Now that we’re on the other side of Easter, our sacred calendar takes us through the stories in the Gospels about Jesus’ various appearances to his disciples after his death in his resurrected form. A natural question to ask is “What on earth is going on here?” As well as, “What on earth does it mean?” Those are fair questions for us now, and they would have been fair questions for those in the 1st Century who either had these experiences or were sharing or hearing stories about them. “What do you mean they saw Jesus again?” and “What does it mean that Jesus rose from the dead?”

How to approach a mystery?

Consider this: Before Jesus’ death, the disciples were too afraid to stand with Jesus in his hour of need. Before Jesus’s death, they disavowed Jesus, too afraid of pain and death to risk being associated with the scapegoat. Just imagine how they would have felt about all right after his death – not only terrible grief from the violent loss of their beloved teacher, as well as continuing fear that they may be next, but also the guilt and shame of knowing that they hadn’t stood up for him or with him, they had been fearful bystanders – like most people are inclined to be, honestly – who did not intervene to try to prevent a horrible crime, the lynching of an innocent man, a holy man, their friend.

            But then after Jesus’ death, all of this changes.

After Jesus’ death, the disciples can’t stop running around talking to everyone they meet about Jesus, even when that gets them in trouble (and it does get them in trouble). It’s not like they were sad but kind-of-relieved that this wild teacher they fell in love with is no longer around to drag them into uncomfortable confrontations with the authorities they fear. Instead, somehow, after Jesus’ death, they grow to be courageous in the face of the threat of violence. And instead of flagellating themselves with survivors guilt, what they proclaim is forgiveness from sin and reconciliation with God through Christ. They are not guilt-ridden about their prior moral failures. In fact, they openly tell the unflattering stories about how they had been cowards at the moment of truth and disavowed their dear teacher and friend in his hour of need. And they aren’t ashamed of Jesus’ failure as the supposed Messiah to actually bring about the liberation of his people from Rome, instead getting himself killed off in the most miserable and insulting way.

Rather, after Jesus’ death, somehow his disciples became bold and clear in conscience, free from guilt, free from fear of anyone and of death itself. They became dedicated to living lives of mercy and love, of generosity and faith, of healing and hope, openly proclaiming Jesus’ earth-shaking teachings about how to live in alignment with our Holy Creator.  

What happened? What caused this change from fear and guilt to freedom and forgiveness?

The answer, according to the disciples themselves, is the Resurrection. The answer is these strange and wondrous stories of encounter with the Resurrected Christ, stories charged with mystery and meaning.

In our story for today, from the Gospel of Luke, two disciples were traveling on the road to a town called Emmaus when they encountered a stranger with whom they fall into conversation as they walk along. It’s only after they invited the stranger to stay with them and share a meal that they realized it was Jesus. The scales fell from their eyes the moment that Jesus took the bread and broke it and gave it to them.

Why this moment? What does it mean?

The week before, the week leading up to his death, Jesus had done the same while sharing the Passover meal with his disciples. He blessed the bread and broke it and gave it to them saying, “take and eat, this is my body broken for you.” What does that mean?

A clue may be that, back on the road to Emmaus, the Resurrected Jesus had responded to the two disciples recounting the story of his crucifixion by explaining how the Hebrew Prophets had foretold that the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ, was “bound to undergo this suffering before entering into his glory.” By this suffering, he means the shame of the cross.

Whatever this all means, it must have something to do with the astonishing transformation that the disciples underwent after Jesus’ death, from being fearful and morally weak, to being courageous and morally clear on behalf of Jesus’ way of mercy and love.

Some of you may know of Nadia Bolz-Weber, who has become a fairly well-known Christian writer and speaker as a Lutheran pastor with legitimately punk roots and punk sensibilities, whose experience of Grace is shaped by the journey of recovery from addiction. Anyhow, she’s written: “The Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life. In ways both dramatic and small.”

In the Call to Worship we shared today and on Easter, we said:

Darkness sought to overcome the light

But Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Fear sought to cloud God’s peace

Hate sought to destroy love

Death sought to triumph over life

But Christ is risen! Alleluia!

Notice how this is about a transformational power, a holy power that transforms lives.

And it implies an answer to why Jesus “had to” suffer.

Fr. Richard Rohr, a wonderful Franciscan teacher, meaning he is a priest in the lineage of St. Francis, has written,

“the most famous act in Christian history both reveals the problem we are up against and give us a way through it…

It is not God who is violent. We are.

It is not that God demands suffering of humans. We do.

God does not need or want suffering – neither in Jesus nor in us.”

Rather God, “transforms all human suffering by identifying completely with the human predicament and standing in full solidarity with it from beginning to end. This is real meaning of the crucifixion.” (The Universal Christ pgs. 146-147)

Rohr is clear that the role of suffering in the saving power of Jesus is transformational rather than transactional. Through the Cross and the Open Tomb Jesus exposes the sin of human violence – which the Hebrew Scriptures are clear is against God’s purpose for human life – Jesus draws out that evil and shows it to be ultimately powerless against God’s love and life-giving power. This is a tremendous gift to humanity, allowing us the opportunity to truly know the transformational power of Divine Mercy, which can free us from guilt and from fear.

Jesus’ suffering is not part of a transaction to appease some kind of wrathful god who demands the blood of an innocent victim to satisfy a debt due to the failures of humankind. (Maybe you’ve heard that one before).

Rather, Jesus’ sacrifice is a gift given to humanity – a stunning inversion of the usual economy of sacrifice – bread broken and wine poured out from God to humankind, to nourish humanity’s new life in God’s Divine Mercy and Love (The Universal Christ, pg. 141). This is not about retribution. Rather it is about reconciliation and restoration for the sake of our transformation, transformation away from being bound to sin and violence and fear of death, into freedom, the new life we find through Christ.

For this, my friends, I give thanks to God.

Thanks be to God.

Delivered Sunday, April 7, 2024 by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Christ at Valley Forge. Video of this sermon is available on UCCVF’s YouTube Channel.

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