We didn’t expect it

Message March 23

Bulletin: Mar 23

Scripture: Isaiah 25:1-10, 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, Luke 24:13-49

We didn’t expect that it would snow this morning. No, we didn’t expect snow on Easter Sunday.

But then, Easter is the very essence of what we didn’t expect.

Take Mary Magdalene and the other Mary. In church services all over the world this morning, people read how the two women worried how they would roll the stone away from Jesus’s tomb so they could wash the body and prepare it properly with spices and fresh linen.

They didn’t expect the stone to be moved from the opening. They didn’t expect angels to be telling them Jesus was raised from the dead.

No, they didn’t expect to SEE Jesus in the flesh. But they did.

And they ran to tell the men. They probably didn’t expect the men to believe them. And they didn’t.

Because the men, they didn’t expect that Jesus would show himself first to the women. These men who ran away and denied Jesus, they had expected Jesus would be a triumphant King of Israel and chase the Romans from their land. They didn’t expect him to be crucified.

And they sure didn’t expect him to be raised from the dead.
And so they didn’t expect that Jesus would show himself first to those lowly women who stood on the hill, as close as they could get, while Jesus died.

But he did.

So now, join me on the Road to Emmaus, with Cleopas and his wife. Notice, in scripture, when a person who has as big a role as these two travellers, when one of them isn’t named, it isn’t because the gospel tradition didn’t know the name, it’s more likely that the person was a woman.
So the person with Cleopas is probably his wife.

Lets walk alongside Cleopas and Mrs. Cleopas. Like them, we had been following Jesus. Like them, we thought we knew all about him. We loved him and what he said – Love your neighbor; feed the hungry; free the captives. Like Mr. & Mrs. Cleopas, we saw him stir up trouble in the temple. We heard him argue with the high priests, the Roman collaborators that the empire had put in charge of the most holy place in Israel. Like the rest of his followers, we expected Jesus to make trouble with these powerful people who were not following God’s will. But we didn’t expect him to be arrested, tried and condemned.

Like Mr. & Mrs. Cleopas and the rest of Jesus’s followers, we were not among the hand-picked crowd that shouted, “crucify him,” to Pilate.

No, we didn’t expect Jesus to be killed on a cross, hanged on a tree – that was not just a painful death, but one that was for slaves and criminals, not kings, not the anointed one.

After such a week – Jesus riding in triumph into the city, and arguing with the authorities and then being arrested and condemned and killed – well, we’re doing like Mr. & Mrs. Cleopas. We’re walking back home. We don’t know what to expect anymore.

How do you feel? Defeated? Confused? Cynical? Like Mr. & Mrs. Cleopas, we’re discussing, we’re arguing, probably, about the events of the last week and what they mean.

Then this stranger joins us. He asks us what we’re talking about. We didn’t expect that anyone who had been in Jerusalem would NOT know what had happened. So we told him, at least as much as we understood. We told this stranger what we’d heard from others, from Mary Magdalene and from the disciples who saw the empty tomb. But still, we don’t know what it means. It’s not what we expected.

The stranger explains the scripture to us. We feel our hearts begin to burn with excitement. We didn’t expect to feel like this after the events of the last three days.

When we get to our village, we urge the stranger to stop and stay with us for the night. We crowd into the Cleopas house along with the stranger.

And upon breaking bread together – like we’re about to do here at altworship in a minute – we, like Mr. and Mrs. Cleopas, we recognize Jesus. He has been with us through the whole journey from Jerusalem, talking with us, explaining to us. But we don’t recognize our beloved teacher until he shares food with us. We didn’t expect that.

Talk about not expecting. As soon as we realize he’s with us, he disappears from our sight. But this time, we realize he’s not gone. He’s risen.

Well, if we were talking excitedly before, now we’re in a frenzy. And we turn right back around and go back to Jerusalem, only this time, we’re running, we’re so excited.

We run toward our fellow disciples, holed up in an upper room. “They’re not going to believe this,” we say between breaths as we run.

Now shift scenes. Imagine you’re in the upper room, crowded in there together, the door locked against the authorities, who might just decide to sweep through Jerusalem and arrest any followers of this crucified Jesus.

