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Grace, mercy, and peace be upon you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading. You may be seated. Now remember last Sunday’s Gospel reading. That was from the Gospel of John. That’s where Jesus appeared to his disciples and breathed upon his disciples and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. And whosoever sins you retain, they are retained.” We spoke about the mission of the church being to proclaim that absolution to one another and to the world.
Well, this morning’s Luke Gospel reading, interestingly enough, is the account by Luke of the exact same event. Now, there are some differences, obviously. We don’t see the impartation of the Holy Spirit. We don’t see Thomas involved in this text, but we do see some very unique things that are important for us to continue to meditate on during this Easter season and always.
The first is using Jesus’ own words. He is, this is his words, a flesh and bone Savior. He is flesh and bone. He is not abstract. He is not ethereal. He is not a spirit or a specter. He is flesh and bone. Just as he was given birth to by Mary with flesh and bone, so he died with flesh and bone, so he was raised with flesh and bone.
The second one goes along with our Bible study that we’re going on right now and just started this morning in Fellowship Hall. Everything in the Old Testament points to Jesus Christ. Everything in the Old Testament is all about Jesus, and in fact, that was the source document that all of the early church used until finally later on, the New Testament was assembled, copied, and it was able to be scattered about in multiple copies.
So who is this flesh and bone Savior? Well, this is interesting. In the Gospel of Luke, at the very beginning, when Simeon is in the temple and he’s holding in his arms God, what a novel concept, isn’t it? He’s holding in his arms a squirming little baby boy named Jesus, who is God in the flesh. He says something profound about mankind’s heart. He says, “…behold, this child is appointed so that the hearts of many may be revealed.” That’s kind of scary if you think about it, because what is in your and my heart?
Now, the things that we’re so quick to say that I’ve revealed to God, fantastic, but there’s also a lot that you and I hide in our heart and do not let God forgive, because quite frankly, we don’t know if we can forgive ourselves, or we’re unsure of it, or we’re ashamed of it, regardless. But this word about a heart being exposed—why is that so important? Because notice the exact words that our Lord Jesus proclaims to these men as they’re gathered there. He says, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?” Because he is pointing out to them the very thing that is true about all of our hearts. We’re fickle. Our hearts are very fickle. From one moment they’re proud and defiant, and to the next moment they’re fear-filled and doubting, despondent.
Jesus’ purpose for coming into this world is to take those hearts that are ugly and black, that are dead, and raise them from the dead and bring life into them, make them anew. That Easter hymn, “I know that my Redeemer lives,” has two lines that go like this: “Jesus lives to comfort you when faint. Jesus lives to hear your soul’s complaint.” These apostles are fainting, and these apostles are complaining because it’s not as they had thought in their mind. And yet Jesus comes to them and shows himself to be flesh and blood so that their hearts are comforted.
The afterlife is a part of every religion out there; there is something beyond this world as a part of every religion. The problem is, even in Christianity, a lot of people get it messed up. Yes, there is an afterlife. But the most important thing that Jesus is showing in this text is that this afterlife of which we will enjoy is not an abstract spiritual realm that does not have concrete, real entities who live there. Again, just as God became man with real flesh and blood, and Mary gave birth to flesh and blood, and so did these apostles eyewitness the death of that flesh and blood on that cross, and so are these eyewitnesses seeing that flesh and blood in front of them raised from the dead; so you too shall have flesh and blood when you are raised from the dead.
This is vitally important, for when you look at the lump of clay that lies in a casket, you are not going to see that same lump of clay in heaven. You will see a glorified body, but you will see real flesh and real bone that can be touched, that you can see with your eyes, that you can hear with your ears, just as they were able to touch Jesus. He says, “Touch me and see.” They heard his voice spoken to them. Mary embraced him in the garden. He even goes one step farther. He takes a piece of fish and eats it. Don’t overlook that fact. He eats it, which means all those scriptures that talk about the Lamb’s feast in the kingdom of heaven, where we will eat and drink, are not a metaphor. It is literal eating and drinking. Jesus himself would not have done that had that not been what he was trying to show you; that the reality of heaven is corporal, tangible, flesh and bone.
Now, St. John in his epistle adds another point. He wants us to see this point as well. He says, “The reason why the world doesn’t know you is that it didn’t know him either. Beloved, we are God’s children. Now, we are, and what we will be has not yet appeared.” Meaning what we will be in heaven has not yet appeared. Well, it did in Jesus, but he’s talking about the end time. We know that when he does appear to you and to me, we shall be like him. We shall be like him with flesh and bone. And we shall see him just as he is. And you can’t see something unless you have eyes, right? And you can’t see something if that thing isn’t real flesh and bone. That’s why John wrote that. He did not want the Christian faith to become an abstraction, a metaphor of something else. It was tangible and real—flesh and blood, or as Jesus used, flesh and bone.
