Third
Sunday of Easter
April
30, 2017
Luke
24:16
His
Words Come First As He Walks With Us
In
the name of the Father and of the ☩
Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
Before
His glorious death, Jesus must have walked hundreds of miles on the
dusty roads of Israel. So why not seven more?
On
this most busy of days, Jesus was visiting with many of His
disciples. And two of them were walking away from Jerusalem to
Emmaus, a seven-mile trip. And Jesus joined them on the road.
And
He does it again. He gives these disciples first His Word, then His
body. Just like with Mary and Thomas, He wants them to trust His Word
alone. That’s why He
hides His presence from them—He wants to be found in His Word.
And
what wonderful words! After rebuking them for their failure to
connect His promises to the actual events unfolding right around
them, He explained to them what the Scriptures said about Him. How I
wish Cleopas had written down this most illuminating of all catechism
classes, but we can take some very wise guesses as to what Jesus
taught. He would have taken them back to the beginning when He
promised Himself to Adam and Eve. And then when He promised Himself
to Noah and then Abraham. He would have proclaimed the words of King
David in Psalm 22, that are the Words of Christ:
My
God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?
Why
are You so far from saving Me,
so
far from My cries of anguish?
PSALM
22:1 NIV
And
ends with these triumphant words:
All
the ends of the earth
will
remember and turn to the Lord,
and
all the families of the nations
will
bow down before Him,
for
dominion belongs to the Lord
and
He rules over the nations.
All
the rich of the earth will feast and worship;
all
who go down to the dust will kneel before Him—
those
who cannot keep themselves alive.
Posterity
will serve Him;
future
generations will be told about the Lord.
They
will proclaim His righteousness,
declaring
to a people yet unborn:
He
has done it!
PSALM
22:27-31 NIV
These
words are fulfilled in Christ! And these words filled these believers
with joy and gladness! They were those of whom Jesus spoke,
Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have believed.
JOHN
20:29 NIV
Perhaps
you have had the chance to talk with a stranger, and as the
conversation went on, you both began to realize that you were
followers of Jesus, who knew how deep sin goes, how Jesus' death and
resurrection satisfied God's anger at our sin, how Jesus gives us
this peace through water, word, body, and blood, and how we followers
follow Jesus' way of the cross—suffering and loss, with Jesus
always there for us. In other words, you both realized you were
Lutherans. This joy might give you a sense of the joy of these Emmaus
disciples.
Naturally
they did not want this mysterious friend who had connected the dots
for them to depart from their presence. So they asked Him to stay
with them since it was getting late. He said yes, and soon they saw
for just a moment.
When
He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it
and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they
recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight.
LUKE
24:30-31 NIV
They
ran back to Jerusalem and told the others what they had seen, and
then they saw Him again and knew it was Him for a whole evening and
for the rest of their lives.
And
so it is with us. Jesus stays with us in the evening and the morning,
when we are home and when we are at church and when we travel on the
road. He is always with us through His Word.
For
even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give His Life as a ransom for many. Alleluia! Amen!
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