Scripture text: Luke 24:36-48
Quite some time ago, I was channel surfing on TV, looking for something to watch. I stumbled onto an old movie called “Evil Under the Sun.” It came out in 1982, has a stellar cast, and is film-version of an old Agatha Christie mystery novel. I liked the movie. I got pulled in. Part of that is because of the story’s setting and time. I’m a fan of the 1920s: Art Deco, Jazz, The Great Gatsby, Duesenberg cars, and all that. But I was also was sucked in because of the story. I wanted to find out what was really going on. Who was the murderer? Who was guilty? Why’d they do it? All the good things that mystery stories tease us with.
If I look over the width and breadth of my favorite films and stories, there are a surprising number of mysteries among them. Many of them are cross-genre, which is to say they are fantasy or sci-fi or historical films that also mysteries. Another favorite is “The Name of the Rose,” a mystery that takes place in a medieval monastery (Movie is seriously creepy, by the way.) Even the recent largely-forgettable Valerian: City of a Thousand Planets is a sci-fi movie with a mystery plot. I liked it though. It was entertaining enough.
In every mystery, there comes a moment when the mystery is unraveled. The detective or whatever he or she is tells us what really happened. They tell us who did it. They tell us how they did it. They tell us why they did. The whole mystery is explained and the guilty party is exposed. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for the whole time and the best mysteries wrap up every loose end, tying together every clue, including the ones we saw ourselves and the ones we missed.
I feel like our Gospel lesson today is that scene, that moment, when all the questions are answered. This is actually the second of two of these moments in Luke’s Gospel, both of which appear in chapter 24 of his narrative. The first is when Jesus encounters the two disciples on the Road to Emmaus. Luke tells us that as the trio is walking along the road, Jesus opened the Scriptures to the other two, telling them all the things about himself from the OT. The second occurs a few verses later and is our Gospel today. Again, Jesus comes among the disciples and “opens their minds to understand the Scriptures.”
He’s telling them the story. He’s putting all the pieces together. All the way back into antiquity. Here’s where it started. Here’s where it went. Here’s who it did. Here’s why and here’s how. Here’s all the pieces of the puzzle laid out before you. Here is the mystery solved. Only this time, the mystery isn’t some crime, it’s the story of God’s love for his creation.
I have heard many times, and have even said myself, that we wish we could be there. A fly on the wall or little bird listening in on those conversation. We wish we could hear, from Jesus himself, how all the pieces add up. It would go a long way towards calming all those doubts and questions I spoke about last week. We could finally have the answer to those nagging questions in our minds about all this God stuff.
Yeah, we’re envious of those who were given that insight, but the truth is, Jesus didn’t reveal anything to them that we haven’t learned ourselves. It’s not as if, in the course of this mystery story, that we are given only half the clues while those so long ago have the whole story. No, we have all the same clues as they did and we too can piece together the puzzle. The solution of the mystery is right in front of us. All too often, however, we choose not to believe it.
Last Sunday, we talked quite a bit in our Adult Q&A about the first chapters of Genesis. I called those stories “myth” because they are. However, myths are stories that reveal truths in much the same way as Jesus’ parables do. The biggest truths that come out of those ancient stories are the brokenness of human existence due to sin and God’s attempts to solve that problem. We see sin and its consequences outlined in the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, Cain and Abel, and the tower of Babel. We also see God wrestle with a solution in the Noah’s Ark story and his acknowledgement that the destruction of his creation is not a proper solution. Evil cannot be defeated by destroying it. So what then?
Well, then comes Abraham and the Old Covenant. As I’ve pointed out before, that promise to Abraham made him and his descendants into a conduit by which God would bless the world and bring about the end of sin and death forever. We Christians know this blessing came in the form of Jesus, who lived, died, and rose again for the sake of every person who ever lived and ever will. He did this to show God’s love, to forgive our sin, and to give us life eternal.
This is the heart of the Christian story. It’s really not a very complicated mystery. God so loved his creation that he gave his son Jesus so that the creation would be saved. Seems I read that somewhere. That’s really the long and short of it. He loved it at the beginning. He loves it now. And he will love it forever more. And he will do anything he must to see it saved. Oh, and lest this get lost on any of you, let me say that a little differently. He loved you at the beginning. He loves you now. And he will love you forever more. And he will do anything he must to see you saved.
That’s the part we have the hardest time believing. But that too is the story. That’s what this is all about. It’s about how much God loves you and loves the person next to you and the person next to them, all down the line until we come to the last human who has ever drawn breath or ever will. Every single one of them. Now, in that massive list of billions upon billions of humans, there are more than a few that we have disliked or even hated for a whole host of reasons. Some legit, some not. God loves them too. God has been working to save them from the dawn of time, just like you. Heck, the one who might dislike the most in that list is yourself. Him too. Her too. Loved all the same.
Time and again, I come back to the wellspring of the late Brennan Manning, whose entire ministry here on Earth was driving home this simple truth: God loves you. Period. End of story. No exceptions. No exclusions. That’s the great mystery, now solved and outlined before you. There are a wealth of quotes I could draw upon that drive home that point, but I settle on this one. “Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.” That’s who you are. That’s who I am. That’s who we all are.
And that’s the “mystery” of the Scriptures, the mystery Jesus laid bare before all of us, the mystery he lived and revealed not merely in the teaching of the Scriptures, but in his dying and rising. This is God’s great plan: to love you beyond death, beyond reason, beyond measure. It really is that simple. Amen.
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