In this thought-provoking transcript, Clint Loveall and Michael Gewecke delve into the closing verses of Luke’s Gospel. They explore key themes such as encountering the resurrected Christ, the significance of Jesus’ scars, the disciples’ doubts and joy, and the call to be witnesses.
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Transcript
00:00:00:14 – 00:00:23:01
Clint Loveall
Friends. We’ve almost done it. If you’ve been hanging in there with us, we are near the end of the Gospel of Luke, which at some point you might have wondered if that was ever coming. But we are in the closing verses of Chapter 24. Just a little bit of context. We’ve been looking the last couple of days at the walk to a mass.
00:00:23:02 – 00:00:45:45
Clint Loveall
The disciples there, we saw a kind of a reunion of the disciples. At this point, the the word is out, but Jesus has not yet made an appearance to his disciples, although it does seem as though Simon has had an encounter with Jesus, the others have not. And Luke gives us that story today, so I’ll read through it quickly.
00:00:45:45 – 00:01:05:05
Clint Loveall
Then we’ll come back and talk. Talk it through. While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. They were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, Why are you frightened? Why you? Doubts arise in your hearts. Look at my hands and my feet.
00:01:05:05 – 00:01:30:36
Clint Loveall
See, it is I myself touch me and see For a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet, which in and while in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering. He said to them, Have you anything here to eat? They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took in and eat it in their presence.
00:01:30:41 – 00:01:57:16
Clint Loveall
Then he said to them, These are my words. I spoke with you while I was still with you, that everything written about me and the law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the Scripture, and he said to them, Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
00:01:57:21 – 00:02:23:06
Clint Loveall
You are witnesses of these things and see, I am sending upon you What? My father promised to stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high. So we’ve said this a couple of times now, and at the risk of overdoing it, the resurrected Jesus is a mysterious figure in the Gospels. And we start right off with a reminder of that.
00:02:23:06 – 00:02:50:55
Clint Loveall
The disciples are there in this room, and Jesus himself stood among them. We’re told nothing of his entrance. We are told that it rattles the disciples. They believe this to be a ghost, which we don’t know exactly what to make of the they there. It is interesting. They’ve now heard from Simon Peter from Clear Opus, from whoever this other disciple is.
00:02:51:00 – 00:03:16:12
Clint Loveall
They’ve heard from Mary the word of Jesus resurrection has reached them at multiple occasions, and their reaction to Jesus is still terror and fear. And Jesus says to them, Why are you frightened? Why do doubts arise in your hand? And we have a kind of in the gospel of John, we have this sort of same conversation between Jesus and Thomas here.
00:03:16:17 – 00:03:25:48
Clint Loveall
Michael We really see it kind of written large. Jesus essentially proves himself to the entire bunch.
00:03:25:53 – 00:03:51:26
Michael Gewecke
Now, so I think a key sort of transition here that we want to make sure we can see began actually in 35. The idea of what had been made known to Clovis and this other disciple, first 36, while they were talking about this, while they were talking about what had already happened, it only underscores your point further that this encounter with Jesus is not a thing that sneaks up on them.
00:03:51:27 – 00:04:15:18
Michael Gewecke
It’s a thing that happens while they’re actively thinking and talking and engaging upon these eyewitness accounts. And so when he then does come, he’s standing in the room with them and they are they’re taken by his visage, by his presence, which once again, to your point, what ghost means or doesn’t mean Luke is really taking pains here to not share that with us.
00:04:15:18 – 00:04:50:52
Michael Gewecke
It doesn’t matter. What does matter is in their fear they respond to Jesus being there. And then Jesus asked this question What is the doubt that is arising? Why does doubt arise in your heart? Come and see that this is who I am and note that there’s this really interesting movement happening here as Jesus encounters the disciples. Whereas on the road to away from Jerusalem, when Jesus is having these conversations with the disciples to a mass, we make note of the fact that Jesus explained the Scriptures to them.
00:04:50:52 – 00:05:14:49
Michael Gewecke
The idea of leading them from what the prophets had said towards who Jesus is and what He represents. What’s striking here is we have no account of Jesus doing that right off the bat. No, Instead here, Clint. Jesus immediately moves towards the physicality of his presence. He says, Come and see for yourself. Touch me and see for Ghost doesn’t have flesh and bone said You’re being.
