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| Peace Be With You (John 21-19-31) |
| Written by Pastor Fausel | |
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Grace, mercy and the peace of our risen and living Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ, be with You in this blessed Easter season! Amen. We pray this morning that you all had a blessed Easter Celebration this past Sunday. And for those of you who have school age children, we pray that this past week of Spring Beak was one of rest, relaxation, and a lot of memorable fun! Part of the tradition we have here at Our Savior is the sharing of the Peace of Christ with one another during our services. Since God has reconciled Himself to us in Christ Jesus … we share that peace by affirming that we also are reconciled through Christ with one another. What we have in our Gospel reading for this morning is the first occurrence of Jesus sharing that peace following His resurrection from the dead. … We see Him appear in the midst of His disciples in closed and locked room as He declares to them: “Peace be with you.” Now, John says that the disciples were “glad” when they saw the Lord. I think if I had been one of the disciples … glad would not have described ALL the feelings I had. We have to fast rewind back to Maundy Thursday … the last day that that the disciples were close enough to talk to Jesus, to ask Him questions … to share table fellowship with Him. You may remember some words they spoke on that occasion… Like Peter saying to Jesus: “Lord I am ready to go with you both to prison and to death. And Mark tells us all the others said the same. But Run forward to later that evening and you may then remember Peter’s words of, “I don’t know the man!” And Peter saying that not once, but three-times… an emphatic denial. Go forward a bit more in time and we see at the crucifixion that all of the disciples fled, eventually to go into hiding for fear that the same fate that claimed Jesus would befall them… perhaps except the Disciple John, who was looking after Mary, Jesus’ mother. So what do we see? The disciples, those who’d even been sent out by Jesus to heal and cast out demons in His Name … all ran out on Him when He needed them most … despite all their most solemn claims to allegiance to Him, even unto death. And now, out of nowhere, Jesus bodily appears in the room with them. If I had been one of them, His sudden appearance have would triggered a pit in my stomach. Here’s Jesus. Supernaturally appearing in my midst. And I was guilty of running out on him … and Peter … not only had run out on Him, he had denied Him in His own hearing three times. What would we say? “Glad to see you, Jesus… old buddy, old pal.” We can’t argue with Scripture … we’re sure that the disciples were glad to see Jesus, as He was indeed risen from the dead… But there had to be a part of the disciples that was thinking, “Boy… are we in for it, now!” But they weren’t in for it. That’s what the Cross and the Vacant Tomb were all about. “Even before they ask, I will answer,” God said of old. When Jesus said to them, “Peace be with you,” the peace He was speaking of… was the peace that now existed between them and God, because their sins had been buried forever at the foot of the Cross … That “Peace be with you” meant that their sins of running out on Him… that even their sins of denying to have known Him … were forgiven. Even before they asked. There would be no invisible elephant sitting in the room that day that they would be trying to ignore. God, in Jesus, had announced it. “Peace be with you. Do not fear my wrath or punishment on account of your sins … though they may be grievous and many, they have been removed from you as far as the East is from the West.” Notice also … the order of events here. First, Jesus appears. Then, He announces His Peace. Then, He proves He is indeed flesh and blood by showing them His hands and side … and THEN Luke tells us the disciples were glad. The announcement of Peace first … then Gladness follows. We could get into some discussion about whether seeing Jesus alive was the primary reason for their gladness … or whether it was knowing that they stood forgiven in God’s eyes, instead. Probably a mix of the two. But notice where Jesus takes this meeting … He doesn’t give the disciples instructions about how to tell other people He is truly alive and risen from the dead … What does He do? He immediately breathes on them, imparting the Holy Spirit. Why? So that as THEY have experienced God’s peace through the forgiveness of their sins … THEY might be enabled now to share that same peace through the assurance of God’s forgiveness to others. And so, from that, there is good reason to understand that Jesus’ Peace, His forgiveness, was perhaps, a major reason for the disciples’ gladness. And so … Thomas’ unbelief, then, may have had more to do with his still living under the burden of his sin … than his lack of trust in the eyewitness accounts of the other disciples. They had been set free by Jesus’ words. “Peace be with you.” … Thomas had not had that experience. “We have seen the Lord!” they told him. They had seen Jesus more than with just their eyes … they had also experienced Him in their hearts. So, Thomas may have been thinking … “You have seen the Lord … and you have lived to talk about it? What you and I did to Him was unforgivable. What I can’t believe is, that if you really saw Jesus, He’d just let you off like that.” And so … as we read … Jesus again appears, offering the same gift. “Peace be with You.” And then He invites Thomas to touch what the others had only seen … His hands and His side. Thomas’ reaction is more a confession, than a witness, as he says, “My Lord and MY God.” We might hear that with the sense of: “Jesus, forgive me for not believing that You were THEN … who I see You to be NOW.” Jesus accepts that confession, absolving Him by affirming Thomas’ faith … You have believed because you have seen … And then Jesus remarks that those who have not seen are more blessed than he. Because why? Because we who have not seen Jesus in the flesh still have been given the gift of faith, the forgiveness of our sins … which stands in our hearts because of His Word … because He said so … not because we have trusted our senses to confirm the truth of His Word. “Fear Not. My peace is yours. Your sins have been forgiven. Why. Because I died and rose again. And you believed that as I have said so. Yes … but Pastor, but where is that peace? It’s not what we see! We see war and violence … people blowing themselves up to kill others. We don’t see peace there. We see divorce almost every day. We see we see abandonment, we see out-right abuse. We see trouble with children, children being so mean to other children they back them into corners with no way out. Even in the church, some of the Lutheran churches in our own circuits … dealing with conflicts … and unrest. And that’s just looking outside ourselves … how about that Peace within us? We see illness … problems due to age and infirmity, we see death, disappointments … and often, we are burdened with our own feelings of guilt. The answer to that is this … Christ’s peace is not something someone can see in the world … or we can always feel in our own hearts … The peace of which Jesus speaks is an attitude toward you in the heart of God. And that’s why Jesus words to Thomas and the others are ones we need to take with us today. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus wasn’t referring only to not having seen His scars … He was referring to what we just listed out. That despite what we DO see in our sinful world … we know in spite of that … that God’s heart is lovingly inclined toward us. He IS at peace with us. He wants to have a personal and loving relationship with us. Again, that was what Good Friday and Easter were all about. Making that Peace Jesus announces a reality. So that when we find ourselves in God’s presence … as the disciples did the evening of the first day of the week … our hearts are filled with gladness instead of dread. Joy instead of sorrow. Love instead of fear. How do we know that for sure? … We have Jesus Word on it. And we know that it works! Ask anyone who has recently come to faith … ask anyone who up to now has lived under the tyranny of the guilt of their sin … and then when they have been given that most Precious jewel of the Gospel, God’s unconditional forgiveness … they can tell you how real and tangible that Peace of God that passes all understanding truly is. THEY can tell you how precious those words from Jesus are: “Peace be with you!” It changes lives. And it changed theirs. And it HAS changed yours. So, talk about that peace this week, as you sit and as you rise … as you drive along the road … teach it to your children, meditate on it in the cool of the day. God’s heart is at peace with yours! … No matter how the devil and the world may rage all around you … All those things one day will pass away. But Good Friday and Easter will stand forever … in Your heart and in His. His Peace IS with You! In Him, Amen. |