Resurrection or Bust
Scripture Reading: Luke 24:36-48
At the top of the bulletin next to the date you can see that it says “Third Sunday of Easter.” One of the things I appreciate about being part of the mainline Protestant church is that we follow the liturgical seasons. Easter is not one and done. Easter Sunday may have been two weeks ago, but the season of Easter lasts for seven Sundays, up until Pentecost. And during the Easter season, it’s typical of the lectionary to feature readings from several of the Gospels rather than just one. We get a chance to see how each Gospel writer focuses on different aspects of the resurrection.
On Easter Sunday we read Mark’s account. The women who went to the tomb to anoint Jesus’s dead body were alarmed, not only by the absence of the body, but by the presence of an angel who told them that Jesus had been raised from the dead. They then fled from the tomb in terror and amazement.
The Gospel reading for last week, which we did not read, was from John. It was the so-called “doubting Thomas” passage. The resurrected Jesus appears to all of the disciples except Thomas. When Thomas hears their account, he refuses to believe it unless he can place his own hands in the wounds in Jesus’s side. Jesus returns once more and offers Thomas exactly what he had asked for, but it’s no longer necessary. Thomas has become a believer.
In the Gospel of Matthew, which we read last year, the risen Jesus appears to the disciples and commissions them to make disciples of all nations and to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Now today we dip our toes into the Gospel of Luke. Don’t get comfortable. We won’t be here long. In fact, we’re here for today only. Luke’s account overlaps with each of the other three Gospels. First, similar to how Mark describes the women at the tomb being frightened, in Luke the disciples’ first reaction is also fear.
Similar to how in the Gospel of John Thomas wanted to touch the wounds of crucifixion to allay his doubt, here in Luke, sensing the disciples’ doubt, Jesus shows them the wounds in his hands and feet.
Lastly, in Matthew Jesus commissions the disciples to make disciples of all nations. Here in Luke Jesus declares that “repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.”
That’s quite a few similarities. Now for one significant difference. Of the four Gospel accounts of the resurrection, Luke alone emphasizes that everything that has taken place—the fact that Jesus was arrested, tried, crucified, and raised from the dead—happened in fulfillment of the scriptures. None of this was by accident. Raising Jesus from the dead was not God turning lemons into lemonade. The resurrection was not Plan B. A messiah who would suffer and die and rise again was God’s plan all along.
It’s impossible to overstate just how scandalous this notion of a suffering messiah was in the first century of Jesus’s day. Many Jews living in occupied Israel at the time expected a messiah much like David, a skilled military leader who could lead Israel to victory over their Roman oppressors. A messiah who would crush Israel’s enemies? That would have come as a surprise to no one. But a messiah who would give his life for them? Outrageous!
The cross is the cosmic battlefield upon which the powers of sin and death—appearing triumphant—are in fact dealt a crushing blow.
Even more outrageous was the claim that the messiah was crucified. A savior who would suffer the horror and humiliation of the cross was simply unimaginable. The cross was a symbol of terror. Crucifixion was the most brutal and dehumanizing method of state violence—not just execution but torture. The crucified was hung for public display, his arms stretched out and nailed to a crossbeam, rendering him utterly powerless as he suffered a slow, agonizing death. To claim that this was the power of God unto salvation would have seemed like a sick joke at best and blasphemy at worst.
The Gospels record the incredulousness of those who witnessed the crucifixion. They sneered at Jesus, saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matt. 27:40). Come down from the cross because everybody knows that messiahs aren’t crucified.
To be perfectly frank, I don’t think that in our day we fare any better when it comes to our expectations about how God wields power. We too want to see our enemies crushed. We too are envious of those who have the money, the fame, and the social connections that should rightfully be ours. We want God to take action by using right-handed power to fix everything that’s wrong with our lives and with the world.
