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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
One Sunday morning a few months ago, during the time for refreshments before Sunday School and Bible Class, I said something to one of the Sunday School children about ghosts. The child told me that there is no such thing as ghosts. I asked about the Holy Ghost, and the child said that was different. In today’s appointed Gospel Reading, not the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity, but the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God incarnate in the man Jesus, is thought to be a “ghost”, a vision of a departed person, or a “spirit”, the essence of a departed person. The first eight verses of today’s appointed Gospel Reading might be said to tell, as I have titled this sermon, “A Jesus Ghost Story”.
Today is the only Sunday of our three‑year cycle of Readings that we hear the Gospel Reading’s first eight verses, which tell events of the first Easter evening. To be sure, there are similarities between the first part of today’s Reading from St. Luke’s Gospel account and the first part of last Sunday’s Reading from St. John’s Gospel account (John 20:19-31), such as both accounts’ telling of Jesus’s standing in the disciples’ midst and speaking peace to them, but there are also differences between the two accounts, such as St. Luke’s accounts’ uniquely telling both of the disciples’ thinking they were seeing a spirit and of Jesus’s speaking of and showing them His feet.
In today’s appointed Gospel Reading, the disciples were talking about Jesus’s earlier appearances to Simon Peter and to the Emmaus disciples (Luke 24:34-35), and then Jesus stood in their midst and spoke peace to them. The Divinely‑inspired St. Luke tells us the startled and frightened disciples were supposing they were seeing a “spirit” or “ghost” (so the NIV), a shadowy Jesus, existing without a physical body (Schweizer, TDNT 6:415). Somewhat similarly, when the disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea, they said He was a “ghost” or “spirit” (so KJV), a “phantasm” or “apparition” (Matthew 14:26; Mark 6:49). In both cases, we might imagine the disciples muttering to themselves, “There are no such things as ghosts!” Both on the sea and in the locked room, Jesus assured the disciples Who He was, using an equivalent of the Name of God given in the Old Testament (Matthew 14:27; Mark 6:50). In today’s appointed Gospel Reading, Jesus also commanded them to look at His hands and feet, something ghosts often were not thought to have (Davies and Allison, ad loc Matthew 28:9, III:669). Nail marks on those hands and feet should have convinced them He was not some other spirit, and Jesus also convinced them He was not only spirit. Jesus commanded them to touch Him and to see, for a spirit does not have flesh and the bones essential for a resurrected body (see Grundmann, 451, as cited by Marshall, ad loc Lk 9:39, 902), as they all were seeing that He had. We are not told specifically that they did touch Jesus (Goppelt, TDNT 8:249, but see 1 John 1:1), but we are told that, while they still disbelieved and were marveling, Jesus also ate a piece of broiled fish before them, making them all‑the‑more‑certain eyewitnesses of His bodily resurrection, since ghosts were not thought to be able to eat (confer Mark 16:14; John 21:5, 10; Acts 10:41; confer/compare Genesis 18:8; 19:3), despite what the “Ghostbuster” movies might suggest. The same Jesus Who was crucified was clearly there, in the same flesh.
At least initially, Jesus rebuked the disciples for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen (Mark 16:14). Jesus asked them why they were troubled and for what reason such doubting thoughts arose in their hearts. Jesus reveals the thoughts from many hearts (Luke 2:35), including yours and mine. Even if we believe that Jesus Who was crucified rose in the flesh, we may be troubled unnecessarily about other things, just as also we may have doubting thoughts in our hearts. Polls have suggested that most Americans, including half of those who report going to church regularly, do not believe their own bodies will be resurrected; do we? Do we let the certainty of our own bodily resurrections comfort us in our troubles and remove our doubts? Do we, as today’s Epistle Reading describes (1 John 3:1-7), make a practice of sinning? Do we recognize that apart from God’s grace we cannot feel or touch our way to God and find Him (see Acts 17:27)? For those and all such sins we deserve temporal and everlasting death.
To some extent, being startled and frightened, as the disciples were, thinking Jesus was a ghost, is the natural response of sinful people aware that they are standing on holy ground. As Jesus called the disciples to repent and believe, so He calls us to repent and believe—to turn in sorrow from our sin and to trust God to forgive our sin. When we so repent and believe, then God truly forgives our sin. God forgives our sin of being unnecessarily troubled, our sin of having doubting thoughts, our sin of disbelieving the bodily resurrection, our sin of making a practice of sinning, our sin of overestimating our human nature, or whatever our sin might be. God forgives it all, for Jesus’s sake.
To be sure, the Triune God is a spiritual being, a personal being without what we think of as a body, but, because of the First Person of the Trinity’s great love for us, the Second Person of the Trinity was incarnate by the Third Person of the Trinity. Conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, the God‑man Jesus had our human nature but was without sin. So, Jesus kept the law perfectly for us, and, in dying on the cross, He paid the price for our failure to keep it. Jesus’s resurrection proves that God the Father accepted Jesus’s sacrifice through the Spirit on our behalf. When we repent and believe, then God forgives our sin, by grace for Jesus’s sake. That grace of God is so great, that, like the disciples in today’s appointed Gospel Reading, for joy we might at times seem to disbelieve and marvel.
The great grace of God for Jesus’s sake is given to us in specific ways that bring forth our witness or confession to others of the resurrected Jesus. As elsewhere in St. Luke’s Gospel account (for example, Luke 10:5-7), so we see the same pattern in today’s appointed Gospel Reading (see Just, ad loc Lk 24:36-43, 1042-1048). There was talking or instruction about Jesus, and then there was a meal with Jesus really, physically present, and then the disciples were sent as Jesus’s witnesses. As we heard done in today’s First Reading (Acts 3:11-21), the apostolic ministry of peace preaches the significance of the resurrection, repentance and the forgiveness of sins in the Name of the Triune God. In that same Triune Name, the apostolic ministry baptizes people of all ages, making them children of God, as we heard in the Epistle Reading. In that same Triune Name, the apostolic ministry individually absolves those who privately confess the sins they know and feel in their heart. And, the apostolic ministry communes those who have been so absolved. Here, at this Altar and its Rail, we touch Jesus in bread that is His Body and wine that is His Blood, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins. Jesus may have a new primary way of existing, but He is still the same Jesus and still has a human body in which He present and active in our midst so that, with our sins forgiven and doubts and fears removed, we can depart in peace.
Today’s appointed Gospel Reading might be said to tell “A Jesus Ghost Story”, but make no mistake about it: Jesus is not a ghost or spirit in our midst. As I suggested months ago to one of our Sunday School children, depending on your definition, ghosts and spirits do exist. But, in Jesus, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God, Who otherwise is spirit, a personal being without a body, is present with us in flesh and bone, Body and Blood, to graciously forgive the sins of all who believe. As we believers have opportunities, we with word and deed tell others what He has done and is doing for us. We know that when the time comes, we also will be resurrected as our selves in our same bodies: the same flesh and bone but in a new and wonderful glorified state, and that knowledge gives us peace and joy. In today’s Collect we prayed God to grant to His “faithful people, rescued from the peril of everlasting death, perpetual and eternal joys”, and we know, as we sang in the antiphon of today’s Introit (Psalm 16:11b), that “In [His] presence there is fullness of joy; at [His] right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +