"Open To The Risen Jesus" Easter 3 April 30, 2006

(First read the text for this sermon: Luke 24:36b-48)

Picture the scene, and put yourself in it.

It is evening.

This morning Jesus’ grave was found to be empty by Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James! At the open tomb, the women encountered “two men in dazzling clothes” who told the women that Jesus had risen from the grave! “Don’t you remember how he told you this would happen?” they hear. Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to [the men] an idle tale, and they did not believe them. (What a parable: that God would choose women to be the first to tell about the resurrection – in a culture that didn’t even consider women to be reliable witnesses of anything! God is really good at turning our assumptions upside down, huh?)

Here’s what happens next in the gospel of Luke. Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him.

It’s two followers of Jesus: Cleopas, and another who’s unnamed. The risen Jesus is walking with them, and even leading them in Bible study – but they are not able to recognize who it is! But when they get to their home, in the village of Emmaus, and they invite this stranger in for a meal, remember what happens? When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?" That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, "The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

Now we get to this morning’s story. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.

Picture the scene, and put yourself in it. How are you reacting at the end of this long and traumatic day? How do you feel? Certainly, you’re struggling to understand what’s going on! (Remember: you haven’t heard Easter preaching so often that you’re taking all of this for granted – ho hum!)

What strikes me is how sensory, how physical all of this is. “Look,” Jesus tells the bewildered disciples. “Touch,” Jesus invites his astonished followers. He says to them, “a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And he’s hungry! He eats a piece of broiled fish!

This is the risen Jesus! (It’s important to remember that, according to the Biblical witness, in the resurrection, we will have resurrection bodies. It’s not as if we’ll be ghosts, floating around; invisible spirits of some sort; not according to the apostles’ experience of the risen Jesus.)
And it’s experience that’s key here! It is only after this sensory experience of Jesus’ somehow-physical resurrected body – experienced through seeing and hearing and touching – that we read this in the story: Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

For those first followers, intellectual understanding only comes after experiencing the presence of the risen Christ! Indeed, the written gospels were formulated in the same way: backwards! First, Jesus’ followers experienced him alive! Risen! Then they worked backwards. Because he is risen, because they finally knew how the story would turn out, they were then able to make sense out of what he had said, and what he had done – what had been so bewildering and confusing. So it was a process of, “Remember when he said…? Do you think this is what he meant by that?”

And notice that those first witnesses to the resurrection, to receive openness from God, do not have to go off far away from their daily life situations, on some mountain-top-experience retreat! God comes to them, where they are. They are opened through sight, and through sound, and through touch. They come to contemplation, through their physical senses! They become open to the risen Christ.

Isn’t that the way it works, for you and me, as well? Each one of us is a contemplative! Each one of us has sensed the presence of God, at one time or another. That presence of the divine is all around us, at each moment of each day – even though we are often not aware of it; even though we are often not open to the presence of the risen Christ.

There’s an old joke: I wonder how many burning bushes Moses walked past before he finally noticed one?! Doesn’t that describe you and me, most days? When we’re on automatic pilot, we cruise through the day after day routine and don’t even see what’s there around us! Isn’t that true?

Ah, but when you and I pay attention to what we see, and what we hear, and what we touch. We become contemplatives, and recognize, in our sensory experiences, the risen Christ.

That can happen in worship. Think of the water of Holy Baptism: the wetness, the splashing presence of the risen Christ.

Think of the bread and the wine of Holy Communion: the tasting, the eating; the presence of the risen Christ.

Think of when something that we do or say in the liturgy touches you deeply, even in a way that you cannot understand. For many, that happens through the music of liturgy. You become open to the presence of the risen Christ.

But it is not simply what occurs during worship. It’s in daily experience, too. Reading the newspaper becomes a contemplative experience: when you see the face of the risen Christ in the face of a person who is suffering. Think of the instance of receiving comfort and solace and the help of another person. The wisdom of another person who speaks words that enter right into your heart. Think of the tears that come to your eyes from time to time, when you are moved by joy and gratitude for another person’s kindness and mercy. Those salty tears mark openness to the presence of the risen Christ.

In all of that experience is God!

He is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleuia!

You [and I] are witnesses of these things!

In the name of God, who is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.


Pastor Andy Ballentine
St. Stephen Lutheran Church
Williamsburg, Virginia