The End?

Matthew Round

The Gospel of Luke • Sermon • Submitted 4 years ago

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As Jesus appears to his terrified disciples, he explains to them that everything written about him must be fulfilled. He shows them there is a chapter yet to come: broadcasting the good news of forgiveness in his name to all nations. This is the task he commissions them to, empowering them with the Holy Spirit.

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Transcript

Big Idea: All will be fulfilled: death, resurrection - and empowered proclamation.

Have you ever felt that frustration which comes when a book, or a series, or a film, or box set you’ve loved comes to an end?

there’s that moment of final breakthrough, that moment of resolution, of revelation: finally all is put to right - and then “THE END”, credits roll. how many times have I wished for another ten pages, ten minutes, to enjoy that destination, that resolution.

I think I felt this most profoundly with Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. <slide> Give me a heart if you’ve ever read them! For each and every book in the series, I wished it wouldn’t end. And then I came to the end of the series. I felt like it left a hole. I wanted it to continue so much. I wanted to be allowed to live inside of the story, to inhabit it.

When I was at university I joined SouthCon - one of the first online games from right at the dawn of these things being possible, a multi-user-shared-hallucination was what it was called - a MUSH. <slide> The best pic I could find online was a photo of an old printout from the game! Text only - properly old-skool. I would go sit in the computer lab (no network anywhere else in those days), find myself a terminal, open up a window and connect. And sat at my keyboard, I’d join another world in my imagination.

The game - if you could call it that - gathered a group of people from around the world who loved the book series and didn’t want it to end, and it invited them to continue the story - as characters in it, as authors of it. <slide> I was master vintner Tarken and it was my job to build out the vineyards, wine cellars and breweries. Digitally, of course. But brewing was an important aspect of game life! I remember sitting in the uni library for hours studying how brewing actually worked so I could make a realistic brewery inside the game.

There were people writing songs to be performed at festivals inside the game - I actually composed some music for their lyrics once. There were people working on realistic wildlife. <slide> We took it seriously - we didn’t want the story to end - instead we wanted to become a part of it, to inhabit it. Pure escapism, right, but I so enjoyed it.

Much as we might long for stories to continue forever, for every story, authors, script writers and producers always reach a point where their work is done, and they draw it to an end. Perhaps they just ran out of imagination or budget. Perhaps they felt their audience just couldn’t manage another hundred pages, or another hour in the cinema. And yet endings, the ending of stories, so often leave us longing for more.

Well today we’ve reached that moment in our journey through the gospel of Luke. <slide> We started … oooooh … a fair while ago now. Back when I didn’t have so many grey hairs. If you’ve been with us throughout, today’s the day you get your medal! We’ve worked our way through Luke from beginning to end, step by step, verse by verse. Today we turn the last page. Today we get that moment of breakthrough, that moment of resolution, that climax. And also today, and ending to the story.

Before we listen to those closing phrases together, let’s just have a quick recap of where are we up to: We’re in Jerusalem and everything’s come to a head. Friday Jesus died on the cross. Saturday all was quiet. Sunday morning the women found the tomb empty but the disciples dismissed their report. Sunday evening, two disciples rush back from Emmaus, having met the risen Jesus on their journey - and as they arrive the find the disciples together, astonished because Jesus has also appeared to Peter. There’s rising faith (“it is true, the Lord has risen” the disciples say - Luke 24:34) - but that faith’s still mixed with doubt, as we’ll see.

<slide> Suzie’s going to read for us this morning from Luke’s final chapter, chapter 24, and we’ll read verse 36 to the end.

READING

So we pick up the story at this moment of excitement and rising faith - but still it’s faith mixed with doubt. While the assembled disciples are busy talking about Peter’s experience and the tale of the two on the road, boom: <slide> suddenly there’s Jesus himself, standing among them.

They’re startled, frightened, the passage tells us. Why? They think they’re seeing a ghost! But why do they think Jesus is a ghost? Is he part see-through or floating or just saying “ooooooooooh” all the time? To be fair, he was recently very dead. But most likely their ghost-conclusion is driven by Jesus suddenly joining them in lockdown <slide> (see, the disciples were on to social-distancing long before us!) John 20:19 which is probably narrating this same event, tells us “On the evening of that first day of the week” - that’s this resurrection Sunday evening - “the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders.”

