Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

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Sermons

May 2003 (click here to return to "May 2003 Sermons" page)

3rd Sunday of Easter (May 4, 2003)

        “Easy for You to Say …”        Dr. Julie Adkins

                Text: Luke 24:36b-48

SERMON

I’m sure there must have been days when Jesus wondered

            whether the disciples were ever going to get the story straight,

                        ever going to understand what he was really about.

In the text for today,

            we see him after the resurrection,

                        still trying to teach them,

                                    to make clear to them who he was and what it meant.

Were they ever going to get it?

By the same token,

            I wonder whether, sometimes,

                        the disciples wondered if Jesus really got it.

Here he is, in yet another post-resurrection appearance,

            and the first words out of his mouth are,

                        “Peace be with you.”

Sure, Jesus …            easy for you to say!

While you’ve been in the tomb or wherever it is you’ve been the last three days,

            we’ve been hiding out in fear for our lives.

We wouldn’t know peace if it came and swept us off our feet.

Don’t you get it, Jesus?

Being your follower is a capital offense these days.

We’re scared.

Is “Peace be with you” all that you’re going to say?

 Remember the circumstances, as well.

In John’s gospel, where he says the same words …

            the reading that we heard last week …

                        the disciples are hiding away in an upper room behind a locked door,

            when Jesus suddenly appears and says “Peace be with you” …

                        the same words we hear in Luke’s story.

Peace, Jesus?

You’ve just come floating through a locked door somehow,

            and you want us to be at peace?

We watched them take you down off the cross, and put you in that tomb.

            You were dead, brother.

But here you show up again when you were dead a few days ago,

            and you tell us to be at peace?

Easy for you to say, Jesus.

You be at peace.

We’re afraid for our lives.

And now, in Luke’s version,

            Jesus says the same words.

And the situation is just as weird:

It happens right after the Emmaus road trip.

Remember?  Two followers, Cleopas and another who is unnamed,

            meet up with Jesus as they are walking to Emmaus,

                        only they don’t recognize him as they are talking along they road.

They only figure out who he is

            when he breaks the bread, at the table with them,

                        but then immediately he vanishes from their sight.

So even though it’s after dark by this time,

            they run back to Jerusalem to tell the eleven “main” disciples.

And while they are telling the story,

            suddenly, somehow, Jesus is in the midst of them

                        when he wasn’t there before.

Imagine the different reactions.

The eleven disciples hadn’t yet seen Jesus.

Remember?  Earlier that same morning,

            Mary Magdalene and some other women had found them,

                        and told them this hogwash about the tomb being empty,

                        and some “men in dazzling clothes” telling them that Jesus had risen.

            And they didn’t believe it.

            Luke says they thought it was an “idle tale.”

You’ve heard me talk about that before!

So, the eleven didn’t really believe he was raised;

            they may even have been speculating about whether someone had stolen the body,

                        and wondering what if anything they could do about it.

But here is Jesus,

            suddenly standing among them,

                        and Luke says that they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Startled, and terrified.

And Jesus says, “Peace be with you.”

Sure, Jesus.  Easy for you to say.

And, what about those two who had run all the way back from Emmaus?

Last time they saw Jesus, he was in Emmaus!

And of course, he vanished,

            but somehow I bet they didn’t see him anywhere on the road,

                        running back alongside them.

Yet here he is, back in Jerusalem.

You think that didn’t scare them?

He was there; he disappears; now he’s here.

“Peace be with you,” says Jesus.

Easy for you to say.

So many of the struggles and the challenges of our faith journeys

            seem to come about, at least in part,

                        because things are easier to say than they are to do.

Particularly, it sometimes seems,

            it is easy for God or Jesus to tell us something,

                        but hard for us to do what they said.

We wonder, sometimes, if they really get it.

            Or if their expectations are impossibly high.

If Jesus appeared in here this morning and said, “Peace be with you,”

            we could make him some pretty good arguments about that, couldn’t we?

Easy for you to say, Jesus.

But my neighbor’s house was broken into last week,

            and now I’m frightened.

My doctor says I need to come back in for some more tests.

My daughter lost her job last year,

            and still hasn’t been able to find anything in this bad economy.

My best friend just found out she has cancer.

My grandson is stationed over in Iraq.

What is there to be at peace about?

It’s not any easier for us than it was for them

            to take Jesus at his word.

Because no matter how hard they tried,

            and no matter how hard we try,

                        it really can’t be done halfway.

And I’ve been finding this hard to verbalize,

            so bear with me, okay?

Let’s start by talking about the disciples,

            because it’s always easier to pick on someone else

                        than to start with our own lives, right?

In some respects, the disciples had it easier than we do.

They had Jesus right there, in the flesh …

            if he said something they didn’t understand –

                        which apparently happened quite often! –

            they could just ask him what it meant;

                        they didn’t have to do consult the rabbi

                        or look it up in some learned commentary

                        or take a vote among themselves.

He was there …

            and there was something about him

                        that people found either tremendously reassuring

                                    or tremendously threatening.

Jesus was intense.

In a way, his followers kind of got carried along in his wake.

As with any charismatic leader,

            sometimes the followers are more “into” the leader

                        than they are interested in the actual content of what he or she teaches.

Some of Jesus’ followers –

            maybe not the twelve disciples, but some of the gang –

                        were probably more like “Jesus groupies” than they were true disciples.

They might in time become real disciples,

            but they weren’t there yet.

They were caught up in the excitement,

the miracles, the crowds.

Even the Twelve weren’t always on board

            with what Jesus tried to teach them …

                        maybe they didn’t understand, maybe it was just too much.

Anyway, for a whole lot of people in Jesus’ time,

            they were intrigued, they were interested;

                        they weren’t yet committed.

And so when he was crucified, and he died,

            one of two things happened:

Either they quickly wrote him off, thinking,

            well, he was wrong all along,

                        glad I didn’t get too caught up in that …

Or, they were devastated,

            because their leader was gone,

                        and they were still dependent on him to tell them

                                    what to think and to do, and how to act.

Either way,

            when he suddenly shows up again,

                        neither group is particularly at peace.

Is he a ghost?  Is he real?

            Which of those two is a scarier option?!

No one had believed the whole story when Jesus told it.

Not even the women, although they were the first finally to “get it”

            when they appeared at the empty tomb.

No one really believed that he was going to die in the first place.

But after that really and truly did happen,

            no one believed he was going to come back, either.

If they had believed what he said to them,

            he would not have had to say “Peace be with you”

                        when he reappeared.

They would have been at peace.

They would already have understood that Jesus was telling them the truth,

            that all was going according to plan,

                        even if it’s not how they would have done it,    

and none of it would have surprised them.

Their lack of peace,

            was because they only believed Jesus halfway.

Now … does that start to sound like anyone else we know?

Two thousand years later, we still struggle with only believing Jesus halfway.

In this sense, we have it easier than the disciples:

They were hearing it all for the first time;

            we have been hearing it for a long time …

                        many of us, for our whole lives.

Yet it remains a challenge.

There is so much that Jesus says that makes sense to us,

            that seems right,

                        that seems like a good way to live our lives,

                                    and so in those respects,

                                    we follow him as faithfully as we are able,

                                                and encourage others to do the same!

But there are other things that Jesus says and does

            that we do not understand,

                        or that we understand and don’t like,

            and so, those things we lay aside, or ignore.

Love your neighbor as yourself –

            sounds good, let’s do it.

Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you –

            Jesus just doesn’t understand.

Like those disciples long ago,

            we fail to understand that it’s all of a piece …

            it’s a seamless garment, like the one Jesus had that the soldiers cast lots for.

 Here’s what I don’t mean:

I do not mean that God is going to shun us if we still have doubts,

            and have trouble accepting the whole story.

God is far more gracious than we give God credit for!

I do mean that, as long as we limp along with a kind of half-faith,

            we will never have the peace that Jesus continues to wish for us,

                        and for all who follow him.

Like I said last week,

            our doubts don’t hurt God; they hurt us.

“Peace be with you” is an easy enough thing to say …

            it is impossible for that wish to come true,

                        until and unless we allow God to be Lord of everything,

                                    not just some things.

Either our lives are in God’s hands,

            or they are not.

There is no halfway.

That is to say, from God’s side of the equation, there is no halfway.

From our side, it’s a different issue.

Even though God is the Lord of all,

            we will continue to struggle with trying to keep control

                        over certain aspects of our lives,

            and we will probably never, in this life,

                        reach the point where God is completely in control

                        and we are completely at peace.

But the closer we get,

            the more at peace we will be.

Not necessarily content;

            when we take God seriously we often become

                        quite discontented with the world as it is.

But peace will be with us

            when we come to the point that we know,

                        not just in our heads but deep in our hearts and our guts,

            when we know that God is Lord, and we are not,

                        and we don’t have to be! –

            and that whatever happens, no matter how bad we think it is,

                        there is nothing that is beyond God’s healing and redemption.

Christ is risen.

God is Lord.

Peace be with you.

Amen.