“A LIVING TESTIMONY”
Second Sunday of Easter
April 3, 2016
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being
locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and
stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When He had
said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples
were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be
with you. As the Father has sent Me, even so I am sending you.”
John 20:19-21 (ESV)
Just one week ago we proclaimed the most glorious message of hope
that the Church has to offer: the earth-shattering news that Jesus
Christ has risen from the dead! As Christians we hold this message to
be our greatest hope and we proclaim it with the greatest confidence,
yet not a single one of us was there on that first Easter morning to
see these things for ourselves. Our hope and confidence in this
message are derived primarily from the testimony of five men named
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. Three of these men (Matthew,
Mark, and John) were undisputed eyewitnesses, having seen the risen
Christ with their own eyes, and a fourth (Paul) saw the risen Lord
when Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus road. But these men, as
well as all of other eyewitnesses of the Gospel events, are long since
dead and buried. In the light of this, some Christians might begin to
wonder just how confident we can be. Certainly some of those outside
the Church ridicule us for being gullible because we believe and
boldly proclaim as fact something that was witnessed by only a
relatively small group of people, none of whom are still alive today.
But the confidence that we have concerning the Gospel of Christ is
not in this small group of witnesses from the past. Our confidence
really rests in the risen Christ Himself. We believe in the hope of
His Gospel because He is alive! That’s why there still is a Christian
Church today, some two thousand years later, despite all of the
attempts to wipe it out. And that’s why a small group of disheartened
followers, so timid and frightened that they deserted their Lord when
He was arrested, just a few short weeks later were boldly proclaiming
His resurrection from the dead, continued to proclaim it under the
threat of death, and eventually went to their graves proclaiming it.
If the message of Christianity was based on the apostles, both the
message and the Church would be as dead as those apostles are. But
the Church and its message are based on the living Lord, so they are
as alive as He is.
This is something that the persecutors of the Church have never quite
understood. In their attempts to eradicate the Gospel, they supposed
that they were up against mere men who were spreading a false message.
They couldn’t have been more wrong. Before the dust had settled on
the events of that first Easter weekend the Jewish leaders bribed the
soldiers who had guarded Jesus’ tomb to discredit the resurrection
story with a lie. They told the lie as they had been instructed to
do--but they couldn’t produce the corpse. Paul himself, before his
conversion, tried to silence the Gospel by making arrests and even
condoning violence against the early Christians--but he couldn’t
produce the corpse. For the next three centuries emperor after
emperor tried in vain to rid the empire of Christianity by destroying
those who professed it--but they couldn’t produce the corpse. No
matter how hard any of these enemies of the Gospel tried, they could
neither eliminate the message not stop it from spreading. They could
not disprove the truth of the Lord’s resurrection because that corpse
of Jesus of Nazareth never turned up. Their efforts were unsuccessful
because they were battling not a handful of vulnerable men, as they
supposed, but a risen and glorified Christ--One who they could never
defeat.
The whole point is that witnesses may pass away but the message that
they proclaimed (if it is true) lives on after them. It lives on not
because they did a particularly good job of proclaiming it and not
because they were willing to make sacrifices in order to proclaim it
and not because they drew attention to their proclamation through
persecution. It lives on for the simple reason that it is true. The
Gospel lives on because Christ lives on and the Gospel lives on
because the living Lord Himself has promised that His Holy Spirit
accompanies His Word, which “will not return to [Him] empty but will
accomplish what [He] desire[s] and achieve the purpose for which [He]
sent it” (Isaiah 55:11 NIV).
That same incarnate and living Word of God--that same risen and
glorified Christ--still comes among us today. We may not be
eyewitnesses who have actually seen the risen Christ and we may not
have had any miraculous visions of the glorified Christ as Paul did.
But we have experienced His abiding presence nevertheless, through
Word and Sacrament, and because we have experienced Him through these
means, we have felt the joy of forgiveness and the hope of everlasting
life. Having given these blessings to us, the Lord tells us that we
are now His witnesses. We are witnesses of what Christ has done for
us--of what a difference it has made in our lives to no longer have
the burden of sin and of God’s wrath hanging over our heads and around
our necks. This wonderful experience of forgiveness becomes real to
others as we proclaim to them the glory of Christ’s resurrection by
forgiving them as we have been forgiven.
That’s what’s so wonderful about proclaiming Christ--indeed, that’s
what makes it possible for us to continue to proclaim Christ in the
face of the many difficulties and frustrations that confront us in
this hostile world. Those frightened disciples who assembled behind
locked doors are long gone but the risen Lord who reassured them with
His glorious presence is still with us today. The Word that they
preached is a living Word that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, not
only abides but bears fruit. Like the disciples, we are encouraged by
the Savior’s presence and promise. If His Gospel is as powerful as He
says it is and if we are faithfully proclaiming that Gospel, that
Gospel is going to grow. It’s not only going to grow; it’s going to
increase and spread to all corners of the world for which the Savior
suffered and died.
In these unpredictable times not a one of us can say with any degree
of certainty that we’re going to be here next Sunday. But we can say
with certainty that the risen Christ and His message of joy and
forgiveness will be here and that, through the power of His Holy
Spirit that message is going to be preached and heard and believed at
every time when and in every place where His people assemble for
worship around the means of grace until the end of time. What’s more,
the power of the Holy Spirit in these means will motivate and empower
God’s people to share the Gospel message with others. The end result
of this proclamation is you and me--indeed all of us who have trusted
in the Lord Jesus--being with Him forever in His kingdom of
glory--“the kingdom prepared for [us] from the foundation of the
world” (Matthew 25:34). When we are together there our joy will be
complete and it will said of us what our text says of the eleven in
that room: “Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.”
Amen.
May the God of peace, who brought again from the dead that great
Shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the everlasting
covenant equip you thoroughly for the doing of His will. May He work
in you everything which is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, our
Lord, to whom be honor and glory forever and ever. He who calls you
is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.