Now, granted, since we cannot touch Jesus and cannot see his flesh and bones, wait a second, can we not touch him? Can we not see his flesh and bones? Is it not laid upon your lips and in your hands the very flesh and bones of Christ? Is not the very blood that coursed through his veins placed upon your lips in the supper of the wine and the blood? You better believe we can touch, taste, and see Jesus in that supper. It’s not a metaphor, and it’s not a symbolic remembrance. It is real. Not real in a metaphor way, but real in a tangible flesh and blood way. Or Jesus would never have said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” He would have said, “This is a metaphor for my body,” or “This is symbolic of my body,” or “This is a remembrance of my body or blood.” He does none of such.
And where does he reveal to his disciples that this is what it is? He does not quote the New Testament—because the New Testament had not been written. He quotes and uses the Old Testament alone. The choir sang about this. This happened after, immediately after, Jesus had spoken with his disciples from Emmaus. Now you remember the story. Jesus appears to them on their road to Emmaus. Jesus. They don’t recognize him. They ask him, “How are you?” “Fine.” “Oh, we’re sad.” “Well, what happened?” And they go, “You don’t know what happened?” “Yeah, tell me.”
“Well, here’s what happened. This Jesus of Nazareth.” And then they go and tell him. Then Jesus says to them, “Listen, how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” That’s the Old Testament, brothers and sisters. That’s the Old Testament. Then the text says, “Beginning with Moses,” which is the first five books of the Bible, “and all the prophets,” which are the rest of the Old Testament, “Jesus interpreted it to them in all the scriptures.” What are the scriptures? Not the New Testament yet. Just the Old Testament. “In all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.” He reveals to these disciples on the road to Emmaus everything about him, how all of the Old Testament was written to reveal him to come, including how he would bring himself to us in this manner.
Why, of all the nights, would he celebrate and give us the Lord’s Supper except on the night of? The Passover, which was an Old Testament feast. And what was the Passover? That a perfect, sinless, in a sense, without any scar or blemish, lamb of God, male, would be slaughtered. And what would they do with the slaughtered remains of that lamb? They would eat that lamb. And why would it be such a profound thing when John the Baptist would say, “Behold, there is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” All from the Old Testament, dear brothers and sisters. Jesus said that everything, here’s in our text this morning, everything written about me, everything in the law of Moses and the prophets, and Jesus even adds this term, “and the Psalms.” He’s making sure that they get it. Everything in the Old Testament must be fulfilled.
Then, having said that, he opened their minds, which doesn’t mean that they were ignorant, meaning they were capable of understanding, but it is something that is understood by faith and faith alone. He opened their minds to understand by faith alone the scriptures. The scriptures are not the New Testament in this text. It is the old, but that’s not where Jesus leaves it.
That’s just one of the important facets of this Lucan account of the resurrection. The second part… He sends you on a mission. Many of you have given to our sister in Christ who is a member of Jesus Lutheran Church for the Deaf, Jennifer, who is heading to Macau for a month-long mission trip where she will work with the deaf there in China. That’s the most obvious kind of witness when we think of witnessing.
And yet we also know that pastors as well, Pastor Shilke, I’m sorry, Pastor Shivey, he’s over in China also, in Hong Kong in the Church of All Nations, proclaiming the gospel there. We supported him for years. You are supporting Pastor Mitwitty every Sunday evening when he gathers with the youth of our University of Texas here in this place, where your offerings pay the bills for this place so that that mission can go on. But where Jesus is really heading toward is not the glamorous kind of missions.
He’s heading it toward you, where it’s not always glamorous. It’s you proclaiming it to your spouse and children. It’s you sharing it with your fellow workers. It’s you who bring the gospel and this proclamation to other people. Jesus made it very clear. It is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You, or in the Texas language, y’all, are witnesses of these things. Now, yes, you and I did not see this resurrected Lord. But we have, with the eyes of faith, seen the evidence of the scriptures that were recorded by the very people who were eyewitnesses of the resurrected Lord, and especially saw him eat this flesh of that fish, and proclaimed himself to be flesh and bone. You are witnesses of that reality. And that reality is to be proclaimed. The meaning or the method is that there is repentance and forgiveness. Forgiveness to be proclaimed to all nations. Same thing Matthew said, except he said “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.”
He adds again, “Behold, I, the Son, am sending the promise, the Holy Spirit, of my Father upon you.” There’s the Trinity. “But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” Brothers and sisters, that has come and gone. You are now the witnesses of this great miracle of his flesh and blood resurrection, all revealed through only the Old Testament.
You’ve been given the greater gift, for you’ve been given all of the accounts of the New Testament, all of the words of these apostles and their eyewitness accounts, all of the words of what Paul reinterpreted for us, and John and Peter. Given to you that you may then witness the same truths of a flesh and bone Savior sent for you, for you to proclaim. This is the great good news of the resurrection of Easter. And we shall continue to proclaim it.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
