Sermon-Sunday-April 15, 2007
Second Sunday in Easter
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus has defeated sin, death and the devil. He has walked out of the tomb, and He has appeared to Mary Magdalene and now He is appearing to His disciples. And where does He find them?? He finds them in hiding, out of fear. After the humiliation that He endured at the hands of the chief-priests and the Roman authorities, after the beatings that He endured, after suffering and dying on the cross and then walking out of the tomb victoriously three days later, He finds His disciples hiding in fear. He told them what was going to happen. He told them it wasn’t going to be easy. He told them that He was going to have to go through death in order to bring about new-life.
And yet at His shining moment of victory they are in hiding. If they were half as devoted to and trusting in Jesus as they claimed they were, they should have been lined up outside of the tomb waiting to give Him a high-five as He walked out of the tomb. OK, maybe that’s a little much. But for all their claims that they would never deny Jesus, and all their talk about following Jesus and all their claims about who would be the greatest among them in the kingdom of Heaven, after all of that, when things got rough, did they stand defiantly in the face of their persecutors??? No, they went into hiding.
These are the founders of Christianity. This is Peter and Matthew, and James and John and all the disciples and probably many of the early believers. Imagine how we might have acted. Truth be told, any one of us would have been right up there with them. I mean these guys faced real persecution. Their lives were literally on the line. We’re resistant to sharing our faith with our neighbor out of fear of embarrassment and rejection, but these guys faced death. So, in a sense, it’s no wonder that they went into hiding.
Nevertheless, this still had to be distressing for Jesus, knowing the magnitude of what has just taken place. In His awareness of the new reality that had just broken through in His resurrection, it had to be somewhat disappointing for Him to find those in whom He had called to proclaim the good news of this new reality, and the good news of the defeat of sin, death, and the devil, and the good news of the gift of eternal life given to those who put their faith in Him, it had to disappointing to Jesus to find them hiding in fear, doubt, and confusion.
But that’s where He finds them. The door was locked and they were hiding for fear of the Jews. But Jesus appears right before them, right in the midst of them. And does He berate them for their lack of faith? Does He say, " You know what I thought you had what it takes, but I guess I was wrong, I am going to find someone else?"
As deserving as this group might have been to hear that, that is not what Jesus says to them. Instead He stands among them and says "Peace be with you." And when Jesus says "Peace be with you." It’s not said in the same way we say it. When we say it, it’s a wish or maybe even a prayer. But when Jesus says it, it is a declaration. He is not wishing them peace, He is bringing them peace. In the midst of their cowering in fear and confusion, He is bringing them peace. He brings peace in the same way that God the Father brought about creation; through His Word. He speaks and it is so. He said "peace be with you" and there was peace among them.
And then, as if to address any lingering doubt that there might have been after that He shows them His hands and His side to visually and tangibly confirm for them that standing right there among them in their midst, was the risen Lord Jesus, the risen Savior. He is no ghost, He is no apparition, and He is certainly not a mere metaphor, He is the risen and victorious Messiah and thanks be to God He does not leave them in their fear, doubt, and confusion.
He is fulfilling the promise that He made to them before going to the cross; the promise that He will turn their grief into joy. And it says that they rejoiced after seeing the marks in His hands and on His side. And then He repeats His declaration of peace and lets them know that He now sends them as the Father sent Him. This is their moment of commissioning, and then He gives them everything that they will need to fulfill this commissioning by breathing the Holy Sprit on them.
They had been freed from the clutches of sin and now the Holy Spirit has been poured upon them. This is the same Holy Spirit who was poured upon you in the fulfillment of the prayer that was made over you at your baptism, after you also had been welcomed into the family of God and raised up in new life. Indeed in baptism, the Holy Spirit comes upon you and fills you with the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and fills you with the same joy that can only come with being in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus.
You are given the same commissioning that those disciples have been given. Jesus sums up their commissioning, and yours by bestowing upon His disciples, then and now, the authority to forgive and retain sins. And that authority comes not from you, but from God’s Word. It’s the same authority that Jesus displayed when He said "Peace be with you." But Jesus knew that for the disciples to truly have peace, they had to believe that He was bringing them peace and so He showed them that, when He verified for them that He is indeed the risen Messiah by showing them the wounds from His crucifixion and then breathing the Holy Spirit upon them.