00:05:14:54 – 00:05:39:13
Michael Gewecke
If you have any doubts about whether or not I’m human, come and answer those doubts for yourself. Come and see that I’m not some spiritual image. I’m a person with you. And I think that is maybe the key to help us understanding the fear. Because if on one hand, even today, if there was a thing that appeared in front of you, you might be able to imagine some kind of spiritual presence.
00:05:39:18 – 00:06:04:28
Michael Gewecke
It’s another entirely fearful thing, a terrifying idea that here stands a human in front of me alive on the other side of death. How could that be possible? That’s an inversion of everything that should be able to exist. But yet here Jesus does. And the response from the disciples. Then, as by the way, I think if we receive it honestly to date, remains fear trembling, a lack of faith and doubt.
00:06:04:33 – 00:06:10:03
Michael Gewecke
The first awareness of this causes within us, I think, real turmoil.
00:06:10:08 – 00:06:37:58
Clint Loveall
There is obviously more we don’t know about resurrection life than we do know. But it’s fascinating because I think most of us, when we think of if we do, the idea that there will be a life after this life and that we will occupy about a body. I suspect most of us hope that the ailments of that body won’t follow us.
00:06:37:58 – 00:07:17:15
Clint Loveall
And what is what is incredibly interesting is that the resurrected Jesus carries forward his scars into whatever it is. This resurrected body is it it appears and disappears. It it is not something that seems altogether physical, though. There’s certainly physical to it. But Jesus vanishes and then he shows up. And yet he kept his scars, because the scars are fundamental to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done.
00:07:17:15 – 00:07:44:22
Clint Loveall
And so even on the other side of death, Jesus has the marks of that death and carries them not because he couldn’t get rid of them, but because they are the sign of who he is and fundamental to what he has done. And so it is just as there’s other disciples see him and recognize him in the breaking of bread, it’s in his scarred hands and feet.
00:07:44:22 – 00:08:19:48
Clint Loveall
It’s in the scar of his side that the disciples begin to understand that this living Jesus is the Jesus they saw and knew to be dead. And Luke does a really interesting thing here. He tries to capture this verse 41 while in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering. It’s tempting to think that your reaction to Easter is binary, you know, faith or no faith.
00:08:19:53 – 00:08:51:02
Clint Loveall
But Luke paints a picture of it with this middle ground. They were in joy that it’s Jesus. They still were trying to wrap their heads around it. They’re still wondering. They’re still wrestling with it. That that’s the I think that’s the experience of anyone who’s ever tried to seriously encounter the idea of the resurrected Christ. It’s not something that fits into our perspective, into our experience, but it is a thing that is mysterious and troubling.
00:08:51:07 – 00:09:17:11
Clint Loveall
And I love the idea that they were both joyful and asking questions. They were believing and disbelieving all at once because that feels like the right reaction to Easter. It feels like a realistic depicts kind of what it means to encounter the resurrected Christ. And then to your point, Michael, the only thing I think there may be more.
00:09:17:13 – 00:09:40:27
Clint Loveall
Maybe there’s something else to it that a Bible scholar could tell us. But I think realistically this bit about a fish is Jesus just saying, Look, don’t, don’t eat, get me some fish, I’ll eat with you. Now, you could spin that out in other ways, but I think that’s probably a sign, a practical demonstration to them and if it means more than that, I’m not aware of it.
00:09:40:31 – 00:10:13:51
Michael Gewecke
So I think what makes this so interesting is that Luke is so brief and I know we’ve said this before, but it deserves repeating here that Luke is so brief in his accounts of the resurrection. If you compare it with all of the books that came before contained within one chapter. And so when we want to turn to Scripture to answer questions that are I think at some point in our life, every person of faith wrestles with the question, What is the hope of resurrection?
00:10:13:51 – 00:10:53:09
Michael Gewecke
What what is my faith leading me towards on what it looks like on the other side? And I think the ground you’ve already traveled with us here today is really, really important. I think that we want to make sure that we explicitly see that resurrection is not some kind of universal reset in which the life that we lived has no impact or bearing or matter upon God’s ability to redeem on the other side that somehow it is in the wounds of Jesus, that we can see the starting point for God’s resurrecting power in Jesus.
