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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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
We all probably can think of a time, or likely even of multiple times, when our hopes were dashed: when we expected something to happen that we regarded as positive, but first something else happened that we regarded as negative and thought prevented what we were expecting, and so we were left disappointed or disillusioned. So, in some ways, we can relate to the two disciples of Jesus who today’s Gospel Reading tells on the day of the Resurrection of Our Lord were going to a village named Emmaus. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus Himself drew near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. Jesus asked them about their conversation as they were walking, and they stood still and looked sad. Eventually they told this man whom they did not recognize how they thought that Jesus was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how they had hoped that He was the One to redeem Israel, but their chief priests and rulers had delivered Him up to be condemned to death and crucified Him. Even though there were reports of angels’ announcing Jesus’s resurrection and an inability to find His body, their hopes were dashed, presumably until after Jesus opened to them the Scriptures and made Himself known to them in the Breaking of the Bread. As we this morning consider today’s Gospel Reading, we realize that “We hope in the One Who has redeemed us”.
Cleopas, perhaps an “uncle” of Jesus, and his unnamed traveling companion, perhaps the Divinely-inspired evangelist St. Luke himself, clearly were talking about Jesus, but they seemingly did not draw any strength or comfort from His mighty deeds and Words, nor apparently did they draw any strength or comfort from Moses and all the Prophets, all the Old Testament Scriptures, concerning Jesus. Jesus called them foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had spoken, for, from those Scriptures, they should have realized that it was necessary that the Christ should suffer those things and enter into His glory.
We can be similarly foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the Scriptures say. We might pick and choose which of God’s Commandments we think still apply to us, maybe wrongly trying somehow to lessen His law’s condemnation of our sin. We might doubt or reject what God’s Gospel tells us about Who Jesus is, what He did, and how He gives us the benefits of what He did (confer TLSB, ad loc Luke 24:13-35, p.1772), maybe wrongly not using all of His Means of Grace. We might dash our sure and certain hope in Christ when we are afflicted in some way or suffer the loss of a loved one who believes in Christ, maybe forgetting or ignoring what the Scriptures say about our afflictions’ being for our good and the death of a believer’s being victory. As today’s First Reading described (Acts 2:14, 36-41), ours is a crooked generation; as today’s Epistle Reading described (1 Peter 1:17-25), from our forefathers we inherited futile ways.
On account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin, we deserve both death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, apart from Holy-Spirit-wrought repentance and faith. So, as Jesus led the hearts of His two disciples on the road to Emmaus to burn in sorrow over their sin (Schmidt, TDNT 3:464, with reference to Psalm 39:3; 73:21), and as Peter called his hearers on Pentecost to repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of their sins, so the Holy Spirit leads us: to turn in sorrow from our sin, to trust God to forgive our sin for Jesus’s sake, and to want to stop sinning. And, when we so repent, then God does so forgive us!
The disciples on the road to Emmaus had hoped that Jesus was the One to redeem Israel, and, as one commentator points out, the very things that they allowed to dash their hopes—Jesus’s condemnation and crucifixion—should have confirmed their hopes that Jesus was the Redeemer (Plummer, cited by Buls, ad loc Luke 24:25-35, p.80). As they came to understand, so we understand: for, “We hope in the One Who has redeemed us”. More than a prophet, Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God in human flesh, and He lived the perfect life that we fail to live. The chief priests and rulers delivered Him up to be condemned to death and crucified Him, but, as we heard repeatedly in our Midweek Lent Sermon Series this year, out of His great love, God the Father delivered Him up for our trespasses and raised Him for our justification (Romans 4:25). The Lord, the Holy One of Israel, is our Redeemer (Isaiah 41:14; 43:14; 44:24). He did not redeem us with perishable things such as silver or gold but with the precious blood of Christ. God’s will to save us and all people made necessary the Christ’s suffering and His entering into His glory. So, He descended into hell, rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He will come to judge the living and the dead.
Until then, Jesus Himself draws near and goes with us through His Means of Grace. Jesus opens to us the Scriptures and makes Himself known to us in the Breaking of the Bread. As with the disciples on the road to and in Emmaus, Jesus reveals Himself to us when and where He pleases, and, as on the Day of Pentecost, the Lord thereby adds to the Church. In Holy Baptism, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, we are born again through the living and abiding Word of God that remains forever. And, Holy Baptism’s promises, as we heard in today’s First Reading, are for all people, including children. The Lord’s post-resurrection appearance to Simon Peter (1 Corinthians 15:5) is thought to have included private absolution for Peter’s denials (Lenski, ad loc Luke 24:34, p.1195). And, if Jesus’s meal with the disciples in Emmaus was not the Sacrament of the Altar (see the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, XXII:7), it surely points us to the Sacrament of the Altar, where bread is the Body of Christ given for us and wine is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we stay, or “abide”, in Him and He stays, or “abides”, in us (John 6:56).
Christ in us, the Divinely-inspired St. Paul writes to the Colossians, is the sure and certain hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). Christ—and the Father and the Holy Spirit—in us leads us: to at least try to keep all of God’s Commandments; to believe and accept all that God’s Gospel tells us about Who Jesus is, what He did, and how He gives us the benefits of what He did; and to remember and apply what the Scriptures say about our afflictions’ being for our good and the death of a believer’s being victory. As it was necessary that the Christ should suffer and enter into His glory, so we likewise suffer before we enter into His glory. With our prayers we urge Him to stay with us, and with our offerings we try to support the ministry of His presence in this place, lest by our neglect of that ministry, like the passing rain shower once described by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, we be left without (To the Councilmen of Germany [1524], AE 45:352‑353). With daily repentance and faith, we live both in the forgiveness of sins that we receive from God and in the forgiveness of sins that we in turn share with one another. As we prayed in the Collect of the Day, God will grant to His faithful people, rescued from the peril of everlasting death, in resurrected and glorified bodies, perpetual gladness and eternal joys.
The disciples on the road to Emmaus had hoped that Jesus was the One to redeem Israel, but “We hope in the One Who has redeemed us”. Nothing should dash our sure and certain hope in Him, for, as St. Paul writes to the Romans, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35‑39).
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 + + +