Now, in God’s Word you have the authority not to pray for your neighbor’s forgiveness, not request it, but to declare it to them. But just as it was necessary for Jesus to show the disciples that He was risen and thus that He does bring them peace, you are called to show your neighbor that they are forgiven by loving them, not just as yourself but as Christ has loved you.
The authority to forgive sins is not simply about being an arbiter of right and wrong, it is about continuing the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. To have sin is to be blind to that revelation. In John 3:19 Jesus tells you that light has come into the world but that men love the darkness instead of the light. Forgiveness of sin is about revealing the risen Lord Jesus to your neighbor and allowing the Holy Spirit, through you to reach out to your neighbor, and bring them out of that darkness and into the light of forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus.
This is the darkness that Thomas was trapped in as he entered the story in today’s lesson. The disciples tell Thomas that they have seen the risen Lord. But Thomas refuses to believe without proof. He demands that he be given the same tangible proof that all the other disciples were given; the opportunity to see and touch the marks of the crucifixion. And when Jesus appears to Thomas and declares peace to him and allows Thomas to touch the marks of the crucifixion, he can only do one thing, confess Jesus as Lord when Thomas says "My Lord and my God."
And lest you think that Jesus has forgotten about you and your need to daily experience the revelation of the risen Lord Jesus, He promises in today’s lesson "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." This is not a conditional statement, it’s another declaration, it’s a promise. Jesus is promising that He will continue to be revealed to those who don’t have the advantage of seeing the physical appearance of the risen Christ, as the disciples did. He reveals Himself in the proclaimed Word; the very Word being proclaimed to you right now. He reveals Himself through His supper which you will come forward and partake in just a few minutes, and through your fellowship with each other the risen Lord Jesus is revealed.
Daily He reveals Himself to you and confirms for you that you have been rescued from the darkness of sin and confusion and brought into the light of forgiveness and the risen Lord Jesus; your Lord and your God.
Amen
Brothers and sisters,
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the risen Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus has defeated sin, death and the devil. He has walked out of the tomb, and He has appeared to Mary Magdalene and now He is appearing to His disciples. And where does He find them?? He finds them in hiding, out of fear. After the humiliation that He endured at the hands of the chief-priests and the Roman authorities, after the beatings that He endured, after suffering and dying on the cross and then walking out of the tomb victoriously three days later, He finds His disciples hiding in fear. He told them what was going to happen. He told them it wasn’t going to be easy. He told them that He was going to have to go through death in order to bring about new-life.
And yet at His shining moment of victory they are in hiding. If they were half as devoted to and trusting in Jesus as they claimed they were, they should have been lined up outside of the tomb waiting to give Him a high-five as He walked out of the tomb. OK, maybe that’s a little much. But for all their claims that they would never deny Jesus, and all their talk about following Jesus and all their claims about who would be the greatest among them in the kingdom of Heaven, after all of that, when things got rough, did they stand defiantly in the face of their persecutors??? No, they went into hiding.
These are the founders of Christianity. This is Peter and Matthew, and James and John and all the disciples and probably many of the early believers. Imagine how we might have acted. Truth be told, any one of us would have been right up there with them. I mean these guys faced real persecution. Their lives were literally on the line. We’re resistant to sharing our faith with our neighbor out of fear of embarrassment and rejection, but these guys faced death. So, in a sense, it’s no wonder that they went into hiding.
Nevertheless, this still had to be distressing for Jesus, knowing the magnitude of what has just taken place. In His awareness of the new reality that had just broken through in His resurrection, it had to be somewhat disappointing for Him to find those in whom He had called to proclaim the good news of this new reality, and the good news of the defeat of sin, death, and the devil, and the good news of the gift of eternal life given to those who put their faith in Him, it had to disappointing to Jesus to find them hiding in fear, doubt, and confusion.
But that’s where He finds them. The door was locked and they were hiding for fear of the Jews. But Jesus appears right before them, right in the midst of them. And does He berate them for their lack of faith? Does He say, " You know what I thought you had what it takes, but I guess I was wrong, I am going to find someone else?"
