Luke 24:36b – 48

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look 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.” And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.  Then 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. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. 

Message

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing unto you, oh God.  Amen.

The appearance stories are some of my favorite in our sacred text.  With careful discernment they lay a foundation strong enough to hold us intact as we explore the ways in which we encounter a risen Christ: Jesus as a gardener, standing outside of the empty tomb; Jesus as a stranger, walking on the road to Emmaus with two others.  And today, finally, with everyone in one room, Jesus is met for the first time after his resurrection.  Like many of you, I have held various beliefs about the resurrection and appearances of Jesus during my life: a physically resurrected Jesus, Jesus as a hologram, maybe.  I’ve even wondered if the New Testament writers created a resurrected Jesus to give credence to the Old Testament prophecies and the discoveries of the New Testament.

In “Jesus Before the Gospels,” Bart Ehrman writes that it could well be that people believed that they saw a resurrected Jesus and therefore wrote about it but that in fact their memories were not founded in reality.  In my many conversations with others about the resurrection, people’s responses vary from “Are you kidding?” to “Christ is risen indeed.”  Now I want to assure you that my sermon today will not settle the score on the type of resurrection that occurred that day.  But no matter where we fall along that spectrum, we are called to make sense of an empty tomb and to understand the words Jesus spoke that day.  We are invited today to listen to His words as he works with the disciples in acknowledging His presence in that place.  We are invited to discern His invitation of looking at, touching and seeing a risen Christ.  We are promised that through this discernment our minds will be opened; we will come to understanding the Scripture, so why?  So that we can be witnesses to the saving grace of a risen Christ and that our witness is to begin where, but in Jerusalem.

Let’s first look at Jesus’ role in today’s story.  Had Jesus not understood and accepted His call as the son of man, he could have easily walked into the room with a grudge, hurt feelings, angry and resentful about the events of the last several days.  Based upon His previous conversation with the disciples He could have entered the room with the expectation that the disciples would have been gathered in the circle, awaiting His return.  Instead, they were gathered in a circle alright, but terrified and startled.  But being Jesus, He just appeared and greeted them with the words, “Peace be with you.”  To affirm His presence He invited them