Josh Koelpin
Sermon based on John 20:19-31 Preached at Water of Life Lutheran Church, Caledonia WI on 4.23.23
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24 Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
28 Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
29 Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe x that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
In the name of Jesus, Peace be with you!
Many of the Easter decorations are packed away already, some of the flowers are fading, the church might not be as full as it was a week ago. The choir isn’t singing a special anthem. The cries of “he is risen, he is risen indeed” are a little quieter than they were. Extended families have gone back to their homes. We continue with our lives and daily routines. The ham dinner is gone. The weeks after Easter is just not, well, Easter. I’m sure I could continue with this somewhat sad list, and I’d probably make you say, “Wow Josh is such a downer this week,” but that is not my point. In fact, my point is the opposite. I actually come to you with good news this morning. News that makes us sing our “Alleluias” with all the joy of a week ago. That news is this: Easter shows up every Sunday. We will focus on that, and what it means for us as Christians to live with the reality of the resurrected Lord Jesus and what He has done for us on our minds. Not just today, but every day.
How do you think the disciples felt as they sat behind those locked doors the first Easter evening? Well, John tells us that they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. They were together, at least 10 of them (Judas and Thomas were not there), behind locked doors. Yes, it is true, the women had told them about what they had seen at the empty tomb. Yes, Peter and John raced to the tomb and the body was no longer there. Yes, the disciples from Emmaus had come and told them that they talked with him on the way, and he opened the Scriptures to them, and they knew it was the Lord. But there the disciples sat. Afraid. And I think if we think about it, it makes sense. It wasn’t just Peter who had denied Jesus, all of them had also denied Jesus and run away from Him. They saw their teacher die at the hands of Roman soldiers. It wasn’t just any death, but death on a cross. A brutal and public execution. And to add to it, now they didn’t know where His body was. They felt like they had no real purpose, and as I mentioned earlier, they were afraid of the leaders of Judaism. It is at this moment that Jesus comes through the locked doors and said to them words of tremendous comfort. “Peace be with you.” As Jesus showed them his hands and side those words must’ve been ringing in their ears. This Jesus they had run away from, came to them, and didn’t come at them with words of rebuke and condemnation as we might expect, but gave them the peace that they desperately craved.
A small point, but perhaps worthy of note. The text says that the disciples were overjoyed. What is the difference between joy and overjoyed? Well, joy is to be filled with happiness, whereas overjoyed is to be filled with so much happiness that it overflows. When someone feels overjoyed, they can’t help but tell people about the joy they are feeling.
And perhaps that feeling of being overjoyed prepared them for what Jesus was going to share with them next. Jesus hit them with information that admittedly was also probably quite terrifying. Jesus told them that he was going to be sending them into the world, just like He had been sent by the Father. Wait what? They may have thought. Now we must go out to the world that hated you and tell them the message about you? They are going to hate us, too. Are you crazy, Jesus? Jesus told them, though, that they wouldn’t be alone. He would send them with the Holy Spirit, and his peace. The peace of the resurrection would be theirs as well. As they would go out and proclaim the forgiveness of sins, the joys of Easter would be with them every step of the way. They would not need to fear. Not even death. Because Jesus, their Savior had risen from the dead and defeated death.
Pretty much the same story you just heard was going to happen the very next Sunday. The disciples were gathered again (in a locked room out of fear again, by the way), and Jesus would do the same thing with Thomas. Thomas doubted that Jesus’ resurrection happened. He said he would not believe it unless he saw it with his own eyes. Jesus came to him, too. Jesus took on his doubt and his fear, too. He came to Thomas and even told him to put his hands into the spots the nail marks had been and to plunge is hand into his side where the spear had been. And he spoke the same words that he spoke to the disciples the week before, “Peace be with you.” The text doesn’t tell us this explicitly, but we can guess that Jesus also told Thomas that he would also be part of the mission to tell people about the forgiveness of sins. Finally, this is the mission of the Christian church. The mission of the Christian church is to go and tell people about what Jesus has done for them and to announce to them the forgiveness of their sins.
This account of Easter eve and the week after Easter, puts a “human face” on Easter. Yes, there is joy, but I must ask a couple of questions: Have you ever felt like the disciples or like Thomas? Do you identify more with them than anyone else in the Easter story? Have you ever felt scared of what being a witness of the Gospel might bring into your life, or even doubted that the resurrection is for you altogether? When we were singing and praising God together on Easter in the church building it seemed easy to proclaim the Risen Savior. But after you left did you huddle behind closed-locked doors like the disciples did on that first Easter eve? What types of security systems have you set up in your life so that you don’t have to talk about the resurrected Savior with others?
· Perhaps we have a fear of what other people are going to think about us if we share the message of Jesus. And so, we convince ourselves it is better not to at all.
· Maybe we are afraid that we are going to lose friends because of our confession of faith or cause a disagreement at the lunch table. And we tell ourselves that Jesus would rather have us preserve the peace than say something. So, we don’t say anything at all.
· Possibly our security system is to say, “I don’t have the talent.” God can’t use me.
· Maybe our security system is to doubt, like Thomas did.
But the thing about all these security systems that we set up is that they are not secure at all. While they may preserve our self-image from a worldly standpoint, they ultimately fail. More than that they are sinful. And if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that these things don’t make us leave the situations we are in in our lives feeling very good at all. Our sinfulness and the barriers of self-interest that we have established in the end make us feel like Peter and the disciples who denied Jesus.
Perhaps the barriers we put up look a little more like this: you feel like you’ve majorly messed everything up since Easter Sunday a week ago, and your sins sins of this week are weighing you down. Those sins are making you say, “I can’t be a witness of the resurrected Lord.”
Whatever the case may be, Jesus comes to us in the midst our barriers of self-interest and self-preservation, knocks them down, and says, “Peace be with you.” He shows us his hands and his side and says look at my hands and my side I went to the cross and suffered for the forgiveness of your sins. He appears to us resurrected and says look, I am really risen, and I have defeated death so that you will live, too. Share in the joy of my resurrection Jesus says. And he also comes and tells us what that means for us. He tells us that he is sending us. He is sending you and is sending me into the world to forgive sins. He isn’t sending us alone, though. He is sending us with the Holy Spirit to proclaim a message of his peace.
Jesus used the disciples, who were just as human and sinful as we are to spread the message about Him, and to forgive people of their sins. Jesus uses us, too. So go out today joyfully proclaiming Easter. Tell people about the victory Jesus has won for our sins and for their sins. And forgive people. When someone has wronged you, forgive them. You may even use it as a chance to tell them about what Jesus has done for them on the cross. That is something you can do every day.
Easter shows up each Sunday. But for us, living as Christians, we should say, Easter shows up every day. Easter shows up and fills our hearts with faith as we read God’s word, Easter shows up every week as we confess our sins and receive the forgiveness of sins, Easter shows up as we go and be witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection, and Easter shows up when we hear Jesus say to us, “Peace be with you.” Amen.
May this peace of God which surpasses all our human wisdom and understanding, guard and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.