Living Waters Church | May 25, 2025
The Gospel of Luke 24.35-43
Listen to or watch this sermon here.
Years ago, I met a university student named Chris. He joined a Life Group I was hosting through our church, and I soon learned that he was born and raised in Hawaii, where, even at his young age, he’d already become an experienced scuba diving instructor. When he wasn’t diving, however, Chris’ idea of fun was what most of us call reckless: hiking volcanos in flip flops, freshwater caving with little equipment, and jumping off ocean side cliffs. “Growing up in Hawaii can get boring,” said Chris “so you learn to make your own fun.” He also told me he’d sometimes invited fellow students to visit him during the school breaks, but no one had taken him up on the offer. Feeling a little for him, I asked if he’d ever be open to one of his pastors paying him visit. As his eyes widened with excitement, I began to wonder what I’d just committed myself to.
I probably came closer to death more times in that one week with Chris in Hawaii than I had my entire life up to that point. Each morning, I would ask about our itinerary so I could pack accordingly, and Chris would say, “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out”. I think he knew I wouldn’t get into the truck if he told me the plan. As storied as that visit to Hawaii was, however, the best part was Chris teaching me how to scuba dive.
If you’ve never gone, it’s hard to explain the experience of diving, especially in clear, more tropical waters. After some training, suddenly I found myself standing on the sea floor, and everything was alien and alive to me as never before. I moved and breathed differently, surrounded by colours I’d never seen and creatures I’d never met. I had a totally new perspective on the world, and found myself thinking: has this been here the whole time? It was a new world, and in a way, I felt new myself. I was so grateful to experience this new world, and I knew I’d only been able to enter it because of Chris. Chris was my way in.
Once he knew I was relatively competent, Chris would disappear and reappear, bringing me shells and creatures to hold, far more at ease below the waves than I was. I’d only ever known Chris on dry land, but this was his other home. I learned to trust that he knew what he was doing, and I followed his instructions closely. But it certainly took some time to acclimate to my new surroundings.
When I read the gospels’ descriptions of Jesus’ turning to his disciples after his resurrection, I’m sometimes reminded of scuba diving with Chris. Jesus’ taught his disciples to pray that God’s kingdom would come “on earth as it is in heaven”, and there was Jesus’ bringing those two realms together through his very own resurrected body. Jesus was their way in. And there were Jesus’ disciples, only just getting used to the entirely new world Jesus’ had plunged them into. They couldn’t yet believe what they are seeing and hearing, what was possible and what was real. Soon, they’d discover how important it was not only to listen to Jesus’ teachings, but to truly live like him, trusting the breath of the Holy Spirit in deeper waters. By following and trusting Jesus, they would be submerged into the reality of God’s new creation, charged with inviting others to take the plunge too.
LUKE 24
Our scene today in Luke chapter 24 seamlessly follows the last, which we have focused on the last couple of weeks. A brief recap. In Luke’s gospel, the first appearance Jesus makes after his resurrection is to two of his disciples on a road from Jerusalem to a town called Emmaus a few kilometres away. In that scene Jesus’ is not yet recognizable to the two travelers, but is eventually revealed to them once he explains and expands on ancient Israel’s expectations of a Messiah, and Jesus’ embodiment of that role. Hoping that Jesus was the promised Messiah, come to bring freedom and peace for ancient Israel, Jesus’ followers had been crushed over his crucifixion and death. Surely, the true Messiah would win, not lose. With Jesus dead and buried, he must not have been who they hoped was.
But on the road to Emmaus, a resurrected Jesus appears and corrects two of these disappointed disciples, expanding on the Scriptures to show that in fact Jesus was the Messiah. Jesus was the Messiah, but he burst the banks of people’s expectations. The Messiah had come. The Messiah had won a great victory. The Messiah was redeeming Israel, and so much more beyond only Israel. In other words, in Jesus the Messiah, they got more than they bargained for. In Jesus their hopes had not been dashed, but superseded.
As Jesus is unpacking all this to these two disciples, suddenly they’re no longer kept from recognizing him, and Jesus is dramatically revealed while they share a meal together. And then, just as dramatically, he disappears. Jesus is moving about his newly redeemed world in his resurrection body in ways others can’t. As you can imagine, these two disciples didn’t bother hanging around for dessert in Emmaus. They’d been face to face with a resurrected Jesus and they had to tell the others. They went straight back to Jerusalem to relay their experience and learned that Jesus had apparently been turning up to others too, namely Peter. As they’re frantically swapping stories, what should happen but another appearance of Jesus. The sequence of events continues this way in Luke 24:36:
36 While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.”
Most of us have probably had our share of jump scares at home when we don’t know a family member or roommate is around a corner, but I imagine this surprise hit different. All of a sudden, there was a resurrected Jesus again, with them in the room, and his first words to the group are: peace be with you. Why those words? First, maybe Jesus knows his method of turning up unannounced (to put it mildly) could be a little surprising. Maybe it’s a little like when folks in Scripture are visited by an angel; so startling was it to meet an angel face to face, they often lead with “don’t be afraid.” “Peace be with you” might carry that sentiment, but these are not only words to put Jesus’ disciples at ease, they’re layered and profound. Peace is truly now with them. Not peace as an idea or message, but peace as a person. The peace Jesus carries in his resurrected body, the peace he has made possible through his death and resurrection is among them. Peace is the word Jesus brings to the insecure and unaware living in the already and not yet of God’s new creation project.
