Day 52: He is Risen (Luke 24:13-53)

Luke’s work is a two-volume set. We get no great send-off in this chapter (like we do in the other Gospels). The disciples, after meeting the risen Lord, are told to go and wait.

Waiting is not a strength of mine. I like to go and do things, not go and wait.

Yet I am pondering just how Luke has constructed his two books. He could have divided the ending in any number of places. He might have continued with the words we find in chapters 1 and 2 of the Acts of the Apostles.

Two bits of the story strike me. The first is that angels (from the text studied a day earlier) announce that Jesus is risen. My mind races back to Luke 1. It was an angel that announced his coming into the world—it is an angel that first announces his resurrection!

The second bit is the burning hearts of those walking with Jesus. A few entries ago I spoke of the logic-experience spectrum. Jesus is not an idea we think of and conclude to be true. Nor is he pure spirit, Jesus is a spiritual-physical Person who dwells in our hearts and whose story is contained in every book of the Bible.

This book is about Jesus, God come to earth: born, died, risen, and now ascended. When we say we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, we are not proclaiming the eternal significance of an idea—nor are we saying that Jesus lives on in somebody’s memory or that his reappearances were simply visionary experiences. The confession of the Church of Christ for two thousand years has been, and must continue to be, an unequivocal conviction of the bodily resurrection.