Grace Lutheran Church Third Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2006

The Rev. Evan Gaertner
The Third Sunday of Easter “Jesus opened their minds”
April 30, 2006 Luke 24:36-48

The scribes and the Pharisees plotted to kill Jesus. They asked him questions to get him caught in their snares. They asked the people in the weeks preceding his crucifixion to report his whereabouts. They paid Judas thirty pieces of silver in a plot to arrest Jesus in a private location so that the crowds would not stop them.

They plotted to kill Jesus and that is exactly what they got. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus put Jesus in a new plot, never used grave. Jesus on Good Friday was apparently powerless. He did not even try to dissuade Pilate from executing him.

His disciples were crushed and filled with doubts. A couple of Jesus’ followers had walked to Emmaus to escape the depression and doubts of Jerusalem and Jesus met them along the way and opened the scriptures for them to show that all these things must take place. In the breaking of the bread in Emmaus Jesus disappeared from them and they recognized Jesus. They remembered that their hearts were ablaze within them as Jesus had opened the scriptures to them.

They ran back to Jerusalem and told the apostles all that took place. These followers of Jesus have been locked in fear and doubt. They have been just going through the motions of living. They suddenly feel completely powerless to do anything. The guys going to Emmaus were trying escape their doubt. The apostles in Jerusalem were trying to hide form their doubt. They do not know what to do with the news they received from the women at the tomb. They do not know what to do with the news from the Emmaus. Life has been sucked out of them as they witnessed their master die on the cross.

As the disciples were talking about these things, the gospel of Luke records that Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you!”

Even so they in their doubt, in their desperation they would not hear these words as words of promise. They were startled and frightened and thought they were seeing a ghost.

Their fear comes from doubt and disbelief. Jesus said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?”

They haven’t believed Jesus’ promises to them. Jesus had promised to them that he was going to Jerusalem and was going to die but that on the third day he would rise again. Jesus promises are clearly told twice in Luke chapter 9 and again in chapter 18. But the disciples did not know how to hear these words.

But these had not only been Jesus’ words. The Lord had fed his people throughout time with repeated words of promise that can be found in the scriptures. Jesus told them that everything written about him in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

The disciples had failed to connect Jesus’ words to what had happened to Jesus. The disciples had failed to connect the promises of Scripture to what had happened. But worst of all was that they failed to connect their own lives to what had happened to Jesus. They did not know that Jesus had come to be the way out of their desperation, doubt, and despair.

This doubt and disbelief does not just leave them locked in that room in Jerusalem This doubt and disbelief would have kept them locked out of knowing the gracious and merciful Lord. Then things would really have been hopeless. And the thing that scares me is that there are a lot of people today that have not connected their lives to the promises of Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

People today can have doubts in all sorts of things. People doubt the creation story of Genesis as a true and literal recounting of how the world began. People doubt the miracles of the bible and find all sorts of medical and natural phenomenon explanations for all that has taken place. People will doubt the veracity of Scripture and especially more so with sensational articles about the gospel of Judas and fiction like the Da Vinci Code.

But to be honest in all my concerns as a pastor those are not doubts that I am going to get hung up on as I talk to someone about Jesus. Because the doubt that I am most worried about is the deadly doubt of not knowing the death scarred risen Jesus as Lord and God.

Consider those disciples on the road to Emmaus, the disciples locked in the room for fear, and Thomas the one that doubted even a week later. They all did not trust in the promises of God and so remained locked in despair, doubt, and disbelief. Instead of having Jesus as Lord and God they had death still as their Lord and God.

What those disciples did not grasp and sadly too many people do not grasp, as the thief on the cross does, is that death has been swallowed up in the grave of Jesus Christ. Jesus spit out death and gives to us to swallow instead of death and guilt, life and freedom.

The Law of God had rightly taught those disciples that the judgment of God was upon them for their sin and the sin that they had inherited from the ancient one Adam. St. Paul had accounted in Romans chapter 7 as he struggled with doing what he did not want to do, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

The disciples were at that point of questioning. The Law of God had worked its sword into their hearts and cut them down. They could not stand up before God. Indeed it had appeared to them that not even their master and teacher, Jesus, could not stand up against the world at work against them.

The plots were against them; the plots of the authorities and the plot of the grave that had swallowed up Jesus.

This kind of doubt cannot be left opened to fester. It is a disease ridden doubt. The guys walking despondently to Emmaus were ready to give up and just live in their despair and settle into the plot of death. The disciples in the upper room were locked in fear and living promiseless lives. Paul would have been beaten down by his guilt but he found his trust in the risen Lord Jesus and so could respond to guilt and despair that tried to swallow him, “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

God had a desire of promise of mercy and redemption for those disciples and for you. He greeted the disciples with that very customarily greeting, “Peace be with you.” A very everyday common greeting that in the mouth of Jesus, who was to be dead but is in fact very much alive now mean so much more. The disciples saw and heard him with fear and doubt. Jesus responded to their doubt by showing to them his hand and his feet. He invited them to touch him and discover that he has flesh and bones. While they still disbelieved but for joy and marveling kept up talking and eating with him.

Jesus transforms the room of doubt and fear when he reveals that the plot of God that has been revealed in Jesus the Messiah is more than the plot of the authorities and the plot of grave that tried to swallow him up. Jesus revealed the plot in no strange mysterious way but in the opening of their minds to how all these things took place to fulfill what was written in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms. The aha moment, the opening of their minds, the faith that would be their comfort holding onto Jesus came through the opening of the scriptures. Jesus opened the scriptures to his followers to show them the promises once again, the promises fulfilled in his death-scarred, Easter flesh and bones. Just as the disciples on the road to Emmaus found their hearts ablaze within them through the opening of the scriptures, now the disciples in that room find their lives filled once again with promise.

Jesus gives them a new plot to live in. Instead of living in the plot traps of sin and the never ending hopeless escapes of the grave, Jesus gives them life. Jesus clothes his disciples with the promises of the father and gives the promise of the power from on high. The one that we confess as our Lord and God is trustworthy. That is the real issue in the doubt of the disciples and the one that is answered by the faith that Jesus gives to them through the opening of the scriptures. Wall-to-wall evidence surrounded them in Jerusalem with all having been witnesses to the crucifixion. Wall-to-wall evidence of the continuing effects of sin and destruction continue to confront people today. In our personal lives today we are confronted with the question is our Lord and God trustworthy? Is he victorious or are we defeated and doomed to the fate of the grave?

Is death our Lord and God? No we have a scarred and risen Lord. He is not dead. He is not defeated. And his life and victory is by faith my life and victory. Though death and sin may surround me all day long, I trust in Jesus and so will live boldly.

Soli Deo Gloria

Grace Lutheran Church

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