The Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to Luke.

Jesus himself stood among the disciples 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. (Luke 24:36b-48.)

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I haven’t heard about one for quite a while, but there once were  literally hundreds, if not thousands, of sightings of Elvis reported. After he had died!

He was  seen coming out of a Burger King; driving down a Nashville road; ducking into a bar somewhere; or ducking out of one – he was seen in places as disparate as Los Angeles and Dusseldorf.

But we know that he wasn’t really seen, don’t we? Someone had seen someone who had a resemblance to Elvis, just caught a glimpse of him, and had been sure that the king of rock and roll had really appeared. 

But we know that Elvis died. We know he was buried in a casket in Graceland, and that his body, what remains of it, is still there.

As much as his fans may have wanted him to be alive,  no amount of yearning for one more chance to hear Blue Suede Shoes,  or to see those swiveling hips, can bring him back.

Elvis had not only left the building, he left this world once and for all.

Jesus came back.

He found the disciples in the upper room where they were hiding. They had just finished hearing the account that two of them told, of meeting Jesus on the road to Emmaus. That couple had rushed back to tell their friends about their encounter with the Risen Lord. They were all excitedly discussing this, when suddenly he appeared.

They thought they were seeing a ghost. They were scared, as anyone would be.

But this ghost – as they thought – told them to come and look at his hands, and at his feet. The wounds were still there. He was flesh and blood, and he was alive.

And as if to prove he was as alive as anyone there, he asked for, and ate, food.

He tells them not to be so surprised, shocked, petrified, that he has risen from the tomb, and to demonstrate that it was always meant to be, he takes them on a little journey through the Bible, pointing out all that the prophets had said about a coming Messiah, and how those words applied to him.

It’s a lot for them to absorb, isn’t it? No matter how much you have loved somebody, seeing them again, alive, would knock your socks off.

I read of a case some time ago,  where a man had died, been buried,  and his family mourned him.  A couple or so years later, his brother saw him in their hometown, and collapsed from the shock of it.   It turned out that the funeral had been a phony one, set up to make this man’s many enemies think he had died. 

He had testified in court, giving evidence against an organised crime figure. The police thought he would be safer if everyone thought he were dead.  So they arranged his death, told his family he had died, and a funeral took place.

The man was really in the witness protection program.

No matter how his brother had loved him, he nearly died of shock when he saw him.

So believe it when Luke tells us the disciples were frightened.

Later, however, they were relieved and glad. 

He ate with them.

And here was Jesus alive and well, and with his disciples days after dying on that cross.

The resurrection was real!  Jesus was no phantom or hallucination, no product of someone’s fevered mind. He was back, and he was real.

Christianity is founded on the one who in actual historical fact faced, fought, and conquered death and rose again.

That’s a prime truth that we see in this account.

We also see from this account that the cross was a necessity. It was not forced on God. It wasn’t some Plan B to which God reverted when all else had failed. 

It had been God’s plan all along.

The cross is the one place on earth where in a moment of time we see His eternal love.

This account of meeting the Risen Lord in that upper room also tells us the message of Jesus that must be taken out into all the world. 

Jesus told his disciples what he himself saw in the scriptures, namely that all people in every nation must be told in his name to turn to God in order to be forgiven.

So ” Christianity” is not to be locked up in church buildings however beautiful . It is not some deep secret to be held by a few. It is not for the rich, nor for the poor, nor for the good, nor for the bad- it is for all.

For everyone.

And if we thwart that, by our own inaction or our timidity, or our wish to avoid challenges,  then we are actually going against his stated purpose for his church. And His plan for each of us.

And it’s an urgent matter.   

I can’t believe that God will stand idly by and see   ” Men like Min Aung Hlaing the dictator  in Myanmar who is clinging onto power by brutalizing his people, killing those who protest, and those who do not, but are in the wrong place at a particular time – I can’t believe that God will stand idly by……..

 He will not ignore the cries of his people for ever.

He will hear them.

Then the tyrants and the oppressors will tremble.

Such men will tremble. Such men will face the awful wrath of God. They will be held to account.

And what of us? What of his followers, who have heard his word and have tried to live as Christ lived?

My dear friends we are already God’s children.

He loves us so much that He lets us be called His children,  as we truly are.

It is true, however  that the people of the world, who don’t know Jesus won’t know us. But we know that when Christ returns we will be like him – alive for ever – and we will see him as he really is.  The words of John.

The world does not know Jesus.

That’s a strange statement. Surely everyone knows about him. Everyone celebrates Christmas and Easter, the two holidays that commemorate the three most momentous events –  the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus.
You Think?

Some years ago, when Jay Leno, was the Tonight Show host,  just about Easter, one year, he did one of his  “Jay Walks.” He took a mike outside, and stopped people and asked them some pretty simple questions about Jesus.

He asked one woman, “ Do you know about Jesus?” and she answered, ‘Oh yes.”

He asked her when did she think Jesus lived on earth. She said two hundred years ago. When Leno asked her if it seemed  right that Jesus lived about the same time as Abraham Lincoln, that didn’t seem to faze her at all. 

So he asked her the names of Jesus’ earthly parents and she perked up at that, replying swiftly, ‘Mary and Joseph.’

Leno then asked her when they would have been living and she said four hundred years ago.

“So Mary would have been about two hundred years old when Jesus was born,” Leno said, and the woman said, “I suppose so.”

Jay asked others when Jesus walked the earth and the answers ranged from a thousand to a million years.

The last answer came from a person who said she was studying anthropology. Leno asked her then, ‘So Jesus lived at the same time as the dinosaurs?’ She agreed.

It would be funny except that it is so tragic.

They don’t know Jesus.

And it tells us that we Christians have a bigger job to do than we ever imagined.

How can we keep it  to ourselves when there are people out there, poor lost  souls, who know nothing about the love of God?

What is going to happen to them when some crisis hits them? Separation? Divorce? Loss of a loved one? Serious illness?

To whom will they turn? Oprah?  Dr. Phil?

And who will help them to live through the strife and trouble of everyday?

And how will they know what is right and wrong? And how will they know what true love is? 

Oh we Christians have a big job on our hands, haven’t we?

And how can we Christians, simple human beings that we are, how can we know what to do, to  help such  lost souls?

Maybe first by learning what we can, ourselves – about his love and His plan and how Jesus came to save such as us – and them.

Then by living in such a way that they can’t help but wonder how we do it

Living in love. Living in harmony. Living in integrity. Living as children of God.

And knowing enough that when they ask, “How do you do it?” “How do you cope with the troubles that life throws at you?”  “How do you manage to make it through every day?”  How can you face life with a smile on your face when the world is going to hell in a hand basket?

…….knowing enough to answer, “Because of Jesus.”

And when they say, “How do you mean?”

And telling them in simple terms, that living for Jesus means not living for the world.

Loving Jesus means not loving the world.

So that  we don’t crave worldly things.  We like to live well, but that isn’t what drives us.

And when we have to let go of worldly things, we do that, we let go.

Because that isn’t what drives us.

That isn’t what fulfills us.

What fulfills us is that we have accepted the freely given love that God graciously sent to us in his Son Jesus.

We have accepted that we are sinners – redeemed sinners – and have cast off the old person and taken on the new.

And we know that when we slip, when we falter, when we fall, he is there to forgive us and take us back, and nurture us, because we are His own.

And we believe that because He lives, we will also live. And what he is we will also be.

That is what fulfills