As deserving as this group might have been to hear that, that is not what Jesus says to them. Instead He stands among them and says "Peace be with you." And when Jesus says "Peace be with you." It’s not said in the same way we say it. When we say it, it’s a wish or maybe even a prayer. But when Jesus says it, it is a declaration. He is not wishing them peace, He is bringing them peace. In the midst of their cowering in fear and confusion, He is bringing them peace. He brings peace in the same way that God the Father brought about creation; through His Word. He speaks and it is so. He said "peace be with you" and there was peace among them.
And then, as if to address any lingering doubt that there might have been after that He shows them His hands and His side to visually and tangibly confirm for them that standing right there among them in their midst, was the risen Lord Jesus, the risen Savior. He is no ghost, He is no apparition, and He is certainly not a mere metaphor, He is the risen and victorious Messiah and thanks be to God He does not leave them in their fear, doubt, and confusion.
He is fulfilling the promise that He made to them before going to the cross; the promise that He will turn their grief into joy. And it says that they rejoiced after seeing the marks in His hands and on His side. And then He repeats His declaration of peace and lets them know that He now sends them as the Father sent Him. This is their moment of commissioning, and then He gives them everything that they will need to fulfill this commissioning by breathing the Holy Sprit on them.
They had been freed from the clutches of sin and now the Holy Spirit has been poured upon them. This is the same Holy Spirit who was poured upon you in the fulfillment of the prayer that was made over you at your baptism, after you also had been welcomed into the family of God and raised up in new life. Indeed in baptism, the Holy Spirit comes upon you and fills you with the Spirit of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord and fills you with the same joy that can only come with being in the presence of the risen Lord Jesus.
You are given the same commissioning that those disciples have been given. Jesus sums up their commissioning, and yours by bestowing upon His disciples, then and now, the authority to forgive and retain sins. And that authority comes not from you, but from God’s Word. It’s the same authority that Jesus displayed when He said "Peace be with you." But Jesus knew that for the disciples to truly have peace, they had to believe that He was bringing them peace and so He showed them that, when He verified for them that He is indeed the risen Messiah by showing them the wounds from His crucifixion and then breathing the Holy Spirit upon them.
Now, in God’s Word you have the authority not to pray for your neighbor’s forgiveness, not request it, but to declare it to them. But just as it was necessary for Jesus to show the disciples that He was risen and thus that He does bring them peace, you are called to show your neighbor that they are forgiven by loving them, not just as yourself but as Christ has loved you.
The authority to forgive sins is not simply about being an arbiter of right and wrong, it is about continuing the revelation of God in Christ Jesus. To have sin is to be blind to that revelation. In John 3:19 Jesus tells you that light has come into the world but that men love the darkness instead of the light. Forgiveness of sin is about revealing the risen Lord Jesus to your neighbor and allowing the Holy Spirit, through you to reach out to your neighbor, and bring them out of that darkness and into the light of forgiveness of sin through Christ Jesus.
This is the darkness that Thomas was trapped in as he entered the story in today’s lesson. The disciples tell Thomas that they have seen the risen Lord. But Thomas refuses to believe without proof. He demands that he be given the same tangible proof that all the other disciples were given; the opportunity to see and touch the marks of the crucifixion. And when Jesus appears to Thomas and declares peace to him and allows Thomas to touch the marks of the crucifixion, he can only do one thing, confess Jesus as Lord when Thomas says "My Lord and my God."
And lest you think that Jesus has forgotten about you and your need to daily experience the revelation of the risen Lord Jesus, He promises in today’s lesson "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." This is not a conditional statement, it’s another declaration, it’s a promise. Jesus is promising that He will continue to be revealed to those who don’t have the advantage of seeing the physical appearance of the risen Christ, as the disciples did. He reveals Himself in the proclaimed Word; the very Word being proclaimed to you right now. He reveals Himself through His supper which you will come forward and partake in just a few minutes, and through your fellowship with each other the risen Lord Jesus is revealed.
Daily He reveals Himself to you and confirms for you that you have been rescued from the darkness of sin and confusion and brought into the light of forgiveness and the risen Lord Jesus; your Lord and your God.
Amen
posted by Steve at 10:33 AM
1 Comments:
Cripes! Man, you are on a roll here-a few GREAT sermons in a row-I have to learn from you how are do it!
I loved the line: "But when Jesus says it, it is a declaration. He is not wishing them peace, He is bringing them peace." That is handing over the goods as Forde called it!
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