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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!)
We are one week into the Easter Season, on the Second Sunday of Easter. Today’s Gospel Reading primarily narrates events that took place both on Easter Day itself and one week later. In both cases, both on Easter Day and on the Sunday following, the resurrected Jesus came, stood among His disciples, and spoke peace to them. With the blessing of the Holy Spirit, this morning we will realize that the resurrected Jesus comes, stands among us, and speaks peace to us, not only on Easter Day and on the Sunday following, but whenever and wherever two or three are gathered in His Name (Matthew 18:20).
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, on the evening of Easter Day, Jesus’s disciples were gathered behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. The Divinely‑inspired St. John does not tell us precisely what the disciples feared about the Jews. To be sure, parts of three days earlier, some Jewish leaders had handed Jesus over to the Romans in order to be crucified, but by the time of the events in the Gospel Reading, Jesus had risen from the dead and appeared both to women who had reported His resurrection to His disciples (Matthew 28:9-10) and even to Peter, one of those disciples (Luke 24:24; confer 1 Corinthians 15:5). We do know that elsewhere in St. John’s Gospel account people would not speak openly about Jesus, much less confess Him, for fear that Jewish leaders would put them out of the synagogue (John 7:13; 9:22-23; 19:38; confer Graff, CPR 31:2, 34). Maybe Jesus’s disciples were afraid of being cut off from the fellowship of the church as they knew it and so gathered behind locked doors, and maybe Thomas was similarly afraid and so did not gather with them that first day of the week at all.
Of whom or of what are we afraid? Early Christians’ fear of the Jewish leaders and people arguably is long gone now, and, though others have taken their place in persecuting Christians, ultimately we have no real reason to be afraid of them or their persecution. For more than one year, many have feared and may continue to fear the coronavirus, in some cases even letting their fear keep them from gathering with the Church on the first day of the week, and, in some of those cases, on any other day of the week, too—their fear and its results effectively putting them in danger of being cut off from the fellowship of the church as they know it. Some fearful people even have, like Thomas, refused to do what they should do until certain conditions are met, conditions such as practicing social-distancing, wearing facemasks, or being vaccinated. By his absence, Thomas had missed the peace of Jesus on Easter Day, and Thomas refused to believe the other disciples when they told him that they had seen the Lord (confer John 17:20), much as the other disciples had refused to believe the women, when the women told those disciples that they had seen the Lord (John 20:18; Luke 24:11). In a sense, Thomas was not asking for more than what the women and the other disciples had received in seeing Jesus, including His hands and His side, but the problem was Thomas’s asking or demanding the sign (confer John 6:30), like some who taunted Jesus even while He hung on the cross: give us what we want, and then we will believe in You (Matthew 27:42; Mark 15:32). Elsewhere Jesus said those who seek for a sign are part of an evil and adulterous generation (Matthew 12:39; 16:4; Luke 11:29), and that is what we all are by nature, deserving of nothing but death here in time and torment in hell for eternity. As Jesus called Thomas to stop being unbelieving but to be believing, so Jesus calls us to stop our unbelief, the fear that goes with it, and all our other sins, and to trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s own sake.
As we heard in today’s Gospel Reading, the resurrected Jesus came, stood among His disciples, and spoke peace to them. Then, Jesus showed His disciples His hands and His side: His human hands pierced by the nails of His crucifixion (confer John 19:18; Psalm 22:16), and His human side pierced by the soldier’s spear confirming His death (John 19:34). Jesus’s death as God was a sufficient sacrifice to appease God’s righteous wrath over all sin. Jesus’s death on the cross objectively made peace between God and all sinful human beings, what today’s Epistle Reading (1 John 1:1-2:2) called the “propitiation” for the sins of the whole world, including your sins and my sins. Although we may not see, much less touch, the resurrected Jesus in the same way that Jesus’s disciples did, by the great power of the Holy Spirit working through their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord, as today’s First Reading described it (Acts 4:32-35), great grace is also upon us. Through faith, we see and touch the resurrected Jesus in His Word and Sacraments, preached and administered by the imperfect successors to the apostles whom He sends.
Because of all of the signs written in St. John’s Gospel account, we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and, by believing, we have life in His Name. He puts His Triune Name upon us in the waters of Holy Baptism, which works the forgiveness of sins, rescues us from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe the words and promises of God (Small Catechism, IV:6). Through the pastors to whom we privately confess our sins, God individually absolves us in that same Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Small Catechism, V:16). And, so baptized and absolved, we receive in the Sacrament of the Altar bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we there receive the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation (Small Catechism, VI:6). We receive the same Christ crucified and resurrected for us, Who is able to be present here in bread and wine with His Body and Blood, by the same supernatural power that allowed Him to be born of a Virgin’s womb, exit a sealed tomb, and enter a locked room (Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration, VIII:100).
In today’s Gospel Reading, when the resurrected Jesus came, stood among His disciples, and spoke peace to them the second time, the disciples apparently had no more fear of the Jews. And, as the resurrected Jesus comes, stands among us, and speaks peace to us, we do not fear anything, either. Of whom or of what should we be afraid? When we in sorrow turn away from our sins and trust God to forgive our sins for Jesus’s sake, then God forgive us our sinful natures and all our sins, whatever our sins might be. We have peace with God! God ultimately is the One Who could destroy our souls and bodies in hell, and, if we do not have to be afraid of Him or of that, then we do not need to fear the lesser possibility of anyone or anything else’s destroying our bodies but not our souls (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:4-5). For, if and when our bodies die, we will still be alive with the Lord (Matthew 22:32; Mark 12:27; Luke 20:38), and, on the Last Day, our bodies will be resurrected and reunited with our souls, and so then, in body and soul, we will experience the peace and joy of the presence of God for eternity, together with all who have gone before and come after us in the faith and fellowship of His Church.
With the blessing of the Holy Spirit, this morning we have realized that the resurrected Jesus comes, stands among us, and speaks peace to us. Jesus does not give peace as the world gives peace (John 14:27), and, in the world, we will have tribulation, but He has overcome the world, and so we take heart and still have peace (John 16:33)—peace with God, within ourselves, and with one another. In today’s Gospel Reading, the disciples’ fear of the Jews, arguably over being cut off from the Jews’ fellowship, was supplanted by peace and the authority to either forgive sins or withhold forgiveness and so to either admit-to or cut-off-from the fellowship of the Church. The exercise of that authority in Word and Sacraments gives us peace. And, as God says through the prophet Isaiah, though the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, His steadfast love (His “mercy”) will not depart from us, nor His covenant of peace be removed (Isaiah 54:10).
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 + + +