“Dead Man Down
Under”
Luke
24:36b-485
April 26, 2009
The disciples huddled together behind locked doors, afraid that the
authorities were coming after them. They were struggling to take in the strange
reports of “Jesus sightings” and wondered what it all meant. Then
suddenly, Jesus was there in their midst, “opening their minds,” and, in so
doing, setting them free from their fears. Today we need such transformation.
Please listen for how the
Spirit is addressing us through God’s word found on page 85 of your pew Bibles from
the Gospel of Luke chapter twenty-four verses thirty-six through forty-eight….
Jesus himself stood among
them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 37They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing
a ghost. 38He said
to them, “Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39Look at my hands and my feet;
see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as
you see that I have.” 40And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. 41While in their joy they were
disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, “Have you anything here to
eat?” 42They
gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43and he took it and ate in their presence. 44Then he said to them, “These are my
words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me
in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.” 45Then he opened their minds to
understand the scriptures, 46and he said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and
to rise from the dead on the third day, 47and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in
his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things.
This is God’s word to us…
For Michael O’Neill
of Middlesborough, England, death was just a vacation. On June 2nd 2008, Michael
decided to take a last-minute trip to Australia to visit a friend and made his plans
without telling a soul. His neighbors, who had seen neither hide nor hair of him for
days, grew worried and called the police, who broke down the door of his house only to
find that he had disappeared, leaving behind no evidence of what had happened to him.
Honest mistake, right?
But it gets weirder. A few weeks later, a death notice appeared in the local
paper for a Michael O’Neill, another resident of the same town, who was about the
same age as the spur-of-the-moment-traveler and who had brothers of the same name.
Friends and neighbors of the very-much-alive O’Neill figured
that their worst fears had been realized. That is, until one of them received a
postcard from him, confirming that, while he was indeed Down Under, it wasn’t in the
way they had thought. Michael arrived home on August 11th to find his front door
smashed in, police watching his home, and his neighbors, once again seeing him on the
street, believing in ghosts.
“Everywhere I went, people I know were grabbing hold of me and
saying, ‘I thought you were dead!’” O’Neill told the newspaper.
“My friends can’t believe it’s me, that I’m still alive.
I’m a nervous wreck because everywhere I go people keep grabbing at me.”
Jesus himself experienced a similar reception when he, too, returned
from the down under of the grave—except that his friends and neighbors had seen him
die and it was no vacation. As we continue our Easter journey, which began with the
Resurrection and continues through the Ascension Day and on to Pentecost Sunday, it is
important for us to ponder more deeply the meaning and message of Jesus’
resurrection.
The events of Good Friday left Jesus’ disciples shocked at the
brutal, painful and shameful way that Jesus had died on a Roman cross. The only
saving grace of the whole experience was that at least his body was allowed to be laid in
a tomb by his friends instead of left hanging for days to rot in public humiliation as was
standard Roman practice.
But it wasn’t as if Jesus had not told them where he was going.
Unlike Michael O’Neill, Jesus was very clear with his friends that he would be
taking a trip down the road toward the cross and the grave. In fact, Jesus had given
them his fateful itinerary three times but “they understood nothing about all these
things; in fact, what he said was hidden from them, and [the disciples] did not grasp what
was said to them” (Luke 18:34).
They were surprised, then, to find the tomb door open, the flat
stone of his resting place empty and no indication of Jesus’ whereabouts on Sunday
morning. Matthew even says that the police had been watching the place but to no
avail (Matt. 27:62-66). Instead of being missing and presumed dead, Jesus was dead
and presumed missing. No one needed an obituary to determine which Jesus son of
Joseph of Nazareth had died, only where his body had been taken.
It was the angelic messengers who provided a postcard description of
Jesus’ whereabouts. Reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated, they
said. “He is not here, but has risen,” they said, and then reminded the
women again of his travel plans (Luke 24:1-12). Two disciples traveling on the road
to Emmaus got the same reminder, only to find that it was the risen Jesus himself who was
delivering it (Luke 24:36).
As they gathered together in Jerusalem, with anxiety, grief and
wonder of the past several days on their minds, all the disciples and friends of Jesus
tried to sort through the evidence. But then, suddenly, there he was among them
saying, “Peace be with you” (Luke 24:36). Like the perplexed and astounded
neighbors in Middlesborough, England, the disciples thought they were seeing a
“ghost”. Death, after all, is a trip from which no one is supposed to
return, so it’s little wonder that the disciples were “frightened” and that
even “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering” (vv. 39,41).
Yet, unlike Michael from Middlesborough, Jesus had no problem with
people grabbing on to him to see if he was real. “Touch me and see,” he
said to his incredulous friends, “for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you
see that I have” (v. 39). Luke makes it clear that this was no projection of
imagination or collective fantasy. The risen Jesus was touchable and even hungry,
asking his friends for a little fish on the barby (vv.41.43).
These physical details about Jesus’ post-resurrection
appearances are offered by Luke as a form of proof. It’s instructive for us to
remember that the “good news” these first disciples preached so long ago was not
bound up in the teachings of Jesus as much as it focused on the pivotal events of his
death and resurrection. The risen Jesus, wiping the crumbs of fish off the table,
reminded them that it was not a philosophy they were dealing with, but a real and
resurrected person in whose name “repentance and forgiveness” would be
proclaimed “to all nations beginning from Jerusalem” (v. 47).
Later in the book of Acts, Luke tells us that the disciples did not
go around the Roman Empire setting up Jesus memorial societies or simply repeating his
parables. Instead, they insisted that Jesus was alive, that his death and
resurrection had ushered in the new age when God would set a fallen world to rights, and
that they had been witnesses to the fact.
Jesus’ disciples understood that, after his ascension, they
were to continue to embody his scarred hands and feet, feeding a world hungry for the hope
of salvation, wholeness and promise of new life made possible by his sacrificial death and
bodily resurrection. They had witnessed something utterly new, surprising and
overwhelmingly joyful. No matter how bizarre their story seemed to be and no matter
how much the prevailing powers tried to crush their movement, they continued to be
“witnesses” to the reality of the resurrection. And make no mistake,
witnessing was no easy task especially when you understand that the Greek word for
“witness” is the same as the root for “martyr” (v. 48).
There in Jerusalem, sometime on that amazing Sunday, Jesus mapped
out for his disciples just how the journey had been leading God’s people to that
precise point in history. He led them on a biblical travelogue through the
liberating stories of the exodus, on to the warnings and exhortations of the prophets, and
through the pain and hope of the psalms to his own journey to the cross (v. 46). His
death had been an essential part of the journey and was now to be seen as a holiday
instead of a day of mourning. Because of Jesus, death is no longer our final
destination.
Jesus was the original dead man Down Under, but the passage of time
since that Sunday can distance us from the feeling of surprise. Easter comes every
year, but it usually finds us arguing and debating theological points and social issues
among ourselves while the rest of the world yawns with indifference. Perhaps
that’s because we haven’t been preaching and engaging the sheer, audacious
surprise of the resurrection.
We become so enamored with our churches, our structures and our
positions that we neglect the incredible claims of the gospel. We act as though
Jesus has gone on some kind of vacation, and while we do things in his name, do we really
expect anything to change as a result?
The friends of Jesus came “looking for the living among the
dead” that first Easter Sunday. The promise of resurrection means that
we’re always looking for the dead to come to the land of the living! Who are
the people in your life who need new life? Who do you know that is on a spiritual
vacation from which they can’t seem to return? How will we welcome them home?
Amen.
SOURCE:
“Man
declared dead while on holiday.” The Daily Telegraph Website, August 18, 2008.
Telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2579105/Man-declared-dead-while-on-holiday.html.
The
Scots Confession—Chapter 10—“The Resurrection”
We undoubtedly believe, since it was impossible that the sorrows of
death should retain in bondage the Author of life, that our Lord Jesus crucified, dead,
and buried, who descended into hell, did rise again for our justification, and the
destruction of him who was the author of death, and brought life again to us who were
subject to death and its bondage. We know that his resurrection was confirmed by the
testimony of his enemies, and by the resurrection of the dead, whose sepulchres did open,
and they did rise and appear to many within the city of Jerusalem. It was also confirmed
by the testimony of his angels, and by the senses and judgment of his apostles and of
others, who had conversation, and did eat and drink with him after his resurrection.