We’ve heard Mary Magdalene and the other women say they saw Jesus, but it’s so unexpected, we can’t wrap our minds around it. We’re afraid and confused and deeply grieving for the death of all our hopes.
If we’re expecting anything, it’s that we’ll be chased by the Romans all the way back to Gallilee.

And then Cleopas and the others knock on the door and tell us a fantastic tale about meeting Jesus on the road, but they didn’t recognize him. He taught them how his death and resurrection was foretold in scripture. But they didn’t know it was him until he ate with them.

Jesus alive – and explaining scripture and eating with his followers? We don’t expect this. We can’t believe it. It’s too fantastic.

Has the whole world gone crazy? First the Romans and the Judean collaborators arrest and kill the most godly man we’ve ever met. Then his followers say they’ve seen him alive! And that he is not a ghost or a vision, but a real human being who ate with them.

How do we know what to expect anymore?

Yes. Yes. I’m coming to it.

While Mr. And Mrs. Cleopas were still telling us about their experience, here he is in the flesh. “Peace,” he says. “Peace be with you.”

Now, we can be forgiven for being a little slow. The women told us, some of the disciples told us, Mr. & Mrs. Cleopas told us. But we didn’t expect to see Jesus alive, in the flesh, right here in front of us.

It is too much. It’s too good to be true.

Then Jesus is asking us for something to eat. Someone gives him a piece of boiled fish. And he eats it.

Is this really Jesus? The Jesus we saw drag his cross through the streets? The Jesus they took down from the cross, all broken and bloody and dead? Cold and dead. Is this really Jesus?

We’d been following him. We’d been listening to him. But we didn’t expect what he would say next. He goes through scripture and he says, “You can see now how it is written that the Messiah suffers, rises from the dead on the third day, and then a total life-change through the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in his name to all nations—starting from here, from Jerusalem!

Starting from here, from Jerusalem? Well, we expected a Messiah to deliver us from the Romans, not a Messiah we would take to the nations – including the Romans.

But that’s not all. Now he’s saying WE are witnesses. Well, yes. We are seeing and touching the living Jesus. Now we can understand. Sort of. It’s all so out-of-this-world. But how can we argue with what we see and hear?

What is he saying? WE are witnesses? Witnesses don’t just see, they tell others. And now we understand. The two Marys, Mr. And Mrs. Cleopas, and now the people in the upper room, we’ve seen Jesus and he told us to tell other people.. We’re witnesses.

How are we going to get others to believe us?

Quit asking questions and listen. Jesus is still speaking. He says, “I am sending what my Father promised to you, so stay here in the city until he arrives. Until you’re equipped with power from on high.”

The disciples of Jesus. They didn’t expect him to be killed. They didn’t expect him to live again. They didn’t expect to see him in the flesh. They didn’t expect him to command them to tell others.

But all that happened. And more. Those of us who know the story, know it continues to Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit swept through the disciples and they told everyone. And from there, to the ends of the earth.

When we hear the Easter story, do we still hold onto our doubts? Are we still surprised when Jesus says it’s true, he lives? Are we still surprised when Jesus says, “YOU are witnesses.”

We didn’t expect it, but we are witnesses.

We don’t expect Jesus to give us the power to tell others. But he has. We have the power. We will get the power. We are witnesses.

Say it with me. Jesus lives. He is risen, he lives!

Praise God
Amen.

A dream, a witness, a baptism

Bulletin: Jan. 13

Scripture: Acts 10

So we have two people here. Cornelius, an officer in the Italian Guard of the Roman Army. He’s what the Jews at the time called a God-fearer. He lived his life believing in the one true God of the Hebrew Bible. But he wasn’t a Jew. He wasn’t born of a Jewish family. He didn’t undergo the ritual of circumcision. He didn’t “convert.” He just followed the commandments and the spirit of the commandments to love God and love neighbor. He prayed, he gave to the poor.

And then there’s Peter. This is Peter after the resurrection and after Pentecost. You may recall, during Pentecost Peter and the other disciples who had seen the resurrected Jesus were gathered in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit descended on them – the descriptions talked about tongues of fire and a great whooshing wind, and they were inspired to speak about Jesus. Everyone who had gathered in Jerusalem during this time of festival heard the disciples speak in their own language.
This experience of the Holy Spirit was still relatively fresh in Peter’s mind as he stands up on the roof – well, this translation says balcony – waiting for lunch.

