May 4, 2003
Acts 3:13-115,17-19 + 1 John 3:1-7 + Luke 24:36-48
Last week we took up John’s version of an appearance of the risen Christ. This week it is Luke. The verses today follow the Emmaus story. The two disciples are the ones who met him on their “way”. They have now returned to Jerusalem with their story. The Jesus who has reviewed the scriptures and eaten with them does it again. They are still in that room terrified and unbelieving. It is their shame that holds them back. It is the memory of their failure that they recall, not what he promised them. All they seem to remember is that they abandoned him. All they could see is failure, theirs and his. Their messianic dreams and expectations are over. The cross was the end of that. They thought it was all about them; and the truth of their failings is more than they can bear, so they hide. In their midst comes the risen Christ: a failed Messiah in the midst of failed disciples, and what we hear when they come together is talk of forgiveness.
This is the heart of the Christian story. It is the essence of the Gospel and the source of belief in the risen Christ and the greatest joy. What those disciples came to realize sitting in that room sharing their shame and admitting their guilt and suffering their terror was that the whole experience of Jesus had not been about them. It was not about their messianic expectations. It was not about their power and their victory over their enemies. It was not about how loyal they were as disciples. It was not about their religion either. It was about God and God’s love and God’s plan for them. It was about what God could do with failure and sin.
Until those two making their way to Emmaus had their eyes opened
and one more time went over all that Moses and the Prophets had to say, they didn’t get it. Until those others in that locked up room had the same experience, they didn’t get it. But once he came into that room of failure and shame and doubt, it was different.
Forgiveness became for them the moment of awakening and belief.
He did not avoid them in their guilt nor abandon them in their fear.
He did not reproach their denials of him nor the betrayal. He never mentioned it. He simply reproached their fear. Once they experienced that forgiveness and realized that their failures had not been the end of God’s plan, they understood and were overcome with Joy.
This Easter season can do the same for us. It is not about those disciples and something that happened in Jerusalem. This Easter is about us. We understand their part of the story because we are just like them. Our denial, our betrayal of Jesus and our quickness to abandon Him is just as real as theirs. We have just as much to fear as well. The only difference is that in addition to locking doors,
we set alarms, close the gates, and look the other way at the failures of justice and the suffering of the innocent. The wounds of Christ alive in our midst do not interest us. We want the sentimental Jesus with fair skin, long hair, and gentle voice. He stands before day in and day out inviting us to see and touch wounds, and he asks us for food.
It is to disciples who have failed that the risen Christ appears. It is disciples who are ashamed and hiding that Jesus sends forth in Joy.
It is people forgiven and redeemed who inherit the Gospel and its mission. Our own experience of failure and sin is what puts us in the company of the saved and the redeemed. To the eyes of his own and the eyes of his world, Jesus was a failure – no power, no strength, no miracles. Yet when he confronted with forgiveness the failures of others, he was exalted; and they came to believe. Our best prayer this third Easter day is that it may be so again that he may come into this room or our homes or our hearts with that message of Peace and that mission of forgiveness. When we have come to know that Peace, we shall believe in the risen Lord not because someone told us about it, but because we have known it ourselves.