Three P's of Easter

Three P's of Easter

God’s grace, peace and mercy to you. My theme for today’s sermon is The Three P’s of Easter. My text includes all three readings.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.

People remember a sermon if you simplify it. Most often, I simplify sermons by hanging three points on one letter. Today, three Ps – Proclaim, Passages and Practice. Three points are easier to remember if they all begin with the same letter. For instance: An investor analyzes businesses through people, product and process. An entrepreneur states the key to success is passion, patience and perseverance. An anthropologist deems it imperative that males aspiring to be men must protect, procreate and provide. A professor teaches that we handle setbacks through personalization, pervasiveness and permanence. While I do not expect you to remember all those Ps, they illustrate that points are easier to remember if all the words begin with the same letter. That said, our worship today contains three P’s: Proclaim, Passages and Practice.

First, proclaim. The word proclaim means to declare formally, officially, publicly or solemnly in speech or writing. It also means to praise or glorify openly. The root word of proclaim is the Latin proclamare meaning cry or call out, from pro meaning forth or forward and clamare meaning to cry out or shout.

Modern languages create words to convey meaning. By now, we’re all familiar with the word social-distancing. Well, there is a Greek word that is used to describe the type of proclamation we find in our worship and readings today. That word is kerygma. Kerygma is a noun that came into use in the English language around 1879.

Kerygma comes from the Greek word of the same name. It is a proclamation or public notice cried by a herald. Kerygma or kerygmatic literally means to cry or proclaim as a herald and is used to proclaim, announce or preach. It is used in the Greek New Testament for preaching.

Matthew employed kerygma when he introduced John the Baptist. In chapter three, we read, “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

Luke illustrated how Jesus proclaimed his own ministry when he stood in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from the scroll of Isaiah these words: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And in Romans 10:14, Paul asks, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?”

Among biblical scholars, the term means the core of the early church's oral tradition about Jesus. The New Testament includes many of the same proclamations as the oral tradition that preceded it, for the promises of God made in the Old Testament were fulfilled with the coming of Jesus, the Messiah. He was anointed by God at his baptism as Messiah and then began his ministry in Galilee. Throughout his public ministry, he performed mighty works by the power of God. He was crucified according to the purpose of God, was raised from the dead and appeared to his disciples. Jesus was exalted by God and given the name "Lord". He gave the Holy Spirit to form the new community of God, and will come again for judgment and the restoration of all things. Therefore, all who hear the message should repent and be baptized.

Folks, if that sounds like a familiar refrain, it should. We recite it every Sunday when we speak the Nicene Creed. In that 4^th century kerygmatic statement, we Christians proclaim our faith in our Triune God in every age, culture and language.

So much for my first point, proclaim. Let’s move to my second point, passages. If you search passages on the web, you will be directed to a company that organizes trips for college students, a rehab center in Malibu, or book about adult crises. Here, I am talking about the passages the Church selected for the Third Sunday of Easter. Our passages today focus on Peter’s Pentecostal Proclamation, Peter’s Letter to the Household of God, and the account of Jesus accompanying and revealing himself to two disciples leaving Jerusalem on the day of his Resurrection.

The Book of Acts is a continuation of Luke’s Gospel and is directed to Theophilus, which means lover of God. Without going into identifying details of Theophilus, Acts opens by telling us that the Gospel of Luke dealt with all that Jesus did and taught up until his bodily Ascension into heaven. Our passage resumes on the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit filled the Apostles.

After proclaiming Jesus, whom the men of Israel crucified, as Lord and Christ or Messiah, they repented and were baptized. In its entirety, Peter’s speech is a fine illustration of Law and Gospel. Three thousand sinners were baptized, and in doing so, were saved, redeemed and sanctified. What greater news is there than that?!

The passage from First Peter is addressed to sanctified and obedient Christians exiled from their homes and living in modern Turkey. Dislocated from their place of origin, they are disenfranchised, and subject to the ignorance, slander and hostility of the locals who are suspicious of their pedigrees, intentions and allegiances. Such was the perennial predicament of strangers in the ancient xenophobic world.

In comparison to any problem we face, they encountered the perennial problem met by all displaced peoples: the maintenance of a distinctive communal identity, social cohesion, and commitment to group values, traditions, beliefs and norms in the face of constant pressures urging assimilation and conformity to the dominant values, standards and allegiances of the broader society. Judeans – so-called because of their allegiance to Judea and the Jerusalem Temple – could always be forced out of cities where they had taken up residency. This made the existence of Jews and Christians in the first century vulnerable. It is part of the reason why 1^st Peter was written and later included in the Bible.

