Easter 3B (2024)
Lutheran Service Book Three Year Lectionary • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Text: Luke 24:38–39 “38 And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
Is He risen? Has it happened? What are you waiting for?
He is risen. He has. It’s done. So why do you live as if, because of Christ, you will be saved—one day?
The apostles in our Gospel reading were still waiting for the last piece of the puzzle, so to speak. Jesus told them to wait there in the city until they were “clothed with power from on high” (v. 49). They still had to wait for the Holy Spirit to be given at Pentecost before they could start preaching and teaching— so that they could start behaving like apostles.
But what’s your excuse? What is it that you’re still waiting for? What is it that still has to happen before you actually believe that you are a Child of God?
Let’s take half a step back. Over the past two weeks, you’ve had the opportunity to hear the account of the resurrection from three different evangelists— remember that ‘evangelist’ is the term we use for the writers of the four Gospels. You’ve heard the account of the resurrection from three of the four evangelists. You heard from Mark and from John on Easter Sunday; you heard from John again last week; today you’re hearing from Luke. You’ve heard from three of the four evangelists. It’s interesting to take in the little things that each of them likes to emphasize. Mark gives a very brief description, listing three different eyewitness accounts— Mary, the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and then to the eleven. He barely includes any details (we assume that the two disciples that Mark mentions are the two on the road to Emmaus, but Mark doesn’t actually tell us that). John gives a lot more detail about what Mary saw and heard, then about what he and the other disciples saw and heard (he even had to record for posterity that he beat Peter in the race to the tomb); he is the one who tells us about Thomas asking for a sign; he also tells us about Jesus giving His church the authority to forgive and to retain sins. Luke’s description is interesting, too.
Luke, here, includes a lot more detail than Mark includes. It’s more like John’s description in that way. But what is it that Luke is focused on? What I find really interesting is that Luke really wants to emphasize that this is a Jesus who has “flesh on.” Look at verse 39. “39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39).
In that verse, what does Luke emphasize? He tells us about Jesus showing the disciples His hands and feet. But why? Last Sunday— in John 20— with Thomas, Jesus shows His hands and feet and side in order to show Thomas and the other disciples the wounds. “See, I really was dead but now I’m alive.” That’s not the point in Luke’s mind. “Touch me, and see,” Luke records Jesus as saying. “For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” In verse 40, when Luke describes Jesus showing them His hands and feet, it’s His hands and feet that are important rather than the wounds. Jesus then goes on to ask them for something to eat— again, to show them that He’s not just a spirit. He has flesh and blood. He is truly risen. That is what Luke wants to make sure that you and I understand.
Why? One of the reasons is in order to produce Christians “with flesh on.”
We live in a strange time, in general, when we imagine ‘uploading’ our consciousness into computers and, eventually, into robots. Our feelings are somehow more real than biology. We imagine evolving beyond the physical world and becoming purely spirits.
Arguably, that has seeped into the Christian church. A growing number of Christians don’t even necessarily believe in the Resurrection of the body on the last day. They struggle to understand why that would be important. Unfortunately, they’re very consistent in that. Because their bodies really don’t matter very much to their faith as it is.
For example, millions of Christians deny that baptism does anything. Something you do with— or to— your body can’t possibly have any real, spiritual meaning. They reason that baptism must be about the profession of faith that the person makes. That is the only meaning that they can imagine.
You and I don’t deny what God has promised in baptism, but do you take the physical world any more seriously?
We’ll deal with a particularly good example of this later on in Bible class. One of the most difficult issues for the church to address right now is the issue of same-sex attraction. Now, please understand clearly why I say that it’s the most difficult: it’s the most difficult because the church, as a whole, has lost any sense of the necessity of resisting sin. That presents us with a huge problem: how can we expect people with such desires to fight against them when we are unwilling to fight against our own? How dare we demand that of them when we show absolutely no willingness to do the same?
It’s true: people with same-sex attraction can not just go on living in sin and consider themselves Christian. And neither can you.
You may try. You might try to reason that your actions are just your actions but, still, you really believe, but…. Can you go on living in sin and call yourself a Christian or not?
