You Are Witnesses

  

Text: Luke 24:44-53

Focus: ascension

Function: to remember the promises.

⁴⁴Then 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.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

⁵⁰Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. ⁵¹While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. ⁵²And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, ⁵³and they were continually in the temple blessing God.

Good morning to the beloved children of God. We live in a faith, with a God who describes their own self as Love and us as the children of the loving Father. Praise God! I want us to dwell on this truth because Romans 8 says that nothing can separate us from the Love of God.

Today we celebrate the ascension of Jesus.

Jesus dying, then coming back to life and then leaving again could have been a traumatic event, but the promises that Jesus made right before he ascended are relevant for us today and we will take some time to look at them.

The first promise is how the Holy Spirit will open our minds to understand the scripture.

After the Spirit came, we began to understand passages in the Old Testament that talked about a victorious leader who also was a suffering servant.

They could not reconcile those two different realities in their own mind. But the Spirit shows us the deep meaning behind the scriptures given to us.

They didn’t understand that God’s plan for humanity came through the agency of the suffering of the Christ.

Upon the Cross, Jesus forgave his murderers.

He showed them a different way of reacting. He showed them love and forgiveness.

The disciples understood that God’s kingdom resides in the heart of people and is not political. It is spiritual and it changes them into kinder and more loving people.

If love has not filled us and changed us, we are not listening to the leading of God’s Spirit inside of us.

The second promise he gives us the promise of the power from on high.

I don’t want to get premature with the celebration of Pentecost next week where we see how the coming of the Spirit affects the body of Christ.

Remember, I introduced the sermon with the thought that the disciples should have been concerned that Jesus was leaving them. But instead, the text says that they left the place rejoicing in what had happened.

That was a move of God to comfort them in the time of their loss.

And it came with the hope of a promise.

They were instructed to wait for the Spirit to come. Luke records it again in the book of Acts exactly the same way except he narrows down the place of ascension to the Mount of Olives with sat on the South side of the town of Bethany.

The promise given was that we will somehow have the ability to accomplish this monumental task of loving others as well as we love ourselves.

The promises of the Ascension are Understanding and the Spirit.

Then there is a call in the text.

That leads me to a transition. Many bibles include headings above groups of verses that describe the text so that people can find stuff easier. And almost every translation calls this passage; “The Ascension” because Jesus goes to heaven in the passage.

But Eugene Peterson, in his translation calls the passage “Witnesses.” And that is significant because the apostles were given the call to spread these truths to others.

We are witnesses for Christ. 1 Corinthians 12:27 says that we are the body of Christ, so we can’t be anything else. When we let the Spirit of God take control and we give in to the command to lay down our selfishness, ego and fear -three things that keep us from loving sacrificially- then Christ works through us to heal the world we are in with grace and mercy.

Without being negative, let us look at those three distractions, or obstacles, as we tell the men in prison at Kairos.

Selfishness is greedy living where we hoard what we can. We can hoard mercy and only give it to people who look and think like us. We can love only our own family, our own race, our own country, our own team and not care for the needs of others. God calls us to witness God’s love to the world entire.

Selfishness applies to money. I know people who still believe that they are measured by the money they have made. I believe we should be like Dolly Parton and be measured by the money we give away. Trust God to provide.

Then there is ego. Ego can cause an unwillingness to change course or belief when God shows us a better way by the Spirit.

One of the biggest areas that I personally contend with in dealing with my ego is forgiveness. I have to set aside my ego and lay down my pride to forgive someone who has harmed me when I know I am in the one who is right.

And finally we look at fear. Fear can control us.

Fear is not living by faith. Remember, God promises to provide. God called me to fight racism early in my life. And I used to allow myself to hate racists. Hatred of anyone is sin because even racists have access to Christ’s Spirit inside of them.

Then I realized that most prejudice comes from fear. I hate to say it but the majority of early TV programming trained me to fear black people.

And when we allow faith to flourish, fear dissipates and along with it, the prejudices that fear enhances.

For me, Christian discipline contains letting the Spirit reign in my heart because the Spirit fights those influences of fear, ego and selfishness.

Let the Spirit lead you in life. Jesus promised it right before he left us and the Spirit is here today. Praise God!

Peterson calls the passage “witnesses”

He left blessing them.

