The Power of Jesus’ Peace
John 20:19-29
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. John 20:19-20 Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Christ is risen! This Sunday in the Church year has a funky title: Quasimodo Geneti. It is the Latin for the opening words of today’s Introit which comes from 1 Peter 2:2 “As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word.” It is an admonition to Christians to desire pure and right doctrine, and never settle for sloppy agape or false teachings; we will come back to that later. And, as you may also know, the Hunchback of Notre Dame’s name was Quasimodo because he was left on the cathedral steps on this particular Sunday of the Church year in Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel. But on to our Gospel text for today…
It is Easter evening. Jesus had already appeared to Mary Magdalene and to Cleopas, and to the other disciple on the way to Emmaus as we heard about on Easter Sunday. Now Jesus comes through locked doors to the Upper Room to the ten – the twelve disciples minus Judas who is dead, AND minus Thomas who is quite conspicuously missing. And despite the eye-witness accounts and angels’ words, these ten men have locked the doors. They are afraid of the people that had killed Jesus, and they are afraid they are going to be killed. And just maybe they are afraid of Jesus and what He may do to them for leaving Him to die.
This is what happens when God’s people do not believe or trust His Word to them. By trusting in our own words or feelings or circumstances and focusing only on those things, we sink into irrational fear, because our lives are then based not on what is sure and certain, but on the shifting and sinking sand of human weakness. Repent, dear fellow redeemed, of ever doing that to yourselves. //
Now, as the ten were cowering in fear, Jesus came through the locked doors. He came through in His body, as a physical man. He is no ghost. He is there, body and soul, out of the grave, a human being. He no longer humbles Himself. He had humbled Himself once so that He could suffer and be killed for our sins and the sins of all mankind. He humbled Himself so that He could keep and obey the Law as a man, and also allow the Law to do everything to Him that it should have done to us. But, as Jesus declared from the cross, all of that is finished.
Jesus came through the door the same way that He came through the tombstone. The angel did not roll back the stone to let Jesus out; He didn’t slip out when no one was looking. He had already passed through the stone. He let the angel roll back the stone so that we and His disciples can see in and see that He is not there; for He had risen just as He said.
And this is the same way He comes to us in the Holy Supper. He comes to us as a man – it is the exalted body and blood of Jesus. In the Supper we are not just partaking of the Divine nature of Christ. Rather, we are partaking of the whole Christ who has promised to be present for us there. He is not limited by His physicality the way we are. He is, as we say, “all there.” It is stated more clearly in the Athanasian Creed where we confess that, “Who, although He is God and man, yet He is not two but one Christ – one, not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of that manhood into God.” Christ is fully God and Man for us. And as that God-Man, He bore our sins on His cross, redeemed us body and soul, paid for our sins, and graciously delivers His forgiveness to us in His Word rightly preached and His Sacraments rightly administered.
The disciples hide and cower in fear; their discomfort is extreme. Perhaps they don’t want Jesus to be risen from the dead, and so they just cannot accept it and refuse it on some level of unbelief. They had failed Him miserably at the cross and they had failed Him in Gethsemane. And when the angel told them that He is risen and not to be afraid, they were afraid; they locked the doors. They refused to accept this Word of Jesus’ resurrection. And from their confused and selfish perspective, they perhaps thought that Jesus was quite angry at them because of all of their failures. They don’t know what Jesus is coming to do. At best, they may think Jesus had come to lecture them and point out all the things they did wrong. Or, worse yet, He could be coming for justice and recompense. So, they are afraid; they don’t know what the resurrection means, they don’t understand Jesus’ sacrifice and what He did for them on the cross, and they don’t really want it to be Him. They are rightly afraid.
But notice that Jesus did not appear to Herod or to Caiaphas or to any other people or place; He came to His own disciples. And His first words to these cowering, nervous, and wary men are, “Peace be with you.” And as He says this, He points to His hands and His side. This is more-than-likely one, simultaneous action, not two sequential actions. The Greek verb tense indicates that while Jesus is saying, “Peace be with you,” He is showing the disciples His hands and His feet because His wounds are where true peace comes from. The payment has been made for their sins and all sins; and there, in Jesus’ hands and feet, is the evidence of that. Jesus shows them their cause to rejoice. And when they see this evidence, THEN they rejoice in seeing Him, because the peace that Jesus speaks into them – the very peace that He IS – drives out their fear.
