Post Resurrection Appearances – Upper Room and Bethany
This is the final sermon in our series looking at the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. I hope you have been as encouraged as I have by these accounts. One of the things which has struck me afresh is the realism these accounts contain. Time and time again we have seen how people reacted in just the way we would have expected them to – hardly daring to trust their eyes. Before looking at the passage in detail there is no point in trying to reconcile all the different accounts. For example, we have what sounds like Luke’s account of the first upper room appearance of John yet it leads straight on to Bethany and the ascension – collapsing a 40-day period into one.
In our two most recent studies we have heard how the risen Christ calls all of us to a life of discipleship. One of the chief reasons behind these post-resurrection appearances was the turning of Disciples into Apostles. In today’s passage we have a glimpse of just how radical this transformation was. I want to look at this transformation under three headings: from worriers to worshippers, from doubters to declaimers and from gloom to gladness.
This passage is highly descriptive of the emotions: troubled, frightened, startled, amazed and so on. When Jesus appears among them he finds his disciples frightened and startled. They thought he was a ghost – I suspect most of us would be worried if we thought we were seeing a ghost. Jesus seeks to re-assure them by having something to eat – ghosts certainly can’t do that! This encounter with the risen Christ transforms the disciples from worriers v.37 into worshippers v.52. How about you, are you a worrier or a worshipper? I used to have a problem with a song we sang quite a lot a few years ago which contained the phrase “And in his presence our problems disappear”. However as I have continued in my Christian life and faced some fairly tough problems I have come to experience the truth of this. No matter how big our worries when we come before God in worship, they diminish.
It was not just Thomas who doubted, all the disciples found it hard to understand and believe what had happened. Jesus acknowledges their doubts v.38 and addresses them firstly by showing them his scars. It is interesting to see what a common thread this has been running through these accounts. Having established his credentials Jesus then opens their minds to understand the Scriptures – just as he had done on the road to Emmaus. Having addressed their doubts Jesus then commissions the disciples to be declaimers of the good news. They are to wait for the promised Holy Spirit and then go into all the world proclaiming the gospel. Are you a doubter or a declaimer? What is holding you back from telling others the good news? Do you need to “see the scars” or receive a new filling of the Spirit?
If you look back to v.17 you will see that before Cleopas and his companion encountered the risen Christ their faces were downcast. One has the distinct impression that as the disciples met in the upper room they weren’t just worried and frightened, they were downright gloomy. In this passage, as the penny finally drops, there is a radical transformation from gloom to gladness. See how the emotional colour changes from words like troubled, startled, frightened and doubtful to joy and amazementv.41 and great joy v.52. I was at a meeting the other day when a fellow cleric was speaking in a derogatory way about those fellow clerics he described as being “Happy Clappy”. I refrained from pointing out that I was probably someone he would describe in those terms. I also felt quite sorry for him as he was obviously someone who was walking in gloom not gladness. I am not for one moment suggesting that we should put on an artificial smile and pretend that all is well when it quite patently isn’t nor that it isn’t right to “weep with those who weep” However I would say that there is something quite transformational about encountering the risen Christ which turns our gloom into gladness.