John
20:19-23, 31 *
+In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit+
Where has this
week after Easter taken you? Have these
few days, this relatively short amount of time since that glorious Easter celebration
last Sunday, have just these few days taken you right back to life as
usual? That Easter was a nice day,
right, but life goes on now. And at
least to a certain extent, life quickly seems to slip back to the same old
things – back to rushing and running around, back to deadlines and stress and
grief.
Or maybe this week
after Easter has taken you somewhere else.
Maybe just these few short days on this side of Easter on the
calendar have given you a brand new outlook on things. We’re already past Easter! It can’t be long until summer is here. So our attention turns to “what’s next…”
Where has this
week after Easter taken you? As we
ponder the account of the evening of the very first Easter together, we realize
that a risen Lord has a lot to say to us not only in the message of his
resurrection but also in where this message will take us. In the aftermath of Christ’s victory at
On the evening of
that very first Easter, Jesus’ disciples were huddled together in an upper room
somewhere in
Without a doubt
the disciples were filled with the same type of concerns that we just talked
about a moment ago. Only, their lives
didn’t just slip back into the same-old life as usual before Easter. These men had betrayed their Lord, turned
their backs and ran. They had witnessed
the awful events of Good Friday; their Lord was pierced; he bled; he died. And if they asked themselves “Where were we”
or “What did we do for our Lord,” the only answers they would have had were
“nowhere” and “nothing”. Their lives
were quickly slipping into the pit of despair.
And what’s
next? It was the inevitable question
they had to ask themselves. The Jewish
leaders had the Lord arrested; they put him on an unfair trial and sent him to
death – to a most cruel death. Now it
was the evening of “that first day of the week”, the day of the
resurrection. But the disciples’
attention wasn’t anywhere near that.
With the horrifying question, “is there anything better in store for us”
burning in their minds, we see “the disciples were together, with the doors
locked for fear of the Jews.”
The disciples were
absolutely crushed by their guilt and fear.
This is what was foremost on their minds. Sure, by now they had heard the
reports…reports from Mary and Peter and John and the disciples on the road to
Emmaus, reports of an empty tomb and burial linens neatly folded and a risen
Lord! But what did it all mean? They didn’t grasp yet the full richness and
all of the implications of a risen Lord.
It was at just
this moment, however, when the most extraordinary thing happened. “Jesus came and stood among them and said,
‘Peace be with you!’” It certainly was
not to congratulate the disciples on a Holy Week job well-done that the Lord
was standing there. In fact, he would
have had every right to stand before his disciples filled with a righteous
wrath. But he didn’t. In perfect mercy and in perfect love, he
instead brought a gift that only he could give: true peace.
Jesus was standing
there right in the middle of his disciples and his only message was this: On the night I was betrayed I promised you:
“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you”. Tonight I’m here to tell you that what I promised
is an accomplished fact. In me you have
the peace of sins forgiven; all is right with God; you have salvation. In me you have the peace of knowing that you
are in the hands of a God who only loves you no matter what the circumstances
are that you find yourselves in, in this life.
Look and see: look at my hands; look at my side. The marks of the warfare are in my
flesh. Yet I stand before you in the
flesh, resurrected, the physical proof of eternal victory. So keep your attention on my resurrection. All that Christ promised his disciples in the
word “peace” was theirs based on the objective fact of the resurrection.
It is the same
promise Christ holds out for you. Just
like the disciples back then, we as Christ’s disciples have gathered together
in the aftermath of Easter as well. We
too have heard the Easter message. But
where has our attention been? So often
we find ourselves thinking that there is nothing so
necessary as to hold on to, to dwell on our own problems, our fears, our
sadness, our guilt. We know what we’ve
done, what we’ve left undone. We know
who we’ve hurt. We know that we too have
betrayed God. And who knows what the
future holds in store for us?
Suddenly the
Easter message that was celebrated last week becomes last week’s news. We want something more practical for
today. Have we grasped all of the
implications of a resurrected Lord? We
turn our attention away from the resurrection.
Yet, while we are
wrapped up in ourselves and lost in our own sin, Jesus comes to us as
well. He brings that same gift of true
peace with him that he brought to his disciples. He says to you: look at my hands, my pierced
side. The price was paid for you, he
says to you, and now, “because I live, you also will live.” Through your baptism you were buried with me
in my death and you were raised in a new life of faith. You are at peace with God – He doesn’t hate
you because of me. The victory is won
and now I am in loving control of all things for you. So keep your attention on my resurrection.