The Reformation theologian Martin Luther distinguished right-handed power from left-handed power. Right-handed power is worldly power: the power of the clenched fist, the cruise missile, the mansion on a hill, the in-crowd. By contrast, left-handed power is paradoxical power. It’s power that looks an awful lot like weakness and foolishness. It’s the power not of the clenched fist but the open hand, not the cruise missile but the mission of mercy, not the mansion on a hill but a manger in a barn, and not the in-crowd but the outcast.
And the place where right-handed and left-handed power meet is on the cross. On the cross we see the most terrifying expression of right-handed power on the part of imperial Rome. Just unmitigated, merciless brutality.
But we see also the ultimate expression of the left-handed, paradoxical power of God. On the cross God does not meet violence with violence. Jesus does not die cursing his enemies but blessing them, with his last breath asking God to forgive them because they don’t know what they’re doing.
At the clash of these two powers, right and left, Jesus hanging from the cross might appear to be the victim. Of course, in one sense Jesus was a victim because he was utterly blameless and undeserving of such a death. But at the same time that he is a victim, Jesus is also victorious. For on the cross Jesus won for us victory over sin and death. His death on the cross accomplishes the mission for which he was sent—the reconciliation of sinners to a God who simply would not leave us to fend for ourselves.
The cross is the cosmic battlefield upon which the powers of sin and death—appearing triumphant—are in fact dealt a crushing blow. While the cross was designed to make the crucified appear utterly powerless, ironically it is the showcase for God’s subversive left-handed power.
Why do I say “subversive”? Because nobody expected a crucified messiah. Nobody—not Peter, James, John or any of the other disciples; not the chief priests and other Jewish leaders; and certainly not Pilate or any other Roman official. Nobody.
This is why when the risen Jesus does appear to the disciples they are, as Luke notes, startled and terrified. They doubt what their eyes see and what their ears hear. Jesus shows them the wounds in his hands and feet, but still they can’t fully process the wonder of the resurrection. It’s too much to take in, understandably!
If I ever go back to seminary for a third time—and I’m not ruling it out—I might write a thesis on the role of humor in the Gospels, because I think it’s an unappreciated aspect of the Gospels. Take for example this scene in Luke. There’s something humorous about Jesus trying to convince his terrified disciples that he is not a ghost but has in fact been raised from the dead. He shows them his hands and feet. He invites them to touch him. But still they don’t come around. Luke writes, “While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.”
Only One who was raised from the dead in the body could free our bodies from bondage to sin and death.
Isn’t that an amazing sentence? “In their joy they were disbelieving.” The resurrection was too good to be true, they must have been thinking.
And so Jesus has to take it a step further to prove to them that he is real. “Do you have anything here to eat?” he asks. Some leftover pizza in the fridge, perhaps? Some crackers even? Some matzo?
Look, Jesus is not hungry. He just wants to show his disciples that he is real, that he has weight and mass, and that he’s not a ghost. And so he eats a piece of broiled fish in their presence. This is the length that Jesus had to go to in order to prove, even to his own disciples, that he truly was raised from the dead. Because such a thing simply didn’t happen!
We ought to celebrate the fact that the disciples are so hesitant to believe that Jesus was raised because 1) who wouldn’t be? and 2) it suggests that the resurrection is real. If Luke, or any of the other Gospel writers, had portrayed the disciples as readily accepting the resurrection, then that would have been suspicious. Ironically, it’s their doubt—to the point of Jesus needing to eat a piece of fish in their presence—that lends credence to the physical nature of the resurrection.
As I emphasized in the sermon from Easter Sunday, the resurrection isn’t a metaphor. It doesn’t represent Jesus living on in the disciples’ memories or in their shared life together. It’s real. Like fishbone-in-the-throat real. Make no mistake, if Jesus isn’t actually raised from the dead, then we may as well close up shop. There would be no point to all of this. The church stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It’s resurrection or bust.
Only One who was raised from the dead in the body could free our bodies from bondage to sin and death. The forgiveness of sins that Christ accomplished on the cross has set you free—has set us all free. As Luke says, you are a witness to this because through the Holy Spirit the risen Christ now lives in you—not as a metaphor, not in your memory—but in your very body.