Proofs to Confirm our Faith
By Pastor John Eich Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Alma, MI
John 20:19-31 On the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were together behind locked doors because of their fear of the Jews. Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. So the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you! Just as the Father has sent me, I am also sending you.” 22 After saying this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 Whenever you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven. Whenever you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” 24 But Thomas, one of the Twelve, the one called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples kept telling him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe.” 26After eight days, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue to doubt, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” 30 Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, did many other miraculous signs that are not written in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
There are times that we need a boost of confidence and a lone voice rings out to give you that boost. Perhaps it is when we are standing at the free throw line in basketball and your team needs only one point to win the game. And you hear the coach shout from the sideline, “You can do it!” Or when you are facing the congregation on your confirmation to give witness to your faith and you think you are going to fail. But then the pastor says “you got this!” Or maybe when you have heard that a dear friend was seriously ill and you give them a call just to hear their voice to regain your confidence that they will be alright.
On this Second Sunday of Easter, the Risen Lord Jesus comes to you and to me to confirm our faith. That’s confirmation we all need. For you four young adults about to be confirmed, you have been listening to Jesus’ voice these past years in Sunday School and confirmation instruction. Jesus was speaking to you through the voice of your teachers and through my voice. He was confirming that your faith isn’t a matter of opinion but God’s revelation. He was confirming that what you are confessing this morning isn’t a matter of your choice, but God’s will.
This is what we read in this morning’s Gospel. After Mary and the other women told Jesus’ disciples they had seen the Lord, the disciples did not really believe. By Sunday evening the disciples are behind locked doors huddled in fear. This is the Church at its absolute worst. Hunkered down, huddled together, letting fear rather than faith control their every thought and action.
Then suddenly, Jesus comes and stands among them. It’s Jesus who speaks the first word. And just as was the case at the sound of God’s voice in creation, the sound of Jesus’ voice creates something wonderful and new: “Peace be with you,” he says (v 19).
This is not a wish or a hope. It is his gift to them. This was the whole point of what Jesus had just been through. Jesus’ death on the cross was to reestablish the peace between God and man that had been shattered when we first sinned. Sin will always stand as separation, conflict, between two parties. In sin, we live for ourselves, not for the other. In sin, we cannot be in harmony, gladly yielding for the sake of others. In sin, we could never be with God, because his holiness cannot be in relationship with unholiness. But by taking our sin to the cross, Christ removed the separation and reconciled us to God, bringing us back into peace with him.
The whole scene repeats a week later when Thomas, at last, is with the disciples. He speaks the same word. “Peace be with you.” Rather than scolding, Jesus encourages Thomas to touch and see the wounds. “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (v 27).
Even though two thousand years have passed since that first Easter evening, the church still struggles to get out from behind locked doors and into the world. The fear that kept the first apostles locked up is as crippling in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century.
You young adults have lived in relative safety until now. Soon you will move into high school and college and later the working world. You will be confronted by those who think Christianity is silly or narrow minded. You will be encouraged to open your minds to new ways of thinking, new morality, a new way of living. Some will be subtle, and some will be forceful, even violent. Fear can make you huddle behind the closed doors of not speaking up or even giving in.
For example: A while back there was an article in which a Florida State University professor claimed that Jesus did not walk on water as the Bible maintains. Rather he speculated that some mysterious meteorological phenomena caused the Sea of Galilee to freeze over so Jesus actually walked on ice. Nothing miraculous about that! Would you have the confidence to stand up to a university professor and tell him that he’s wrong? Would your children? Your grandchildren?
Example number two: Have you ever heard of the “Gospel of Judas”? The “Gospel of Judas” was written long after Judas ended his own life after his betrayal of Jesus. This document contends that Jesus told Judas to betray Him as a part of some clandestine scheme to “manipulate” the Old Testament Messianic prophecies to make it look like He was the fulfillment of those prophecies. Would you have the confidence to stand up and say that’s why the book of Judas was discovered in a garbage dump, because that’s where it belongs?
The irony of the disciples’ locked doors is that they weren’t really keeping out the soldiers. The One they were locking out was Jesus. They locked out the word he had so clearly spoken to them about dying and rising again. And in locking out that word, they locked out Jesus. When fear becomes our focus, we fall into the same trap; we lock out the Lord, who time and again tells his Church, “Do not be afraid!”
Jesus will have none of it! And so, he comes and stands among them and among us and speaks words that brings the very thing they say: “Peace be with you.” “Peace, your sin is forgiven!” “Do not fear the world. I have overcome the world. Peace be with you.”
That word comes to you and me today, with exactly the same power as it came to those first disciples on the first Easter and to Thomas a week later. With his resurrection, Jesus barges through our self-made doors that don’t provide us the peace and security we thought they would. Jesus gives us what we most desperately need, but have only failed to find on our own – peace; true, lasting, blood bought peace with God. The peace of Easter is the peace to know that because Jesus lives, the holy God is not an angry ogre waiting to squash you into hell forever – because Jesus has paid the debt of your sin. The peace of Easter is to know that because Jesus lives, you don’t have to be afraid of that day when it’s you who’s lying in the casket – because Jesus has defeated your death with his resurrection. The peace of Easter is to know that the anxiety and the worry and the fear that drain joy from your life, peace from your heart, and sleep from your eyes – to know that all of those pressing concerns that seem to smack you in the face as soon as you wake up aren’t the final word. Instead, with his resurrection, Jesus promises, Peace be with you! The peace of Easter is to know that Jesus lives, and he is alive for me.
This peace is for all of us even if we ran away from Jesus like the disciples, if we denied him like Peter, if we doubted him like Thomas. And we all have at times. Perhaps more than we want to admit. Jesus speaks his reassuring words of peace to even us.
Jesus spoke his peace to us in the water of our Baptism, where we were joined to his death and resurrection and we died to sin and rose to new life. That peace is spoken to us every time we return in repentance to our Baptism, and he says to you through your pastor, “I forgive you all your sins.” That peace is spoken to you at his table, where in, with, and under bread and wine, he comes through space and time to feed you his body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins and to lift from you your fears. There his voice speaks peace. “This is for you,” he says, “for the forgiveness of sin.”
And we rise from the table at peace, ready to go into the world. “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you” (v 21). The Lord cannot be bound; his word will not be bound; and his followers do not live behind locked doors. He sends us out into the world, but we do not go empty handed.
He breathes his Holy Spirit upon his disciples, and to his Church, he hands the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And so we have confidence that our message isn’t make-believe. It is the very word of God that stands opposed to the foolishness of this age that pretends to be wisdom. Our voices, our human voices, become voices of power, not because they are louder, wiser, or more entertaining than other voices, but because through our voice, Jesus himself speaks.
“Peace be with you.” And our confidence soars! Amen