Listen to the sermon with the player below, or, download the audio.
+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!) That we continue to exchange that Easter greeting is appropriate, since our celebration of Easter itself continues today, the Second Sunday of Easter. Yet, Jesus uses a different greeting in today’s Gospel Reading, and we focus our thoughts for the next few minutes using that greeting as our theme: “Peace be with you”.
Today’s Gospel Reading, with its four distinct parts, picks up St. John’s divinely‑inspired account of Jesus’s resurrection right after the end of the Gospel Reading we heard in last week’s Matins service. Then, St. John reported that Mary Magdalene announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and that she told them what He said to her. Today, first we hear how Jesus miraculously appeared behind locked doors to ten of the disciples, instituting the Office of the Holy Ministry. Second we hear how Thomas did not believe the ten disciples when they said, “We have seen the Lord,” and placed conditions on any future belief. Third we hear how on the eighth day Thomas believed Jesus was resurrected and confessed Him as Lord and God after Jesus again miraculously appeared behind locked doors and offered to fulfill Thomas’s conditions. And, fourth and finally, St. John explains that he has reported certain signs in order for those hearing to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing have life in His Name. Extending through those four parts is Jesus’s greeting on which we focus: “Peace be with you.”
Whether or not, at the beginning of today’s Gospel Reading, the ten disciples themselves believed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is not clear. The ten had heard Mary Magdalene’s report that she had seen the Lord, but they were still behind locked doors for fear of the Jews—a fear for which, in light of Jesus’s resurrection, there really was no basis. If they did realize that Jesus had reconciled them with God, they certainly did not have a feeling of peace. You and I may be like them: we may realize that Jesus has reconciled us with God but not have a feeling of peace. Maybe we do not have that feeling of peace because others have not forgiven our sins we have committed against them. Maybe we do not have that feeling of peace because we have not forgiven sins others have committed against us. Maybe we do not have that feeling of peace because we create conflict for the sake of extending some form of human interaction, like children who want attention so badly that they will misbehave and welcome even the resulting discipline as negative attention. Or, maybe like the ten disciples, we do not have a feeling of peace because we do not always realize that Jesus has reconciled us with God—that God can and does forgive even the most‑horrible sins of our pasts. Or, unlike the ten disciples, maybe we do have the feeling of peace but have it falsely. Maybe we falsely have that feeling of peace because we want to avoid conflict so badly that we think there is nothing wrong in any of our human relationships. Maybe we falsely have that feeling of peace because we falsely take blame or give blame in order to quickly settle conflict without addressing its underlying problems. Maybe we falsely have that feeling of peace because we are unaware of or unwilling to admit the need for our reconciliation with God on account of our sin.
Today’s Epistle Reading, echoed weekly in the preparatory rite of the liturgy, reminds us that, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, the truth is not in us, we make God out to be a liar, and His word is not in us. But, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, we confess our sins related to feeling peace, and we confess all our sins. We turn in sorrow from those sins, and we trust God to forgive them for Jesus’s sake.
In today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus three times uses the greeting “Peace be with you”, but the words are more than a simple greeting. Each use is closely connected with Jesus’s showing His nail‑marked hands and sword‑pierced side. His words effect our peace, for those wounds won our peace! Today’s Epistle Reading calls Jesus the propitiation for our sins, but St. Paul in writing to the Ephesians says more‑simply that Jesus is our peace. Jesus, the Word, Who was God, Who was with God in the beginning, and Who became flesh, was, for us, crucified and resurrected in that flesh. The death we deserved, He died, and, the life He won, we will live. Or, as our opening hymn put it, “The life laid down, the life restored.” Jesus’s resurrection that we continue to celebrate in this season assures us that God the Father accepted His sacrifice on our behalf, and, so, we, too, will rise. As today’s First Reading describes, there is great power to the apostles’ testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and there is great grace upon us all. When we turn in sorrow from our sins and trust God the Father to forgive them for Jesus’s sake, God the Father does just that: He forgives our sins—our sins related to feeling peace or whatever our sins might be—He forgives them all by grace through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, Whom He sent to win our peace.
Having completed the mission for which the Father sent Him, that of winning our peace, Jesus in turn sends His disciples with the mission of distributing that peace. Jesus gives them the gift of the Holy Spirit and the authority to forgive sins and to withhold forgiveness through preaching, Baptism, Absolution, and Communion. In Holy Baptism, often done on the eighth day of life, water and the Word give life in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In Individual Absolution following private confession, words effect our peace just as with Jesus’s greeting of “Peace be with you”. And, in Holy Communion, Jesus’s body and blood miraculously appear in, with, and under bread and wine, even as they miraculously exited the tomb and entered behind closed doors. Our Lord’s incarnation, His being God in the flesh, continues for our good, even if He is not bound by ordinary rules of space. At this altar we see the Peace of the Lord. From this altar we, as our Introit put it, taste that the Lord is good. In all these ways that we receive the forgiveness of sins, we can truly say with today’s Epistle Reading that we have heard, seen, and touched that which was from the beginning. Through these ways, His peace is with us.
“The peace of the risen Lord is the comfort and joy of all believers.” As today’s Gospel Reading tells us that the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord, so, too, we can be glad and rejoice. We have no reason for fear, for we are reconciled with God, and our reconciliation with God brings about our reconciliation with one another. The accusations of the devil, the world, and our own sinful flesh against us are now without basis. Jesus won peace with God for us; so long as we do not reject it, it is objectively ours, whether or not we feel it. Between us and God—peace. In our broken relationships—peace. Amid the troubles and difficulties of our lives—peace. Since we in this world only imperfectly feel and carry out the peace that is ours, we live every day turning from our sin and trusting God to forgive it. Ultimately we will have total, eternal peace at the last. Jesus’s post‑resurrection greeting of “Peace be with you” in a sense fulfills His pre‑resurrection teaching about His peace. As He said that night on which He was betrayed, Jesus does not want our hearts to be troubled or afraid. He knows that in this world we will have tribulation, but He does not give us peace as the world gives peace. He has overcome the world, and, so, even here and now, in Him we have true peace.
Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +