+ 2nd Sunday of Easter – April 7th, 2024 +
Series B: Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 1:1-2:2; John 20:19-31
Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church
Milton, WA
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Jesus breathes on His disciples. How’s that for a welcome?! You’re behind locked doors, scared out of your wits, the women have reported Jesus is risen and then, all of a sudden, Jesus appears out of nowhere. Well, not out of nowhere. Out of the grave. But He’s no ghost. No figment of their collective imaginations. No hallucination. “Look at my hands; my side.” He is real. He is alive. He is risen! And risen Jesus can do whatever He wants to. Locked doors and lowly bread and wine are no problem for His crucified and risen body.
Jesus doesn’t wait for an invitation. He enters. “Peace be with you.” The Hebrew word is “shalom.” Shalom is a blessing and a greeting all at once. Shalom is harmony, wholeness, everything in its place. All is well. Genesis 1 before the fall: very good. “Peace (Shalom) I leave with you, my peace (my Shalom) I give to you. Not as the world gives, do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
This is exactly why Jesus is sent by the Father. That’s what Jesus’ death and resurrection mean: peace for His disciples and for you. For the Father is well pleased by His obedient, Crucified and Risen Son. His sacrifice has restored life, to His disciples, to you, to me. Sin, death and the devil are defeated. You are redeemed. You are loved. You are at peace with God and God is at peace with you in those precious wounds. Jesus is sent from the ark of the heavens, a flesh and bone dove, to bring peace through His flesh and blood on the cross.
“As the Father has sent me to Shalom the world to Himself, even so I am sending you.” And when Jesus said this he breathed on the disciples – a little Pentecost - the big one is coming, 50 days after Easter. The God who once breathed life into Adam’s dusty lungs, the God who breathed upon the waters of creation and parted the Red Sea waters, the God who breathed life into the valley of dry bones now breathes on His disciples.
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Have you noticed that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are always together? At His Baptism. Good Friday. On Easter. At Pentecost. In his Church. In the Word.
Jesus is born to breathe our toxic, sin poisoned air, to suffer, die and give up His breath on Good Friday – suffocated by sin - so that he can breathe new life into our lifeless graves by rising from His own. From the disciple’s panic room to His people huddled in His Church, wherever they are gathered, whatever fear, doubt, confusion or sin you are struggling with - Jesus gives his breath of life to his people.
Jesus doesn’t leave His church gasping for forgiveness. If the church is going to preach and proclaim, she’s going to need breath; and if you as Christians are going to give a reason for the hope that is within you (1 Peter 3:15), you need mouths to speak, words to declare. You need Jesus’ breath. His life. O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will breath out your praise.
Jesus ordained His apostles by this breath. Jesus gives them authority to do what God alone can do - forgive sin. He gives an Office. A Spirit-breathing, life-giving office. A preaching and hearing office. Given to forgive and retain sins. That’s what God calls pastors to do. That’s what the church is for: a wind tunnel of the Holy Spirit, bringing you forgiveness, from Jesus to through his appointed means to you.
That’s the hard part for us - understanding and believing that the Spirit is at work in lowly, ordinary, daily stuff of creation. Words. Water. Bread and wine. Fellow sinners.
Thomas gets a bad reputation. But honestly, we’re far more like Thomas. So often for us, seeing is believing. A friendship that reconciles after a huge argument? An end to constant illness? A politician who keeps their promises? Nothing to worry about or be anxious over? Sure. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Problem is, believing isn’t always seeing. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). God masks Himself. Jesus looks, lives, and dies like a man – yet faith says, “Jesus is Lord.”
You go about your daily work, sweat, labor, toil – not always whistling while you work – yet faith says, “This labor is holy, divine work, for I am God’s instrument for the good of others.”
We get sick, lose jobs, loved ones die, we hurt, cry, suffer – yet faith says, “I am a child of God, Baptized and loved by Him.” And nothing and no one can snatch you out of his pierced hands.
Believing is not seeing. To believe is to confess that God is where God seems not to be, to confess that God is good when God seems to be bad, to confess that what is really real is not what you see, but what you hear.
Just like our twin, Thomas, we want something real. He throws down a gauntlet for Jesus. The ultimate reality show: “So you think you a dead man can rise from the grave?” “Just let me see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side or else I will not believe.”
Thomas may have been many things – stubborn, hard-headed, confused, and most of all unbelieving – but John never uses the word doubt. All the other disciples didn’t believe the women’s report at first either. But only Thomas gets the name - doubting Thomas. And yet, thank God for Thomas. St. Gregory once said, “More does the doubt of Thomas help us to believe than the faith of the disciples who believed.” Jesus takes the triple-dog-dare. Gives him hard proof. “Go ahead, Thomas; read my wounds like Braille; put your finger here; place your hand in my side. Do not disbelieve but believe.”
“My Lord and my God.” That’s the kind of confession that only the breath of the Lord can create. Our Lord did not condemn him. He gave him flesh and blood peace. Peace be with you, Thomas and all of us, his twins.
This is how our Lord works. He takes your doubt, your unbelief, your sin and death and He makes it His own. He gives you the kind of peace that knows that no matter how great your sin, Christ’s love – His peace – is greater. Jesus’ breath creates believing for you as he did for Thomas.
What Jesus did for Thomas and the disciples after the resurrection, He does for your every Sunday until He returns. Jesus speaks peace. This Crucified and risen Jesus still blusters His holy breath upon His church. He calls and sends pastors to announce His holy absolution into your ears. He pours out his body and blood from those holy scars to fill the chalice. The Spirit hovers over the waters of Baptism to make you a new creation. In His Church, by His Spirit you get to see and touch and hear the Crucified and Risen Lord.
We’re not given to see or touch the way Thomas did. “Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.” But we get a beatitude from Jesus. Blessed are you.
For these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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