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The living Christ authorizes His ministers, like Thomas

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Sermon for Easter 1

1 John 5:4-10  +  John 20:19-31

The order of events on the first Easter Sunday is a little hard to pin down. Each Gospel writer was moved by the Holy Spirit to include certain details about that day, not always in order, but always with obvious excitement, even writing, as they were, several decades later, still so excited to share with the world some parts of the resurrection story. Matthew skips Jesus’ Easter appearance to His disciples entirely and takes us straight to His meeting with them on a mountain in Galilee some weeks later. Mark takes us to the table in the upper room where the eleven were gathered—the same table where they had celebrated Passover with Jesus and had received the Lord’s Supper from Jesus a few days earlier—and tells us how Jesus rebuked them for disbelieving the reports of those who had seen Him alive. Luke includes that story about the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, which we heard on Wednesday, and adds a little bit about Jesus eating a piece of broiled fish in front of the disciples, to prove that He was not just alive again, but alive with His own, real, human body made of flesh and blood.

For the apostle John, it had been nearly six decades between the resurrection and the time he wrote his Gospel, but the Holy Spirit still called to his mind certain details from that first Easter Sunday that no other Evangelist had recorded. And so we have this wonderful account of Thomas and his struggle to believe, and, as part of that account, a repetition of that special authority Jesus gave to His Church through the apostolic ministry to forgive or to retain sins in Jesus’ name.

First, let’s have a look at Thomas. Jesus appeared to ten of the twelve disciples on Easter evening, and, according to Luke’s account, it seems that other disciples were there with them, too. Judas was dead by suicide. Thomas was out and about. The doors were locked, for fear of the Jews, because, if they succeeded in killing Jesus Himself, why should they stop with Him? Why not go after the ones closest to Him, even as they had been planning on killing Lazarus, too? Worse, if God had not seen fit to rescue His beloved, sinless Son from the Jews, what hope did His disciples have left?

And then Jesus appeared in the middle of the room before their very eyes, just as He had disappeared before the very eyes of the two disciples in Emmaus, as soon as they recognized Him. Jesus had real flesh and blood and yet was able to appear and disappear at will, no longer submitting to the laws of nature as He had before. He doesn’t have to. He’s true God as well as true man, and does as He pleases.

He greeted His fearful disciples with a word of peace, and after a few minutes (and a few bites of food) they were convinced that it was really Him. And they rejoiced. And after a little while, Jesu disappeared again. Why didn’t He just wait for Thomas to get back? Because He wanted you and me to have this story, and to learn a lesson from it.

Thomas walked in the door a moment too late, and he wouldn’t believe his brother apostles, or the women who had reported seeing Jesus earlier that day, or the two who had come back from Emmaus. “Not unless I see the nail prints in His hands and put my fingers into them. Not unless I can thrust my hand into His pierced side. I know what I saw with my own eyes: a Jesus who was crucified, who died, who was pierced with a spear and whose blood came pouring out. You don’t come back from that. No one does. Human reason and experience say so.”

And the Lord allowed Thomas to stew in the unbelief that flowed from his human reason and experience for a whole week, until the following Sunday, and waited until Thomas was with them before appearing again. Peace to you, He said, and then turned and looked straight at Thomas, and held out His hands, still bearing the nail prints as a testimony to His suffering, and said, “Reach out your hand, Thomas, and put your fingers here. Take your hand, Thomas, and thrust it into My side, if you must. Whatever it takes. Be no longer unbelieving, but believing!” And Thomas said, “My Lord and my God!”

Yeah, he finally got it. The one whom he had been referring to as Lord for the last three years was also God. That’s why He could rise from the dead. Man can’t conquer death, but God can. And now Thomas knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this man, Jesus, is the very God who has power over life and death.

With that in mind, consider the authority Jesus spoke upon His apostles on that first Easter Sunday. First, He breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit! The breathing on them was a picture of the Holy Spirit proceeding from His mouth like breath, the Spirit whom He, their Lord and their God, would send upon them 50 days from then, on the day of Pentecost. When the Spirit came upon them on that day, like breath from heaven, they were to remember this act of Jesus breathing on them and understand that it was Jesus, from the right hand of God, sending the Holy Spirit down upon His Church to begin the lengthy process of building it until He comes again.

And the tools for building it would be, not hammers, but keys. The keys of the kingdom of heaven. Keys that would be wielded with heaven’s own authority. Keys not made of metal, but keys made of words. As my Father has sent me, so I also send you…If you forgive the sins of any, their sins are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, their sins are retained. This is not a new command or authority. It’s the same one Jesus had spoken about months earlier. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. It’s the same command and authority recorded with different words by Mark: Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned. It’s the same command and authority referred to in Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus told them that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And it’s the same command and authority that He gave them again on that mountain in Galilee, recorded in Matthew’s Gospel: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. Jesus, as Lord and God, gave this command and authority to His Church, through the apostolic ministry, to preach the Gospel and to administer the Sacraments in the name of Jesus, who is both Lord and God. That’s how He would build His Church, through what we often refer to as the Means or the “tools” of Grace, wielded by the ministers whom He would continue to send until the end of the age.

Using the keys or the Means of Grace includes the speaking and the baptizing in the name of God that Peter did on the day of Pentecost, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins! It includes the appeal of St. Paul to the jailor in Philippi, Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!, or as he summarized it to the Corinthians, Be reconciled to God! For God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. It includes the administration of the Lord’s Supper, too, where God’s forgiveness is handed out to God’s believing people, one by one. And it also includes, where necessary, the retaining of sins, as Peter did with Ananias and Sapphira, or with Simon the Sorcerer, or as Paul did with the sinner in Corinth who was flaunting his adultery. Whether it’s the forgiving of sins or the retaining of sins, Jesus set it up in His Church going forward that God would deal with men and build His kingdom through the keys wielded by the apostolic ministry of His Holy Christian Church.

A ministry that included men like Thomas, who had their moments of shameful unbelief. A ministry that included men like Peter, who had faltered before and would falter again, needing to be corrected by a minister like Paul, who had a previous reputation of locking Christians up in jail. A ministry that included also the Apostle John, who carried out his God-given ministry throughout the first century, of which this Gospel of John was a part. With the authority and with the inspiration of the Spirit that the Lord Jesus gave him, he wrote for us, not everything that Jesus ever said or did, but only the things the Spirit guided him to remember and to record, all for a purpose, which he states at the end of our reading: that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, by believing, you may have life in his name.

This is the same ministry, with the same Means of Grace, that has been passed on from generation to generation, so that the Church would always have the necessary, Spirit-filled tools for creating and preserving faith. This is the same ministry that is being carried out among you today, which you support, and which you are here making use of right now, according to Christ’s command. He never planned for any of you to see Him in this life, as the apostles did. What He did plan for was for you to hear His Word, to believe through what you hear, and to continue to receive the ministry of His Word and Sacraments, so that you might make it all the way through this earthly life, still hoping, still rejoicing, still believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, crucified and risen from the dead, and that, by believing, you, too, may have life in His name. May God grant it, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Source: Sermons

If Christ is not risen…

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Sermon for Quasimodogeniti – Easter 1

1 John 5:4-10  +  John 20:19-31

As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty…If Christ is not risen, then your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. We could add to that list. If Christ is not risen, then Jesus was a liar. If Christ is not risen, then He is not the Son of God, not the King of anyone, not your Savior from anything. If Christ is not risen, then evil truly does triumph in the end.

Those thoughts must have hit Jesus’ disciples like a ton of bricks on that first Easter evening. In their minds, there was no “if” about it. Christ had not been raised. Being raised from the dead, especially on a permanent basis, wasn’t a thing, even though Jesus had prophesied that very thing on several occasions, even though the women had seen Him alive that morning, even though Peter, apparently, had seen Him already, too. In a way, it’s hard for us to comprehend how they could still be in disbelief. But that’s only because we have gotten so used to this story. And we have seen how the Church of the risen Christ has spread throughout the world—spread, largely, by men who believed so strongly in the resurrection of Christ that they were willing to abandon their homes, willing to be hated by their countrymen, willing to be tortured and killed for His name’s sake. We haven’t seen the resurrection, but we’ve most definitely seen the effects of it. Those first disciples had only the word of Jesus, and of the handful of people who had seen Him that day—which should have been enough! But wasn’t.

So they were gathered together in that locked upper room, fearing the Jews, because if the Jews could crucify Jesus, they could certainly crucify His disciples. And they weren’t wrong! The Jews eventually did persecute Christians and have them stoned and imprisoned and put to death. But the only reason to fear any of that is, if Christ is not risen.

Or, if you don’t know or believe that He’s risen from the dead, which was the case with most of Jesus’ disciples on that first Easter day. But unbelief and fear were soon replaced by astonishment and joy when the Lord Jesus appeared out of nowhere in the midst of that locked upper room and said, Peace to you!, and showed them His pierced hands and side, no longer painful wounds, but signs of the death that had now been overcome.

Peace to you!, or Peace be with you! More than just a Jewish form of greeting. On the night before He died, Jesus had told His disciples, Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. If Christ is not risen, then that peace that He left with them and gave them is worthless. But if He is risen, then it changes everything. It means that God is reconciled to sinners through Christ, that we have peace with God through faith in Christ Jesus. And, since Christ is risen, He is able to maintain that peace forever and ever. What do you think it means to have peace with the God of the universe? What do you think it means to have peace with the One who holds the keys of eternal life and the keys of eternal condemnation?

