Sunday, June 1, 2014

Graduation, Ascension, and the Wounds of Christ - A Sermon in Triptych: Luke 24.36-52, New Life Baptist Church, Corpus Christi, TX June 1, 2014



And when He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. While they still could not believe it because of their joy and amazement, He said to them, "Have you anything to eat?" - v.40-41

Collect
Our God and Father, Christ Our risen Lord
Displayed His strength through hunger and through scars.
Now grant us grace to show the world Your love
Through our own weakness and humility,
That at the heart of our faith all might find
The Christ who understands their every need.
And this we ask You in the holy name
Of Jesus Christ, Our Savior and Our Lord,
And to the glory of Our Mighty God,
The Father, Son, and Spirit three in one,
Who lives and reigns forever without end,
Amen.


Introduction

            Last Thursday, May 29, was Ascension Day - calculating forty days from Our Lord's resurrection on Easter Sunday we arrive at that date for His return to the right hand of the Father on high. (I know Luke makes it seem here as if it happened all on one day, but he's compressing things in order to get the main points of the story across. In the first chapter of Acts he expands his account and mentions the actual time-frame [Acts 1.3]). For that reason, many churches set today aside as Ascension Sunday, a time to remember and reflect on what it means that Jesus returned to Heaven.
            But this is also Graduation Sunday, a day when many churches take time to do what we are doing today - to praise God for those who have achieved significant milestones in their education. And that is a good thing to do, because just as Jesus entered a new phase of his life and a new ministry as our advocate before the Father (1 Jo 2.1), you now enter a new phase of life which offers new opportunities to bring the love of Christ to the world.
            My purpose this morning is to see if we can't bring those two events together - Jesus' "graduation" to glory and your own graduation from school. And I don't think I'm abusing the text to make that attempt: You see, the life of the Christian basically consists of discovering what is true of Jesus and then asking how that applies to our own experiences. Your classmates and colleagues may be asking themselves, "Now how can I get a good job?" or, "Now how can I get a scholarship for the next phase of my education?" Those are good questions and you are probably asking them too, but ultimately the Christian graduate asks: "Now how can I better represent Christ to the world?"

Central Panel: Christ in the Text
            So we need to begin by looking at Jesus in this passage. As I do that, I see two things I want to point out: I see that everything is different but at the same time everything is the same.
            At either end of this passage, we see that Jesus has changed radically. At the beginning of this story he appears suddenly on the inside of a room with a locked door. He doesn't pick the lock; he doesn't batter it down; he doesn't even lift the latch and enter - he's just sort of there all of a sudden. And at the end of this story, he ascends into Heaven as the disciples stand watching.
            But in the center of this passage, we see that Jesus remains radically the same. His changed body is merely the case that carries and protects the precious jewel of radical continuity. Look at two actions Jesus' resurrected body performs.
            To begin with, He showed them his hands and his feet. That means he showed them his wounds from the crucifixion. This is important for two reasons. First of all, it is important in terms of proving the truth of the resurrection. You cannot argue that the disciples mistook someone else for Jesus, that this was some kind of hoax. More powerful than a fingerprint or a DNA sample, the wounds were an irrefutable way of saying, "It's me. I'm the same guy you've always known and whom you saw die on the cross."
            But second, and more important for our purposes, it showed his weakness and woundedness. His sudden appearance didn't convince them; his scarred flesh did.
            Jesus, who could smooth the scars of the lepers until their flesh was soft as the skin of a newborn baby, kept his own scars! Jesus, who could command a mangled limb to blossom into length and strength, left his own maimed skin unchanged. Jesus, who could call life back into a dead body chose not to remove the marks of his own death from his living flesh. At the moment of his greatest power he proves his identity by showing his need.
            Next, He said to them, "Have you anything here to eat?" Again, this is important in terms of proving the resurrection. From the first Easter Sunday until today, people have tried to dismiss the resurrection as a mirage, a mistake of mass hysteria in which people hallucinated what they wanted so badly to see. But it takes a lot of faith to believe that - too much faith for me. You have to believe that multiple people saw the same thing at different times and places. And anyway, Jesus eats a piece of fish, something a hallucination cannot do.
            But again, the more important thing for our purposes is that Jesus asked for their help! Apparently resurrection bodies still get hungry, still need nourishment. And Jesus, who fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fish, asks for food! Jesus, who after his resurrection blessed his grieving disciples by cooking their breakfast with his own hands (Jo 21.9),  asks for food! Jesus, who the night before he died fed the disciples and promised them the food of his own flesh and blood, asks for food!
            Now here's the point: The ultimate proof of Jesus' glory is not the ways in which he is different, but the ways in which he is the same; not his power, but his poverty; not his divinity, but his humanity. The miracle is not so much that he ascends into the Heavens as that he takes his scars with him. The risen Lord, the King of kings, looks toward us from the throne of glory and his wounded body cries out, "I live with bread like you, feel want, taste grief, need friends."
            And here's the real payoff: It is that Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father in Heaven and ever lives to make intercession for you! (Heb 7.25) Hebrews 2.18 says of him that since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted.

