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Christ is risen. Indeed, God, dear brothers and sisters in the risen Christ, especially this morning, Wyatt, as you have been made an heir of the kingdom of God, grace, mercy, and peace from God, the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Now, there is a lot that we can talk about this morning, and I think given the gospel text, our tendency, even among us creatures, is to talk about Thomas. But too often the message, I think, becomes, well, don’t be like Thomas. Don’t be a doubting Thomas. You know, you should just have faith and if you just try, you can. Well, we will talk about Thomas a little bit, but there’s something really more important going on here in our lesson this morning, or gospel lesson primarily. It’s something that we don’t want to miss. It’s this notion of being free, being released from captivity.
We see with this lesson, we see kind of this self-imposed confinement of the disciples, and we see this actual confinement of the soon-to-be apostles. But more so we want to think about the spiritual freedom that Christ brings, and it is the resurrection of Christ that is the culmination of victory over death in the grave, which we are all enslaved by. And also that Christ gives to his church here, this gift, this marvelous gift, this wonderful gift of absolution, which is simply no more than the preaching and the proclamation and the knowledge of the forgiveness of sins.
So for this, we will look mostly at the gospel lesson. We will also briefly touch on this reading from Acts as well. But first, imagine that you are one of these disciples and you are here in this locked room somewhere in or near Jerusalem. The reason you’re there is because you’re terrified, you’re afraid, you fear for your life. You fear that these religious authorities who have persecuted and killed Jesus are coming for you also. And that’s what John means when he says the disciples were in the room locked behind the door for fear of the Jews. The disciples are dejected and dispirited and disheartened, and they are in disbelief, and maybe we would even say they’re in shock. Who they thought Jesus was appears to not be the case. Never mind that Mary Magdalene had told some of them that this news that she has seen the resurrected Lord in person, they didn’t believe her.
I’m sure they see no need to kind of risk their lives by being out and around looking for Jesus, who they don’t believe is there to begin with. And now they’re afraid they are at least in danger of being arrested, possibly killed, because they’ve been part of this conspiracy against the authorities themselves. And then John tells us, with no warning, appearing out of nowhere, Jesus is there among them, as he says.
And I like how, maybe you have to like how John writes, you know, very sedate about things. He’s not dramatic about it. Jesus is just not there one second, and the next he is. Can you imagine the faces of the disciples and what was going through their minds when Jesus appears? Something like, oh boy, we are in trouble now. The Messiah has hunted us down. Never mind about the authorities; the Lord is here. I know I would have been like that, but the disciples do otherwise.
Before they can even say anything, Jesus speaks to them before they have a chance to say anything. He says this: “Peace be with you.” I’m sure they were surprised and maybe were surprised at what this means. Isn’t Jesus going to lay into them for their disbelief? Isn’t it going to rebuke them that they have been cowards and that they haven’t believed in anything that he had told them when he was with them? Maybe he did just a little bit. Mark tells us actually that Jesus rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart.
I mean, I guess it can be some of both. It can be a rebuke, and Jesus tends to work this way. It can be a rebuke and a little bit of comfort, more so comfort here. And I think that’s really what John is focusing on: Christ’s comfort to them. “Peace be with you.” Jesus is forgiving them for their unbelief, for everything, before they can even ask for it. He knows their hearts, and he forgives them of their sin and absolves them of their sin.
Then, if he is responding to some unsaid demand for physical proof, he shows them his hands and his side. Because after all, he knows what they’re thinking: is this really Jesus? Can it really be him? So he shows them. I suspect that the mood in the room had to have changed dramatically. Again, John isn’t very dramatic about it himself. He says, “The disciples were glad.” Surely they were overjoyed, ecstatic, thrilled.
But Jesus isn’t there just to greet them and have a reunion because he’s already given them this forgiveness, the reconciliation of peace with God, and now he’s got something else for them. He has a mission. John tells us three things about what Jesus says to them, this mission that he gives them. I think it’s kind of three details that maybe we don’t quite see in the other gospels. Luke is usually real thorough about this stuff, but even he doesn’t have it. And I think we ought to take note of these.
First, Jesus tells them that as the Father has sent him, so he is also sending them now. This is a continuation of his mission. They continue his ministry, what he has done, and so he consecrates them in this mission as he does it, just as the Father had consecrated Christ in his mission.
Second, in this sending that he is about to put them on, he gives them the Holy Spirit. He actually breathes the Holy Spirit on them. The Holy Spirit, the helper, the one whom he had promised to send them. When he did that, he said that the Spirit will guide them into all truth.
The third thing, and probably the most important for us, is that he tells them to forgive sins. This maybe really is the only place in John where we hear about this, where the forgiveness of sins is even mentioned. We should know that in giving this authority to the disciples, he’s not given it just to this small group of men; he’s given it to us, to the church.
After all, we confess in the office of the keys that this is the special authority which Christ has given to his church on earth, to forgive the sins of repentant sinners and to retain the sins of the unrepentant as long as they do not repent. But isn’t it remarkable what Jesus does the very first day out of the tomb? He gives his church, us, his church, God, the absolution. He gives us the authority and the responsibility and the obligation to forgive sins.
We don’t know what happens next. John doesn’t bother to tell us, but does Jesus just disappear as he appeared? We don’t know. John just jumps to this news that Thomas was missing. Thomas wasn’t there, so we pick up the story about Thomas. Well, what’s going on with Thomas? And we think, well, maybe he wasn’t afraid like the others. We might remember earlier in John, we hear about how when Jesus is up in Galilee and he hears about Lazarus, and he hears about Lazarus’ death and dying, that he wants to go down to Bethany to see about Lazarus. But he’s warned by everybody that the Jews are going to kill him when he gets there. Thomas is the only one who doesn’t seem to be afraid of going when he says, “Let us disciples also go, that we may die with him.”
