"OVERLOOKING THE OBVIOUS"
Third Sunday of Easter
April 26, 2020
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
[Jesus] said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!"
Luke 24:25 (ESV)
Some people in this world are just plain dense. They have an uncanny ability to overlook the obvious. Have you ever noticed that? I am reminded of it every time that I see one of those ridiculous warning labels that are posted on various products. No doubt these warnings are deemed necessary because people have actually done the stupid things that we are being warned about or have supposedly been victimized by a danger that they wouldn't have been aware of without such a warning. There is, for example, the warning on the Alka-Seltzer package telling you not to swallow these tablets until after you have dissolved them in water. Most of us have heard about the famous lawsuit that resulted in the cup of coffee at McDonald's having "Hot! Hot! Hot!" printed all around it. And don't forget my personal favorite: I'm sure you've seen those cardboard shades that you buy to put inside your car windshield on those hot summer days when the sun is unbearable. Well, a number of years ago my wife bought one of these that had printed on it, in large, bright red letters: "Warning: Do not drive car with autoshade in place"!
The two disciples of Jesus who encountered the risen Christ as they made their way to Emmaus on Easter Sunday were dense also--not because they failed to recognize their Lord (It was His intention that He not be recognized just yet), but rather because of their failure to recognize that what the ancient prophets had written and what Jesus had done in recent days went hand-in-hand. Jesus' comment to them implied that a person would have to be foolish to be familiar with the Old Testament prophecies concerning the Messiah and familiar also with His life and ministry, yet not make any connection between the two. What He says to these disciples is something that you and I need to hear and take to heart as well, because we also tend to overlook the obvious in many ways. But thank God that our foolishness in this regard is overcome by His greatness.
Our foolishness is evident, first of all, in the fact that most people in our world still don't even understand (let alone believe) the essence of the Christian message. Contrary to what a lot of people think, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not about being the best you can or about trying your very best or about treating others fairly or about living up to your responsibilities. The Gospel is about what God has done in His Son Jesus Christ to compensate for our failure to do all of these things, along with all the other good things that we have failed to do and all the evil that we have failed to avoid. As good and noble as all of these lofty goals are, the sad reality is that no one lives up to them. That's why God sent His Son into the world: to do for us what we have not and will not and cannot do for ourselves. The Christian Church has been proclaiming this message for over two thousand years, and yet the average person, even in an "enlightened" society such as ours, still does not "get it."
What's even more foolish is that many of those who supposedly do "get it"--many of those who know the Christian message inside and out and in fact claim to be Christians themselves--still don't seem to really believe what they claim to understand. They're always trying to accommodate the Gospel in one way or another to their own intellect. They take the attitude that God couldn't possibly do things that don't fit into their way of thinking or acting. You have on the one hand the so-called Biblical scholars who flatly deny the basic truths of God's Word and base their theology instead on their own personal experience. These are the people who would conclude, for example, that Jesus couldn't possibly have risen from the dead because they have never seen such a thing happen, so therefore, such things just don't happen. Then there are those who give lip-service to the Gospel but fail to really apply it in their own lives. They confess openly that Christ is their sure Confidence, but when push comes to shove, there always seems to be something other than Christ that they're really counting on to get them through the proverbial "rainy day." We have seen this quite clearly as we listen every day to the many (and often conflicting) theories about how to deal with our current difficulties.
God's Good News for us is that His greatness is greater than our foolishness. His ability to save us is greater than our ability to thwart His efforts. One way in which this greatness of God is displayed is in His patience with us. Who else would put up with what God has put up with in His relationship with humans ever since He first created them? This relationship, from day one until the present, can be summarized very simply: God acts in love for His creatures; His creatures reject His love, ruin His gifts, and corrupt His blessings, consequently bringing all kinds of pain and suffering upon themselves; God then responds to it all by acting again in love to overcome His creatures' foolishness and deliver them from the mess that they've gotten themselves into. That's the pattern--and it never changes. The particulars may vary, but this pattern is repeated again and again and again. The remarkable thing in all of this is not the foolish things that we do, but rather how patient our God is with us in spite of what we do.
A perhaps even more amazing example of God's greatness is His ability to actually make us understand the mysteries of His grace--or at least to trust in them and to receive their benefits. Working through the Word of God, the Holy Spirit teaches us both the Law and the Gospel, thereby imparting to us everything that we need to know about our sin and God's grace in Christ--about our offense and God's forgiveness in Christ--about the condemnation that we deserve and the redemption that we receive as a free gift through the mercy of Christ. Granted, we will never fully comprehend these great mysteries of God in an intellectual or academic sense, but we can know them well enough to know that God's grace (and all the blessings that accompany it) are ours through the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
How do we avoid overlooking the obvious? It begins with an understanding that our Lord and Savior and everything that He has accomplished for us are realities in our lives. I realize that that's a lot easier said than done in a world as cynical as ours--a world that is so full of heartache and disappointment and broken dreams that it can make cynics out of the best of us, as we have seen all too well in recent weeks. But the empty tomb of Jesus changes everything. It radiates hope even in the midst of cynicism, proclaiming the greatness of God that overcomes all human foolishness and doubt. God's Holy Spirit, through the Gospel of Christ, enlightens us so that we can see that greatness and live in that hope every day of our lives as we await the Savior's final coming in glory.
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.