00:10:53:09 – 00:11:26:06
Michael Gewecke
And there’s a bit I’m going afield on this, but I think that some people do come to texts like this and ask, Well, what does this mean for me? What is well, what implication does this have for my faith? And I think one way that Paul would respond to a text like this from Luke would be to say that our hope and trust in Jesus is that like God took the scars of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, and he in what was on every level bad on every level, evil.
00:11:26:18 – 00:11:51:25
Michael Gewecke
What was done to his perfect son? God was able to turn to good through a resurrection power, through a remaking kind of power. And it didn’t validate that which had come before the suffering and the difficulty and the struggle, but rather it was a way of bending that bad or that struggle into something that could be remade, even something that like going back to the Garden of Eden, could be called good.
00:11:51:39 – 00:12:14:03
Michael Gewecke
And I think that that is the ultimate hope for our lives that we join our hopes that, like Jesus, we will one day be found even with the brokenness of our lives to have that restored. I don’t think Luke is teaching that. It’s certainly not explicit. And if it’s implicit, it’s a sort of a theological idea that maybe would be of comfort to the earlier church.
00:12:14:07 – 00:12:40:57
Michael Gewecke
But I think sometimes we apply modern questions to the text, and I think you’ve got to be careful not to not push those questions beyond what Luke intended and what Luke wants us to know. I think with an image like this is that the resurrection Christ is not a ghost. He’s not a disembodied spirit, that he is still the person who lived, is just God has transformed and renewed that body into something that is mysterious and and remade.
00:12:40:57 – 00:12:44:33
Michael Gewecke
And I think that that remains a hope for Christians today.
00:12:44:38 – 00:13:11:58
Clint Loveall
I also think it helps to remember that Luke is the first volume of a two volume work. And so as we come to the end of this story, it brings us nearer the beginning of Luke’s next story, which is the Book of Acts. And and we see that prefaced here it is written, The Messiah has to suffer and and repentance and forgiveness.
00:13:11:58 – 00:13:46:22
Clint Loveall
Verse 47. And that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. And that that small phrase to all nations is a wonderful clue of what Luke has in mind. He doesn’t yet say Gentiles, he doesn’t yet say Samaritans. He’s going to save that for the Book of Acts. But that simple phrase prefigures and looks ahead to the movement.
00:13:46:22 – 00:14:17:06
Clint Loveall
So what? Who is Jesus now? To the disciples? He is the resurrected one. And what does it mean to them? It means that they are going to be witnesses. You are witnesses of these things, and I am sending upon you what my father promised as I am then going to send you. And so you can never uncouple the gospel from the call to share the gospel and take the gospel into the world.
00:14:17:11 – 00:14:50:31
Clint Loveall
In Luke’s in Luke’s work, it is there fundamentally linked in a way that that really I think is just inseparable. And so Luke here, even even again, we’ve seen Luke’s ability to do this, but even with a sentence or two anticipating where the next part of the story goes and and I think we we may talk about that as we wrap Luke up because it is helpful to remember that this is part one of what Luke is trying to tell us.
00:14:50:36 – 00:15:13:42
Michael Gewecke
I think it is instructive also to ask what are they witnesses to? They’re not witness as to a particular theology or a particular philosophy. They’re witnesses to a person, they’re witnesses to the resurrected Christ. They’re witnesses to seeing him on the other side of death, to him breaking bread with them and eating fish with them and being open to them.
00:15:13:42 – 00:15:39:54
Michael Gewecke
Just say, hey, look, you’re my wounds. Prove to yourself, let your doubts be quelled. That is what they are witnesses to. And so that is ultimately what Christians through every generation street strives and seeks to be able to do is to give witness to our own individual and communal encounters with the risen Christ to say we’ve seen this life beyond death power at work in us in these ways.
00:15:40:08 – 00:16:03:48
Michael Gewecke
We’ve seen them, we recognize them, we give thanks for them and gets that witnessing or pointing out that becomes the fundamental task. And Clint’s right to say that as you turn into the Book of Acts, the part two of this part one, you’re going to find that this phrase Jerusalem is carefully chosen in this and actually becomes a structural element of that book.
00:16:03:48 – 00:16:27:59
Michael Gewecke
So if we were going to be continuing on into that as our next study, this would be an essential first step in what is going to come later. But that said, there’s always been this sense of of movement, of continuity, whether it was movement away from Jerusalem by a clear opus or whether it was the return of these two disciples to Jerusalem.
