Psalm 4; Luke 24:36-48
How is Missions Sunday like being an
international government spy? Well, before
we can get to the punch line and the “Mission: Impossible” analogy I know
you’re all waiting for, we need to set some background first.
First, this is the last chapter of
the Gospel of Luke that we just read from.
It’s not the end of Luke’s story, because he also wrote the book of
Acts, but it is the end of his Gospel.
This chapter begins with Jesus’ resurrection, when the women went to the
tomb and found it empty and an angel told them, “Why do you look for the living
among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”
And the women go and tell the disciples.
Then, what Luke relates next isn’t about Thomas like we read last week,
but about the road to Emmaus. To refresh
your memory, this is about the two followers of Jesus who are so discouraged by
his crucifixion and the empty tomb and the report that he’s risen but no one’s
seen him, that they leave town and go walking from Jerusalem to the town of
Emmaus. Along the road, Jesus joins
them, only, kinda like a spy, they don’t recognize him. Jesus asks why they’re so mopey and
dejected. They ask him if he lives under
a rock because how on earth could he not have heard about what’s been going on
in Jerusalem?! They explain they were
followers of this guy Jesus, who they thought was going to save Israel, and
then their authorities crucified him.
And then three days later, his tomb is empty. So, they’ve skipped town. Jesus responds by interpreting the Scriptures
to them, how Moses and all the prophets show that it was necessary for the
Messiah to suffer and then to enter into his glory. They get to Emmaus and Jesus makes like he’s
going to go on, but they invite him to come eat with them. Of course, Jesus breaks the bread and while
he’s breaking the bread these two guys realize it’s Jesus! And as they realize it’s him, he vanishes,
again, kinda like a good spy, there one second and gone the next. These two guys are so awestruck that they’ve
just seen Jesus that they go back the way they’ve just come, all the way back
to Jerusalem, to tell the others.
And it’s as they are telling the others that our Gospel story today
picks up with Jesus entering the room while they’re all gathered and talking
about who’s seen him and who hasn’t. Now,
these others include the eleven remaining disciples, including Peter who has
seen him, plus some other followers, or in today’s parlance, groupies. Jesus has kinda concentric circles of people
who hang out with him. There’s the
crowds who see him when he comes to their town, there’s the folks who have
followed him all over everywhere, the groupies, there’s the twelve disciples who
he handpicked, and even within the twelve, he often chooses Peter, James, and
John to do special things with him, like witness his transfiguration or pray in
the garden of Gethsemane with him. So,
the eleven disciples plus some followers are in this room that Jesus enters and
says “Peace be with you.” Now, of all
the people in the room, three of them have already seen Jesus
post-resurrection. Everyone else has
heard their firsthand reports, but apparently no one believes them because they
all react to Jesus as though he’s a ghost.
Now, even though they just lived through Jesus’ passion and heard
reliable firsthand witnesses of his resurrection, they still didn’t believe it. Pastor Ken talked about doubt in his sermon last
week and his final point was that “doubt disappears when we meet the risen Lord
for ourselves.” When we meet the risen
Lord for ourselves, like Thomas in last week’s Gospel lesson and like others of
Jesus’ followers in this week’s lesson, when we meet the risen Lord for ourselves,
doubt disappears. Jesus had to prove he
wasn’t a ghost but was there in the flesh.
Just like with Thomas, he invited folks to touch him and see that it was
really him. He also ate some fish,
because ghosts don’t eat. They’ve heard
Jesus was risen from the dead, now for the first time they see for
themselves.
Jesus had to get past their fear first.
If you remember, these folks have locked themselves in the upper room
out of fear. Jesus addresses their fear
and disbelief first. It really is him. Then, just like on the road to Emmaus, he
explains the Scriptures to them. Minds
cannot be opened when they are trapped by fear.
Jesus calms their fears and then he opens their minds to understand the
Scriptures. What has stuck with me all
week with this passage is that even though they know the Scriptures, they
still need them explained to them. Even
though they’ve studied the Scriptures, and we’re talking about the law of
Moses, or the Torah, the first five books of the bible, plus all the prophets
plus the psalms, so most of what we know as the Old Testament; even though like
all good Jews they have read them and studied them, Jesus still has to
interpret them to them. It’s a repeat of
what he did on the road to Emmaus, explaining how the Messiah has to suffer and
rise from the dead on the third day, that’s it’s all there in the
Scriptures. The Old Testament is all
about Jesus! What it also shows, though,
is a difference between knowing and understanding. We are living in the Information Age. We have knowledge at our fingertips,
literally. We don’t have to go to the
library or ask an expert. We can whip
out our smart phone or i-pad or anywhere with the internet, which is almost
everywhere, and look up what we want to know.
However, how much of that knowledge do we actually
understand? How much of that knowledge
can we actually attribute meaning to?
Knowing is not the same as understanding. Knowing what the Bible says is not the same
as understanding it. Being able to quote
the bible is not the same as living out the Word of God. We are not Christians who each live on their
own separate island but part of the Christian community. We test our own interpretations against
Christian tradition, reason, the Scriptures, and experience. We don’t do this on our own and we don’t gain
understanding on our own. Just as Jesus
had to interpret the Scriptures to his own disciples and followers, even after
they’d lived through his passion and resurrection, so we need them interpreted
to us. That’s what we do when we come to
church, when we study the bible, when we pray and listen for the Spirit’s
moving. Knowing and understanding are
two different things. It reminds me of a
science teacher I had in high school.
Her tests were pretty standard multiple choice, true/false, fill in the
blank, and short answer. However, her
make-up tests, which I had to take one time, were not. Those tests were strictly essay. Write everything you know about protein
synthesis. Essays are harder because if
you just string facts together and throw in vocabulary words like ribosomes and
uracil and thymine, your writing isn’t very coherent. To write a good essay, you have to show
understanding of the facts and the terms.
It’s the difference between knowing and understanding. You can know that grace is the unconditional
love of God, but until you’ve experienced it, you can’t understand it.
Finally, getting back to Jesus and
his followers, even though they’ve been his followers for three years, day
in and day out for most of them, Jesus still has to commission them to be his
witnesses to all the nations. Jesus
still has to call them. Jesus still has
to give them a mission. “Your mission, should you choose to accept
it…” is to be witnesses and proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins to all
nations. We don’t do anything without a
call. Agents don’t act without a
mission. There’s no story, no plot, no
TV show or movie, without a call, a mission.
We don’t just do good things because we’re Christians. We do the specific tasks that God calls us to
do. Before seminary, when God called me
to serve him overseas and I was researching different mission agencies, I found
that some of them have very vague mission statements. In effect, they say, “we do mission work because
we’re Christians and we’re supposed to do good things like that.” The one that I served with said we do this
because we’re called to do this, we have a specific goal with a specific end in
mind and specific means of how we go about it and why we go about it how we go
about it and we know when we’ve accomplished our goal because we have specific
ways to measure it. God doesn’t call us
to do vague good things; he calls us to specific ways of serving him. When I was preparing to serve in Nicaragua,
my mom asked about the needs here in North Carolina and just why I had to go to
Nicaragua to serve God when I could do it here.
My answer was that God had called me to serve him in Nicaragua; at that
time in my life God wasn’t calling me to serve him in North Carolina, like he
is now. At that time, God was asking me
to walk with his people in Nicaragua. At
this time God wants me here, walking with y’all. We are not called to all ministries in all
places and all times but to specific ministry.
That’s part of why we don’t all have the same gifts. Of course, sometimes the ministry corresponds
to your God-given gifts, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes God calls the equipped and
sometimes he equips the called. Pastor
Ken has a natural gift for speaking and preaching; I don’t, yet I’m also called
to preach. So the question is: what are
you called to do? What stirs your
heart? What has God put on your
heart? Is it something you’re ready to
do or something you need some training in?
In your bulletin is a missions
survey. There are lots of specific ways
we offer for you to serve God. If the
one you feel God calling you to isn’t listed on here, there’s a space where you
can write it in. What is your
mission? How is God asking you to serve
him today, this month, this year? Take a
second to pray about it, reflect on it, and follow the Spirit’s leading. And [air quotes] “as always, should any of
you be caught or killed…” so what? We
know who we serve and we know where we’re going when we leave this earth. We
also know that when we’re following the Lord’s will for our lives, we’re in the
safest place we can be because we’re serving him. What better place is there to be?