So a suddenly appearing Jesus, when the doors locked - yes, I can see that would definitely raise questions about whether he’s real or just a ghost. But Jesus is very not ghosty - and he pushes that point on his disciples.

“Look at my hands and my feet”, he says. Why hands and feet? Presumably because they’ll see the nail wounds there - Jesus still has the same body he took to the cross.

“Touch me and see,” he says - “a ghost does not have flesh and bones”. He’s solid, material, physical. Even though he can suddenly appear in a locked room.

But they’re still stunned and reeling. So Jesus carries on “have anything here to eat?” <slide> - I don’t think it’s that he’s particularly peckish after three days in the grave - he’s rubbing their noses in the concrete reality that he’s still Jesus, still human, and still very much alive.

The disciples struggle to believe - have you ever been that astonished? had something so amazing happen that it’s just hard to take it in? I think we can cut them a little slack here. Jesus is back from the dead! From dawn that Resurrection Sunday morning there’s been mystery, tension, questions, possibility. At last, we have resolution: once the disciples get over their emotional whiplash they’ll realise finally it’s the end of the story. <slide>

And how does Jesus close out his time with the disciples? What are the parting words he leaves echoing in their ears? <slide> Verse 44: “He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Everything written in the Jewish holy scriptures about the promised one - the messiah - everything must be fulfilled.

This moment, verse 44, feels to me like it’s the last page, the one you turn over only to find blank space. If verse 44 was the very last verse, that’d feel totally fitting to me. If it was the moment when “The end” <slide> comes up on the screen and the credits begin to roll, that would work.

...

But remember we started out talking about that ache you sometimes get at the end of a book, the end of a film, wishing there was another chapter, wishing this wasn’t the end? Well I have good news for you: this isn’t the end. See, in verse 44 Jesus tells his disciples <slide> “everything must be fulfilled that is written about me” - the thing is, that’s not happened … yet…

In verse 46 and 47, Jesus summarises what is written about him, what’s foretold: the Messiah must suffer and the Messiah must rise. But there’s a third chapter written about Jesus, too. It’s not quite so clear in our English bible translation, but in the original language there are three infinitives here - that is, three key actions, three anchors, three chapters that are emphasised in Jesus’ summary here: suffering, resurrection … and being preached. <slide>

And see that word, “preached” - before you switch off, one of the challenges we have is that our understanding of language is coloured by our context, by our experience. When you hear “preached” you might think about a monologue in church on a Sunday from a minister-type - perhaps even a long and rather boring one. But that’s just what we’ve come to associate with that word; the original meaning is broader. It means to announce. To declare. To make known … To broadcast.<slide>

Jesus’ resurrection isn’t the end of the story, it isn’t all that’s foretold, all that’s to be fulfilled - the offer of forgiveness in his name also needs to be broadcast to the world.

And who’s going to be doing that? Well imagine the moment; sat around the table that Sunday evening: “repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be proclaimed in my name to all nations,” Jesus says … “beginning at Jerusalem.” Which just happens to be exactly where they are. Holed up behind a locked door. Fearing for their lives.

Awkward glances are exchanged between the disciples and the silence lengthens. Cue the required tumbleweed. <slide> Perhaps one of them performs an RBS, hoping someone else will actually take it on. RBS, you know, raise-butt-slightly? It’s what happens at your dinner table when someone has to do the washing up but no-one really wants to. The sly one among you gives that indication they’re going to go do it - rises from their chair just slightly - only to let someone else go instead while they still take credit for being willing. Do you think the disciples had one of those moments?

Maybe they’re all imagining - or wishing - that Jesus himself will be the one doing it - I mean, he is there, back from the dead. Wouldn’t he be the one best placed to announce the forgiveness his own death has made possible? But then Jesus nails them: verse 48 <slide> you are witnesses - you. These eleven are especially witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, but there are others with them too, verse 33 tells us.

Now this was not something they were ready for - having deserted and denied Jesus just days back, they were hiding in a locked room - proclaiming him wasn’t high on any of their lists. But Jesus knows they are not ready in a deeper way - he goes on to tell them “stay in the city...” Why? Because something needs to change before they can take on this new mission. There’s something they need first.

“Stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high.” he says. The power from on high Jesus introduces here is the Holy Spirit, as we’ll see on the day of Pentecost, coming soon after. The bible teaches us that every follower of Jesus has the profound privilege of having God’s own Holy Spirit come to live within them, empowering them - empowering them particularly for this task of announcing forgiveness in Jesus’ name. These disciples couldn’t play their part in this third chapter without it.

But everything must be fulfilled - suffering, resurrection, and broadcast to the world. That’s Jesus’ closing message.

And then, though I am sure his disciples would have preferred the risen Jesus to stay with them, Jesus has to go - he has to go so the Spirit can come - John 16:7 And so Jesus leaves. Hands lifted up in blessing, on a mountain nearby, he is taken up into heaven. Last page. “The end” for real in Luke’s gospel. <slide>

But like we’ve talked about already, this isn’t the end.

Now it isn’t the end in the simple literary sense because the great news, if you’re feeling that ache of an unfinished story, or wanting to read on past the resolution, is there is a sequel! The bible book called Acts is, in fact, Luke part 2! Luke even starts it with these words: “in my former book!” So you can read on and follow the story as it unfolds and develops.

But this isn’t the end of the story in a much more profound sense than just there being a sequel. This isn’t the end of the story because this is a story which is still playing out - and it’s one we are all invited in to. <slide> This is a story we don’t just have to leave “out there”, external and separate from us, a story belonging to someone else which could never really be ours. This is a story we can inhabit - inhabit not just in an imaginary escapist online world like I did with my dragon fixation, but in our real, ordinary, everyday lives.

It’s a story, wonderfully, that has a critical part prepared for each and every one of us to play. This is our story.

Let me just take a minute, though, to speak to anyone who’s watching today, but who feels like this is just another book which comes to an end, just another story “out there” - whether you think of it as pure fantasy, or just mixed up history. If that’s you, I want to challenge you to think through the marks this story has left on the world we all live in. There are many ways in which the story of Jesus has shaped our world - for example, it’s shaped our approach to education in Scotland - the key driver in establishing universal schooling here was so people could read the bible for themselves. Don’t believe me? Check your favourite history source. But I want to focus on just one key mark it’s left on our world, and that’s this worldwide Christian movement which we, Hope City, are just a teeny tiny part of. <slide>

In this story, these terrified disciples, hiding in a locked room, are told the third chapter, their chapter, is the proclamation of forgiveness in the name of Jesus to all nations. What does the fact that there’s a global christian movement in the 21st century tell you? It tells you this happened - it actually happened, just like the scriptures said. Terrified disciples must have become fearless evangelists or, … or that would have been the end of the story. You have to have some explanation for that. They broadcast this good news of forgiveness and convinced others - and those broadcast the news to others in turn - and this despite sustained and brutal persecution.

If this is just a story, not real, how come so many people are changed by it? How come it motivates so many to produce art <slide> - some of the greatest art in our world? Why are so many people affected by this story? How come it motivates so many to serve, to share? Why has no-one stamped it out? Because people have tried down through the ages - more recently some of the communist regimes of the twentieth century, for example. But this movement runs on and on, all the way down to you and me, here today. This foretelling of a proclamation to all nations finds its fulfilment here, in your own experience.

Consider the evidence. This isn’t just another book that comes to an end - this is the one true story of the world. <slide> Our church, Hope City, is part of the fulfilment of that third chapter - we exist to broadcast to all nations the good news that, on account of Jesus, there is forgiveness of sins. I would love to share that good news with you, and how you can be a part of it. It can change your life. Through repentance - that is, changing your mind, changing direction, it can give you a new life, a life inside this one true story of the world. Drop me a message - reach out to a friend - join the story!

I want to close out our time - our long time - in the gospel of Luke with this takeaway: This story is not yet finished. <slide> If you’d call yourself a believer, someone who follows this Jesus, then you, too, have a part in fulfilling what has been written about him. You, too, are a part of this story. You are called to live inside of it, not just watch from the outside. While it began in that room, in Jerusalem, all those years ago, you share this commission to broadcast the good news of forgiveness in Jesus’ name to all nations.