Semon-Sunday April 6 2008

Third Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
It says in our Gospel lesson ‘but their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.’ This is of course referring to two of the disciples who had yet to see Jesus risen from the grave and so they are incredibly disappointed and sad because they think "that’s it" "it’s over.’ They had hoped that He would be the One to redeem Israel but they had come to think otherwise because they had not seen Christ Jesus risen from the grave. But then Jesus comes right up next to them and they still cannot recognize Him.
And so we see that even in the midst of inevitable defeat sin, death and the devil are at work trying to hide God’s people from the truth of who Christ Jesus is and what He did for them and what He continues to do for you daily. And so indeed today, sin, death, and the devil continue their assaults on God’s people as they try to keep you from recognizing Jesus.
The devil had convinced these two disciples that Jesus was not coming back and that Jesus had not defeated sin, death, and the devil and so out of extreme disappointment and sadness these two disciples leave Jerusalem and they walk away from their Savior. And we can see that this is not just a matter of these two disciples simply thinking that Jesus was dead. This was not just a matter of not seeing Jesus. They didn’t even recognize Jesus when they saw Him. Jesus comes right up next to them and these two disciples still don’t recognize Him. In fact as I said it says that their eyes were kept from recognizing Him. In fact they even refer to Jesus as a stranger.
And these deceptive efforts of the devil, tempting to lead God’s people away from their Savior continue today. Indeed there is a whole world filled with all kinds of means that the devil will use to try to lure you away from Christ Jesus and to get you to fail to recognize Jesus when He does come to you, when He is literally right next to you. And so the devil will come at you with doubt and denial in the midst of all that the world throws at us, be it addiction or depression or materialism or greed or lust or simply in the every day struggles that we all experience.
But the trickery of the devil does not end there because the devil knows that even if he can lure you away from Christ Jesus there is still going to be a void. That void is going to need to be filled with someone or something. And so the devil will attack you with sin and temptation but still the void remains, still something must go where faith in Christ Jesus should reside or maybe even once did reside. And so the devil comes with a false gospel. The devil comes with a gospel that speaks of making you a better person or even making you wealthier if only your faith is strong enough. Or the devil comes with a false gospel that maybe doesn’t even mention Jesus or if it does it reduces Him to being one of many ways to salvation.
Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a better person and there is not necessarily anything wrong with a desire for more wealth. But Jesus did not come to give you tips on daily living or to show you how you can get a raise or a promotion. And He certainly did not come to be One of many ways to salvation.
To even suggest such a notion, that there might be more than one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us. After all it assumes that we even deserve the One way to salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. And to suggest that there might be more than that one way to salvation shows the devil at work in us again. We all want salvation and often we want it on our own terms. And sin, the devil and the world are constantly trying to convince us that we can have salvation on our own terms.
And so not only are we willing to buy into a false-Gospel and really a false Jesus, but we also fail to recognize the real Gospel and the real Christ Jesus when we are confronted by Him. At the heart of all this; being deceived by a false-Gospel, allowing struggles in our lives to create fear and doubt, materialism, addiction, greed, lust, all of this sin that each and every one of us struggles with on a daily basis, at the heart of all of them is the condition that we have all been stricken with; the condition of original sin; the condition that causes us to think that we can be righteous on our own, the condition that deludes us into thinking that salvation is an inalienable right and not that which was attained for us through the death and resurrection of Christ.
And so we see these two disciples who are walking away from Jerusalem, because the recent events surrounding the death of Jesus didn’t happen quite the way they were expecting. Jesus told them that He would be raised from the tomb but it didn’t happen the way these two disciples had envisioned and that was all it took for them, in spite of all that they had seen; that they had to wait a little longer than they had anticipated was enough to completely shatter their faith and leave them in a pit of denial and depression.
But then there is something truly unique that Jesus does, He goes after them. Now keep in mind, they were about seven miles away. That is a long walk but Jesus goes after them. Jesus goes after them because He refused to leave them in their doubt and denial. He went after them because, in spite of everything that He had taught them and everything that they had seen Him do, they still didn’t understand that everything that they witnessed; Jesus’ persecution, His suffering, and His death on the cross, it all happened for a reason. It was not an accident and He was bound and determined to see to it that they understood that. He went after them because He had claimed them as His own.
And He went after them and told them that His suffering and death was necessary and then He interpreted for them all the passages about Himself in scripture, going all the way back to Moses, showing them that it all pointed to Him.
He was doing for them, what He does for you right now; revealing Himself to you through His Word, revealing to you that the promise that is extended to all God’s people all throughout scripture is for you. He is revealing Himself to you as He does for you right now reminding you through His Word that the Word that Peter had in the first lesson, for that crowd of believers outside the upper room is for you also; that in baptism you have received the forgiveness of sin and the Holy Spirit, that you are among those whom the Lord calls to Him. And it took Jesus bearing the burden of your sin; suffering and dying for you.
And so hear the promise of Peter, this time from the second lesson for today, when he promises that you have been ransomed from the futile ways of your ancestors, which by the way are every bit your futile ways also, and this ransom was paid with the precious blood of Christ. And in the bread and the wine of His Supper He comes to you bringing you once again this same precious body and blood which redeems you and He brings to you forgiveness that you can see, taste, touch and feel. And in the same way Christ Jesus was fully and finally revealed to the two disciples from the Gospel lesson when? It was when they broke bread together, finally they realized, when they broke bread together that it was Christ Jesus breaking bread with them and then Jesus disappeared.
But that’s ok because that was all done so that they would believe upon Him. And so through Christ’s faithfulness they were finally drawn to faith, and Peter gives us a word in the second lesson that reminds us that through Christ Jesus we have come to trust in God; who raised Christ Jesus from the dead after He had done what He was destined to do, bearing the penalty for your sin in His suffering and death on the cross. Through the faithfulness of Christ and the faith that the Holy Spirit brings to you through God’s Word your faith and hope have been set on God and you have now been freed to go forth, like the two disciples from the Gospel lesson and proclaim to your neighbor that Christ has risen indeed.
Amen