Both men saw angels, and each angel seems to know about the other man’s angel. They’re a sort of wireless communication. God never has been confined by space and time. These days we just sort of accept some kinds of wireless communication and are suspicious of others, like angels. But in those days, Cornelius and Peter would have been more astounded by e-mail than they were angels. Angels were surprising enough.

Each man trusted the messenger and followed. They were accustomed to praying to God. When God wanted to get in touch with them, they had their cell phones turned on. They were receptive, and they didn’t argue. Cornelius didn’t say, “Wait a minute. You want me to send to Joppa? What do I want to do with one of those crazy Galileans? They hear voices. They say they’ve seen the Son of God.”
Well, Peter did resist his vision at first. “Oh no, lord, I’ve never even tasted food that wasn’t kosher.” That is, Peter considered himself a good Jew who wouldn’t eat what the commandments in the Old Testament said was unclean or not kosher.
Now, Peter was with Jesus during his ministry, so Peter saw Jesus eat with tax collectors and prostitutes and other low-lifes. But even in the gospels, I don’t think you’ll find a story where Jesus intentionally ate with gentiles. Jesus spoke to gentiles. He healed gentiles. He fed the multitudes, even on the gentile side of the Sea of Galillee. But did he ever go to a gentile’s house and eat? I don’t think we have a record of that.

Eating together was a form of social interaction that many people in the Roman empire didn’t do with people who weren’t like them. They might have servants who were a different race or religion. But they would never sit down and eat together as equals with anyone other than people like themselves.

Jews were even more careful about what they ate and with whom, because ever since their exile into Babylon, they hadn’t had a nation to call their own. They were spread out all over the Mediterranean world. One way they kept their religion and culture intact was to keep to themselves.

So when Cornelius and Peter were told by their separate messengers to get together, it wasn’t a simple thing.

Cornelius called his neighbors and relatives together to meet Peter. And he says to Peter, we’re all here in God’s presence, ready to listen to whatever the Master put in your heart to tell us.”

What trust Cornelius had in God. He believed that angel. He sent his most trusted employees to find Peter. He didn’t keep it to himself either. He called his friends and neighbors and relatives. And he says only, We’re ready to listen to whatever the master put in your heart to tell us.

And notice the effect on Peter. He exploded with the good news of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.
Peter realizes the meaning of the visions he saw. “Nothing could be plainer,” he says. “God plays no favorites! It makes no difference who you are or where you’re from—if you want God and are ready to do as he says, the door is open. The Message he sent to the children of Israel—that through Jesus Christ everything is being put together again—well, he’s doing it everywhere, among everyone.

Among everyone. Among Jerusalem Jews, among Jesus’s closest disciples, and also among a Roman centurion, an officer in the Roman army. And his friends and relatives and neighbors.

Can’t you just see God smiling? “Yes, Peter. You got it.” Peter and Cornelius and all the people listening. They understood. How do we know?
Because the Holy Spirit descended on these gentiles, these friends of a Roman army officer. The Spirit descends right before the eyes of the Jewish Christians who came with Peter. And they’re convinced too.

It’s true. It’s for everyone.

So what did Peter do? What was his first reaction when he realized that God sent the Holy Spirit to these outsiders? He turns to the folks he brought and asks, “why don’t we baptise them?”

Notice, the Holy Spirit came first. Then Peter followed with a suggestion of water.
Baptism by water isn’t some magical ceremony that works apart from our will or God’s will. It is a manifestation of what has occurred through the Holy Spirit.

Whether you were baptised as a baby, or as an adult, or maybe you haven’t yet had water applied to your head and body with the words, Father, Son, Holy Spirit – God has sent you here tonight to hear about the Holy Spirit.

So let me reread these words that Peter said once more:
He commissioned us to announce this in public, to bear solemn witness that Jesus is in fact the One whom God destined as Judge of the living and dead. But we’re not alone in this. Our witness that he is the means to forgiveness of sins is backed up by the witness of all the prophets.” Praise God! Praise God! Amen.