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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!)
As you heard, today is the Third Sunday of Easter, and, the second half of today’s Gospel Reading arguably has moved on from the events of Easter Day (and the events of the Second Sunday of Easter that we heard about last week) to summarize what Jesus taught His disciples when He was with them, though not in the usual way, during the forty days between His Resurrection and Ascension (for example, Arndt, ad loc Luke 24:44-49, p.496). In these verses, uniquely recorded by the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke, Jesus reiterates what He apparently had previously told His disciples, that, out of Divine necessity, everything written about Him in the Old Testament Scriptures must be fulfilled, specifically the Divine necessity both that the Christ suffer and on the third day rise from the dead (confer Luke 24:6-7, 26-27) and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins be preached in His Name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. So, as we consider today’s Gospel Reading this morning, we direct our thoughts to the theme, “The need for the Christ and preaching in His Name”.
The Divine necessity of the Christ’s suffering and rising was hardly understood by His disciples on Easter evening, so presumably much less did they understand the Divine necessity of the preaching in His Name of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As we heard in the first half of today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus’s disciples were frightened and thought that they saw a spirit when He first stood among them. And, even after Jesus asked them both why they were troubled and why doubts were arising in their hearts, and even after Jesus commanded them both to see His hands and feet and to touch His flesh and bones, they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling. So, Jesus asked for something to eat, received a piece of broiled fish, and ate it before them. (Apparently people then thought that spirits were unable to eat, unlike what we may think now, thanks to the voracious character known as “Slimer” from the original “Ghostbusters” movies.)
As St. Luke reports in the verses right before today’s Gospel Reading, earlier on Easter Day, Jesus interpreted, for the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures (Luke 24:27). Clearly neither the disciples on the road to Emmaus that afternoon, nor the disciples in Jerusalem that evening, nor we ourselves today by nature have minds open to understand the Scriptures. We do not understand the Divine necessity of the Christ’s suffering and rising, much less do we understand the Divine necessity of the preaching in His Name of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. We misunderstand the nature of the Christ, and we misunderstand the purpose of the Scriptures that testify to Him. We may deny our own sin, or we may even deny the existence of any sin at all. In fact, we are sinful by nature, and so we commit countless actual sins: thinking, saying, and doing things that we should not, and failing to think, say, and do things that we should. On account of our sinful nature and actual sins, we deserve nothing but death here in time and torment in hell for eternity, unless, as God calls and so enables us to do, we repent. Through the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit leads us “truly to recognize [our] sins, to feel heartily sorry for them, and to desist from them” (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, V:8). The Holy Spirit, as it were, changes or opens our minds so that we not only understand the Divine necessity of the Christ’s suffering and rising, but we also trust in Him, Who so suffered and rose (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration II:26).
God’s great love for us and His resulting will to save us is what makes Divinely necessary both that the Christ suffer and on the third day rise from the dead and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins be preached in His Name. For, the Christ’s suffering and rising and the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins are necessary in order for us to be saved from the eternal death that we otherwise deserve. Christianity is not about a moral code by which we earn forgiveness for ourselves, nor does our repentance merit forgiveness; rather, by God’s grace, for the sake of Jesus Christ’s fulfilling the Law and suffering for us, we are freely forgiven through faith in Him (Pieper, I:35). In today’s Gospel Reading the God-man Jesus clearly identifies Himself as the Christ, about Whom Holy Scripture is written. While earlier in His ministry the meaning of His Passion and Resurrection prophecies was hidden from His disciples and they did not understand them (Luke 18:34), at least one of His disciples nevertheless witnessed His crucifixion (John 19:26), and, as we heard in the first half of today’s Gospel Reading, at least the Ten witnessed His showing Himself alive again, essentially proof of His resurrection. As Jesus Himself said in today’s Gospel Reading, His disciples were witnesses of the fulfillment of the Scriptures regarding the Christ’s suffering and on the third day rising from the dead, and so they naturally became the first ones to fulfill the Scriptures regarding the preaching in His Name of repentance for the forgiveness of sins (confer especially Acts 2:38; 3:18-19).
Jesus provided the merit for our forgiveness of sins, and His disciples distributed—and their successors continue to distribute—that merit (confer Pieper, III:375, citing Luther, AE 37:192), but the disciples did not—and their successors do not—distribute that merit without first being clothed with power from on high by Jesus’s sending upon them the promise of His Father, namely, the Holy Spirit. So ordained, they to groups preach in His Name repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and they for individuals effect that forgiveness of sins with water when baptizing in the Triune Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, with the pastor’s touch when absolving in that same Triune Name, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood given and shed for us in the Sacrament of the Altar when administered in the authority of that same Triune Name. When we repent and believe, then, in all of these ways, God forgives us, our sinful nature and all our actual sin, whatever our sin might be.
So forgiven, we are transformed, and so we, with gentleness and respect, give answer to anyone who asks for a reason for the hope that is in us (1 Peter 3:15). We are not witnesses in the same way that Jesus’s disciples were witnesses, for we were not there from the beginning (John 15:27; Acts 1:22; 5:32), but rather what Jesus said and did is attested to us by those witnesses (Hebrews 2:3). And so, we confess with our mouth what we believe in our heart, and so we are saved (Romans 10:9‑10). On the Last Day, we will fully experience the resurrection of the body as Jesus Himself experienced it. We will not be spirits but have flesh and bones as He had, and we will fully experience the perpetual gladness and eternal joys for which we prayed in today’s Collect.
Considering the Gospel Reading this morning, we have realized “The need for the Christ and preaching in His Name”. By nature we all are sinners in need of the preaching in His Name of repentance for the forgiveness of sins on account of His suffering and rising. We thank and praise God that He freely gives us that forgiveness that we need through His Means of Grace. And, we look forward to, what in the words of the antiphon from today’s Introit can be described as, the fullness of joy in His presence, the pleasures forevermore at His right hand (Psalm 30:1-5; antiphon: Psalm 16:11b).
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 + + +