The holy Spirit makes us understand

About Suffering

  

Text: 1 Peter 3:13-18

Focus: Suffering

Function: to help us find peace in the midst of trials

¹³Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? ¹⁴But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, ¹⁵but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you, ¹⁶yet do it with gentleness and respect. Maintain a good conscience so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. ¹⁷For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. ¹⁸For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit,

Good Morning. Let me remind you that you are the beloved children of the living God. Your name is carved in their hands and God will never forget you.

My title for this message is “About Suffering.” I am trying to understand a theology of suffering as we face the trials in this life.

I feel inadequate to preach the subject because I know that many of you are suffering and you have placed your faith in God and I can learn from you.

Now, I was raised in the Missionary Church and true to our name, we made it our mission to convert others to the way we understood the faith.

And unfortunately, we were told that the eternal destiny of those we didn’t reach was going to be laid on our account if we didn’t do everything possible to convert them.

I don’t believe that anymore. I believe that God will restore everyone to their love eventually because God describes God’s own self as Love.

But I don’t want to undermine the missionary call either. Most of the books that make up the New Testament were written by a missionary, Paul.

It was God’s calling on him and without that missionary call, God’s call to love everyone through Christ would have died out in the first century. We owe a lot to missionaries and God still uses them today.

Peter was not a missionary, but he writes in this passage that we are to be bold and fearless, and always be ready to share the hope that we have in Christ.

And he ends that phrase with the Kairos method: “With gentleness and respect.”

Peter is saying that while sharing the love of Jesus, we do not judge or disrespect the person with whom we are sharing.

And he tells us to do it mainly with our ethical and moral lifestyle.

It happens as we value the other person. Remember, Christ is in everyone at some level or another and we have the power of the Spirit of Christ to bring out that love in others by showing that love ourselves.

That means we have to love and forgive. Forgiveness takes faith.

It takes faith because we have oftentimes been made to suffer when we were innocent and didn’t it.

And Peter points us to Jesus who suffered and died in order to redeem us. Jesus died on the cross to forgive the sins of everyone, even those who are unjust.

Some believe that God is a God of wrath. I do not. I believe that God is a God of restoration, not revenge.

God takes our sins and unjust actions, forgives them, and gives us another chance to do the right thing.

Sometimes while doing the right thing, we suffer.

Christ suffered also. Christ suffered specifically so that we can know that he can feel our pain and he understands the terror of our suffering.

He shares it with us and lightens the burden because we know that he understands our pain.

So Peter tells the audience in the letter that we should not fear what they fear. Instead, we should rest in God, even if serving God leads us to suffer.

Peter speaks of the Other. The “They” who are those who do not yet rely on the loving power of the Spirit in their lives through Christ .

We get to show it to them.

He doesn’t tell us what they are afraid of.

I surmise that given the prevailing culture of Greek Mythology at the time this was written, the fear is the wrath of God in hell.

But we trust the fact that Jesus forgave us and we have the power of the Spirit to live a different life, one that is born from above with the power of love prevailing our intents and purposes.

We also fear pain. And when I think of suffering, I think of pain.

And in the midst of suffering I believe we can take comfort in the fact that Christ has given us the power of the Spirit to help endure.

When we suffer we can remember that Christ is with us and will never leave us.

And again, we live by faith.

The passage refers us to Jesus when we are suffering. But when I think of suffering and the pain caused by it and my need to have comfort in my suffering, I think of a Mother’s love who knows how to kiss away the pain.

Just the knowledge of her love in the midst of suffering. It is a love that doesn’t quit.

The crucifixion story came up in my devotions this week and I noticed that contingent of women who stood by Jesus when all the apostles abandoned him at the cross.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was given a prophecy before she miraculously conceived that her heart would be broken but through the Christ, the world would have hope again.

She suffered for God when she endured her son’s murder.

I am beginning to understand the unconditional nature of God’s love for us as I understand the unconditional love of a mother for her children.

Mary suffered with Jesus.

And her suffering is part of God’s salvation for us.

Genesis 1 says that we are created in the image of God. Male and female are both the image of God.

Mary’s love for her son was divine and is part of God’s love for us.

God’s love is both Fatherly and Motherly.

One of the names for God in the Old Testament is El Shaddai. It means “The many breasted one.”

And it refers to God as the nurturer.

Motherhood is divine and although we are not all mothers, we all had one and we can rejoice in the way that God designed to show us love through our mothers.

CHRISTian

  

Text: 1 Peter 2:2-10

Focus: Being Christian

Function: to help people see the power available to them as priests to God

²Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation— ³if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

⁴Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and ⁵like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶For it stands in scripture:

“See, I am laying in Zion a stone,
    a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

⁷This honor, then, is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,

“The stone that the builders rejected
    has become the very head of the corner,”

⁸and

“A stone that makes them stumble
    and a rock that makes them fall.”

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

⁹But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

¹⁰Once you were not a people,
    but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
    but now you have received mercy.

Good morning to the beloved children of our living and loving God.

This passage contrasts the difference between trusting in the way of Christ for healing and restoration in this world or trusting in our own way of doing things.

God gave humanity a template for loving others when God became human and walked the earth as Jesus the Nazarene.

God showed love to the world. God embodied love for us so that we can learn to love and care for the other as much as we care for ourselves.

I like the way the passage calls us a people who were chosen by God and we have become a priesthood with royal power.

I place the emphasis on God’s calling us to their own self in love.

When we do the Kairos weekend, the first thing we tell the men who come is that God has called them there for a special time of receiving God’s love and mercy for them.

The call is in love and these men certainly need the mercy that love brings.

Many of them are in prison in the first place because they did not get the right kind of love and nurture in the first place.

During the weekend, we see the walls of defense that these men have built up come down as we share from our hearts the fact that we too are not perfect and somehow we have found God’s grace and forgiveness in our own failures.

We have a series of ten talks with titles like: Choices, opening the door (to God), Studying to know God, forgiveness, Christian action and others. During these talks, we get very personal and describe, as I said, a time when we failed and God brought us through. The hope is that the men in the room can see themselves as people that God can redeem as well.

For most of the men, it seems to me that keeping hope up is their biggest challenge.

So, we remind them that God has called them there and that they are not out of God’s sight for love even though they are in such a rough place.

And the point comes from the passage that God has chosen us to be God’s special people.

I like to think of that fact that God choose me to know me and to heal and restore me.

God is in the business of healing and restoration. That is why God came to planet earth as Jesus, to heal the world of its lack of love and to change the dynamic of power in human culture.

Peter, in his contrasting those who trust Christ’s way and those who do not, speaks of how the difference is seen in the way they accept “The Word.”

John 1 tells us that Jesus is the Word.

The difference is in whether or not they obey the word of God, whether or not they obey the teachings of Jesus.

I notice that he doesn’t condemn those who do not follow Jesus, but he blesses those who do. It isn’t an us verses them mentality, it is a “God is in Christ healing the world” mentality.

One of the disciplines we have as a team on Kairos is to make sure that when we see the residents, we see Christ and the potential that Christ has inside of them, instead of looking at their past failures.

Whenever I get to pray for the team right before we enter the prison, I pray that we would treat Christ well when we care for the prisoners.

Christ’s Spirit is in everyone according to Romans 1.

Somewhere, hidden in the midst of a person’s own ego, pride, failures, and successes is Christ. And anyone can draw upon Christ’s Spirit to find the healing and restoration that Jesus envisioned for the world entire. That is why he calls us a royal Priesthood. The actual Christ dwells inside of us.

Christ shines through us in the way we love others.

And picking up that theme, the text calls us a chosen generation, as I mentioned, but also a royal priesthood.

A priest is one who has direct access to God. We do through Jesus. And we are royal priests because not only do we have this direct access to God, but we are also God’s family as we are now one with God and Christ.

That means in this world, we too, are Christ, that is why we are called Christian. We are Christ to the world and we have the same power to bring people back into the love of God by loving them into God’s family.

It hit me the middle of the night last week when I was praying for the Kairos weekend during my time slot that a Christian is a person who first and foremost models Christ.

And it helps me to remember that in this world, I too am the Christ who is called to bring God’s healing.

Let us fulfill our mission.

The Jesus Way

  

Text: 1 Peter 1:17-23

Focus: Living by the Spirit

Function: to help us surrender our selfishness

¹⁷If you invoke as Father the one who judges impartially according to each person’s work, live in fear during the time of your exile. ¹⁸You know that you were ransomed from the futile conduct inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold ¹⁹but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. ²⁰He was destined before the foundation of the world but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. ²¹Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your trust and hope are in God.

