to Exodus, you might think that here the story wanders away from Christ, but that would be wrong. God delivered the Israelites from slavery to the Egyptians, but it was no mere political act or military act on God’s part. After all, there have been all sorts of oppressed nations throughout world history. Why did God single out the Israelites? He wanted to foreshadow the sort of deliverance that God would provide through the Messiah. Just as the blood of the Passover lamb spared the Israelites from death and set them from bondage, so too our Lord’s death set us free from bondage to sin and death. Just as God commanded the building of the tabernacle and instituted the office of high priest, so Christ would be our true temple and our great high priest. Israel was called to be God’s people and to bring His light and salvation to the whole world, but they ultimately failed. That is why Christ had to come.

            This is underscored by two passages in the books written by Moses. You see, you could get the false impression that the first five books of the Bible (called the Pentateuch) are just about Moses delivering the Israelites and establishing a new nation. You might think, as the Jews today still do, that Moses’ law was the culmination of all of Israel’s hopes, and that was that. But in one of Moses’ last sermons he said that God would raise up a greater prophet than himself, for He would speak with the very voice of God. Shortly before he had said those words, the prophet Balaam had outlined Israel’s history, from Israel’s settling in the Promised Land to the coming of the Romans. But as far as Balaam was concerned, everything revolved around “the Star of Jacob,” the one whose coming would not happen for centuries, but whose coming would change everything.

            The Prophets added further details to what the Law of Moses had revealed. So too did the Psalms. We do not have time now to explain all the passages in the Bible that foretold the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Several come to mind. David was told that He would be the ancestor of our Lord. Micah foretold that Christ would be born in Bethlehem. Isaiah gave such complete descriptions of our Lord’s life and ministry that he has been called “the fifth evangelist.” Indeed, Handel’s Messiah, which tells the life of Christ, is drawn largely from Isaiah, not from the four New Testament gospels. In all the prophetic books of the Old Testament you see a common pattern. The prophet will complain about the wickedness of his generation and call people to repent, but he will also point forward to the coming of Christ. The Messianic promises are almost always an exact antidote to the current problems that the prophet was facing.

            Of course, that’s still true today. Just as the Old Testament Scriptures proclaimed “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead” so “that repentance and forgiveness of sins” could be also preached, so we in the New Testament proclaim that Christ has died and risen from the dead and we call people to repent of their sins and to receive the forgiveness of their sins.

            Beloved in Christ, may you understand the Scriptures fully and believe what they are saying, and thereby meet the real flesh-and-blood Jesus who has risen from the dead! Amen.