The mission that
we have following Easter requires us to have as our center of focus the risen
Lord. He has won our salvation; his
resurrection guarantees that. Now with our attention on the resurrection, we go
forth confident in our mission, confident that he has given us the equipment we
need to carry it out.
Notice
that up to this point Jesus has not done any sending yet. In order for
the disciples to be sent on their Easter mission, they needed the right
preparation first. They got this in the
gospel foundation laid with Jesus word of peace and forgiveness. Now that the gospel foundation is laid,
however, Jesus turns the disciples’ attention, and ours, to the mission at
hand.
Look at the
response of the disciples when the Lord pronounced his peace to them. “The disciples were overjoyed when they saw
the Lord.” Not at all surprisingly the
gospel comfort to convicted sinners resulted in the highest joy. And Jesus doesn’t let that joy become
stagnant in them. Immediately he
repeated his promise of peace, but this time he did it with a new focus
attached. This peace that Jesus had just
proclaimed to his disciples is one that has much farther-reaching
destinations. So Jesus said, “As the
Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
It all goes back
to the Father, first. The Father sent
the Son. The Apostle Paul writes in
Galatians, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman,
born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full
rights of sons.” Jesus had been sent by
the Father to accomplish our salvation.
Jesus completed his goal. Through
his perfect life, death and resurrection he won forgiveness for the whole
world. But the work of getting this
message out is not done yet.
So Jesus sends his
disciples out to carry on the work of spreading the news of his
resurrection. And in order to carry out
their mission, Jesus gives them a two-fold special tool. First he gives a special gift of the Holy
Spirit. “And with that he breathed on
them and said, ‘receive the Holy Spirit.’”
The Lord of life, who breathed life into the dust of the earth, also has
created life where there once were only dead sinners. It is his life that his disciples have
been given; it is his Spirit given to them as a gift in order to carry
out their mission.
Jesus also gives
the gift of what our catechism describes as the “keys.” He said “If you forgive anyone his sins, they
are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” He gives to his followers the ability, the
right and the responsibility to forgive the sins of those who repent. He promises that in him the sins they forgive
are truly forgiven. However, for those
who refuse to repent, their own holding to their own sins will truly be
recognized as well. With these tools,
all of Christ’s disciples are sent forth on our Easter Mission.
Do you ever feel,
though, like you’ve been left a little short-handed? Have you ever felt even a little
ashamed? To the one who repents, release
from sins. To the one who refuses: the
sins are bound to them. Is that really all that we can offer this
world? Isn’t there something more? Isn’t there something a little friendlier,
perhaps, or a little less controversial?
Our sinful flesh thinks, “what
foolishness.” We want to offer the
advice for a better life, or the key to happiness, or some good rules to live
by. We think that our Lord has left us
short-handed and that we need something more than what Christ has given us in order
to carry out our Easter mission.
But our risen Lord
has certainly not left us empty-handed.
His payment was sufficient for us.
The blood shed by the Lamb has covered you. His very own body and blood are given to you
for the forgiveness of all of your sins, even the sins of our lack of trust in
him.
He has also given
us the same forgiveness to offer and has sent us to proclaim his peace. We do this using the keys he has given
us. We share what has been recorded for
us – Law and Gospel. And he has promised
that he is at work through it. Listen to
these words from the end of this chapter…“But these are written that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may
have life in his name.” Through the word
of forgiveness we proclaim, through the word of a resurrected Lord who
guarantees that the price of sin has been paid for fully and completely,
through this word the Spirit creates faith.
As your life takes
you forward in these days after Easter, realize the mission you have been sent
on. You are God’s messengers carrying
his good news of forgiveness assured in a resurrected Lord. You have been sent to proclaim the
gospel. And we carry his message out. Each of us goes out each and every day into a
world that is absolutely consumed with and crushed by the very same guilt and
the very same fear that you and I experience, the very same that we see in
these disciples that first Easter night.
But you have the words of life to give them. My Lord has forgiven me, and he has a message
for you: “Peace be
with you.”
This is our Easter
Mission. May God grant that many more
will hear about his peace and his forgiveness as we carry it out; and may God
grant that many will believe and have eternal life. Amen.