April 14, 2024
“Witnesses to These Things”
Luke 24: 36b-48
Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl
Luke 24: 36b-48
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. Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.
Then he said to them, “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, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.
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Witnesses to These Things Luke 24: 36b-48
We are now in the season of Easter and will continue to be so until Pentecost, fifty days from now. Throughout the season of Easter, as people of faith, we hear various stories, telling us of the disciples’ encounters with the Risen Christ. Luke and John are the Gospel writers most fascinated with these encounters. And surprise, surprise, more often than not, these encounters with the Risen Christ seem to involve food.
These post Easter morning stories serve to remind us as people of faith that the story of the resurrection, the story of God’s love and grace, did not and does not end at the empty tomb. The disciples are sent out into the world to share the good news, to help others experience the presence of the Kingdom of God in their midst. These post resurrection stories try to answer for us as people of faith, the questions of “What’s next? What does the future hold for us as a community of faith? Where does the next part of our journey lead?
Our story this morning is no different. In our text, we find this group sitting around talking about what happened during their recent faith experience which happened in the section right before our text. A few of the disciples encountered the Risen Christ on the Road to Emmaus and they ran back to Jerusalem to tell the others. As they started talking about how they had experienced the Risen Christ,they realized that Risen Christ was in their midst once again. He greets them with a word of peace. He invites them to touch his hands, to see his feet. He even asks them for something to eat. As this experience with the Risen Christ comes to a close, Jesus reminds them that it is not enough for just this group to know, for just this group to experience the Risen Christ in their lives. Jesus reminds them that he came for all people, for all nations. And that they were witnesses to all that Christ had done and continues to do in this world.
The author of Luke uses the disciples’ experience with the Risen Christ to push the early church, to push us as modern day disciples beyond just embracing the Risen Christ in our lives. The author of Luke is reminding us that this news is just too good to keep to ourselves, that we are called to share this life changing news with everyone we meet, with everyone we encounter. The author of Luke is reminding the early church, is reminding us as modern day disciples to start thinking about what’s next, to start thinking about how we are going to incorporate the good news that love will always overcome, how we are going to start incorporating that hope will sustain, how we are going to start incorporating the good news that the empty tomb is not the end of the story, how we are going to start incorporating the good news of God’s love and grace in all things and through all things so that this world will know it does not have the last word.
Or let me say it this way…Theologian Diana Butler Bass shared a piece of writing again this past week. It was a piece that she wrote a couple of years ago entitled, “Evangelical Wreckage”. In this piece, she shares the story about how she was at a conference and the keynote speaker was trying to get a sense of the room so she asked about everyone’s particular denominations. A few people raised their hands as Presybertians, Methodists, and other mainline traditions but for the most part, everyone else kept their hands down. So the keynote speaker kept trying to guess, kept asking until finally she said, “Well, what are you?” Someone behind Diana Butler Bass said, “We’re ex-evangelicals.”
People started sharing stories about their various journeys that had brought them together, “but most of those stories included religious trauma, familial rejection, and the loss of friends, jobs, and community. Almost every person Diana Butler Bass talked to had experienced getting kicked out of something (usually an evangelical college, a para-church ministry, or a conservative denomination) and few family relationships were healthy or left intact. People shared about being pushed out of their church for coming out, for being a woman with a call to preach, for asking unacceptable theological questions, and for refusing to vote for Donald Trump. Bass shared that the conference was filled with heartbreaking testimonies from the various platforms and in private conversations.”
As I was reading Diana’s reflection on her experience, this next part struck me….and I invite you to hear this powerful testimony: She shared “At one point, while I was sitting on a panel, a vision flashed across my mind’s eye. I saw Jesus, wounds visible, reaching wide arms to surround and hold the entire room, all those in the space, every beautiful face and body.
You see, Jesus tells the disciples, Jesus tells us that we are called to tell the story of God’s grace and God’s love. In no way shape or form does Jesus tell his disciples, tell us to browbeat people over the heads until they believe only what we believe. Because here’s the thing…what these post Easter stories remind us is that if “Jesus wasn’t bluffing about his resurrection, then we are correct in assuming that he wasn’t bluffing about all the other stuff either. You know, the other stuff about telling us how we are to treat each other, the other stuff about loving our enemies and being a light of love to and for the world.
If Jesus was telling the truth about overcoming death, then he was telling us the truth when he called us to be his followers, when he told us that we as his disciples are called to work to bring healing and wholeness, not just for a select few but for all of God’s children.
As ones who have experienced the Risen Savior in our lives, who know a Savior who showed us a new way, who have accepted Jesus as our Lord who showed us death and brokenness do not have the last word, as ones who are the Body of Christ here on Earth, we are witnesses to all these things.
And now is the time for us to reach out to the hurt and broken in our community, to share God’s grace and love with others as we welcome all to God’s table, to take back being witnesses to good news from those who use it to hurt, separate and demean. Because, the way the story of God’s grace and God’s love changes lives is when we find the courage to become the people God created, the people God calls us to be, people who realize that the Jesus who taught us to break bread with the people others ignored is also the same Eternal Christ who brought us new life. We cannot separate them from each other. They are one and the same. And now, both are waiting for us to take the vision of God’s grace at work in this world and make it the present reality for all of God’s children, not just those who think like us or act like us, or look like us. The Risen Christ is sending us out to speak to the power of new life because we are witnesses to it all it brings. May it be so.
Amen.
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