Third Sunday of Easter

Third Sunday of Easter (B)

April 15, 2018

Text: Luke 24:36-49

He is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia! 

            “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” (Luke 24:38; ESV).  As we learned last week, the disciples are locked away that first Easter evening for fear of the Jews.  This is Luke’s version of the account we heard from John’s Gospel last week.  As the disciples are discussing the strange events and rumors of encounters with the risen Jesus, they are troubled and afraid.  What do we do now?  We gave our lives to this man who has been crucified.  Now we have to start over.  If we can.  The authorities may be coming for us next!  We’ll have to lay low for now.  And what about all of this resurrection talk?  It is all very unsettling.  And if it’s true?  Will Jesus forgive us for denying Him?  For deserting Him?

            And suddenly, there Jesus is among them.  And it shouldn’t surprise us.  As we said last week, the reality is, the risen Jesus is always among His people, in their very midst, bodily, yet in a hidden way.  When your pastor says to you, “The Lord be with you,” I really mean it.  Not just spiritually.  Really.  Bodily.  Jesus is with you.  And you say, “And with your spirit,” and you really mean it.  The Lord is with the spirit of your pastor as He declares to you the whole counsel of God, that your sins are forgiven, that the crucified Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead and you therefore have eternal life.  It’s not just a pious wish when you tell me the Lord is with my spirit.  It’s the truth of the matter.  You impart it as you speak it, because it is not your word, but God’s Word, that does what it says.  As surely as He was there in the midst of His disciples, He is here, in our midst.  He is with you.  He is with my spirit.  And as with His disciples in the locked room, so it is with us.  He is among us and He speaks into reality the one thing they and we need to hear, “Peace to you!” (v. 36).  It is a Holy Absolution for all our sins and failures, for all our fears and our doubts. 

            Now the disciples, far from feeling the reality of peace that has just been spoken, are even more scared!  Well, I suppose you would be, too, if someone you knew to be dead suddenly showed up in the middle of the room.  They think it’s a ghost!  “Why are you troubled,” Jesus asks.  “Why do you doubt?”  It’s a rhetorical question.  “How can you doubt?  How can anything trouble you now that I am risen from the dead?”  The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything.  If Christ is risen, that means death is at an end.  If death is at an end, that means sin has been abolished, wiped out, done to death in Jesus’ death.  If sin is abolished, that means God has nothing against you.  He does not condemn you.  He loves you.  He is for you.  And if that is so, why are you troubled?  What could possibly trouble you?  Why do you doubt? 

            What is it that troubles you?  What is it that causes you to doubt?  There are any number of things.  You are worried and troubled about your temporal welfare.  Will I have enough to get by?  You worry for your children.  Will they succeed in life?  Will they make good choices?  Will they be safe?  Will they know the Lord?  You worry for your parents as they age.  Will I be able to care for them as they become more dependent?  You are troubled by the things that are happening at your job.  The troubles of your friends trouble you.  The events on the world stage trouble you.  And you worry whether our leaders know what they are doing, or if they even care.  The situation of the Church troubles you.  Especially in a mission congregation (mission congregations are always fragile creatures), and a Synod that has its share of conflicts.  Your loved ones get sick, and that troubles you.  They die, and you grieve.  You get sick.  Trouble.  You will die.  And until you do, more troubling, perhaps, is living in this constant danger.  The devil wants to have you.  He can’t, but it won’t stop him from trying.  And the point is this: Your troubles and doubts are real.  It is not the case that the Gospel makes them any less real.  It is rather the case that the Gospel, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, transforms them from death to life.  What is behind every one of the things that trouble you, ultimately, is the fear of death and God’s judgment for your sin.  There you have it, I just saved you a ton of money on counseling.  That’s your problem.  You know that your very existence is fragile and outside of your control.  And you know that you are a sinner, deserving of death and eternal damnation.  But you see, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead changes all of that.  Christ has died.  You are no longer in your sins.  He shed His precious blood to cover them and wash them away forever.  And He is risen from the dead.  Death has been defeated.  It cannot have you.  Our Lord’s resurrection is the great Absolution for all your sins.  It is your justification, your righteousness, your life.  For in raising His Son, the Father has declared His sacrifice for your sin sufficient, accepted, complete.  God declares you His own, His beloved.  He gives you life.  He will raise you from the dead on the Last Day.  Bodily.  And in the meantime, He will not fail you.  He is with you.  He is with you in His Word and Baptism and Supper.  He is with you in the resurrected flesh of His Son, Jesus Christ.  So why are you troubled?  Why do you doubt?  Jesus’ presence with you, with His wounds, with His peace, is the answer for all that ails you.

            Doubt is a sin.  You must know that.  Your troubles are real, and they are hard.  No one is denying that.  But the doubt and anxiety that come as a result of them is sinful.  Repent.  It is a paradox, isn’t it, the life of faith?  I believe; help my unbelief.  I trust, but I worry.  Jesus appears in the room with His disciples, and when they are finally convinced that it is Him, in the flesh, eating fish, touchable, very much not a ghost, Luke tells us the disciples disbelieved for joy (v. 41).  Disbelieved.  For joy.  That’s a paradox if I’ve ever heard one.  I love that phrase.  Because that’s me.  And that’s you.  We know it’s true.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  For me.  For you.  We believe it, beyond a shadow of a doubt.  Except that we still have doubts.  God help us.  He does.  But what’s the matter with us?  We too often live as if Easter never happened.  As if death really does have some claim on us.  As if the devil, the world, and our sinful nature still have a claim on us.  What do we do with that?  Where do we turn in the struggle? 

            “Peace,” Jesus says.  That wipes it all out, because that is the forgiveness of sins.  And then He gives us three gifts to sustain us in the struggle.  First, He points us to the Scriptures.  The Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.  It’s all about Him.  It’s all fulfilled in Him.  And He opens our minds to understand that, to read the Scriptures with the eyes of faith in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus.  Second, He gives the preaching of His death and resurrection for repentance and the forgiveness of sins.  This Gospel is to be proclaimed!  This is preaching broadly speaking.  It includes the sermon, of course, but it is every way this Gospel is made known.  It is Baptism and Absolution, the public reading of the Scriptures and their explication in the Divine Service and in Bible Study.  It is the Supper of Jesus’ body and blood.  It is the liturgy, the prayers, the hymns.  Don’t think of those things as filler to keep you entertained in between the boring parts where the pastor talks.  All of those things preach.  They give you Jesus and His death and resurrection for your forgiveness.  This is where so many congregations get messed up in their liturgy and hymns, because they think of these things as unimportant, a mere add-on to the preaching to be utilized according to the whims of the people, whatever the people want.  That’s not it.  Everything we do between the prelude and the postlude and in Bible Study and Sunday School is part of the preaching.  And, of course, there is the witness you take with you out into the world.  You confess Christ.  You speak of Him and His Word to your family, to your friends and co-workers, to your neighbors.  Third, He gives His Spirit.  “And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you” (v. 49).  We will see how He gives His Spirit in His fullness on Pentecost, and we will see it in a very special way on that day as five of our children confess the faith in the Rite of Confirmation and receive their First Communion.  What a beautiful day that will be.  I can hardly wait.  But our Lord gives His Spirit, the promise of His Father, to us in every encounter with the Scriptures and with the Preaching.  And that is the beautiful thing.  These gifts are really one.  They are of a piece.  The Spirit comes in the Preaching of the Scriptures, to give us repentance and forgiveness of sins by the Preaching of the Word that imparts Christ, who restores us to the Father by His death and resurrection.  It’s beautiful.  It’s Trinitarian.  It’s Law and Gospel.  It’s cross and empty tomb; death and resurrection.  It’s Means of Grace.  It’s all wrapped up in that little Word Jesus speaks when He appears in our midst: “Peace.”  He says it.  You have it.  His Word creates the very reality.

            So why are you troubled?  The Lord is asking you.  Why do you doubt?  It’s silly.  Stop it.  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  What more do you need?  He is with you.  He forgives you.  He loves you.  He provides for you.  And He gives you eternal life.  That puts everything else in perspective, doesn’t it?  All those things that trouble you?  In fact, the resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything.  Now your troubles can’t hurt you.  Not really.  They all come to their end in Jesus Christ, your Savior.  He is risen!  He is risen, indeed!  Alleluia!  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.