So maybe he isn’t so concerned about getting caught. Whatever the case is, he does show up at some point, and the disciples tell him that Jesus has appeared to them, and he doesn’t believe them. Like they did before, he is really in this status of unbelief. He seems to deny any previous belief he had, anything that Jesus had told them that would happen. More than that, he demands physical proof: “Unless I see…”
Well, Jesus will accommodate Thomas in this. About a week later, he’s there when Jesus does make this subsequent appearance in the same room, this same room locked up tight. I think it’s interesting that the disciples are still hiding because Jesus has already told them they’ve got a mission. So they know they’ve got to leave sometime. But we also should remember Jesus’ words about how the Holy Spirit would direct them.
So maybe they’re waiting, and we shouldn’t be so critical. Jesus appears again, this time with the same words, “Peace be with you,” and then he gives Thomas the same thing he gave the rest: forgiveness, along with visual proof, and he tells Thomas to touch it. “Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Words that surely pierced Thomas’ heart brought him to shame and humility, but certainly also at the same time gave him a clear conscience, soothed him, because he too, like the others, is absolved of this sin of unbelief; he is forgiven.
Out of his mouth comes this great exclamation of confession: “My Lord and my God!” In this confession of Thomas, we hear what John begins his gospel with: that Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Word made flesh, is God. Jesus responds to this with the foretelling of the mission that he will send them all, that they will bring all the nations into the kingdom. For many will come to faith by the gospel that he sends them to preach, and that these will be believed by hearing and not by seeing.
That’s how John closes this chapter by saying what Jesus says: faith will come by the word, and the faith will give life in his name. Now, within a short period of time, maybe a couple of weeks after Jesus’ ascension, we now have the apostles, these new apostles, and they were indeed fearlessly preaching the gospel throughout Jerusalem. In fact, they were preaching it in the temple court of all places.
John tells us that they were, by the power of the Holy Spirit, doing many signs and wonders in the name of the Lord. This news began to travel even outside Jerusalem to the point that people were bringing loved ones, friends into Jerusalem to be healed, not just those who had physical afflictions, but John tells us those who had unclean spirits. So many came to faith by their healing, and the apostles weren’t just, as Jesus said they would, when he said, “Whoever believes in me also will do the works that I do, and greater works than these will he do because I am going to the Father.”
Of course, this threat of imprisonment of the apostles kind of never really goes away. It was there as Peter and John had already been brought into the council’s presence after the day of Pentecost. And in kind of this role reversal of persecution, we moved from the Pharisees to the Sadducees who now, because of their denial of the resurrection, are particularly wanting to squash this talk of the resurrection. They didn’t really share the enthusiasm of all the people that were there at the temple, and they were jealous, as John tells us—in fact, mad that the apostles were preaching the resurrection. So they arrest them and throw them in this public prison for shaming them, trying to shame them.
Although most of these apostles will do worse than this, most of them will be martyred at some point for the gospel; that time has not yet come. The Lord sends this angel to release them, and in fact, to direct them in what they are to do, and that is to go back to the temple where they were and continue to preach, to tell the life of the risen Christ.
So again, they do as the Lord wills. They step off into this mission. And we’ll hear more about that in the coming weeks of Easter.
So brothers and sisters, one thing we must know is that in his resurrection, Jesus brings freedom. He appeared to the disciples in that locked room to free them from their fear, but more than that, to forgive them. In his breathing of the Holy Spirit on them, he gave them the courage and the strength to eventually go out of that room and go preach the gospel. He freed those apostles later from an actual prison, a physical prison, when he opened that door and led them out so they could continue to preach.
And He has done the same for us also. He has freed us also. He has purchased our release from the law and from the punishment of sin by his blood. He has released us from our sin and given us the promise of forgiveness in His Word, in the absolution, in His Holy Supper. He has freed us from doubt and, yes, even our unbelief, not by our will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit to convert us and convert our will to be inclined to him.
Jesus sought out the disciples so that they might believe and so that he could forgive them. He seeks us out too, and he assures us of his love and forgiveness with the same words: “Peace be with you.” And as he tells the disciples, even so, I am sending you, he is sending us also to do the same—to forgive sins, to preach the gospel to anybody and everybody, regardless of our vocation.
As Jesus showed the disciples his hands and his side so that they would see that he was indeed raised from the dead, that he is alive forevermore, so that they would be, and so we too may be confident in the promise of our own resurrection. As he came to the disciples there in that locked room, despite the walls and despite the door in bodily form, to show them again, once again, that he is God and man.
Christ comes to us himself in the physical presence of his body and blood in the wine and bread of the Holy Supper. Not just coming to us as a remembrance or so that we may celebrate it as a symbol, His body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, absolution, just as he said.
As he breathed the Spirit on the disciples, so he gives us the Spirit. He sends the Spirit to us in His Word, and He gives us the Spirit in the waters of Holy Baptism that we may believe and be strengthened in faith and be forgiven. And yes, like the disciples, he tells us that we are blessed, not because we have seen, but because we believe and have not seen.
He gives them, he gave them the keys to the kingdom of heaven through the authority to forgive, remit, but yet retain sins. He has given us the same authority as he forgives them, and he forgives us and calls us to carry out this mission of the church, which is to forgive the sins of others.
That is the most important thing you should leave here today with: the mission of the church, for you are the church. So may we ever hold fast to this one and only who has freed us, and by His word, gives us the confidence of salvation and eternal life through faith in Him. Amen.
Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. Amen.