[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]

This Week's Sermon THE SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER 30 March 2008 "Jesus Grants Us His Peace" John 20:19-31 LSB Series A Vicar Heath A. Trampe Soli Deo Gloria!

There are many places in the Divine Service where peace is mentioned. After the sermon, for example, the pastor says "the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus". Again, in the Pax Domini, the Agnus Dei, the dismissal from the Lord's Supper, the Nunc Dimittis, and even in the Benediction, peace is mentioned. What kind of peace is this? Is this peace that can be found in safety from earthly harm? Many Americans seem to think so. We buy fancy alarms and locks so that nobody can break in and steal or harm what we've worked so hard to build, including our families. Is this peace that can be found in the accumulation of wealth? If we save up enough money, we can handle any situation. Like the man who stores up his crops in large barns and plans to take it easy for the rest of his life, we are surprised to find God saying "fool, this night your soul is required of you" (Luke 12:20). What then? It becomes clear that nothing we do on this earth can bring us true peace. Therefore, we must be speaking of a heavenly peace, but how can we attain this? According to today's text, we cannot. Fortunately, for we who are dying,

I. Jesus grants us His peace, but we find it hard to believe.
--Like the disciples, we need more proof.
--Like Thomas, we believe only what we can see and touch.
II. We receive His peace despite our unbelief.
--Christ's peace doesn't depend on our worthiness.
--He has given us the gift of absolution to know that we are forgiven.

In today's Gospel, Jesus' disciples are afraid for their lives. They have neither wealth nor security. They think their Master is dead and now they fear for their lives from the Jews who are seeking to kill them. Hidden behind locked doors, they were surprised to find a man standing in their midst. Not only that, but this man met them with only a simple "peace be with you". However, after hearing such a greeting and seeing the physical evidence of crucifixion upon His hands and side, these trembling men took on new life. Their Lord and Savior was with them once again!

Jesus, again granting them peace, states His true purpose for the visit. "As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you". The first ordination is about to take place. Jesus then "breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld'". This breath, the same breath of life that turned dust into the man Adam, gave these disciples an authority like none other on earth. The disciples, who couldn't get anything right, who denied Jesus and constantly mistook what He was saying, were now the representatives of His church on earth. All of Christianity would come as a result of their preaching and teaching. When they forgave sins, Christ's forgiveness was bestowed.

But not all of the Apostles were there that day. A week later, Jesus returned, only to find that Thomas was now with them. Thomas did not believe that Jesus had been there or that He had ordained the other disciples for His work on earth. Thomas has picked up a bad reputation over the years, but we must remember that he missed the free show of Jesus' hands and side. What the others were able to see and touch to believe, he was not. This is the situation that we find ourselves in.

We have a hard time believing the absolution in the Divine Service. We hear it and we know what it means, but we still feel unclean and sinful. Furthermore, we don't even feel cleansed when we receive the Sacrament of the Altar. The wine tastes bitter and the bread is bland. We leave the service in doubt, wishing that Christ would come to us directly and prove to us that this forgiveness is real. Show us a miracle Christ! If only you will do this, I will believe! You see, Thomas wasn't so bad after all.

Even doubting Thomas, this brute that we spit at and bemoan, came to proclaim his faith in Christ with a resonant "My Lord and my God!" Thomas was allowed to be skeptical, allowed to need further proof, so that we also would have further proof. This sighting by the other ten wasn't some sort of mass hysteria. Christ truly was among them in His resurrected body, and He truly ordained them for service. We have all the proof that we need to believe in Christ's triumph over Satan, but we, much worse than Thomas, still don't consider it to be true. Like I said before, we understand the absolution, but it's not real to us. We continue to feel the pangs of guilt for our sin. Christ's sacrifice on the cross becomes worthless, just one more story in a book full of inspirational stories. This is why we cling to the comfort offered to us by this world. We can see the false security; we can touch the fleeting wealth. But these, like all precious things in this life, will soon expire.

If Christ's bestowal of this power that we have come to know as the Office of the Keys was just for the disciples, then we're in trouble. The disciples have been dead for centuries, and we're still sinning. A greater understanding of this bestowal can be found in Acts, where Peter and the other apostles proclaimed to the Jewish council "The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging Him on a tree. God exalted Him at His right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:30-31). Jesus gives not only the forgiveness of sins to Israel, but also the repentance, regardless of their worth. All of Israel was given these gifts.

Knowing that race and birthright mean nothing to God in light of Christ's death and resurrection, we can confidently assume that we are all given this authority of forgiveness and retention of sins, as Luther's catechism states: "The Office of the Keys is that special authority which Christ has given to His church on earth". Luther's understanding, as well as our own, is that the Keys are for the whole church, meaning each of us. He goes on to explain that this authority is given to all, but must only be exercised by those who are rightly called. This is why only the Apostles were directly given the command to forgive and retain sins; this is also why only the pastor should do so today.

When your pastor forgives you, this is "just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself". Do you believe this? If so, this authority should be treasured as the most comforting of all comforts to be found in this life. The burden of your forgiven sins should haunt you no more. God has forgotten them completely. Jesus explains it thusly: "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed". That's us. We have not seen Christ in the flesh, yet we have faith in His Word, both preached and spoken. This same Word proclaims to us that His forgiveness, and the pastor's forgiveness, is absolute. Thus it is aptly named the absolution. When we receive this absolution, either in the Divine Service or privately, our guilt is wiped away. We, as a result of sin, cannot forget these offenses, but God already has.

John the evangelist considered the account of Christ's resurrection and the bestowal of the Keys to be the climax of his Gospel: "these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name". We sing a version of this text in the Divine Service, as a proclamation of the Gospel as a whole. Do not be deceived, however, the true Gospel is that Jesus Christ died for your sins and rose again, triumphing over Satan. No other message matters. This is the greatest peace, that peace which we hear repeated over and over throughout the Divine Service. This knowledge is more precious than gold or silver. Jesus Christ is Risen, and we know His forgiveness is true, because He told us Himself.