Easter Sunday 24
Notes
Transcript
Handout
theres a saying march comes in like a lamb and ends like a lion
The first Easter morning started much more bewildering and confusing than we let on.
It was much slower, quieter, confusing kind of experience
So if you have come here this morning at all confused, at all bewildered. If you are still trying to figure things out, you have come at a good time.
On the first Easter morning, things were still really quiet. The disciples were confused because they had banked everything on Christ.
And then He was killed.
So three days pass and the disciples kind of go back to the way that life went before Christ entered in.
So our story begins after Jesus has been raised from the dead
And there are two disciples walking toward a village called Emmaus, trying to make sense of what had happened.
They were trying to put the pieces together themselves. But they were missing a big part of the story.
But Jesus eventually walks up near them and joins the conversation
While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them.
They didn’t realize it was Jesus and so he asks them about their conversation.
And they respond with a kind of bewilderment. They seem kind of rude about it.
Are you the only one who doesn’t know what happened?
Jesus gets them to tell him more.
In this discussion they tell Jesus something important about the event and something important about them.
One, they begin to discuss the resurrection.
two, they begin to share their own hope.
They relay the story to Jesus that some of the people with them amazed them. They confessed that Jesus was in fact alive. There was corroborative evidence that others had seen it too.
so this morning we are going to walk with these disciples and Jesus and discover practical theology rediscover the resurrection. What Christs rising from the dead means to this who believe
There is a fuller hope
There is a fuller hope
They are confused and are not sure what to make of everything, but they make sure to communicate that there is rumor of a resurrection.
And that is directly tied to hope.
But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.
These disciples placed their hope in Christ.
But they feel like, at this point, it is misplaced hope.
Have you ever had misplaced hope?
Where you thought God was going to do something, or you wanted God to do something, and it didn’t turn out the way you wanted?
have You ever had the wind knocked out of you? Soccer and ball getting kicked into my stomach. All the air went out.
This is where the disciples are at.
But keep in mind their version of reality is not actual reality. They have heard stories and witnessed things but they do not have the entire picture.
Theirs is a manufactured sense of hope. A hope that they had tried to put together but could not themselves.
to a degree they are trying to figure out what happened in the same way that you would try to figure out what happened by overhearing one side of a phone call. We’ve all overheard one side of a phone csll and think we know what’s going on but it’s never real,y the whole thing
They were grappling with a story that did not include life after death. They were thinking of Christ in a different perception, one in which death had mastery over HIm still.
Their rumors are half hearted. Their hope is half inflated.
There is one point in their story that they have missing.
That Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead.
The only thing between half and full is Christ being raised from the dead.
our hope as Christian’s is directly connected to that reality. That God has beaten death and has mastery over everything. And that often our half rumors and our hope is often halved simply because we’ve tried to figure out God who hasn’t beaten death.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
And Jesus responds to this.
He calls them slow of heart
And he said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.
Jesus has the full story. He tells them (they still don’t know who He is) that the Christ has to suffer, and has to go through what he did in order to enter into His glory.
There is a better story
There is a better story
All of the Scriptures, all of Creation point to that moment.
This is a great note to the narrative.
Jesus takes them all the way back to the beginning, to Moses and the prophets, and he interpreted all the Scriptures concerning him.
The resurrected Christ personally retelling the story of the Scriptures through the lens of what His rising from the dead meant.
Jesus is not just rehashing the stories of the OT, He is showing how the story of God interacting in the world through the nation of Israel all led up to Him. All of History tied itself around the resurrection.
Jesus assumes that those stories, that history would have been enough to carry their faith.
The resurrection is not a one moment thing, a mistake or a used opportunity. The resurrection is the culmination of God’s work.
The disciples see this as loss, Jesus views it as complete.
The difference is profound.
Have you ever looked at an event completely differently than someone else? The same event?
I’m sure this has never happened to you, but have you ever gotten into an argument with someone and when you both figure out why it is that you have been arguing , you realize that you have been thinking about two completely different things? You thought you were arguing about money but find out that the other person thought you were arguing about something you said?
The same event, the resurrection, brings about two different ideas. One, an end. The other, a complete beginning.
The resurrection is the reminder that God brings new life from ends. Every end we have experienced, every loss is prepped with resurrection possibility.
The difference is who gets to tell the story.
The disciples are trying to figure out the story themselves. It becomes an end. Hope deflates.
Jesus, when He tells them, starts at a beginning but shows that the resurrection is the real entrance into life. All of life had been, actually, leading up to that.
It matters who gets to tell the story.
The disciples couldn’t imagine Christ without a reference to death.
Jesus tells the entire story outside of death, without reference to it.
We have to learn to let Jesus tell the story.
Jesus speaks beginnings into what we have thought are ends.
Life happens for Christ through death.
The one area that we avoid, that we can’t seem to get over.
We can’t imagine life without reference to death.
But the resurrection is the experience of it.
You can trust that Christ will tell a better story than we can.
Yours is a better story this side of the resurrection
Yours is a better story this side of the resurrection
At the end of this passage there is invitation. The disciples invite Christ to eat with them and in the next scene, at the table, and as they are breaking bread, “their eyes are opened, and they recognized him.”
So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He acted as if he were going farther, but they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And he vanished from their sight.
The resurrection is an eternal invitation to understand that we no longer have to sit alone. That we no longer have to live in the fear of death or the unknown.
The resurrection is the understanding that God has changed everything and that we are invited into that everything.
The resurrection is the reminder that God brings life from dead things.
We have experienced the ultimate death in our broken relationship with God.
This is the life that Christ offers. That our primary wound, our initial place of brokenness, is healed over.
Easter is a big deal because it is the celebration that nothing has to stay the way it is. That our primary and eternal wound has been healed and restored.
And that happens, not from a distance, not from a God who is far off, but from a God who is willing to sit at our table.
Wherever you are this morning, part of your story reflects these two guys walking down the road to Emmaus.
Maybe your hope has drifted a bit. Christ is walking with you
Maybe your story has seen more ends in it than you would like. Christ is interpreting your story. There is new life offered at the resurrection of Jesus.