John 20: 19–31
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
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In the opening lines of his autobiography, Confessions, Saint
Augustine writes, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient,
ever new. Late have I loved you!” He was talking,
of course, about the beauty of the Word of God, the holy Son of God,
which – late in his life, he says, he has come to love and
appreciate in wonderful new ways. And this morning I am recalling
his words because I am feeling the same way about the twelve verses
from the Gospel of John, which we just read aloud. For I, too,
am appreciating the ancient and ever–new beauty of the Word of
God – words I thought I knew but am always re–discovering.
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You see, we read these same twelve verses from the Gospel of John every
single year, without fail, on the Second Sunday of Easter. So, we
think we know the story of the Lord who walks through locked doors of
the house where the disciples are hiding out, terrified, and breathes
the Holy Spirit into them. We think we know that story backwards
and forwards. It is John’s version of the birth of the
Church. We also know the story of Thomas, who doubts when he hears
that his friends have just encountered the living Lord – and
skeptically challenges what they are telling him. In fact,
we’ve heard both these stories so many times – any one of
you could probably preach those sermons yourselves, without much trouble.
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But this week, as I read these familiar stories again – a few new
thoughts occurred to me – things I was stunned to realize I had
never noticed before. And the first of these thoughts was simply
this: that the last time most of those disciples had seen Jesus
alive – or he had seen them — was the night before his
crucifixion in the Garden of Gethsemane – when the Roman soldiers
were arresting Jesus and they, his disciples, were running away,
saving their own skins.
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And that thought, in turn, shed a whole new light on the fear those
disciples knew when they saw Jesus walking straight into that locked
room on the night of his resurrection. Maybe their
fear wasn’t so much about those who had crucified Jesus
now coming after them. Maybe it wasn’t that he was
some kind of ghost, come back to life again. I’ve heard
both those interpretations of the disciples’ fear many times
over, and so have you. But their deeper fear, I now understand,
was that they were ashamed — that the One who had come back to
life again and was now standing in front of them – was someone
they had claimed to love but had abandoned to a cruel fate. They
were ashamed, you see, of their own behavior. So, they didn’t
want Jesus to come anywhere close, where he could see their shame.
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But that’s also where the beauty comes in. When Jesus walks
into that room, he doesn’t remind those disciples of their past
failures, much less accuse them. On the contrary, he reassures
them. He offers them peace – not once but twice. For
he hasn’t come to remind them of their past failures. He
has come to show them their future – the whole new way
they are now to live.
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For what they are now to do, he tells them, is to go out into the
world in His Name, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, setting others
free from their sin and shame. He is sending them out, you see,
just as the Father once sent him out, to show others how to live with
mercy and forgiveness for all. And just in case they haven’t
caught that significant detail, he spells it out for them.
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“If you forgive the sins of any,” he tells them, “their
sins are now forgiven, gone for good. And if you retain those
sins, well, what are you going to do with them?”
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Now this is an astonishing commission – because you remember what
the critics of Jesus once said – that only God can forgive
sins. But here he is commissioning his disciples – the same
ones who had failed him – to go out in his Name and forgive
others’ sins. How can this be? How can this
possibly be?
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The answer, in human terms, is that it’s not
possible. Human beings, fallible as we are, cannot forgive
sins. But Jesus, our Redeemer, has come back to bind up sin,
to mend what has been broken, to restore what has been destroyed,
torn apart. And what had been destroyed, what had been marred
in those disciples was the image of God – a merciful God –
in whose image they had been created.
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That, in fact, is what the peace Jesus offers them actually
means. That word peace, you might remember, eiro in Greek,
comes from an ancient Greek verb that means to knit something back
together – into a seamless whole. And that’s what
Jesus – in this brand–new, post–Resurrection
Creation — is doing for his disciples. He is mending them,
you see, taking away their shame and knitting them back together in
ways they have hardly ever known. He is recreating them
in all the ways the Father intended them to be when He first created
human beings in the Book of Genesis. And then Jesus seals the deal
by breathing into those disciples the Holy Spirit – who will now
accompany them in all their efforts to carry out this brand–new
commission – whose holiness will enable them to do it.
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For that, in fact, is what being sent out in the Name of Jesus really
means. Jesus was calling them to walk in his ways, to resemble
him in everything they did. For if they resemble Jesus, they
will resemble God the Father, in whose image we were all
created. What does God look like? Well, it’s all
about integrity. He is who He is. That’s actually
one of His names. But the expanded view of that name is the
name He revealed to Moses up on Mount Sinai when Moses asked Him His
name. I am, He said,
The Lord, a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger, and abundant in steadfast love and faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
Well, that is a very long name to keep in mind. So, I just
shorten it to Merciful and Gracious, Slow to Anger and Quick to
Forgive. Those names I can keep track of – not just as
names for the Lord, but descriptions of the way I’m to act as
well, descriptions of the way He wants me to behave towards
others. For those are the names people are supposed to think of
when they think of me or of you, also sent out in his
Name. Merciful and gracious . . .
slow to anger and quick to forgive.
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None of us, of course, are going to get this right away. In fact,
it’s going to take us a whole lifetime to come even
close. Maybe that is why the early Christians called this new
way of life The Way. They were always walking in this new Way,
even if none of them claimed to have arrived. But with the help
of the Holy Spirit, with the ever–present help of Emmanuel, God
with us, we can now come close. And that is astonishingly good news.
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So, this Sunday, this Second Sunday of Easter is not about the same
old, same old story of doors locked out of fear, or the doubt and
unbelief of Thomas. This Sunday is about the ever ancient, ever
new God we serve, the One who is always surprising us, the One who is
always recreating us. This Sunday is about our future – and
how we are now supposed to live in the Name of Jesus – showing
mercy and forgiveness to one and all, just as He has shown mercy and
forgiveness to us.
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You see, resurrection is not just about Jesus. It’s about
us – a whole new beginning — for every last one of us.
Alleluia! The Lord is risen!
The Lord is risen indeed!
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Amen.
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