²²Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual affection, love one another deeply from the heart. ²³You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God.

Good morning to God’s beloved family! You have been born from above to a new way of living that is full of grace and mercy. Mercy for you and for everyone we meet in the name of Jesus.

The focus of this passage leads us to part of the way that we live by the Spirit of God leading us in our lives.

Peter starts out the passage with an “If” and a response from us.

The “If” is the question of whether or not we trust the God the Father who will judge the world without partiality.

He speaks of God the Father who decides what is fair on behalf of those who were abused and mistreated here on earth.

And the command is for us to live in such a way that we take into account that God does indeed judge our actions, fairly.

Judgment is something with which we are uncomfortable. And I don’t like to preach it because I see God’s mercy in where they are full of instances where God’s mercy always triumphs the judgment of both God and humans.

That is why we are told in Romans that God will take our side if we refuse to seek our own revenge.

That is why Proverbs says that God is displeased when we are happy that an enemy of ours has a misfortune, or even gets a fair justice.

Now I am glad that Peter uses the family dynamic reference here when he refers to God as Father.

Hopefully that doesn’t evoke a negative image if you had an overbearing father.

But Peter is speaking of the God who is a loving Father. The God who wants the best for their children.

One of the biggest differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament is the way God commands justice to be done.

In the Old Testament, we see revenge against the enemies of the people of God. Except for the book of Jonah where Jonah is rebuked for being upset that God showed mercy to his enemies.

It might seem to many that the OT judgment was a system of retribution. We use it as a model for our own sense of justice when we incarcerate prisoners without helping them be rehabilitated.

Everyone deserves a second chance.

The NT system of Justice is the justice of a loving parent who wants the best for their children and when the child makes a mistake, the loving parent helps restore the child to wholeness.

God’s justice is restoration of the person who has erred. God’s system of justice is not retribution, but a way to restore that person to wholeness.

It is a father helping a child develop and mature.

It is Jesus the Savior bringing salvation, or healing, to his brothers and sisters.

When we trust Jesus, we open the door to the faith necessary for us to experience that healing that Jesus brings. We are saved in the sense that we are restored.

In the rest of the paragraph, Peter goes on to describe how we are restored spiritually to God through the precious blood of Christ.

He reminds us that it isn’t by religious practices, it isn’t something that we can buy with money, but it is a gift of God through Jesus’s death and resurrection.

And then there is a transition from the theology of how Christ’s blood saved us to how we respond.

We have been restored to God and that is healing us in our spirits, souls, emotions and even sometimes our bodies.

And he says that now that has happened, we are commanded to love others deeply.

Love, Peter will later say in this book, covers a multitude of sins.

Love wants people to be restored and made whole again. And love rejoices when they are made whole.

That is why baking cookies and sending me to the prison is so important to all of our spiritual development.

I know it is a burden on your time, but think about how you are being different than the worldly ways around you.

These guys are facing retribution for their failures.

We are showing them that they too are not enemies of God, but are children of God and worthy of God’s healing and restoration.

The word for love, Agape, is probably best translated in the King James in 1 Corinthians 13 when the translators used the word charity.

Charity is an act, not an emotion. It is practical. It is physical, It is tactile. It takes time and sacrifice. It is hands on in the midst of the mess of people’s lives. And many people are charitable without Christ, but we are driven by the Love of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit.

So, this passage does give us some help in living by the Spirit in this corrupt and selfish world.

And it is as simple as loving others and wanting the best for them. Even when they are enemies.

That takes a surrender of our ego and a laying aside of our selfishness and pride, but we do that by faith believing that we too are part of God’s healing for this world and in the end, God will bless the suffering we might endure to love others.

Let us keep on loving.

How We Believe

  

Text: 1 Peter 1:3-9

Focus: believing

Function: to help people live by faith

^3-5What a God we have! And how fortunate we are to have him, this Father of our Master Jesus! Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we’ve been given a brand-new life and have everything to live for, including a future in heaven—and the future starts now! God is keeping careful watch over us and the future. The Day is coming when you’ll have it all—life healed and whole.

^6-7I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine. When Jesus wraps this all up, it’s your faith, not your gold, that God will have on display as evidence of his victory.

^8-9You never saw him, yet you love him. You still don’t see him, yet you trust him—with laughter and singing. Because you kept on believing, you’ll get what you’re looking forward to: total salvation.

Good morning to the beloved Children of the living God!

This Sunday after Easter, we look at the appearance of Jesus when when he revealed himself to Thomas.

From last week, we learned that the 11, actually 10 of the 12 disciples were in the room when Jesus appeared. Apparently Thomas was somewhere else.

And Thomas didn’t believe the report of Mary, the 2 disciples who were with Jesus on the road to Emmaus and the 10 who saw him in the room where they were hiding.

Thomas declares that in order to believe that Jesus rose from the dead, he must see for himself and if it is true, then he wanted to inspect the wounds to see if they were real. Hence, we call him Doubting Thomas.

Jesus is patient with him and appears again to the disciples, the 11 this time, with Thomas in the room. And before Thomas has a chance to ask, Jesus informs him that he knew his doubts already and offers to let him inspect the wounds.

Thomas believes and again confesses Jesus to be his lord and God.

And Jesus answers with the joy that Thomas believes now, but then says that others will be blessed by believing without seeing.

I believe he is talking about us. We take the resurrection as true based on the testimony of these witnesses we have here in scripture.

And Jesus calls us blessed for that.

And that leads us to today’s text. Peter is speaking about how he was privileged to be one of the actual eye witnesses to Jesus’s resurrection.

Peter, the author of this letter, celebrates what it means that God has raised Jesus from the dead and given to us a new life.

He focuses on the new life we have in Christ. It is led by the Spirit of God and it lives in the peace of Christ as it rests in God’s love for us and for others.

We rest in God’s love.

And Peter describes this blessing of rest in two ways. We have God’s promise of healing and restoration here in earth and the promise of heaven in the future.

And all of that is because God provided a way for us through the cross of Christ and the power of the resurrection.

Peter has great hope in the truth of salvation since he is a witness to the fact of the resurrection.

Thomas wanted evidence to believe. Peter had evidence and was convinced. His conviction was a powerful witness.

But we have a different approach to believing. We don’t see Jesus raised.

In Acts 1, we read that Jesus ascended into heaven after the resurrection.

When he ascended, he commanded the disciples to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit to give them the power to live the Christian life.

50 days later,at the feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came in a visible way and filled the now 120 believers who were waiting for the promise.

It was the birthday of the Church and it came by the power of God’s Spirit .

The way we have to believe is by the witness of the Holy Spirit toward us. God calls each and every one of us. Being in the Church, having a Christian environment around us helps us become aware of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives.

We believe by the power of the Spirit of God.

In Kairos, we depend on the Holy Spirit to do the work of transformation in the lives of the residents to whom we minister.

We have this phrase that we drill into the team: “Listen, Listen, Love, Love.”

Imagine that with me. When we are listening to prisoners, sometimes we hear some pretty bizarre things and ideas. Many of these guys are searching for answers and not necessarily in the Christian tradition, we have Muslims, Wiccans and a lot of white guys who worship the Nordic Gods as part of their affiliation with Neo-Nazi gangs.

We hear some bizarre things from them and our job is to point them to the God of Love, who manifested that love through the presence of Jesus on the earth.

We Listen to them with a poker face so that we don’t look shocked when they say something off the wall. And we don’t argue with their beliefs, we just simply keep pointing back to Christ Jesus and his love for them.

It takes a lot of listening, so we emphasize listen, listen first. And we listen without judgment, without thinking of a response, but we are trained to listen to them and reflect back what they say so that they know that they are heard and valued just as they are.

By listening to them, in whatever they say, we prove to them God loves them.

A new guy on the team, as we were going through this training yesterday asked us when we get to tell them the right thing to do to set them straight and correct them.

And we reminded him the second part of that phrase listen, listen, is Love, Love. By listening, they know they are valued by God who cares enough for them to get to know them.

So, our answer to the new guy on the team is the answer to the question posited by the Title of the Sermon: How we believe. My answer was trust the Holy Spirit to lead them into this new life.

We don’t need to press our hands into Jesus’s side, hands and feet, we believe by the power of the Holy Spirit leading us to faith.

So we have this text which I believe is a sort of prophecy of blessing to us about what it means for us to believe by the power of the Spirit.

Let us let the Spirit lead us into belief. Keep on listening for the leading of God in your lives.

Promises

  

Text: Luke 24:36-49

Focus: Easter

Function: to celebrate our redemption

³⁶While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” ³⁷They were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look 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.” ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. ⁴¹Yet for all their joy they were still disbelieving and wondering, and he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence.

⁴⁴Then 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.” ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.”

Happy Easter to the beloved children of God.

Today we are going to look at the wonder and amazement that the early believers felt when they realized that death could not hold Jesus captive.

The context of our text takes place with two of the disciples who were not among the twelve, but apparently close followers of Jesus who witnessed Jesus’ death and were grieving at their loss so they choose the 30 mile trek home to Emmaus, their home, because they thought this whole thing with Jesus was over after they killed him.

While they were walking, Jesus himself appears to them and enjoins a conversation with them and he asks them why they are grieving.

They are amazed that someone leaving Jerusalem didn’t know what happened so they told him that they killed this great man who was most certainly a prophet or better.

And Jesus patiently listens to them while they grieve during their 8-12 hour trek home. Jesus starts talking to them about all the prophecies in the Old Testament about him and starts explaining to them a different way of understanding how these prophecies were going to turn out. He explains how he fulfilled them without starting a war.

They enjoy the conversation in a deeply spiritual and compelling way. Later on, when they remember it, they describe that there was something inside of their hearts that was persuading them to listen and not argue.

They said that their hearts were burning inside of them as they listened. Jesus set their hearts on fire and gave them a spiritual understanding that they didn’t have before.

Up until this point, all they knew of Jesus was that he was a fellow traveler. They make the 30 mile trek with him and arrived at their home. In typical mid-eastern spirituality, they welcomed this stranger and served him a meal.

And when Jesus broke the bread, they finally realized that it was indeed Jesus who had been talking with them. Suddenly Jesus vanishes.

They knew it was a miraculous sighting so instead of resting, they left their home, by now it is evening, and make the 30 mile trek back to Jerusalem to tell the twelve.

After they get into the room and tell the twelve, Mary, the first witness to the resurrection confirms their story and reiterates her story of seeing Jesus early in the morning at the tomb.

Everyone in the room was wondering just exactly what was happening and suddenly Jesus himself appears to them in the room and declares that he is risen from the dead. That is where out story begins today.

Now, it appears from the biblical account that Jesus’s body had a different appearance after he rose from the dead. His hands and his feet and his side still bore the wound marks from his murder, but the rest of him looked different enough that they didn’t immediately recognize that it was him.

That doesn’t take away from the miracle or the fact of his resurrection. The scars proved who he was but I find hope in the fact that he had a different appearance that has divine attributes> We too will have glorified bodies.

I suspect that the main reason they didn’t recognize him was not that he was that different looking but that they simply weren’t looking for him.

To them, death is final. Although the scripture reports that they witnessed Jesus raising a few other people from the dead, the one who did the work was gone and they seemed to be left without hope.

Except for God and God’s promises.

Jesus had tried to tell them what was happening but resurrection just wasn’t in the wheelhouse of their understanding. It isn’t natural.

And maybe the revelation of Jesus to Mary is a clue. She, when she saw Jesus thought he was the gardener and thought he might know what happened that the stone was rolled away and the tomb was empty.

And in that story it isn’t until Jesus addresses her by name and she realizes that a stranger cannot know who she is so it must be the Lord.

And although Jesus was talking with them and trying to convince them that he was the same person. He even invited them to touch his still visible wounds and eat in front of them so that they would know he was real and not a ghost, they didn’t understand.

Until. They didn’t understand until the Spirit of God opened their minds to believe.

The text says the Holy Spirit opened their understanding and they believed. The Spirit leads us to Jesus and fulfills the promises of God to us.

I imagine the joy that they must have felt when the realization dawned on them.

I wonder if Mary was relieved that others finally believed her story as well. God choose a woman to be the first witness to the resurrection. Perhaps because she was deeply spiritual and seeking after God. In her seeking, God filled her with answers.

This Easter, and always, let us rest in the hope and the promise of the resurrection.