00:16:28:10 – 00:16:50:43
Michael Gewecke
There is a kind of movement that happens when one encounters the risen Christ, and that movement is by nature of the encounter. There is no way to see the risen Christ and to not be magnetically sent out into the world for others to see it. Because what you’re seeing is something that shouldn’t be able to exist. It is the ultimate greatest news.
00:16:50:58 – 00:17:02:06
Michael Gewecke
And once you’ve come in to that, there’s nothing that you can do but be grateful for it. And so it creates this dynamic movement from the Book of Luke and then into Acts.
00:17:02:11 – 00:17:36:22
Clint Loveall
It’s really well done. I hope that as we’ve gone through this gospel for quite a while now, that there’s an appreciation maybe that has been built for Luke’s storytelling style and the way in which he is able to get a lot out of even small details and maybe just one that sticks with me today. You know, to circle back to this idea that Jesus meets these disciples where they are, they’re believing, but not believing, they’re struggling, they’re wondering.
00:17:36:27 – 00:18:16:54
Clint Loveall
And so even something as small as Jesus asking them if they have something to eat, just to just the mundane detail, a way in which Jesus takes care of them, a way in which Jesus demonstrates to them, Jesus reassures them. It is that it is the most casual kind of detail. And yet to think that Jesus, the resurrected Christ, who has just hung on the cross, gone to war with death, stood up alive, walked out of the tomb, now says, Maybe if I eat a piece of fish in front of these guys, it will help them.
00:18:16:58 – 00:18:33:31
Clint Loveall
And so he does. And I think that’s a it’s a beautiful little detail. It’s not profound theologically, but it’s just an incredible little gift in the story, the way it’s told. And Luke, I think, is just so good at giving us those moments.
00:18:33:36 – 00:18:59:22
Michael Gewecke
That represents Clint that Jesus didn’t need to demonstrate his superiority. He didn’t need to come with power and and a sword and miracles. Jesus did need that. He He’s able to come on the other side of death itself and to simply be with the people that he loves. That’s the kind of kingdom that Luke has been showing us that Jesus had proclaimed from the very beginning.
00:18:59:22 – 00:19:36:34
Michael Gewecke
This is what he said he was about. And on the other side of death, that remains true. He he’s the one who’s willing to be with those and not one who is over them, not one who uses that to his own advantage. To use language from Philippians. I think Jesus is able in a text like this to subvert the expectation that we would have, because you imagine with a team wins a Super Bowl like society expects, for them to go out and throw out all of the stops to celebrate, to party, to to really be lifted up.
00:19:36:39 – 00:19:58:57
Michael Gewecke
But when the savior of the world dies and is raised again, he’s comfortable walking along the dusty road, even though he’s not recognized breaking bread in some kind of in or restaurant or stopping place some home. And then he goes and eats fish with just there’s something unbelievably human about these encounters with Jesus. And that is the point.
00:19:58:57 – 00:20:27:30
Michael Gewecke
That’s not an accident. These were chosen to be given to us. So what are we witnesses to? We’re witnesses to the resurrected human Christ. And that’s the good news. We don’t understand that all the time. He is God at work in this world. And so we won’t be able to grasp or contain. And yet the good news is that he has really entered into our homes and really entered into our lives, and that that is the transforming moment of history.
00:20:27:43 – 00:21:00:37
Clint Loveall
Yeah, despite our faith, despite our questions, despite our doubts and our struggles to believe, he stands with us as the one who conquered death and then not in it for himself, came back to have his people share the good news and take that out into the world. So a really, really fascinating again, fascinating text. Luke’s last chapter is jammed packed with stuff.
00:21:00:37 – 00:21:21:07
Clint Loveall
So as we walk through it, hope there’s been something in it for you. Hope there’s something in it today that speaks to you. We will have next week will follow up and kind of wrap up some loose strings and see if we can come up with some kind of conclusion to what maybe Luke has said to us and reflect on where we go next.
00:21:21:12 – 00:21:37:48
Michael Gewecke
So, friends, certainly if you found this conversation helpful, give the like it helps others find it in their own study. Also want to let you know the our current plan following Luke will be to turn to the book of Joe in that for a short study. If you would like to be part of that, subscribe so you can stick with us on studies like this.
00:21:38:02 – 00:21:41:22
Michael Gewecke
Hope that you are blessed and we will of course see you again next week. Have a.
00:21:41:22 – 00:21:41:51
Clint Loveall
Good weekend.