The Risen Life

Sunday, April 11, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 24:13-35

Dear friends in Christ, grace and peace. Amen

Seven miles is a long walk. I like that Luke includes this little detail in the on-going story of that first Easter Sunday. Walking is something we can all relate to, a universal experience and when you combine walking with talking it is easy to picture what was happening on the road to Emmaus.

Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, ¹⁶but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. ¹⁷And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. ¹⁸Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?”

Keep in mind this is Easter Sunday, the same day as what we read and heard about last week. The death of Jesus is still fresh on the minds and hearts of his followers. They are sad. The resurrection is not real for them, yet. But that was about to change for these two walkers.

What is it like for you this first Sunday after Easter?

Is the resurrection real for you or do you still find yourself at the foot of the cross? Feeling sad, distraught, anxious, and lost?

You may be thinking to yourself that nothing has changed in a week. The news cycle is the same. Your family issues are the same. Our world is the same.

Notice what happens on the Emmaus road.

The two walkers are incredulous that this stranger does not know what happened in Jerusalem and so they tell him.

They had hoped Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel. To set them free from Roman oppression. They tell this stranger what happened to Jesus. He was condemned to death by hanging on a cross and then they hear reports that the tomb was empty, and the women had seen a vision of angels, but they were not sure if these reports were true or not.

Then this stranger says the strangest thing – “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! ²⁶Was it not necessary that the Messiah^[^j^] should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.

Why does it take so long for our hearts to catch up to God’s truth? To believe what the scriptures testify to concerning Jesus.

What happens on the road to Emmaus is exactly what needs to happen to us if we are going to realize and live a risen life.

The defining moment in this story is the scriptures being opened for these two walkers. They do not realize what is happening at the time, but they feel their hearts burning as the story is told to them by Jesus himself.

What is happening to these two walkers is that the resurrected Jesus is being reveled to them in that conversation, in that moment. They are moving from death to life as he opens the scriptures to them. “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Do you know that feeling? Have you experienced the burning heart?

It was in the summer of 1979 that I first experienced the burning heart that came as a result of the scriptures being opened up in my life. I began to understand and see the presence of the risen Christ in my own life.

It is both a comforting and unsettling thing to realize and understand because you start to see the world as well as your own life in a new way.

You begin living a life knowing the risen Christ is literally dwelling inside you.

A life where Jesus has taken up residence in you.

It came about from simply reading the scriptures. There was a new intentionality for me to read and consume God’s Word.

I was beginning to listen to the story of Jesus in a new way and while I did not know what to call it at the time, that summer marked the beginning for me of understanding for myself that a risen life is a life lived because of the indwelling of the resurrected Jesus in my life.

We are walking the Emmaus road right now.

Jesus has completed his work. He has gone to the cross. God raised him from the dead.

Now, right now, His resurrected life is in you and me. Once the joy of Easter is revealed and realized in our lives, then comes the work of Easter.

Living the risen life. Living in a manner that revels the resurrected life of Jesus is inside of you. That His life is embodied in your life.

The risen life is lived without fear, without anxiety, without worry.

Christ lives in you. His new life is your new life.

When you understand the scriptures, the story of Jesus and what He tells us to do, then you are living the risen life.

When you are obedient to His Word, the risen life is at work in you and the door to that risen life is the cross. This was true for Jesus and it is true for us as well.

This is what the Apostle Paul means in Galatians when he says – I have been crucified with Christ; ²⁰and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

The Emmaus walkers do one other important thing.

As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. ²⁹But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them.

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

Christ is in you and you will see Him in the breaking of the bread.

Christ is in you and you will see Him as the scriptures are opened up for you.

And Cleopas and his friend remind us of one more very important thing. They invited Jesus to stay with them. That invitation was important. Because of that invitation they saw Him, with new eyes, with the eyes of faith. And they knew as their hearts burned that they were now living the risen life.

A life free from fear.

A life grounded in joy.

A life knowing, in our hearts that God has us covered.

This is the risen life.

This is Christ in you.

For His presence and the new life He gives we say thanks be to God. Amen

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

The book of Romans is a letter. An actual letter. Like, a letter written by hand and then sent to someone else for them to read. Paul, the author of this letter, wrote a lot of letters. Paul was an apostle, that is, someone who is sent – in this case, he is one who is sent to preach the good news of Jesus Christ to the furthest reaches of the known world. He’s really, really good at it.

At the time that Paul writes this letter to the church in Rome, he’s been doing this work for probably twenty years and is at the peak of his career. He’s developed a great pattern in his work: visit a place, get to know the people, continually share his faith with them, help gather a community of believers from all walks of life, and stay with them while they learn how to be followers of Jesus. Then Paul leaves – after all, he’s got other places to visit and more people to teach. He is an apostle – he is sent. But he doesn’t leave the church abandoned. He writes letters back to these churches, especially when he hears about crises or conflicts. Sometimes they need comfort, sometimes challenge, sometimes critique, but always he writes as one they know and love. They welcome his input.

The letter to the Romans is not like that. Paul has never been to Rome. There is already a Christian church there, one brought over likely from Jerusalem very early in the faith. And the church in Rome has recently seen conflict. A few years before the writing of this letter, the Roman emperor expelled all the Jews from Rome. Because Christianity was effectively a form of Judaism at the time, Christians were also exiled. After the emperor died and the Jewish Christians returned, they found a church that had continued to grow and develop – this time with Gentile Christians.

It’s hard for us to understand how shocking and despicable this would have been. Two weeks ago I preached on Acts 10, and how Peter’s vision of God calling all animals clean and good to eat flew in the face of millennia of culture, history, and society for Jewish Christians. Jesus himself was Jewish and kept these laws – surely if anyone else wanted to be Christian, they could likewise follow these rules. Peter’s vision and the general movement of the church revealed otherwise.

That didn’t mean it made things easy. It is hard to let go of tradition and expectation and legislation as the Spirit moves us to new places. I hear people struggle when someone sits in their pew or wears sweatpants to church. Let’s be honest: those are enormously trivial things. If still we grind our teeth at the thought of these worthless infractions how much more might faithful people be driven to despair by moving on from the purity laws ordained by God?

This is the faith community to which Paul writes. He writes to a church redefining and fighting. It is a church that feels a deep rift, a painful split, one that goes deep into matters of identity and righteousness, one that threatens to dissolve into name-calling and condemning and finger-pointing and disgrace to the very name of God in whose name they mean to gather – and if we’re honest, we know how that feels. Those fears are not unfamiliar.

So how does Paul start his letter? He has no standing in that church in Rome. They don’t even know who he is – and if they do, it’s possible that they might still remember him as he was in his youth, an aggressive persecutor of the early faith. What can he say that would possibly invite them to listen to him, to hear the word he will share, to receive the message that he hopes will join them together in the work of the gospel?

He keeps it simple: he tells them the truth. He tells them who he is, and it is fully wrapped up in who Jesus is. His self-introduction is the story of the gospel. Nothing he can say about himself means more than who he is in Jesus Christ.

He tells them he wants to come see them, that he wants to be with them, that he hopes he can share some spiritual gift – but even more than that, so that they might mutually encourage each other in faith. He doesn’t want to come to them because he’s better than them, because he can fix them so they can get things right, because they’re obviously sinful mess-ups who just haven’t been taught the truth. No, he wants to join them for mutual encouragement in faith. He wants to walk with them. He hopes he has something to offer them in his teaching and leadership, but just the same, he knows he will grow by being with them as well.

What if that’s how it’s supposed to be? What if we’re supposed to talk about what we believe and why, not because we’ve got it right and we want to establish our superior knowledge, but because we know that God works through our mutual encouragement in faith? What if we were not ashamed of the gospel, not afraid of getting it wrong, not worried that someone would think we were weird for talking about what we believe and why and then asking others the same? What if we trusted that the power of God was at work in this mutual encouragement? What if we were not so proud and short-sighted as to think that the way we see God is the only way God works in the world? What if we actually believed that God is at work in the world, that God has already been working long before we showed up, that we arrive as much to learn as to teach?

Ah, but I know the argument against it: we’re supposed to keep polite conversation, right? What don’t you talk about at the dinner table? Religion and politics, right? Look where it’s gotten us. It’s gotten us to a place where we can no longer have civil discourse, where we are more likely to condemn than to seek to understand, where we claim a Christian can only look one way, live one place, vote one direction, take one moral position. It’s gotten us built up and walled off and fighting against our own beloved members of the family of God.

So don’t do it. Take Paul’s example. Tell people who you are. Tell them where you’re from. Tell them what you believe. And then invite them to do the same. Make your story of faith as natural a part of your introduction as where you work and where you live and who’s in your family. And when someone’s story is different, listen to it. Hear it. See God at work in it. Be amazed. Allow for the mutual encouragement of faith, because this is how the gospel is shared.

No matter where you go from here, no matter where you find yourself, no matter what comes next for you – you can do this. You are called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel which is the power of God for salvation for everyone who has faith – no matter what. Thanks be to God. Amen.

The Risen Life

Sunday, April 11, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 24:13-35

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

Reclaiming our Place as Creatures of God

Living a New Life with Christ

The Power of God’s Love

About Augustana

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Worship Hours

The Risen Life

Sunday, April 11, 2021 Pastor Mark Aune

Luke 24:13-35

Past Sermons

Sermons

Mutually Encouraged by Faith

Sunday, May 19, 2019 Pastor Megan Torgerson

Romans 1:1-17

Past Sermons

About Augustana

Quick Links

Contact Us

Worship Hours

Sunday, April 11, 2021
Pastor Mark Aune

Sunday, May 19, 2019
Pastor Megan Torgerson