In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Christ is risen!

There’s a whole lot that could be said about today’s Gospel Reading. It relates the account of Christ’s Easter appearance to His disciples. It tells us about the gift of Holy Absolution. It teaches about our need to receive God’s gifts not just once, but repeatedly. It tells us about Thomas’ encounter with the risen Christ and the doubt that the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh likes to sow in our hearts. And it teaches us about the importance and purpose of Holy Scripture. In fact, the overarching purpose of our Gospel Reading – and of all Holy Scripture – is this:
“These [things] 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.”

So let us read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest those things that the risen Christ would say to us for our salvation.
“On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.'”

The disciples were behind locked doors and full of fear. The Jews had been successful in their plot to kill Jesus and there was the looming possibility that they might come for the disciples next. There was also talk about Jesus being alive. If so, then how would Jesus feel about Peter who had denied Him three times or the rest of the disciples who had abandoned Him?

The disciples were like Adam and Eve in their attempt to conceal themselves. They were sinners and they knew it. They not only denied and abandoned Christ, but they didn’t trust Him above all things either. They didn’t hold fast to His divine Word when He told them that He must suffer and die but would rise again on the third day.

As the disciples are contemplating all of this, and in spite of the fact that the doors were locked because of their fear, Jesus came to them and stood in the midst of this band of fearful sinners.
Jesus said to them: “Peace be with you.” This wasn’t just a friendly greeting. It’s Christ’s Word of absolution to these troubled souls.
Jesus is there to comfort the disciples with the forgiveness He’s won for them. He’s is their Savior. He’s put away their sin. He’s buried it in His empty tomb. Peter’s denial and the others’ abandonment was all forgiven because the risen Christ was there speaking ‘peace’ to their consciences that were weighed down by the burden of sin.

Then Jesus showed them where this forgiveness flowed from: presenting the wounds in His hands and side – wounds that He still bears to this day. He could have gotten rid of those marks in His resurrected body, but He chose to let them remain. Those marks in His hands and feet and side are marks of His incomparable, perfect, self-sacrificial love for His fallen creation. As we heard at the Easter Vigil, “By His wounds we have healing both now and forever.”

The disciples’ fear was turned into great joy and gladness when they beheld these marks of the crucifixion because they knew that it was Jesus who was in their midst. They knew that their Redeemer lived, they beheld Him with their own eyes in the flesh, and because of that, they knew there was truly nothing to fear.

We should see ourselves in the disciples. We’re weak, sinful people who are prone to denying Christ or abandoning Him when faced with persecution for our Christian faith. Our sinful nature doesn’t want to trust Jesus to handle our sins and to care for our lives. We often act like Christ doesn’t bear the marks of His crucifixion: as if He didn’t shed His holy, precious blood to atone for our sins and wash them away. We try to hide, cover up, excuse, or even deny our sinfulness.

And, as they should, these sins weigh on us because we really do know our transgressions and our sin is ever before us. So, as with the disciples, Christ comes into our midst to speak His life-giving Word: not once, but over and over again as often as we need to hear it (which, in this life is a constant necessity because of our daily struggles with sin).
Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.

The apostolic ministry – the men who are called and ordained to be pastors in Christ’s Church – are instructed to pronounce the forgiveness of sins to repentant sinners weighed down by their many and grievous faults and to bind the sins of the unrepentant.
As Lutherans, we should be used to hearing about the Office of the Keys and Confession since it’s the Fifth Chief Part of the Catechism – not that we’re always so good about making use of this gift, this Means of Grace that Christ has instituted for our eternal well-being. But for the disciples, it was something completely new. Jesus, God in the flesh, was giving the authority to forgive and retain sins to His called and ordained servants.

In spite of Christ’s explicit directive, many Christians still deny that pastors have been given the responsibility and authority to forgive sins.

But, these things are written so that we might understand the meaning and power of Christ’s resurrection, and so that we might also avail ourselves of this life-giving gift of God when we’re burdened with the guilt of sin.
When we hear the words of absolution, we’re hearing the life-giving voice of Christ Himself. The absolution is His. We receive the absolution from the pastor as from Christ Himself, not doubting but firmly believing and trusting that our sins are fully and completely forgiven – that Christ’s absolving Word gives exactly what it says: the forgiveness of all your sins.

As Christians, we should always be about confessing our sins. As Scripture says: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth 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:” Words, I would add, that St. John is addressing to Christians under His pastoral care – showing that the Christian life is always one of contrition and repentance.

In fact, if we don’t think we have anything to confess, or aren’t troubled by our sins, then we’re deceived and worse off than we know. If your not troubled by your sins, you should examine your place in life according to the Ten Commandments. Remember that Christ came to fulfill the Law and not to abolish it. God’s moral Law is just as binding today as it ever was in spite of what those who would sugar-coat sin have to say. So, when we examine ourselves according to God’s moral Law, it becomes clear just how deeply rooted the disease of sin actually is within us.

But it will also show us how desperately we need Christ’s mercy – how desperately we need Him to say to us: “peace be with you.”

The Good News is that our sins are never too great or too many to be forgiven by Christ and He will speak His forgiveness to us over and over again as often as we need to hear it (which is pretty darn often – all the time, in fact).

Even though Thomas wouldn’t believe until he saw tangible evidence, Jesus was still gracious to him. He came into the midst of the disciples and told Thomas to touch His wounds. “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” The Words of Christ and the physical contact with his Lord created faith in Thomas: faith that caused him to confess the truth about Jesus, calling Him “My Lord and my God!”

In one sense, this historical account is helpful to those of us who are 2000 years removed from the resurrection of Jesus, because it shows that these early Christians were not the type of people who just believed every claim of Messiahship and resurrection from the dead that came down the pike. Thomas examined the evidence that Jesus presented to him and could come to no other conclusion than that the man standing before him was truly the risen Christ: His Lord and God with whom He’d spent the last few years.

But even though Jesus gave the disciples this empirical proof of His resurrection from the dead, He also made it clear that He wouldn’t continue this type of evidence by saying: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Which isn’t to say that Thomas and the other disciples weren’t blessed – they were, they believed.

But for most people – including all of us – faith isn’t founded on what we’ve seen but is created in us by the living and active Word of God. Sure, Thomas’ did what we’d all like to do, but we’re blessed in that Thomas’ doubt and examination of the physical evidence is written down for us in the inspired and inerrant Word of God through which the Holy Spirit works to create and sustain saving faith in each of us.

These things are written that you might believe the truth that our Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. These things are written so that you might know that your sins have been paid for and that in Christ you will also rise. These things are written so you may know that your life is always in God’s gracious care no matter how terrible things seem at a given moment. These things are written that you might know the truth that the resurrection of Jesus is life and salvation for all who believe. “These [things] 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.”

And let us, with such repentant and believing hearts, hear Christ say to us, “The peace of the Lord be with you always” as He invites us to His Holy Supper where He nourishes our souls with Himself: the life-giving bread from heaven.
“Blessed are [you] who have not seen and yet have believed. (Jn 20:29) For by believing in the name of the Son of God … you may know that you have eternal life. (1 Jn 5:13)

Christ is risen.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Pr. Jon Holst