Reprise

This sermon was heard at the First Presbyterian Church in Berryville, Arkansas on Sunday April 26, 2009, the 3rd week of Easter.

Acts 3:12-19
Psalm 4
1 John 3:1-7
Luke 24:36b-48

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

In the immortal words of the great philosopher Yogi Berra, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” If you are wondering why the committee that put together the texts used for this the third week of the Easter season chose a rerun; your question is valid. My answer may leave you wanting, but your question is very, very good.

So today, as we read Luke’s gospel, we hear the echo from John’s that we read last week. But as with every echo, as the sound returns, it comes with distortions from the first hearing. The similarities between Luke’s version of Jesus’ return to the disciples and the version of the passage we read last week in John abound, and so do the differences. In both the disciples are afraid. In John’s gospel it is fear of the Jewish leadership establishment who spearheaded the crucifixion. In Luke’s gospel, the disciples were afraid because they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Both readings have Jesus affirming his physical presence. John’s gospel shows joyous disciples celebrating the physical return of the Lord in his resurrection body. In Luke’s gospel, the disciples were afraid of “Zombie Jesus.”

But Luke’s gospel gives us something wonderful, something so fully human. Jesus asks for a snack. The King of kings and the Lord of lords asks his buddies for a bite to eat. The fully divine Christ shows Jesus’ most fully human needs seeking hospitality.

Remember that these events took place on the day of the resurrection. This is the evening of Easter Sunday, and beginning with Good Friday, it’s been a hard weekend. Imagine how Jesus had spent those last three days…

First there is the ordeal with the cross that happens even before the Romans nail him to the thing. We have recently scrutinized the process of death by crucifixion in some detail, so let’s simply remind ourselves that it is a slow, painful death. Put on top of this the scalding Judean sun and the taste of the bitter wine from the branches of the hyssop.

Then there’s the whole “he descended into hell” thing. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians[i] gives us this piece of Jesus’ life-after-death-before-resurrection life. Scripture opens this can of worms, but it does not share the events that occurred during the death of the Lord. Even the creeds are silent on what happened while Jesus danced with the devil.

Just for good measure, let us not forget the doubters who suspect that Jesus was faking it; he was just in a coma or something like that. Well, the spear through his side into his lung and heart should have finished off that hypothesis. Jesus is not the object of a “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” scene screaming “I’m not dead yet!” So let us not quibble over this issue. Jesus died and let me say for the third week in a row, dead is dead.

This gives us yet another theological predicament, when we testify Jesus dies; we testify that God dies. We testify that God incarnate dies, not just the fully human Jesus of Nazareth, but the fully divine Christ of God dies too. Jesus and the Christ being one and the same, these essences cannot be separated one from another; not in heaven, not on earth, and not even in hell.

This is hard for us to wrap our heads around. It’s so hard that it lead one of the ancient church fathers, a priest named Arius, to say that Jesus and God are not of the same substance, to say that Jesus is not God. But we say this is a false teaching, a heresy. Jesus is God and is of God; in the words of the Nicene Creed, created not begotten.

If there was one experience that the God of creation never had, it was death. God created life and until that very moment nearly two thousand years ago on a garbage dump in the Judean sun, God’s own self had not personally known death. Death introduces itself to God that day, and for two days more the two square off.

We may not know exactly what “descended into hell” means, and this is as close as I am going to get today. So all things considered, is it any wonder Jesus needed a snack and maybe a little something to wash it down?

We learn what the disciples learn at this moment, we learn that Jesus conquers death. Jesus returns still fully human and still fully divine. He conquered death in that moment and for our salvation death remains conquered. Jesus meets the one thing that will ultimately conquer us all, and defeats death so that its sting is only fleeting.

In Christ’s victory over death, life is shown to be eternal, death only temporary. We testify this crying out with the words of the Apostles' Creed, “The third day he rose again from the dead.” We testify this crying out with the Easter declaration “He is risen, He is risen indeed.”

In resurrected life, Jesus performs the miracle of teaching us again and again the things he taught his disciples. In this story of Jesus resurrection appearance and its parallels, the promises of God are fulfilled; showing creation and the created that Jesus’ words about the future life of the community are the source of new life.[ii]

He opens us to the truth of the scriptures written about him and fulfilled by him. The truth of repentance and forgiveness of sins proclaimed in his name beginning from Jerusalem, the truth proclaimed from the ends of the world to your town.[iii]

While my musical tastes run toward classic and alternative rock, I love a good symphonic music. Particularly what I love are hearing musical themes repeat themselves like waves crashing. Sometimes they are played by different instruments or in different keys. Sometimes the tempo is changed, whether faster or slower, sometimes interpolated with other themes. I love it when a good theme is revisited and presented again.

It brings me back to an emotional, even spiritual place in the work that turns on a particular phrase of music. What I admire about this form is that while identified with classical music, the reprise is common to all genres of music. You can hear it in rock, you can hear it in country, and you can hear it particularly in soul music. Sergei Prokofiev does it in “Peter and the Wolf” and Pete Townshend does it in “Quadrophenia.” Today, in our reading from Luke we hear another reprise.

The theme is the story of Jesus’ resurrection appearance before his disciples; and the committee that put together the scripture list for our worship readings put these two messages together, one after another, so that we may hear the word of God and listen to the differences between the musical colors of the themes. John presents Jesus as a glorious being and Luke, the Good Physician Luke gives us Jesus who is a living man and not a ghost.

One gives us fear of the Jewish leadership establishment and the other fear of the resurrected Lord. Both give us God in fellowship with his disciples. Both provide food for the soul, while one provides food for the body. Today, at the table, in the Lord’s Supper; we celebrate the holy meal that feeds us body and soul by the bread and the cup.

Maybe this is the reason for our case of déjà vu all over again, so that we may hear the same story in a slightly different voice; so that we can see of the disciple’s experience from a different point of view. Different gospels focus on different elements; different pastors focus on different elements. Maybe we are hearing the same-story-only-different so that we may hear it again for the first time and so that it may seep into the recesses of our souls and our lives just a little bit deeper.

We hear the echo and we hear it reverberate throughout God’s good creation. We hear the words echo again; the words of God’s peace through the voice of the son Jesus Christ. We participate in the mystical presence of the one who comes into a room that is locked. We are invited to see and to touch his hands, feet, and side. We see the fully human, we touch the fully divine. In a musical sense, as one of these stories comes as point, the other comes as counterpoint.

Variations on a theme.

The theme of Christ’s life and our salvation.

This is life worth sharing. God gives us the tune and the lyric, and we are called to share it again and again as the great reprise of life everlasting ebbs and flows over us.

[i] Ephesians 4:9
[ii] New Interpreter’s Study Bible, Electronic Edition, Comment on John 20:19
[iii] Taupin, Bernie, “Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.” Dick James Music