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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The Easter celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord is not over, but in a sense it has just begun. Today in some sense may be “lower” than last Sunday’s “high” festival, but today’s Gospel Reading picks up where last Sunday’s left off, today telling the events both of that Resurrection Day evening and of the week that followed, as St. John largely uniquely reports. As some of us heard at Matins last Sunday, Mary Magdalene saw Jesus standing near the tomb and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord” (John 20:14, 18). The Divinely‑inspired St. John does not tell us the disciples’ reaction to Mary Magdalene’s announcement, such as whether or not they believed it, but, as we heard today, when ten of the disciples themselves saw the Lord, Who miraculously came and stood among them and showed them His hands and side, they were glad—sorrow over His departure, if not fear of the Jews, faded into the background. As the Father sent Jesus, even so Jesus sent them. Those disciples in turn repeatedly told Thomas, who was not with them when Jesus came, “We have seen the Lord!” Perhaps those disciples even mentioned to Thomas their having verified Jesus’s identity from His hands and side. With Thomas is where we first encounter the matter of “Believing the Apostles’ words”.
Earlier in St. John’s Gospel account, Thomas exhorted his fellow disciples to go with Jesus to Jerusalem that they might die with him (John 11:16), but Thomas did not know where Jesus was going ultimately (John 14:5-6). In today’s Gospel Reading, the apostles told Thomas “We have seen the Lord”, but Thomas refused to believe the apostles’ words. Thomas emphatically said that, unless he would see and touch the mark of the nails and spear in Jesus’s hands and side, he would never believe. Bible commentators differ as to whether Thomas was seriously demanding proof of Jesus’s resurrection that he could touch or whether Thomas rejected the whole idea of the resurrection, either from shock over the seeming tragedy of the crucifixion or from thoroughgoing skepticism. Regardless, Jesus later called Thomas faithless, doubting, unbelieving, disbelieving.
Do you and I maybe know people who are that faithless, doubting, unbelieving, disbelieving? People who refuse to believe the apostles’ words? People who demand proof that they can touch of things that they should believe when they are told? What about our refusals to believe the apostles’ words? Do we altogether reject the authority of their words? Do we reject the whole idea of miracles such as Jesus’s resurrection? Do we reject only parts of Holy Scripture such as those that we do not like because they tell us that we cannot do the things we want to do? At a minimum, even we who believe fail to live out the apostles’ words as we should.
As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 1:1-2:2), if we say we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us; we make God out to be a liar, and His Word is not in us. But, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness by the blood of Jesus His Son. Jesus is the propitiation (the sacrifice that atones) for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins of the whole world. Jesus makes peace between God and sinners. When we repent and believe, then that peace is ours.
Not only Thomas but the rest of the twelve disciples might also have expected Jesus’s rebuke for their behavior Maundy Thursday night and Good Friday, but instead Jesus repeatedly greeted them all with “Peace!”—peace that, likely more than a greeting, was a descriptor of their saved relationship with God, thanks to Jesus’s crucifixion, witnessed by His nail‑marked hands and spear‑marked side. Those markings showed He was the same Jesus Who was crucified, and that Jesus Who was crucified was still the Word of God become human flesh—His resurrection did not change that. Yet, Jesus came to His disciples as the Resurrected Lord, being present in a way really beyond our understanding, a way that allowed Him to come through the locked doors, as He had left the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, passed through a Nazareth crowd (Luke 4:30), and exited the tomb before the stone was rolled back (see Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration VII:100). And, the One sent by the Father, out of His great love for the world, so sent the apostles, to effect the same peace with which He had greeted them, forgiving the sins of those who believe the apostles’ words.
Not even a whole day went by between Jesus’s resurrection and His establishing the Office of the Holy Ministry—that is how important the Office of the Holy Ministry is! Those who had seen Him were essentially ordained with a special gift of the Holy Spirit, in order to minister to those who had not seen Him as they had but who would believe through their words (John 17:18, 20). For the benefit of the Church, the exercise of God’s authority to forgive sins or to withhold forgiveness was not given to Peter alone nor was it given to more than the Twelve and their successors, pastors today. Jesus’s instituting the Office of the Holy Ministry is important enough to have been written in St. John’s Gospel account, so that you and I might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing we might have life in His Name. As the Epistle Reading put it, that which the apostles saw with their eyes and touched with their hands they proclaim to us, and, as we believe the apostles’ words, we have fellowship with them and more importantly with God.
In the Gospel Reading St. John treated his own writing as Holy Scripture, which is how we receive it and preach it. And, we recognize that God’s Word also comes to us in ways that we can touch. Holy Baptism combines water and the Word, putting God’s Triune Name upon us and bringing us into His covenant of grace, perhaps even on the eighth day of our lives. Words of Holy Absolution are spoken to us individually by our pastor after we privately confess the sins that trouble us most. We confess privately not because we are required to do so but because our souls need both the special care and the comfort of being absolved individually. Because the pastor forgives our sins in the same Triune Name of God, we who repent and believe have no fear of being put out of the communion of the Church (compare John 9:22; 7:13; 19:38). And, that Holy Communion combines bread and wine with the Word so that, at a “closed” altar rail, we receive Christ’s body and blood, really, physically present with us in a way really beyond our understanding. Jesus’s incarnation continues, and He extends it here to bread and wine for us to receive His body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins, and so for life and salvation. We do not only look at the water, the pastor, the bread and the wine, but we also hear and believe the apostles’ words about both what these things are and what they do for us who receive them in faith. And, we tell others that we have seen the Lord in these ways.
We may not know whether or not the disciples at first believed Mary Magdalene’s announcement that she had seen the Lord, but we know that they proclaimed what they heard and we know that our “Believing the Apostles’ words” makes all the difference for us, who have not seen Him in quite the same way---the difference between being blessed or not. As we heard in the First Reading (Acts 4:32-35), the apostles gave their testimony to the Lord’s resurrection with great power, and the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul. Sadly, not everyone will believe the apostles’ words, but we who repent and do believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, are blessed, already now, having life in His Name.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +