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+ + + 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. (Amen.)
Alleluia! Christ is risen! (He is risen indeed! Alleluia!)
Along with “diversity” and “equity”, “inclusion” is all the rage these days. We may so quickly over‑react to extreme calls for “inclusion” that we do not ever appropriately react to legitimate cases of people’s wrongly being excluded from rights, opportunities, and resources that are normally available to others and so people’s wrongly being excluded from fully participating in society, such as in the areas of food and clothing. Of course, some calls for “inclusion” ignore what we might say are both legitimate distinctions between groups and appropriate inclusion and exclusion of people from certain groups. For example, a “trans‑woman” can be included in the group of those promoting a certain light-beer or a certain line of women’s undergarments, but women’s sports leagues should be able to exclude “trans‑women” from women’s competition in their leagues on the basis of their God-given sex. Similarly, all people generally should be free to exercise their religion, but, contrary to some people pushing “inclusion” today, religious groups should be able to exclude from their associations those who do not share their religious beliefs and practices. Such religious inclusion and exclusion arguably is in play in today’s Gospel Reading, and, this morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to the theme “Religious inclusion is through confession and forgiveness”.
Today’s Gospel Reading begins on the evening of the day of the Resurrection of Our Lord, with Jesus’s disciples gathered together behind locked doors for “fear of the Jews”. That “fear of the Jews” is probably fear of the “Jewish leaders” and those under their influence: who could include or exclude others, rightly or wrongly, from the Synagogues and other religious practices; who had handed‑over Jesus to the Romans to be crucified; and who later stoned Stephen to death themselves. Even the Gospel Reading’s shut doors and implicit keys bring to mind religious inclusion and exclusion, as Jesus previously had condemned the Jewish leaders for shutting the Kingdom of Heaven in people’s faces, for taking away the key of knowledge, for neither entering themselves nor allowing those who would enter to go in (Matthew 23:13; Luke 11:52). And, Jesus taught about His own ultimately shutting a door: including inside the repentant believers, but excluding outside the unrepentant unbelievers, even those who wrongly thought that they somehow were associated with Him (Matthew 25:10-12; Luke 13:25-27; confer Matthew 7:22‑23).
Even if we do not join mass-media or social-media cries for “diversity”, “equity”, and “inclusion”, we are not immune to such concerns. “Likes” or “un‑likes” or even “dis‑likes” of what we might post on social-media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok may change our moods. On some level we all want to be liked and included, in our own families and friend‑groups, in our church, in our school or workplace. We may fear our being disliked and excluded from certain family gatherings and friend-outings, from meetings and the Sacrament of the Altar, from clubs and other activities. We may rightly want to include everyone in the Church, but we may wrongly not be willing to exclude even those who do not share our religious beliefs and practices and those who do not repent and believe. Of course, when it comes to the Church on earth and in heaven, we all deserve to be excluded, on account of our sinful nature and all of our actual sin. We all deserve death here and now and torment in hell for eternity, unless we repent and believe. As today’s Gospel Reading makes clear, “Religious inclusion is through confession and forgiveness”.
In today’s Gospel Reading, miraculously Jesus came and stood among His disciples and said, “Peace be with you”. And, having said that, Jesus showed His disciples His nail-marked hands and His spear-pierced side—scars from His winning: their peace with God, your peace with God, my peace with God, and all people’s peace with God; scars that also confirmed that He was the same Jesus, once-crucified but now-resurrected. His crucifixion was for us, in our place. The resurrection itself in part declared that God the Father accepted His Son Jesus’s sacrifice as payment for our sins and so also that the world was objectively restored to a right relationship with the Father, at peace with Him. Having convinced His disciples that He was resurrected, Jesus not only reiterated peace to His disciples, but also, as promised, Jesus sent His disciples with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 16:19; 18:18), the authority to include sinners in that Kingdom through confession and forgiveness and to exclude sinners from that Kingdom—not by “withholding forgiveness”, as the English Standard Version that we heard read paraphrases, but, more literally, by retaining their sins (confer 1 Corinthians 5:1-13; 2 Corinthians 2:5-10). So, as the disciples were glad having seen the Lord, having received His peace, so also, when the Holy Spirit leads us to repent and believe and to receive the Father’s forgiveness through His Means of Grace, then we are at peace with the Father for Jesus’s sake and are glad.
What the Divinely-inspired St. John says in today’s Gospel Reading about his Gospel account arguably can be said of all Holy Scripture, which it indirectly describes itself as: its purpose is that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, we may have life in His Name. Most of us know that we first believed and had that life when, as today’s Epistle Reading described (1 Peter 1:3-9), God the Father, according to His great mercy, in the water and Word of our baptisms caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. When we, who are so baptized, privately confess our sin, we receive, by the Holy-Spirit-ordained pastor’s touch and Word, the great gift of individual absolution, which in part has its basis in today’s Gospel Reading (Small Catechism, V:10). And, so absolved, we are admitted to the Sacrament of the Altar at this Rail, where we miraculously receive bread that is the Body of Christ given for us and wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, expressing and effecting our “Religious inclusion” through our “confession” and His “forgiveness”.
Not the Jews’ authority or the Romans’ authority, but Christ’s authority, exercised by His apostles and their successors, for the benefit of His Church, is the authority that matters. Already in the Gospel Reading, arguably as a first exercise of their ministry (Astley, CPR 30:2, p.33), the apostles seemingly‑immediately told Thomas that they had seen the Lord, though he quite skeptically refused to believe them. And, eight days after the Resurrection, by the Jewish inclusive counting of days, the disciples were inside again but no fear of the Jews’ authority is mentioned, and then miraculously Jesus came and Jesus brought Thomas to confess Him as Lord and God. And later, after Pentecost, as we heard in the First Reading (Acts 5:29-42), the apostles openly refused to obey the Jews’ authority over God’s authority.
We likewise obey God’s authority and do not fear any human authority, whether those human authorities might exclude us or even put us to death. We are willing to exclude those who do not share our religious beliefs and practices and those who do not repent and believe. We look forward to the “diversity” of Heaven and to God’s “equity” (or, “righteousness”) there. Our “Religious inclusion is through confession and forgiveness”. The resurrected Jesus, through His ministers, gives us His peace. By faith in Christ we have life in God’s Name, and, as the Epistle Reading said, even though we may be grieved by various trials, we rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of our faith, the salvation of our souls.
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 + + +