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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!)
Recently I was talking with someone about his and my common experiences of occasionally talking to other people whom we generally should recognize but at the time do not recognize. Maybe you have had experiences like that, too. We may attribute the problem to older age, but I think I already had it in my late teens and early twenties! Whatever may cause our problem of not recognizing people whom we generally should recognize, in all likelihood that cause is different from what caused the two people in today’s Gospel Reading at the time to not recognize the Resurrected Jesus, when He Himself drew near and went with them on the way to Emmaus. For, the Gospel Reading said that at first their eyes were kept (passively) from recognizing Him, and that is usually understood as God’s (actively) keeping them from recognizing Him (compare Mark 16:12), until later, when, having taken the bread, He blessed it, and, having broken it, He gave it to them, and their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him. Still later, they told the Eleven and those who were with them how He was known to them (passively, with the same root word) in the breaking of the bread. This Third Sunday of Easter we continue contemplating the meaning of the resurrection of our Lord, with yet another account of the events that first Easter evening. This morning we reflect on today’s Gospel Reading’s account of those events under the theme, “Recognizing the Resurrected Jesus”.
The Resurrected Jesus confronted Cleopas and his unnamed traveling companion as they were talking with each other, discussing all the things that had happened, all the things that had happened perhaps not only that Easter morning but also in the preceding days. Jesus asked them about their conversation, which the original Greek of the Reading may suggest was more of a back‑and-forth argument, and they told Him about their perception of Jesus as a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, Whom their chief priests and leaders delivered up and crucified, seemingly dashing their hopes that He was the one to redeem Israel. And, though they were amazed by their women’s reports of the empty tomb and the angels’ message of a living Jesus, they had not yet, on the basis of Holy Scripture, been moved to faith that Jesus was the Christ, Who had to both suffer such things and enter into His glory. So, with very strong emotion, Jesus called them foolish, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken.
Are you and I any better? Oh, we may believe what Holy Scripture says about the necessity of the Christ’s suffering those things and entering into His glory, but maybe we do not believe all the rest of what Holy Scripture says, such as about how we should be living our lives. Maybe we set our own hopes apart from what Holy Scripture says; or, we may let Holy Scripture set our hopes, but maybe we wrongly conclude that those hopes have been dashed when we experience things that we think are contrary to those hopes. Maybe, for all the incomprehensible tragedies, uncertainties, and other things going on around us, which in some cases are paralyzing us with fear, we are standing still, looking sad, staring right at the Resurrected Jesus but failing to recognize Him.
Whether we sin in those or in other ways, we all are sinful by nature. Even we who believe continue to sin by thought, word, and deed, and, apart from repentance, we would deserve not only to die here in this life but also to be tormented in the fire of hell for all eternity in the life to come. But, as Jesus in the Gospel Reading caused the hearts of Cleopas and his unnamed traveling companion to burn (confer Psalm 39:3; 73:21), and as St. Peter in the First Reading (Acts 2:14a, 36-41) called his hearers on Pentecost to repent, God calls and so enables us to repent and so to receive His forgiveness for Jesus’s sake.
Cleopas and his unnamed traveling companion may have thought that Jesus was the only visitor to Jerusalem Who did not know the things that had happened there in those days, but, in fact, Jesus knew the things that had happened there best of all. Jesus was not only, as they thought, a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, but He was also the Christ, Who had to suffer those things and enter into His glory. His being delivered up to be condemned to death and crucified that seemingly dashed their hopes that Jesus was the One Who would redeem Israel, in fact, fulfilled their hopes (confer Buls, ad loc Luke 24:25-35, p.80, citing Plummer), as He there redeemed Israel, as well as everyone outside of Israel, including you and me. Out of God’s great love for us, Jesus died on the cross in our place, the death that we otherwise would have deserved. As today’s Epistle Reading reminded us (1 Peter 1:17-25), we were ransomed not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. When we repent of our sin, then God forgives us our sin. God forgives our sin of not believing and living all of what Scripture says. God forgives our sin of false and dashed hopes. And, God forgives our sin of failing to recognize the Resurrected Jesus. God forgives all of our sin, whatever our sin might be.
God forgives us our sins in the same ways that He opens our eyes to recognize the Resurrected Jesus, that is, through His Word in all of its forms. In the Gospel Reading, it was no ten-minute sermon or even a one‑hour‑long Scripture study but perhaps several hours of the greatest sermon and Scripture study of all time rolled into one, in which Jesus interpreted, to Cleopas and his unnamed traveling companion, in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself (confer Arndt, ad loc Luke 24:25, p.489, and ad loc Luke 24:27, p.490). In the First Reading, St. Peter not only called his hearers on Pentecost to repent, but he also called them to be baptized, telling them the promise of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit was for them and for their children. In the Gospel Reading, there is reference to what some consider our Lord’s private absolution of St. Peter (for example, Lenski, ad loc Luke 24:34, p.1195; confer 1 Corinthians 15:5), and all that is not even to mention the breaking of the bread. As confessional Lutherans, we do not seriously object if the breaking of the bread in the Gospel Reading is taken as referring to the Sacrament of the Altar (Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XXII:7), but, if they did not celebrate the Sacrament that day in Emmaus, whatever they did do at least makes us think of how Jesus is made known to us with bread that is His Body given for us and wine that is His Blood shed for us, for the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. If the Church’s dual liturgical focus on Word and Sacrament, word and deed, did not begin with the opening of the Scriptures on the road and the breaking of bread in the home of the Gospel Reading, then that dual liturgical focus surely began soon after Pentecost, and, by that dual liturgical focus, the Lord added to their number day by day then, as He adds to our number day by day now, those being saved (Acts 2:42‑47).
With the eyes of Cleopas and his unnamed traveling companion opened and the Resurrected Jesus recognized, they returned to Jerusalem and told what had happened on the road and how He was known to them in the breaking of the bread. With our eyes opened and the Resurrected Jesus recognized, we also tell others about His Word and Sacraments, how they both reveal Him to us and forgive us our sins, as we receive His Word and Sacraments with repentance. More easily fixed in the short term than our problem of not recognizing people whom we generally should recognize due to “older age” or whatever, by God’s acting to save us, we now recognize the Resurrected Jesus. No longer do the incomprehensible tragedies, uncertainties, and other things going on around us paralyze us with fear or leave us standing still, looking sad, staring right at the Resurrected Jesus but failing to recognize Him. We recognize and know Him in His Word and Sacraments, where He also gives us perpetual gladness and eternal joys.
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 + + +