The Presence of Jesus
Text: Luke 24:36-49
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
In the Church, Easter is not a single morning, nor is it even a single day. Easter is a season. It’s seven weeks of rejoicing together over the resurrection of Jesus and taking a good long time to really marvel at what His eternal life means for our own eternity. Seven weeks of celebrating—that could even outrun some department stores’ full bore Christmas season.
But why do we take seven weeks? There are number of answers, but one of them is that our Lord made many different appearances to His disciples after His resurrection. We want to be able to spend time considering all of them. We have Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene right outside the tomb. He walks with two of His disciples on the road to Emmaus. He appears to His Apostles, once without Thomas present and once when he is there. At the end of John’s gospel, Jesus shows up while His disciples are fishing. So why are so many appearances recorded? Why does He keep showing up again and again, often in these sudden and mysterious ways? It was to show His disciples that He was not dead. The reports they were hearing from the others in their number weren’t just wishful thinking, hallucinations of grief, or cleverly devised myths to deceive people. Jesus really is alive and He’s showing Himself repeatedly to His disciples to demonstrate that He is actually resurrected from the dead, with flesh and bones, His body from before, restored to life.
So we have today’s Gospel reading from Luke. The beloved doctor here includes some important details as evidence that Jesus is not a figment of the Apostles’ imaginations. He is not a ghost, nor a deceiving spirit, pretending to be a departed loved one. The Jesus standing before them is their Master and Teacher, with the same body He had as He walked ahead of them on the roads to and from Galilee. When they were frightened by Him suddenly appearing in the room with them, He told them as much. “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts. It’s not too good to be true. I really am resurrected. See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And then, to give further proof, He asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” and He ate a piece of broiled fish right in front of them, to show that He was real and He was alive.
This was done for the benefit of His Apostles then and there. They would be embarking on the start of their journeys throughout the world soon, preaching the crucified and resurrected Jesus, so He wanted to be sure that His preachers would have no doubt that they were proclaiming the truth about Him defeating sin and death and living forever. But, as it is with Jesus, there is always more. What Jesus does in His post-resurrection appearance in today’s gospel, He also does for you.
Our Lord knew that we too would have doubts arise in our hearts. We heard this morning that the disciples disbelieved for joy, and how many of us haven’t done the same? We also have fears that maybe all this eternal life talk is too good to be true. We’re criticized by others as being too pie-in-the-sky. We start to believe the sneering self-proclaimed wise pundits who talk about how untrustworthy the eyewitness reports of the disciples are, or how they were written too long after the fact to be accurate, or even worse, that they were invented as some sort of power play to seize control of a religion. Like the Apostles, we can forget that Jesus is risen as we go about our daily lives, locking ourselves in rooms out of fear, or out of complacency, or out of boredom, or out of suspecting that maybe we know better than everyone else.
But none of our doubts or fears or apathy or forgetfulness can stop Jesus. He shows up in our midst. And I want that to really sink in. Jesus really does arrive in your life. He’s not just with you in spirit, whatever that may mean. He isn’t just a memory, or a story, or an object lesson, or a myth. He’s not some ghost of a dead teacher who lives on through the rules and teachings He gave. He really is with you, with His marked hands and feet, just as much as you’re with each other in this space. A spirit, a ghost, a story, a fable, a nice fuzzy warm thought does not have flesh and bones as He has. He is just as alive as you are—even more alive than you—and He is actually with you.
Now we have to discuss how He is with you. My guess is that none of you are seeing Jesus with your eyes right now. You’re not reaching out and touching Him with your hands. So in what ways is He with you? Again, it’s not just in spirit, it’s not just as a memory or a figment. He’s here, but it’s in the ways He’s told you He will be. It’s in the ways He described and hinted at in our gospel reading today.
The first, and the one that probably comes to mind first, is His resurrected body. “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And it’s with that same body that He comes to you here, at the Communion rail. And what is the way you receive that body for the strengthening of your faith and the calming of your fears? You join Jesus in His meal, but you eat His body and drink His blood, given for you in this mysterious, marvelous, and sacred way. You touch Him there and know that He is alive and shares His life with you through the forgiveness of sins and His holy presence.
And with Jesus there is always more. He’s not satisfied to only give you one source of strength and peace. So He gives more—more to the Apostles and to you. “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” He opens your mind to understand the Scriptures. Now we should not understand this as meaning He gave them some kind of secret unlocking so that they used to not be able to understand the words before but now they suddenly get it. No, what Jesus does to unlock their minds is exactly what He said: “…everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms.” He shows them that He is what Scripture has been talking about all along. So if you would have your mind opened to understand the Scripture, the Bible, you have to start by realizing that it’s all about Jesus. It always has been, from the very beginning, from the time the first words were written down. Jesus is the key. And when you understand that, God’s Word becomes so much more than a rulebook or a textbook or even a history book. It becomes Jesus in the Word, Jesus as the Word, being present with you in the words on the page, the words read aloud, the words woven into your prayers. Jesus is really with you in His Word, just as much as we are with each other in this sanctuary. And when those words are proclaimed, preached, to you in Jesus’ name, there He is again, with you in the word of proclamation: “Thus is it written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.” His body and blood, repentance, forgiveness, the words of Scripture, preaching in Jesus’ name—He wants to be with you in all those places, as close to you as breath; really and truly in your life, beside you through it all.
Your Lord is with you, and He’s so much more than a spirit or a memory or a nice idea. He’s present—truly, bodily, actually with you in all the places He’s promised to be. So look for Him there. When doubts and fears sneak into your heart, when you start to wonder if all this Easter stuff is good to be true, find Him here. See and hear Him risen from the dead, a promise of your own resurrection. Find your peace in what He has won. Know that He’s never done giving His gifts to you. Wait in the places He’s told you and watch Him clothe you with power, with life, and with joy from on high. In the name of Jesus, the Living One. Amen.