When Jesus turns up to his frightened and befuddled group of apprentices, he leads with peace be with you. We can expect the same. Because of Jesus’ presence then and now, we remember we have peace with God. We remember that Jesus’ speaks peace over his world, certain about the promised hope of eternal peace even in the face of present global chaos. When Jesus turns up, he brings a peace which goes beyond our constructs of the word. It’s a peace only Jesus could make, and a peace only Jesus can plunge us into. Can you hear Jesus’ words to you even right now? “Peace be with you.” Still, there was Jesus! He’d just died a horrible death, and yet there he was:
37 They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. 38 He said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? 39 Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” 40 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. 41 And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” 42 They gave him a piece of broiled fish, 43 and he took it and ate it in their presence.
The disciples are a little slow to catch on, and I’d suggest we’d probably be too. Clearly, so unbelievable was the reality of Jesus in his category-bursting resurrection body, the disciples move to categories for which they have language. They think they’re seeing Jesus’ ghost. Just as now, folks then had room for what some today might call the supernatural. And so when the disciples see something that makes no earthly sense to them (they were very sure Jesus had died), they move to what they might be witnessing. They didn’t have a category for a resurrected Jesus. And remember, Jesus’ resurrection was not the same as when he brought others in the gospels back to life. Those people, in those bodies, would die again. This is not the case, according to the gospels, with a resurrected Jesus. He’s in a different kind of body. Still Jesus, but a new creation body. A heaven and earth together body. Jesus was totally unique.
Understandably, Jesus tells his friends to trust what they are seeing. Yes, it was him, and yes, this was his body. He wasn’t a vision, not a ghost, and this was not some spiritual group hallucination. All four gospels and the rest of the New Testament are very clear that Jesus’ had a resurrection body, and he invited people to touch and test to be sure. It’s why embodiment in the Christian faith is so important. Our bodies are not prisons for our souls, our bodies make up who we are as humans. Which means our bodies need renewal, along with the rest of creation.
Notice also that this episode carries within it some scientific foundations like: observe, question, experiment, draw a conclusion. Jesus invites this. And through their literal experience the disciples slowly move from startled and frightened, to amazed and joyful, though they still can’t take it all in. Amazement and joy are the results of meeting the real God through Jesus. Joy is one of those great themes of Luke’s gospel. When we meet the real God, our fear is replaced by joy because of who God really is, and what he’s done for us.
In John’s gospel this interaction gets spelled out further with the disciple named Thomas. When Thomas doubts what he has heard about the resurrection from his friends, Jesus turns up and invites him to know for himself. So this is not about blind faith but trusting evidence. What we’re reading here, is some of the physical historical evidence passed down from the first Christians. People claimed that they saw, touched, spoke with Jesus after his death. And so certain were they of this, that their witness of this experience re-shaped the entire ancient world within a few hundred years.
A passage like this, along with the overall Scriptural story, sends a clear message: our Creator is knowable, and even wants to be known, as see through Jesus. The first believers claimed that Jesus was not only Israel’s Messiah, but Israel’s God among them, bringing new life for all humanity and even all creation. Creator in the flesh, re-making his broken creation. And the message was also that this was both a cosmic reality, but also deeply personal. God could be known, and his aim was reconciliation and relationship with his creation.
Why is it important to see that Jesus points us to a God who wants to be known? It’s important because Jesus shows what the God of the Scriptures is like and wants. Imagine if we ended our gathering right now, and all of us filtered out into the street taking with us one of those Connect Cards and the pen in the seat in front of you. Imagine if we walked up to people in the street, handed them the pen and paper and asked them to draw what God was like. What sorts of pictures would we have handed back to us? What kind of picture would you draw? What’s God like and what does God want? What’s your frame of reference?
Jesus was God’s living and breathing self-portrait. Jesus is God-accessible and God-accurate. And this God, as known through Jesus, is incomparable. Incomparable, but knowable. Even loving and loveable. And this love was not simply reserved for the heavenly realm we pass into at death but can be entered and lived from right here and now. This is one of the implications of Jesus among his disciples after his resurrection and proving his presence even by eating some fish. That’s the implication of his sending of the Holy Spirit. “On earth as it is in heaven”. God’s knowable presence among us.
Some friends of mine are Global Workers, missionaries, in a country where Jesus and his gospel are still institutionally resisted. They work in what’s called a restricted access nation. They’ve taken the risk to follow God’s leading to a place crowed with people who have not yet heard of the God revealed to humanity through Jesus. They primarily work with university students. Here’s what they shared in a recent email update:
“At the end of March, “A”, accompanied by five students, spent a weekend (away in a place) with the goal of building relationships and engaging in meaningful conversations about faith. With its rich history and many beautiful churches, (this place) provided the perfect backdrop for such discussions. One of the most memorable moments came from a student who isn’t yet a believer. He shared, “When we talk about God together and hear about your relationships with God, it makes God seem so welcomable.” While we’re fairly certain “welcomable” isn’t an official word, we completely understood the sentiment. We’re praying that this student continues to experience God’s loving welcome and that it leads him closer to faith.”
Today we’ve read about the knowable Jesus, on the move. What I just read from my friends is the good news of Jesus on the move right now in our world. A student living in a place most of us will never visit, getting to know a Christian couple sharing life to life with them. They’re saying this is what God’s like. God loves you and wants to be known. Through Jesus, God has welcomed all people to himself. That’s why we’re here, not only tell you the good news but show you.
You might be struggling to trust God with your life, with all your big questions, a little like I struggled to trust my friend Chris when scuba diving. Let me share plainly, when it comes to knowing God, Jesus is the way in. And when we put our full weight of trust on him, we are submerged into his new creation reality. Fear is replaced with joy, and we receive his enduring words ourselves: “peace be with you”.
Luke Knight 