V. 17 begins with “If you invoke the Father” or “since you call upon a Father.” Jesus’ followers conceptualized God as father. They also saw Jesus as God’s Son, and after His death, continued to pray as He taught them, calling God their Father, a practice that continues today. The whole idea of God as Father forms Peter’s ecclesiology, or study of Church, in that believers are called into the family or household of God through baptism.

God is also seen as judge. This too is commonplace in the Bible. God is an impartial judge, and his impartiality is based not on our earthly fathers, but solely on our behavior. Because Christians saw God as judge, they “conducted themselves with fear” or reverence. Keep in mind, in that culture fathers were not treated like television fathers. Fathers were revered, feared and seen as judges. Awe or fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, motivated people to keep His commandments and set them apart from ignorant Gentiles.

Christians saw themselves as set apart from others. They saw themselves as aliens on foreign soil. They were strangers living among hostile natives who were ignorant of their origins, their families and their history, and suspicious of their commitments and conduct. … Peter drives home the point that because you are Christian, you are different because you have been elected by God and obey His commands.

Finally, our passage from Luke presents several problems we cannot address in the course of a sermon: locale of Emmaus, the identity of the unnamed disciple and so on. The point our passage raises is the distinction between perception and recognition. The disciples see but do not recognize the Lord. They need a sign. This is because the risen body, though the same body that died on the cross, is in a new condition. Its outward appearance is changed, and is exempt from the usual physical laws. We know that Jesus entered the locked room where the Apostles gathered and that he appeared in another form to two disciples in Mark 16:12. We read in 1^st Corinthians: “So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.” (15:42-44)

Here, the risen Christ opens the eyes of the disciples to see his true meaning in God’s plan, but their eyes are only fully opened after they have shown hospitality to a stranger.

Luke is making the point that mere recital of the creed will not create the sight of faith. What upholds our creeds, our beliefs is Jesus’ interpretation of his life as the fulfillment of God’s promises from one end of Scripture to the other. When we read the Bible through the eyes of the risen Lord, we see that God exalted his rejected prophet, his innocently suffering righteous Son.

When our eyes are truly opened to who Jesus is, this we will know: The lordship of Jesus is not known or shown in acts of war or vengeance or in dreadful and mighty signs, but is attained through a cross and expressed in a meal – an act of hospitality, peace, brotherhood and sisterhood.

Friends, the upshot of my second point, passages, is that any passage of Scripture we read must be seen through the eyes of the risen Lord Jesus Christ. And as we move from passages to my third point, practice, I lead you with one of my most oft-used questions: “Now what?”

Now what? How do we put our passages and our proclamation into practice? There are many ways, but let me leave you with a few.

When we gather for prayer as a faith community, we proclaim what we believe when we recite our creeds – the Nicene Creed, the Apostles Creed or the Athanasian Creed. If you know anything about Martin Luther’s prayer life, you know that he was fond of reciting the Apostles Creed and strongly encouraged daily recitation of it. When we do this as individuals, it reaffirms our faith.

But as I said earlier, mere recital of the Creed will not create the sight of faith. We must devote time to reading and reflecting upon the Scriptures. There are many methods of scriptural prayer that can assist our reading and understanding, but we must always remind ourselves that we want to read Scripture through the eyes of our risen Lord Jesus Christ. And to do that requires grace. Each time we open our Bibles, we must ask our Heavenly Father to grant us that grace and humbly accept it.

Lastly, the disciples on the road recognized Jesus in the breaking of the bread. As a faith community, we should receive the Sacrament frequently and always in good conscience. When we gather again, we will do this every Sunday. Hopefully, you will never pass on the opportunity to receive Christ’s Body and Blood for your salvation, redemption and sanctification. And after you receive His Body and Blood, you thankfully reflect on what just happened to you as individuals and as Church.

Lastly, as I said, the two disciples came to recognize Jesus in an act of hospitality. These disciples were not tax collectors or public sinners, but individuals who strayed from the way. Forgiven and sent back on their way, they proclaimed what they had witnessed. As a church of forgiven sinners, we have multiple opportunities to receive and offer hospitality. From the Lord’s Supper to a pot luck supper, as recipients and hosts, we recognize the Lord’s presence when we open our hearts to God’s grace and to God’s graced sons and daughters breaking bread with us.

Friends, as you resume your daily activities, I ask you to practice your faith, read your passages and proclaim how good our gracious God has been to you. And when you do that, may the peace of God, which surpasses all human understanding, keep your minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. Amen.