Speaking of keys, Jesus said again to the apostles, Peace to you. Then He said, As my Father has sent me, so I also send you.” We’ll get to the keys themselves in a moment. First, how had the Father sent Jesus? The Father had sent Him to accomplish a mission. Several missions, actually. He was sent, for example, to die for our sins. But that mission was accomplished. Jesus wasn’t sending the disciples to do that. What was the mission, then? It was to reconcile sinners to God, just as St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God. Through Christ’s preaching, God the Father was reconciling sinners to Himself, calling them away from their sins to faith in Christ Jesus. The apostles were ministers like that, sent like that. More than ministers. Ambassadors for Christ, sent out in His name to reconcile sinners to God. That’s how Jesus proceeded to send them, the authority Jesus went on to give them:

And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, Receive the Holy Spirit.

Jesus wasn’t at that moment breathing the Holy Spirit onto the disciples. (Remember, the word “spirit” means “wind” or “breath”). He was showing them, vividly, that He would soon (50 days from then, actually) send the promised Holy Spirit upon them in a special way, to enable and empower them to carry out this ministry in His name, which is summarized in what He said next: If you forgive the sins of any, their sins are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, their sins are retained. This is basically a restatement of what Jesus had already said to His apostles earlier: I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. The apostles were sent out with these keys, with this office of the ministry, directly by Jesus. The ministers after them are sent by Jesus through the call of the Church. But the ministry is the same: to preach the Gospel, to baptize and forgive the sins of those who repent believe, and to pronounce judgment and the non-forgiveness of sins to those who don’t believe.

Now, the ministry of Christ, the ministry He has given to men, includes preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God. It includes teaching people the story of the world, from creation to the coming of Christ in humility to His coming again in glory at the end of the age. But the message centers in the preaching of repentance, which would be useless without the authority to forgive the penitent. And Christ’s authority to forgive sins to the penitent is useless, if Christ is not risen from the dead.

So Thomas was still in a bind. He wasn’t there to see Jesus alive again, or to hear Him speak. Worse, even though every one of the other ten apostles gave him their eye-witness testimony, he refused to believe and spoke those bitter but famous words of unbelief: Unless I see the nail prints in his hands, and put my finger into the nail prints, and place my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Now, if Christ is not risen from the dead, then a person certainly can’t be faulted for not believing in something that isn’t true. But if it is true, if Christ is risen from the dead, if He who has never once lied to you did exactly as He said He would do, and if the people you trust most in the world are all assuring you that it is true, that Christ is risen from the dead, and you still refuse to believe, whose fault is that? It isn’t God’s fault. Or the fault of the witnesses. It’s your fault.

Thomas, on this occasion, exemplifies the atheistic scientific age in which we live. I just watched an interview with a man who is trying to cheat death itself. He believes that, with the right scientific measurements and the right diet, suggested by science, and with the right scientifically developed therapies, he can solve the problem of death. When it was pointed out to him that Christians think they have already solved that problem, through faith in the risen Christ, he replied, “Show me the evidence.”

Dear friends in Christ, God has shown mankind a lot of evidence, both of His existence and of His faithfulness to His promises. But I ask you, when has it ever been enough? Adam and Eve walked with God and yet still rebelled against Him. Noah’s sons walked off the ark God told them to build and within a generation their offspring worshiped pagan gods. The Israelites who walked through the Red Sea on dry ground were worshiping a golden calf within two months. The Jews saw miracle after miracle from Jesus and still kept insisting. “Show us a sign! Show us the evidence that You are who You say You are!” You and I can see the universe in all its complexity, the human body and the human mind in all their wonder. We can comb through the Bible and see how everything that’s verifiable in it has been verified and yet the vast majority of the world continues to insist, “Show me the evidence!” The problem has never been a lack of evidence. The problem has always been blind unbelief.

So you can’t blame God for refusing to perform when people have demanded it of Him, can you? “Show me the evidence!” over and over again, even as they completely ignore His Word and His faithfully-kept promises. No, God chose not to reveal the risen Christ to everyone. As Peter says in the book of Acts, God raised Jesus up on the third day, and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before by God, even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead.

Thomas was one of those chosen witnesses, so Jesus mercifully showed him the evidence He demanded. Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put your hand here and place it into my side, and do not be unbelieving any longer, but believing.” And Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” And then Thomas, and the rest of the apostles, went on to become witnesses in all the world of Christ’s. And the only evidence they were given to pass on was their own eye-witness testimony, combined with the words and promises of God in Holy Scripture which pointed to Jesus as the Christ. And that would be enough to convince everyone who could be convinced.

Jesus said to him, “Thomas, because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed.” In other words, blessed are you when you stop demanding more and more evidence, when you hear and believe the Word of God, which is the word of all the witnesses who saw the evidence firsthand, from Moses to the apostle John. More than that, it’s the word of God. Let it be enough! As St. John wrote,  To be sure, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 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.” If Christ is not risen, then it doesn’t matter what you believe. But if He is, then it matters more than life itself. So believe in Christ Jesus, risen from the dead. Put all your hope in Him. Because He is risen, and one day you will see Him, too, just as Thomas did. All men will see Him. And all who have believed, all who have been born of God, who have already been victorious over the world by faith, will sit down with Jesus at a feast that will never end. May God grant that we be among them! Amen.

Source: Sermons