Easter Tuesday Sermon 2022
The two disciples to whom Jesus appeared on the road to Emmaus had just returned to Jerusalem and found the disciples locked in their room. Jesus had opened the Scriptures to them, and then revealed Himself to them in the breaking of bread. They said to each other, “Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?
“So they rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven and those who were with them gathered together, saying, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” And they told about the things that had happened on the road, and how He was known to them in the breaking of bread.
It was while they were talking about these things that Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them and said, “Peace to you.” Remember this. This is the fulfilment of what Jesus told His disciples in Matthew 18, “For where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.”
When you talk about Jesus with each other, Jesus is in the midst of you. He is truly there, not as a mere spirit, but as He is, true Man, having flesh and bones as you do, true God, one Savior who can be wherever He pleases and with whomever He pleases, and He is pleased to be where His word is, when we talk about Him.
Let no one pass over these words lightly, as if they are not very great and precious, because there is no more comforting knowledge in our afflictions, when we are afraid of our sins, and in the good fight of faith when we are struggling to lay hold of eternal life, than that the Crucified is risen indeed and is with us always, even to the end of the age.
The apostles are witnesses, but look at how weak they are! They believed; they knew Jesus was risen, both the disciples from Emmaus and the disciples in Jerusalem. The latter said, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” But when Jesus actually shows them the reality of their faith, that He is risen, and says, “Peace to you,” the Scripture says, “But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit.”
The poor disciples! They had all forsaken Him. They had all become offended at Him in His weakness, in fear for their own lives. They had not treated Him as the friend He had shown Himself to be to them. And then the Jews who had killed Christ were lurking around, and still lying. Their own sins had given them such a bad conscience that they were still in hiding while they confess with their mouths that “The Lord is risen indeed!”
But you must know that this is where we all must be before we become strong. We must know our weakness. It is only those who feel their own weakness and sense their own sin to whom Jesus says, “Peace to you.” Everyone else has no desire for this peace. They go about life either secure in themselves, with no thought of sin and death or eternal life. They are lost because they think they are strong.
But you are weak, as the apostles were. And yet it is to the weak Christians that Christ comes and says, “Peace to you.” The devil will say, “Peace, peace!” where there is no peace. He speaks peace only to lead you to take sin lightly and then lead you to despair. He speaks peace only to make you think you are strong with your own good works and thinking, but that liar is setting you up for a fall when you think you are strong in yourself, and his goal is finally not peace, but a despairing conscience, a fear that God could not love you, and since he has led you to rely on yourself and to follow your own heart, he leaves you only with yourself and your own poor, sinful heart.
Not so the Savior of the world. He comes to speak peace to timid consciences who are afraid. He heals the sick. He calls the repentant. Only look and listen to how He treats poor sinners for whom He died! He says peace to them, and when He sees they are that they are terrified and frightened and that they have seen a spirit, he rebukes their fear, just as He commands the angels to tell Mary and the other women not to be afraid. Jesus’ goal is not that you continue to be terrified. His goal is that you have peace with God, because here is the Man who reconciled you to God by dying for you, by suffering for all your sins, by bearing all of the punishment willingly, and rising from the grave with all of the punishment and pain and sin and death gone. He lives. He is no spirit. He is no demon appearing to men to deceive and frighten them.
He shows them His hands and His feet, where He kept the scars. “Handle Me and see. A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” Do you see how earnestly and seriously, how eagerly and patiently Jesus approaches men who have sinned against Him? Human nature is such that we cannot believe what is good when we know we have done evil. But here is our human nature, entirely good, wanting only good for us, speaking peace to us, giving us the evidence.
And He goes on further and asks them if they want something to eat. So they gave Him some broiled fish and honeycomb. He wasn’t hungry. He ate to show them that He wasn’t what their frightened conscience thought He was. Remember this. Your conscience, when you are weak and afraid, will not think rightly about Jesus. But Jesus knows this about you. The disciples believed, but unbelief still clung to them. Even when the joy of the fact that Jesus really was with them had touched their hearts, the joy itself was too much for them, and Luke says, “But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them “Do you have any food here?” He will show the proof of who He is to those who are weak. He will point you to who He is when your own weak heart can scarcely believe it.
This is truly the one of whom Isaiah prophesied and Matthew identifies, who does not snuff out a smoldering wick and does not break a bruised read. He is defender and protector and savior of all poor sinners, whose hearts are too small and weak to comprehend how great the grace and love of God is, that He would want to be with a bunch of scaredy-cats who don’t have strength in their own understanding to believe that they really have the peace that Christ won for them. But He gives it to them.
He reminds them of the words that He spoke, that He fulfilled Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms. Just as He opened the Scriptures to the two on the road to Emmaus, so He points the apostles the Scriptures again. Because it is through the Scriptures that Jesus comes to us again and again, just as He came to the disciples in their fear. And it is in the breaking of the bread that we recognize Him for who He is. It is when He gives His body that He gave on the cross to poor sinners; when He pours out His blood in the wine, that we see our Savior; when the Scriptures are opened and we see that we have a Savior, a God who is our brother, a Lord who does not despise our weakness, but embraces us and makes us strong by giving us everything He is, by showing us who He is. He is the Crucified – see His hands and feet; He is the risen one; see Him eat what we eat. He is not here to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.
And we are more than two or three. The living, flesh and blood, risen Son of God, the Son of Mary, who was born, and lived and suffered and truly died and was buried, and rose again on the third day – He is with us. He is looking at me and you, and He is speaking through the minister whom He sent. He is saying, repent, turn from your unbelief and believe that your sins are remitted, sent away, forgiven, covered, forgotten by this Lord of Lords and King of Kings. He is yours and you are His. Peace to you. Amen.