Next, Jesus spoke His peace into them again, and with this He gave them their apostolic mandate: “As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you.” The disciples will need this peace of God to accept this mandate, this sending. Jesus was sent into a hostile world, and they will be too. Jesus has come in peace, for peace brings joy. And so, the apostles – the sent ones – are now going to be sent in that.
“And having said this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” Again, like before, the Greek suggests that the breathing and the speaking of Jesus are one simultaneous action: His breathing is His speaking. It is the same as when Yahweh spoke life into Adam, breathing into him the breath of life. It is the same as when Yahweh spoke the world and everything in it into being BY HIS ALMIGHY WORD, the very Word that brings life and peace – that creating Word who is Christ Himself. Now the apostles can take Jesus’ life and peace out into the world through His Word. They are going to go out and preach and bring that same peace that was bestowed into them.
The Holy Spirit that lit upon Jesus when He was baptized – that is, His anointing – is now bestowed upon the apostles in their anointing as the world’s first pastors. This, of course, is the same Spirit that drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, the same Spirit that sent Him preaching around Galilee and Judea, the same Spirit that sent Him to the cross, and the same Spirit who raised Him up from the dead and, here, into the Upper Room. The apostles are going to need that Spirit of Jesus for this ministry; they will need it to suffer the way that Jesus suffered, to endure the hostility they will definitely face. And they will need it to rejoice and to have compassion on those to whom they are sent to preach. It is this Spirit that empowers and fills their ministry and the ministry of all pastors.
The very next words out of Jesus’ mouth explain the Office of the Keys: “If you should forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you should retain any [sins], they are retained.” The peace of the Holy Spirit is the forgiveness of sins. The peace that will sustain them in this ministry is the Spirit of Absolution, of the forgiveness of sins. Jesus bestows peace upon the world through the apostolic ministry that forgives the sins of penitent sinners. So, peace and the forgiveness of sins are synonymous here.
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Now, a Word about Thomas. Why was he not there on that first day of the week with his brothers? Why was he not “in church”? Well, it’s not that he was out relieving himself at the worst possible moment, or that he was inconveniently preoccupied. Thomas was deliberately and quite conspicuously missing. He chose not to be in the right place. He had separated himself from the others. Thomas’ neglecting of the brothers is a problem, and it ends up causing him to be an unbeliever, as our Lord’s words to him indicate. He did not desire the pure milk of the Word. He did not desire to be with the others. And as a result, he placed himself in grave and eternal danger.
When the other disciples tell Thomas, “We have seen the Lord,” what Thomas says in response is absolutely horrible. He doesn’t say, “Well maybe you guys are right.” No, he says, “Unless I see in His hands the mark of the nails and put my finger into the mark of the nails and put my hand into His side,” and here’s the correct Greek, “I will absolutely not believe.” It is tantamount to Thomas saying, “I will never believe.” He tempts God; he lays down standards that God must meet to satisfy him.
God’s people do that all the time. “God, if You’ll just get me out of this problem, then I will believe You more and go to church more and give more and be a better person. Show me a sign, God. You do for me, and I will do for you.” This is blasphemy and unbelief, and it stinks to high heaven. Repent.
But in His mercy, instead of hammering Thomas and rebuking him, Jesus invites Thomas to examine His scars firsthand and personally. Notice that John does not tell us that Thomas touched Jesus at all. He could have, but we don’t know that for certain. What is certain, and what is perfectly consistent with how things happen in Scripture, is that Thomas’ confession, “My Lord and my God,” is an immediate response to Jesus’ words. It is, therefore, the word of Jesus that converts Thomas, and NOT the examination of the scars. Jesus commands Thomas to the faith in the same way that He commanded Lazarus out of the grave. And when Jesus says, “Do not keep on being unbelieving, but be believing,” that worked, and Thomas now again has faith whether or not he probed the scars.
And this is an important theological point. Miracles do not convert; faith always comes by hearing. And it is the word of Jesus – the peace that Jesus speaks upon Thomas – it is the words of the command that cause Thomas to believe.
And then Thomas gets a gentle rebuke, and we get a great blessing. Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen Me?” In other words, “Thomas, you should have trusted the word of the other apostles; they spoke the truth about My resurrection. And you should have trusted Me when I said multiple times that I would rise again.” Then Jesus said, “Blessed are those not having seen and yet have believed.” It is like Jesus is turning to us here in His church and saying, “Blessed are you who do not go the way of Thomas, but trust in these words of Mine, and desire the pure milk of the Word.”
You are to desire the pure and sincere milk of the Word. You are newborn babes, in a sense, and now you’re being told – you’re being given a friendly admonition, but it is also a warning – “Now don’t forget what you need to survive: you need pure doctrine.” This is Holy Mother Church calling you to remember that you can’t live on Easter candy and feel-good cliches. The worship of God is and must be distinct.
The Introit for today has verses from Psalm 81, a psalm of praise for Yahweh leading the children of Israel out of Egypt. The psalm is a reminder that those things that happened to them – a whole generation perished in the desert – was because of their sin. This is a reminder and example to you too, that you need this pure doctrine, that you must stick to what God has said and given.
That means you must never be like Thomas and deliberately decide to miss the gathering of the Saints in the Divine Service. There is no other place on earth where Christ meets you in such a personal, intimate way than right here, where He feeds you with His Word rightly preached and His Sacraments rightly administered; where He gives you Himself in water, words, bread and wine, body and blood. It is only unbelief that says it is not important to be with the saints in worship together. It is faith that says to God, “Feed me, nourish me, strengthen me, forgive me; I cannot live without You.”
Easter is a new start; you are “like newborn babes.” A newborn baby obviously needs nourishment and care because it is totally helpless. That’s you! You need to be nurtured; you need to be fed; you need continual feeding. And God’s Church will keep feeding you and keeping you in this faith. Never forget that you are never, in this life, going to be strong enough to handle everything that comes your way. You may think you can handle a little bit of false doctrine, some “impure milk,” in a sense. “Oh, I am clever enough, I am mature enough, I am strong enough. Other people might be bothered, but not me.” At best, that approach is foolish. At worst, it is eternally deadly.
You are always in full and desperate need of the pure doctrine because that’s what is going to maintain you and hold you in check – not because it’s going to make you better than other people, but because that is what is best for you. And when it is diluted, when it has poison mixed into it, it is dangerous, it stunts your grown, and it can kill you.
It is very popular nowadays, especially in Evangelical circles, to understand the church as existing to feed new Christians, but only up to a point. And if you don’t move on to the status of being a “self-feeder,” if you don’t move on to being able to take care of yourself without the Church, you’re not a mature Christian.
But that is pure nonsense; there is no such thing as a “self-feeder” when it comes to the Church. We need to be fed from outside ourselves. We cannot absolve ourselves; it is ridiculous for a Christian to say, “Well, if I can just forgive myself for what I have done, I will be OK.” We don’t self-feed, and we don’t self-absolve. Those things can only come from the Church, through Christ acting and speaking through the Office of the Holy Ministry. We never grow past the need to be fed and cared for because the Church is not a school that teaches us how to live, nor is it a hospital that tries to make us better. The Church is like a hospice that prepares us to die and shows us how to leave this world and come to the next.
And every single Lord’s Day that happens right here. Jesus feeds us with His Word, His Body, and His blood. Those things deliver to us what He purchased on the cross where He suffered and died for our sins and the sins of the world. Unlike Thomas, we actually get to “touch” Jesus as we open our mouths to receive Him in His body and blood – the same body and blood that hung on the cross, and the same body and blood that delivers forgiveness, life, and salvation. His peace which comes from His body and blood drives out our fear. In Him and His gifts alone we have His peace, His strength, and His certainty.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