Right Panel: Our World in the Text
            So what does any of this have to do with graduation?
            Well, in an important sense, everything is different for you now. True, you do not have a new body - yet - but you are wearing very distinctive clothing, clothing you really can't wear to work or the mall or the beach, clothing which says to everyone that you have passed a significant milestone.
            This clothing says that you now have access to places from which you were previously locked out! You high school graduates - you can now enter the doors of the university to continue your education. You college and tech school graduates - you can now enter the doors of graduate schools, jobs, and other places which would otherwise be closed to you.
            This clothing also says that you are ready to ascend: not to Heaven, of course, but in the ranks of society. You are ready to ascend financially. An American high school graduate stands to earn fifty to one hundred percent more over a lifetime than someone who drops out. College graduates on average earn nearly one hundred percent more than those without a degree, the highest gap in our nation's history.
            And for someone who is not a Christian, I suppose that's enough: You can now enter elite places and ascend the economic scale. But, of course, that's not enough for a follower of Christ. We must always ask the same question of anything that happens in our lives, including our graduation: How do I follow Christ in this experience? The answer is, keep your humanity, compassion, and vulnerability at the core of your achievement.
            Look at the place that Jesus chose to go. He could have walked through any locked door. He could have barged through the locked door of the chamber of the Sanhedrin and taken his place as the religious leader of Israel. He could have strolled through the locked door of Pilate's palace and occupied the throne of political power. He could have busted past the padlocked doors of the tax collectors and become the wealthiest man in the world. Instead, he walked through the locked door of a pitiful band of faithless and frightened disciples who were the basis of the local church. With power that opened any door, he chose the door that opened into a place of weakness and need.
            So your calling is to let your education open doors into places of need rather than places of privilege, into places of want rather than places of wealth, into a powerless church instead of a powerful world.
            Look at the witness Jesus chose to show. Jesus could have ascended to Heaven in invulnerable power. He could have burst into the presence of the cherubim who surround the throne and ceaselessly cry out "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts," and flaunted his perfect palms and flawless feet and vaunted his invulnerability. Instead, he retained his wounds as his most precious eternal possession.
            Look at the hunger Jesus chose to know. He could have called forth a feast with a wave of one wounded hand, yet instead he signals a hunger so sharp that he's willing to gnaw a cold fish stick, humble enough to take pot luck and hungry enough not to turn up his nose at leftovers!
            So let your education continually remind you of the needs of the uneducated. Let your achievement make you the servant of everyone around you. Don't use your education as an escape hatch from lowlifes but as a port of entry to a life of lowly  service. Don't let your knowledge make you an insufferable, stuck-up Somebody, but a scarred and suffering servant. Don't think of your schooling as a way to be sure you always have plenty to eat, but as a way of seeing that there are always plenty of people you can feed!
"How can I use this experience to demonstrate the love of the weak and wounded Christ?"

Left Panel: The Individual in the Text
            But now let's broaden our reading of this passage. We have seen how it speaks specifically to our graduates, and we can all understand how that applies to our own achievements whatever they may be. But now I want to talk to those of you who do not profess Christ as your Savior. It may be that you have factual or intellectual problems with the Christian story. I have attempted to address some of those from this passage, but I don't think it is usually those kinds of things that keep people away from Jesus. I think that often those things are a tool we resort to in order to cover up our real worry: That there is no way God could ever love us, that our sin is too real and too raw and that even Jesus cannot forgive.
            Well, I want you to look for a moment at the eternally hungry, eternally wounded Christ. He sits at the right hand of the Father, and he has not forgotten what it is like.
            I teach Greek at the School of Christian Studies. In fact, your pastor just finished his first year of studying that language. It's a difficult language to learn. I once had a student who flew Harrier jump-jets in the Marine Corps. He told me that flight training for that incredibly complex airplane was easier than New Testament Greek.
            Well, there's a story that I always tell on the first day of class to every group of aspiring Greek scholars. I tell them that in my first semester of Greek as a college student, I made a D, the only D of my college career! Why do I tell them that? Well, first of all, I'd rather they hear it from me than find out from someone else. And then there's the encouragement factor: I struggled at first but eventually managed to learn the language well enough to teach it. But mostly I tell them that because I want to let them know - and to remind myself - that I know what it's like to feel overwhelmed, confused, and utterly helpless in studying New Testament Greek.

            And that's the real picture in this text: Jesus has not forgotten what it is like. Hebrews 4.15 says he has faced every temptation that you and I do. He remembers how, in the wilderness, his body screamed for food so loudly that he was almost willing to satisfy it instead of honoring his Father. He remembers how, in the Garden of Gethsemane, he cried out for relief from what love demanded. He remembers how, as he hung on the tree of Calvary, he felt abandoned by his own Father. He has taken his wounds and his hunger into Heaven. There is nothing you have ever experienced that he does not understand, and will not forgive.

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