Göttinger Predigten
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Easter 3, 04/19/2015
Too good to be true
Sermon on Luke 24:36-49, by Walter W. Harms
Once in a while I get an email from some country in Africa. The promise of this email is that some very large amounts of money have been left to me or are available to me if I will only follow up.
Now I am as greedy for money as all the rest of you. I know, however, that this whole scheme is an enticement to get me to send them money. I know that the whole deal is too good to be true. Have you received those kinds of email?
Well, I wonder if you have ever said, not about this kind of email, but for real, that it seems too good to be true. Perhaps you got that gift on your birthday or at Christmas that was even better than you expected, and you said: “It’s too good to be true,” as you hugged that item to yourself.
Perhaps it was when she said she would marry you. Not, of course, that you had any doubts what her answer would be, but at the moment, it really seemed, didn’t it, that it was too good to be true. Well, you learned your lesson, I hope!
There are many times when we felt that it was, or almost was too good to be true. That was the case of the disciples; the persons Jesus called to follow him, on that Sunday evening. Jesus was dead as a doornail on the previous Friday and buried. For these disciples, it was like the sinking of the Titanic. All their hopes, their dreams, their expectations about the future had in that moment of crucifixion and death drowned. They totally evaporated. They were gone and there was no hope of any of them returning. After all who comes alive once they’re buried?
Then suddenly Jesus was there, in that room. It was a room with a locked door and no windows. Pop! There he was. They were surprised, frightened out of their wits. They thought it was a spirit, a ghost. You all believe in ghosts and spirits, don’t you? Well, these people sure did.
Jesus had to explain to them that a ghost didn’t have hands and feet as he had. He encouraged them to touch him, to see that he was real, real flesh and bones. They just couldn’t believe it because it was just too good to be true. They just kept shaking their heads in doubts, but with smiles on their faces. So Jesus, as patient as ever with them and people like us asked for something to eat. A ghost doesn’t eat; Jesus did. He is real.
The resurrection is real.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Hallelujah!
I just might suppose that you all are a bit weary of saying that over and over again. After all, it’s the third Sunday we’ve been saying it. Perhaps for a lot of us, some of the “it’s too good to be true” stuff is getting old. And if you are like me, having said or shouted that ever year for just lots and lots of years, it might have lost some of it edge of excitement, wonder, joy and hope for us. Jesus also had said: “Whoever believes in me, has eternal life.” Wow! That is too good to be true, isn’t it? Well, almost, isn’t it?
There’s a famous song about becoming accustomed to her face. We can grow even a little weary about this resurrection stuff when we meet the difficulties and hardships in this life. After all, this Jesus seems to come and go as he pleases without any reference to any thing in our lives. He has never appeared to us, has he, on the Emmaus roads we travel?
You see we often find ourselves more than on a third-day time period. We often become as discouraged as those two disciples on that 6-7 mile to their homes. Doesn’t Jesus know about what’s going on with us? Doesn’t he see our discouragement? Doesn’t he see how hard life is for us so much of the time? Doesn’t he see that we really don’t know where to go from where we are right now?
I always tell people who are angry at God, he can take it. I want you to know that you can complain all you want to Jesus; he can take it. God’s people have always done that; check the Psalms and see how the writer often complained to God.
More than seeing us and our situations, he knows, he cares. He does not leave us without hope. As with the two going to Emmaus, Jesus is with us all the way, every day, in every way. We often do not recognize his presence. We often do not understand how Scripture is being fulfilled. God’s precious and holy Word tells us “all things work out for good to them who love Christ Jesus.” Do we see it? Do we ever see it?
It is not only these two disciples or the other nine, but all of us cannot by our own reasoning or abilities believe anything about Jesus. He promised his disciples that a special power from on high would come to them. In not too many weeks, we will hear about that power who gave life and courage to these scared disciples.
That power is the Holy Spirit. We have received that Spirit when we were baptized and received the kernel of faith. That kernel has grown in us, filled out, given us peace and joy, hope and comfort.
You see it is the devil who wants us to give up on Jesus. This foe who really is made harmless by the cross of Jesus and his resurrection wants us to believe that we should be more interested in bread, as in Jesus’ first temptation, than what God has to say. So we are lured by the deceit that things, pleasures and our palatial homes are where life then is really found.
We have felt the power of money and wish we had more power of that kind. We have fallen into the trap that we have been shortchanged by God in this respect, or so we feel as we look at what others have who have so much more.
We all want to control Jesus and have him do what we want. We are discouraged by all this bloody business of the cross, by the gloom of Good Friday. We want every day to be filled with sunshine and what we want.
Jesus had to explain carefully from the Old Testament of God’s Word how all that happened to Jesus was stated there. He showed them how Jesus fulfilled the promises God made to his people back then and the promises he makes to us now.
The truth of the matter is that we don’t want to face that the necessity of the suffering and death and resurrection of Jesus was precisely for us. We needed that to happen or we would be on the Titanic of life, sailing along so gloriously until the cold iceberg of death in its glacial pace puts its icy touch to our frail existence and we perish forever.
We need the forgiveness Jesus gives us daily through the cross that put the finish to sin once and for all. The stain in our lives of sin and its stink is covered completely by the blood of the Lamb of God. We needed Jesus in the grave to realize that the end of sin is death. And we needed the resurrection to wipe the grief, the tears, and all hopelessness from our lives.
Who here doesn’t need that? Who in the world doesn’t need to hear about all of that? And guess what? You and I are witnesses to this—to this seemingly unbelievable event called the resurrection of Jesus.
A man was sitting next to my wife as I received a haircut. Into the conversation with him, he stated that he believed in God and felt he was good enough to go to heaven. My wife carefully disabused him by saying that the only way to heaven is by faith in Jesus Christ. We don’t know whatever happened to that man, but the seed was planted. God through the Spirit will cause that seed to grow, just as it has grown in us and, by the way is still growing. All of us, each of us is a witness to this wonderful news about life through Jesus, now and forever.
So are we a touch weary of Easter and this “hallelujah” stuff? Some years ago, I was preaching in my usual elegant way of preaching and talked how the women on that first Easter morning were taking spices to the grave of Jesus to cover the stinking rot of death. But he wasn’t there. He was alive!
My daughter-in-law was interpreting this to a deaf man. When he heard her tell him that Jesus was alive, his response was: “No way!” She assured him it was true. He looked at the rest of the congregation and asked: “Why are they excited about that?”
Well, what shall I tell them about us here today? It is like an email from Africa, too good to be true? Amen.