Second Sunday of Easter

Grace and peace to all of you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are several overarching themes in our scripture readings today that tie in beautifully with our gospel lesson and the truth of the resurrection. With the resurrection, we who believe ought to have no fear of death. We know that our savior has conquered death and that where He is, we will also be. The resurrection is a promise; it is new life, it is eternal life for all who are in Christ Jesus.

On the evening of the first day (the evening of the resurrection), the apostles are hiding out with doors locked, in fear of the Jews, according to John’s gospel. They (the apostles) saw what happened to Jesus at the hands of the Jews and the Romans, and I am sure they must have been terrified that they would all be next.

Indeed, feelings beyond mere fear swirled among those present as they grappled with the events that unfolded, reflecting on what they had witnessed, their actions or inactions, and the next steps they should all take and where they ought to go now.

No matter where they went from there, they could not escape the gravity of what just happened. They could never go far enough in the world to separate themselves from it. They would never unsee the arrest of Jesus, the horror of the crucifixion, or be able to reconcile it, without God stepping in at the right moment.

The only thing they had left was to lock themselves away in hiding. But like Adam and Eve learned in the beginning, none of us can hide from God. We can lock ourselves away from our neighbors, but God is everywhere, in everything, and knows where we go.

Jesus knew where his apostles were, and when he arrived, he immediately gave them His peace. He showed those present where he had been pierced in his hands and his side. Why? So that they would believe him? So that they could understand! The one who was pierced for our transgression shows us, physically, what sin has wrought, while at the same time telling us that the debt we owed for sin is paid, when He said to them and indeed says to all of us, “Peace be with you” (John 20:19).

Jesus reassures them and us, “Peace be with you,” because that is what Christ’s salvation brings. It brings with it a genuine peace, a lasting peace, an eternal peace. It brings with it a renewed life, a Holy life, an everlasting life! Jesus speaks to the anxious and frightened heart and gives them His peace. Knowing we have peace with God means we ought not fear anything.

“The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). We can live according to what the Father has sought for us from the beginning, in a peaceful relationship with Him, through the Son! The resurrection gives us this assurance.

The resurrection is the promise of peace and new life, including the church. Jesus speaking to the hiding apostles gives them peace and a commission with the Holy Spirit: “As the Father sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). I believe this commission is the moment the church was born out of the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. With the peace of God, we have been appointed a church, and it is Christ himself!

Jesus has commissioned each of us and equipped us with the Holy Spirit, that through whatever vocations we have, family, or our careers, we might proclaim (in thought word and deed) the truth to a world that desperately needs to hear that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Peter, who, as we know, denied Jesus three times, was equipped with the power of the Holy Spirit to carry on the mission along with the other apostles, healing and casting out unclean spirits, and calling people to believe in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. In Jesus, Peter was no longer a fisherman, but a fisher of men. He was not alone, ever. Jesus was near to him, through the Holy Spirit, and his Holy name was ever present in his mouth and on his lips.

And Jesus is near us all today, regardless of where we are, He finds us. Whether we have locked ourselves in (like the apostles did the night of the resurrection) or are confined by something else, he appears.

He arrives in prisons, hospitals, temples, and churches. Wherever His word is preached, and wherever His holy supper and baptisms are administered, He comes and is present to pour out his grace. He is close to the skeptics like Thomas, who needed to touch the pierced hands and side of Christ to believe. We thank you, God, for your peace and for the grace that you give to us, for don't we sometimes do the same as our brother Thomas?

What do we ask of Christ that we may believe? Or are we “those who have not seen and yet believe?” Can we truly believe in God’s word when the message is not always clear to us? Can we have faith in times of tribulation, or do we only believe when circumstances appear favorable? Can we trust that Jesus is always near us, in our homes, at work, even when we pack up and go far away on vacation or during our lonely hours, just as he was near the disciples? Can we have faith that assures us Jesus seeks and reaches out to us when we are hiding and afraid, just as He did for the disciples on that evening of His resurrection?

We can, but not by any works of our own, or by any doings of our own hands. The prophet Isaiah writes, “You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you” (Isaiah 26:3).

It is only Christ who can make us believe in what we have not seen. Just as He has opened the eyes of the blind, made what was unclean clean again, opened the ears of those who could not or would not hear, and raised what was dead to life, because Christ is the author of Life. He is the author of Faith for the Faithless.

It is through faith that He calls each of us to Him, to a perfect peace in which we can find rest in all aspects of our active lives. Jesus gives us the Holy Spirit to keep our minds “stayed” on His words and shows us over and over again that we are by nature sinful, but that Jesus has taken this sin to the cross so that we may be reconciled to God through Him.

We can have peace in the knowledge that Jesus is active in us, through all things, because, like the apostles, we have all been called to His church through our baptisms and our faith. Through these means of his love, blood, and grace, Christ has made us all a kingdom of priests, who are free to serve God and our neighbor. When Christ says we are forgiven, we are indeed forgiven. When Christ gives us his peace, we have true peace, even though “we have not seen and yet have believed.”

The early apostles were first-hand witnesses to everything! They saw and heard all that Jesus said and did. Thanks be to God for the power of the Holy Spirit that worked the miracle of their accounts, so that we might know the Scriptures and, through them, understand even in part. Through their accounts, we witness, both through hearing and reading, as well as through the exposition of the scriptures.

We witness with them when we partake of the Lord’s Supper and hear the words of Jesus “given and shed for you.” We witness with them in our baptisms, we witness with them when Jesus explains his parables, when Jesus heals both Jews and Gentiles. We are with them because Jesus has given us His church, which is built upon the Word of God, and the means of His grace in the sacraments.

Things that can transcend languages and borders. They reach behind prison walls and bars, and in hospital rooms, and offer healing and freedom beyond mortal understanding. Christ sends us, people like you and me, sinners, to offer this forgiveness, which comes from the Most High.

We have been entrusted a church that is built on the resurrection promise of Christ Jesus; “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26). What Christ has given you, no man can take. Paul reminds us of this, when he writes this in his letter to the Romans; “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39)

Through the hearing of the gospel, we are witnesses with the apostles of our resurrected Lord, who arrives in victory (for you) after defeating sin, death, and the devil to give us His perfect peace that we no longer abound in fear and doubt but abide in faith and truth. - Amen