April 15, 2018, Sermon: Too Good to be True?

Sorry for the blurry photo, but the image of our council president Kelly and his son Colton ushering together is too good not to share! Earlier this week on our church’s Facebook page, I shared a blog post from Pastor Andrew Dietzel about the beauty of children and parents serving together in worship, and this weekend was a great example. Check out the blog post here.

Attendance at worship was pretty sparse this week thanks to one of the several April blizzards we’ve had this year in Iowa, but the good news was proclaimed and God was worshiped, so it was a good weekend at St. Peter Lutheran Church.

The sermon texts for this 3rd Sunday of Easter are Luke 24:36b-48 and Acts 3:12-19. Here’s the sermon for the weekend of April 14 & 15, 2018.

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.

Not only are we still in the Easter season for the next 5 weeks, but in our Gospel reading, we’re still hearing about that first Easter Sunday. In fact, today’s reading from Luke covers the same thing as last week’s reading from John. [You can read last week’s sermon here.]

It’s Sunday evening, and most of the disciples are gathered together, not sure what to do. They’re just beginning to process that Jesus might be alive, when suddenly he’s there among them, saying, “Peace be with you.”

Last week, we heard John’s description of this evening, focusing on Thomas, the one disciple who wasn’t there, and we call him “Doubting Thomas.” Of course, as Luke’s version of the story makes clear, Thomas was hardly the only one to be skeptical. Luke describes the whole group as “startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost.”

Jesus realizes why they’re frightened. They’d watched him die, and dead people generally stay dead. It makes complete sense for them to be confused and frightened. So he does a little bit of a science experiment to prove he’s really alive.

It’s kind of like how you’re supposed to pinch yourself to see if you’re dreaming. He invites them to poke and prod him and make sure he’s solid, then he shows them the nail holes in his hands and feet, to prove that not only is he alive, he really is the same guy who was crucified, not some long-lost identical twin or something.

Finally, he eats a piece of fish in front of them, because apparently it’s common knowledge ghosts can’t eat anything. I suppose food would just fall through a ghost.

In the middle of describing their ghost tests, Luke throws in this wonderful phrase in verse 41. “While they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement.” They’ve gone from startled and frightened to joyful and amazed, but they’re still skeptical.

The resurrection seems way too good to be true. They want so much for Jesus to be alive that they’re afraid they’re making it up. Have you ever felt that way? Do you ever wonder if we’re deceiving ourselves because we want so much for faith to be true?

Sometimes the promise that we are loved by God seems too good to be true. Sometimes the good news of grace and forgiveness seems impossible. Surely we don’t deserve God’s grace. Surely we have to do something to earn it, to pay the debt we owe to God, something to make up for our sin.

There was a well-known French existentialist philosopher Robert Camus, an atheist, who once said, “Salvation is much too big a word for me. I don’t aim so high.” [quote first found here] The very concept of heaven, the promise of eternal life, of salvation can seem like too much.

And if Jesus had stayed dead, then that atheist would be right. All this would be too much to believe.

If Jesus had come and said the kind of things he said and even done the kind of miracles he did, and then been killed and stayed dead like a normal person, then it would be right to be skeptical. If Jesus stayed dead, then we would still be carrying the weight of our sins, hoping for forgiveness, hoping irrationally there might be something after death.




This week at Wednesday morning men’s Bible study, we looked at how Paul puts it in First Corinthians 15. Paul writes, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead.”

The tomb is empty. Jesus is alive. The disciples get to see him, not just in a spiritual sense, but physically present there with them, eating fish, inviting them to see his wounds. Then, Luke tells us, “He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” This is one of the places where I really wish they’d written down a little bit more of what Jesus had actually said.

But the promise we have is that the Holy Spirit is still opening our minds. We have the story written down in the Scriptures, and God continues to reveal it to us. God continues to inspire faith in you. Jesus tells the disciples, “You are witnesses of these things,” and that goes for us too.

We don’t get to touch Jesus, but we do get to encounter him. We encounter our risen Lord in each other, in the holy meal we’ll share in a few minutes when we meet him in the mystery of his body and blood given and shed for us.

We encounter him in the testimony of these disciples, who go from timidly hiding in locked rooms to changing the world and being willing to die for their faith.

Our faith is real, because Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

There are a few ways we can respond to the good news that Jesus is alive. We could dismiss it as too good to be true, as a delusion we’ve created to make ourselves feel better. Of course, to dismiss faith that easily would mean ignoring an awfully large amount of historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection.

It’d mean dismissing the impact the Risen Christ had on those first disciples, and on the church, and throughout history, right up to those of us gathered here today. We’re here because we know Jesus is alive.

Another way we respond sometimes is to agree this good news is true, but to think it’s too good for me, or for you. Maybe God loves and forgives that person over there, that person who comes to church every week and volunteers at everything and never forgets their offering and really knows their Bible front and back, but I’ve got to try harder. I’ve got to do enough to make sure God loves me.

My response is to look at the disciples, the first ones to hear the good news from the women. Although I’m sure they’re thrilled Jesus is alive, I suspect some of their fear that first Easter evening might be because the last time most of them saw Jesus alive was three nights earlier after the last supper, when they abandoned him in the garden of Gethsemane.

They’re feeling pretty guilty, and rightly so, but when Jesus shows up, the first thing he says to them is “Peace be with you.” All is forgiven, and that’s true for you as well. The good news is for you!

And then there’s the way Peter tells us in Acts 3 to respond to the good news. Peter tells the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection – and he even points out that the people he’s talking to are responsible for his death, that some of them literally were in the crowd shouting crucify him, crucify him – and he invites them to receive forgiveness from God.

Some people have read this sermon from Peter and used it to try to blame the Jewish people for killing Jesus, as if we would have done any better if we were there. As if Jesus didn’t die for our sins as well.

I think trying to blame one group of people can be a way of trying to get out of the hard work Peter calls us to. Peter tells us the correct way to respond to this good news. He says, “Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.”




To “repent” literally means to turn around and go the other way, to stop doing what you’re doing and do something else. Repenting means to turn away from sin and to turn towards God. In the first of his 95 Theses, Martin Luther wrote, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said ‘Repent,’ he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

As Christians, we respond to the good news that Christ is risen [He is risen indeed] by turning towards God, not just once, but every day of our lives. We respond by accepting the reality that God has forgiven us, that the good news is true. Repenting means turning to live in the joy and hope of the resurrection.

There’s so much more to explore about God’s forgiveness. There’s more to learn about how we ought to live in response to this good news.

But for now, hear the good news. Jesus is alive. Death has been defeated. You are forgiven forever.

And as you hear the good news, may the Holy Spirit stir in you to accept it, to receive it as the best truth in the world, the best news in history. And may you encounter the living Christ in the world around you, in the church, and in the bread and wine. Amen