John 20:19-31

Second Sunday of Easter/Quasimodo Geneti

April 23, 2017

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia! Here we are one week from Easter and for many, last Sunday is treated now like a distant memory.  The Easter lilies are dying, the candy has been eaten. The celebration over. We are left with a very important question. What do we do now with a resurrected Jesus? Plain and simple, this risen Jesus first delivers Himself to us through Word and Sacrament, and then takes us and sends us out to deliver the benefits of His cross and resurrection.

The high feast of Easter is more than an occasion for spiritual emotionalism. It’s more than just a spiritual high that wears off after the festivities are over. The celebration of Easter ought to have a lasting effect and influence in the lives of Christians.  We gather together every Sunday morning, not as if it was new or different Sabbath, but because each Sunday is a little Easter.  On Sunday, we begin a new week basking in the glory of Christ crucified and risen from the dead! We give witness to the resurrection of Christ. With Christ, we have risen to a new life. Easter, above everything else, ought to stir up faith to love and service for our neighbor.

In order to build our lives on the grace of Easter, we must first of all stand upon a firm foundation. This foundation is faith in the risen Christ. Faith in Jesus receives the forgiveness won upon the cross, and the victory over death at the resurrection. But this is not just a passive faith that receives what God has revealed as true, but flowing out of God’s grace it is an active faith that governs all the actions of our lives. The virtue of perseverance is needed. We know how fragile and inconsistent the human nature can be. We feel it one minute, and the next we wonder if any of it with worth the hassel. We leave Easter with the joy of knowing our sins are forgiven and desiring to do better, and then we’re right back into our sinful habits. The Lenten season and then Easter is not a time for new year’s faith resolution or redoubled effort to be better. It is the time to look again to Christ, and Christ alone, for our victory over sin. He who gave the Easter gift also preserves it..

Jesus appears to His disciples in the locked upper room on that first Easter with a message of reconciliation. They are scared each time, and rightly so. They fear that the Jews are going to come and kill them, just as they did Jesus.  They fear that all their hopes and the promises of Jesus were just empty words. And now, that Easter evening, He brings them peace and shows them His hands and His side.  He is no ghost, He is not a figment of their imagination. Here is the One who was crucified, died, and buried now standing in front of them in the flesh.

 And then He breathes on them.  This isn’t just any breathe either, this is the breathe of life that spoke creation into being, that brought life to Adam, that spread across a valley of dry bones to raise them up, that bespeaks, delivers, the righteousness of God, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any it is withheld.”  Jesus brings them peace between God and man by the forgiveness of their sins, and then He equips them with His Spirit to exercise the Office of the Keys, that is the special authority Christ has given to His Church on earth to forgive the sins of repentant sinners, but to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant as long as they do not repent.

It is the resurrection of Jesus that propels the apostles forward to declare the forgiveness found in Jesus the risen and exalted Lord.  What a stark contrast that just 50 days after the disciples are hiding out in fear of their own lives because of Jesus, that the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they begin to proclaim Christ crucified and raised from the dead for the forgiveness of sins with boldness. Their confidence is based in the fact that God raised Jesus.  Not only did he raise Jesus, but he exalted the risen Lord to His right hand in the Ascension.  

This confidence of the apostles is our confidence as well.  Jesus lives and reigns!  In His resurrection Jesus Christ has defeated death.  He has begun the resurrection of Last Day that will be ours.  He won forgiveness for us and he continues to deliver it to us through his Means of Grace.  Through the same Means of Grace, through God’s Word and the Sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, He continues to be present with us.  This isn’t just a spiritual presence. Jesus isn’t a ghost. He isn’t a disembodied spirit floating around visiting church after church.  The risen Jesus is actually present in the reading and proclamation of his Word.  He is present when we are baptized into His name.  He is present as he says, “I forgive you all your sins” through the called servant in his Office of the Holy Ministry. And He is uniquely, bodily present in his true body and blood of the Sacrament of the Altar, given and shed for us. In each celebration of the Service of the Sacrament we sing the words of the Sanctus: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” Because Jesus Christ has risen from the dead he does … and he will. (Adapted from a blog post from Pr. Mark Surburg).

And when Jesus visits His people, He speaks peace upon His people. He grants a peace that leads to joy.  Faith, peace, and joy are the heritage of the Church, the very life by which we live. We have received this life in order that we may be the channel of life to the world.  The Lord sends His disciples out by divine commission with divine life invested with divine authority. The Church is to represent the living Christ to the world, to serve as His ambassador to declare His terms of peace – nothing less than death to sin and resurrection to new life. The Church has received the Spirit, the Water, and Blood for the life of the world.

And now He sends His Church out to announce this good news, and even more so, to deliver it through the means that He has established. So you ask, “Who can forgive sins, but God alone.”  “It is true that there is no human power or ability or merit or worthiness to forgive any sins, even if someone were as holy as all the apostles and all the angels in heaven… However, here we must have the true distinction… between what people do from their own initiative and on their own unworthiness and that which Christ commands us to do in His name and which He produces through His power… But if the absolution is to be true and powerful, then it must come from this command of Christ, so that it says: ‘I absolve you from your sins not in my name or in some saint’s name, or for the sake of some human merit, but in the name of Christ and by the authority of His command, who has commanded me to tell you that your sins are forgiven.  So it is not I but He Himself (through my mouth) who forgives your sins, and you are obliged to accept that and believe it firmly, not as the word of man, but as if you had heard it from the Lord Christ’s own mouth.’” (LW 77, pp. 135-136)

Faith in Jesus receives the forgiveness won upon the cross, and the victory over death at the resurrection. By the authority the Lord has given his church and by his command I declare you absolved: Your sins are forgiven; in the name of the Father and of the Son T and of the Holy Spirit. God forbid that any of you reject his grace and forgiveness by refusing to repent and believe, and your sins therefore remain unforgiven. May the Lord comfort you with His Holy Absolution, and strengthen you with His Sacraments, that your joy may be full. Peace be with you.