As our confessions say:
“It is… necessary to know and to teach that when holy men… fall into manifest sins, as David into adultery, murder, and blasphemy, that then faith and the Holy (Spirit) has departed from them [they cast out faith and the Holy Ghost]. For the Holy (Spirit) does not permit sin to have dominion, to gain the upper hand so as to be accomplished, but represses and restrains it so that it must not do what it wishes. But if it does what it wishes, the Holy Ghost and faith are [certainly] not present. For St. John says, 1 John 3:9: “9 No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, …and he cannot keep on sinning…” (Original quote replaced with ESV.). (Book of Concord, “Smalcald Articles,” Article III, Part III, “Repentance,” par. 43)
There’s no getting around it. You and I can not go on living in sin and think that we still have faith and the Holy Spirit. Why is it necessary to confront the man addicted to pornography? Why is it necessary to warn the couple living together outside of marriage? Because no one born of God can keep on sinning.
And it’s not just “those sinners.” Those who despise God’s Word are under similar warnings. As Luther once wrote,
But those who are unwilling to learn [at least the 10 Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer] should be told that they deny Christ and are no Christians, neither should they be admitted to the Sacrament, accepted as sponsors at baptism, nor exercise any part of Christian liberty, but should simply be turned back to the Pope and his officials, yea, to the devil himself. (Luther’s Preface to the Small Catechism)
Persistently missing church is not just a harmless oversight. And, as he writes elsewhere,
Whoever does not seek or desire the Sacrament at least some four times a year, it is to be feared that he … is no Christian, just as he is no Christian who does not believe or hear the Gospel; for Christ did not say, This omit, or, This despise, but, This do ye, as oft as ye drink it, etc. Verily, He wants it done, and not entirely neglected and despised. This do ye, He says.
I’ll make you a deal. I will never again push for weekly communion— never again use those two words together in a sentence— if you will acknowledge the truth that, if a person has not communed— not just in 2 years, but in 12 months, in 6 months, in 3 months!— there is very good reason to fear that he is not a Christian.
The fact that we struggle with that statement at all is powerful testimony that we are a generation of Christians without flesh on.
What are you waiting for? What is it that still has to happen before you actually are a Child of God?
Everything written about Christ has been fulfilled. Period. He was clear about who He was and why He had come. And the world did not accept Him. And yet, as Peter said, “13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release him. 14 …(You) denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, 15and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses…. 18…(What) God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out…”
Or, as our Lord, Himself, said, “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 and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Unlike God’s people of old, we aren’t even clinging to the promise of the unknown savior that He will send, someday. He has come and fulfilled everything that was spoken by the prophets and He said, from the cross, “It is finished.”
All of your sins are paid for. Nothing is hidden from Him. Nothing is excused. Nothing is swept under the rug. “10He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. 11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:10–12, ESV).
As He said through Jeremiah, “34I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34, ESV). How is an all-knowing God able to forget our sins? Because He’s buried them in Christ’s tomb forever.
He creates in you a clean heart. He renews a right spirit within you. He does not cast you away from His presence or take His Holy Spirit from you.
The fact that, “what we will be has not yet appeared” doesn’t negate the fact that “(you) are God’s children now” (1 John 3:2a) “3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” (1 John 3:3).
One day, you will have a new, glorified body. A body that will be able to physically sit at the marriage feast of the Lamb in His Kingdom. A head that will be able to physically wear a golden crown. A body with hands with which you will be able to lay that golden crown at your savior’s feet. A body with eyes with which you will look upon your savior.
In the meantime, no, you can not go on sinning—whatever your sins might be. And when I say that we can not go on sinning, I mean it in the same sense as when I say that the lame beggar that Peter and John healed could not go on living like someone who could not walk. He had been lame from birth, and every day he was carried to the gate of the temple to ask alms of the people entering the temple. But the next day, everything was changed. Oh, you’d better believe he was back there at the temple the day after he met Peter and John—but he certainly wasn’t carried there! He came running and leaping! And didn’t come begging, he came praising and rejoicing at the gift God had given him!
What Peter and James did by healing that beggar, pales in comparison to what Christ has done for you. He has buried you, through baptism, into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, you, too may live a new life. Has Christ been raised from the dead? He certainly has! And, through your baptism, He has brought you, through death, to a new, holy life.
Through the bread and wine you receive to eat and to drink from this altar— however often we celebrate the Lord’s Supper— you eat and drink forgiveness. You eat and drink eternal life. You eat and drink salvation.
How can you not come running and leaping to God’s house to receive His gifts of forgiveness, life and salvation and leave here striving to live the new, holy life that you’ve been given?
“38 And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”
Indeed He does. And so do you.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed! Alleluia!