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Sermon for Quasimodogeniti
Job 19:25-27 + 1 John 5:4-10 + John 20:19-31
Peace be with you! Anyone can say those words. They’re used, not only by Christians, but by Jews and Muslims as well. It’s a nice greeting, or a nice parting wish, nothing more—unless it has the weight of God’s voice behind it, unless God is the one bestowing peace. If God enters the room and says, “Peace be with you!”, then what do you ever have to fear again? You simply have to rejoice, because it means He hasn’t come to punish you or to condemn you, but that He wishes to grant you the gift of peace, and He wants you to relax and rest securely in the knowledge of that peace.
But when could such a thing ever happen—that God would walk into the room and proclaim “peace”? Well, as you heard in the Gospel, it happened on the day of Jesus’ resurrection—the first Easter Sunday. The women had come and reported the resurrection to the apostles, but the apostles had been slow to believe the report of their Christian sisters. They had even been slow to believe the sight of the empty tomb and the stone rolled away, in spite of the fact that the angel reminded the women about the words Jesus Himself had spoken before He died, that He would rise on the third day. The apostles didn’t believe it. They were afraid of the Jews and their murderous behavior on Good Friday. So they locked themselves in that upper room instead of going to Galilee where Jesus and the angels had told the women He would meet with His disciples.
But Jesus appeared in their midst. Now that He’s risen from the dead, He no longer chooses to abide by the laws of nature. His body is no longer confined to the limits of space and time. He is able to be wherever He chooses to be, whenever He chooses to be. On that Easter Sunday night He chose to be with His disciples, and the first words He chose to speak to them were, “Peace be with you!”
Then He showed them His hands. And there’s the mark of peace and the reason for peace: Jesus was crucified, hung on a tree made to be a curse for all those who were under the curse of sin. And He showed them His side. The mark in His side was from the spear of the soldier that caused blood and water to flow freely from Jesus’ dead body. It was no illusion; Christ had truly died. And yet, there He stood in the midst of His disciples alive again—alive to proclaim to them that His blood, shed on the cross, had truly made satisfaction for their sins, to proclaim to them that He had truly been raised from the dead, and truly lives to be our Advocate with the Father. And now, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Romans, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
See what peace there is in the fact of Christ’s resurrection! This is God, the Son of God, who told His disciples, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. He and He alone has the authority to declare peace, because He and He alone is the Lamb who was slain. He alone has earned the forgiveness of sins for all people. He and He alone has the authority to forgive sins or to retain sins, and He has promised to forgive the sins of all those who believe in Him.
Still, it was to His disciples in that upper room that the risen Christ proclaimed peace. He doesn’t appear in our midst like that, so that we can gaze into the wounds on His hands and His side and hear His voice as the disciples did. He doesn’t appear in our midst to deal with us sinners. So the phrase, “Peace be with you!”—is there any way you can hear those words and know that God Himself is speaking to you?
There is. Peace to you!, Jesus said to His apostles. As the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
This is a remarkable truth. The Lord Jesus, to whom all authority in heaven and on earth has been given, is the Judge. As He had said earlier to His disciples, the Father has given the Son authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. And now that same Jesus has sent His apostles out into the world. Just as Jesus was sent by His Father, so in the same way He sends His apostles and authorizes them to do what he alone has the authority to do: to pronounce judgment here on earth, to forgive sins or to retain sins, to give the peace of God, or to withhold it.
We call this authority to forgive or retain sins the power of the Keys, because Jesus had once said to Peter, I give you the Keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Here in our Gospel we see Jesus giving this authority to all of His apostles whom He directly sent out, as He had been sent. But then in the rest of the New Testament we’re told that the Christ also sends ministers of the Word in another way, as He calls them through the Church to be pastors, bishops, elders, or deacons, so that the power of the Keys didn’t die out with the apostles, but continues to be exercised until the end of the world through those who are called into the Office of the Holy Ministry.
So, through the office of the holy ministry, Christ does enter into the room and announce, “Peace be with you!” This is why I absolve you “by virtue of my office as a called and ordained servant of the Word.” Because this office to which the Church has called me has the authority of Christ to forgive the penitent, or to deny forgiveness to the impenitent. When your pastor says to you, “Repent!”, it’s Jesus calling you to repent. When your pastor says to you, “I forgive you your sins,” it’s Jesus forgiving you your sins. When your pastor says to you, “I retain your sins,” it’s Jesus retaining them.
So when you hear a minister of the Word declare, “Peace be with you!”, you should hear more than a nice greeting or farewell. You should recognize it as the voice of Christ, the Good Shepherd, speaking to His sheep through His called and ordained ambassador. This is how He has chosen to deal with His people until He returns at the end of the age. When a pastor baptizes or administers the Sacrament, He is doing it on behalf of Christ Jesus who sent him to do it, so that the words chanted by the minister before Holy Communion truly bestow what they say: “The peace of the Lord be with you alway!”
You may ask, why has Jesus chosen to deal with us this way, through the means of grace, through the ministry of the Word? Why not walk into each unbeliever’s home to deal with him directly? Why not sit down at every Christian table, or go sit at every hospital bed, or come directly into every Christian church to preach a sermon or to proclaim peace? Why not stay on the earth and sit on a throne and reign visibly over the world?
I don’t know all of His reasons. But I do know this one: it is so that you, His dear people, may be blessed.
The Apostle Thomas wasn’t with the other ten apostles when Jesus appeared to them on Easter Sunday. And he refused to believe their story of Jesus’ resurrection, just as the ten had refused to believe the story of the women. Unless I see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe.
Jesus gave Thomas what he demanded. And then Thomas was ashamed for having demanded it. Jesus said to Thomas, because you have seen Me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. God determined before the foundations of the world that sinners should be justified and saved by faith. And He also determined how that faith would be created and sustained, not by sight, but by the work of His Holy Spirit in the preaching of His Word. He determined to do everything by means of His Word and Spirit: convicting the world of sin, convincing the world that Christ truly died for the sins of the world and is truly risen from the dead, convincing the world to trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins. In this way, the Spirit of God is glorified. In this way, believers are blessed.
Listen again to how our Gospel ends, with these words from the Apostle John: And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name. John witnessed all those things that Jesus said and did. John saw the risen Christ with his eyes. But he writes to those who have never seen or witnessed any of it. He could have given us more, he says, more evidence, more signs, more proof. He could have gone on and on and on. But God the Holy Spirit, who inspired John’s pen, decided, it’s enough. The appearance of the risen Christ to the apostles and first century disciples is enough. The holy ministry that the Lord Christ instituted is enough. What has been inspired by the Spirit and written by the prophets and apostles about God, about Christ, about the resurrection, about salvation—it’s enough. In the Word of God, we have all we need until the end of the age to believe and to keep believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, to hope in Him, to trust in Him, to receive eternal life in His name. Because the Word of God has the power of God’s Spirit within it, and the weight of God’s authority behind it. Peace be with you, declares the Lord. Amen.
