John 20:19-31

Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you."

The peace that Jesus brings is not the sort of peace we could ever think up for ourselves, St. Paul tells us. Writing to the Philippians, Paul tells us that “the peace of God passes all understanding” but it “will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (4:7).

That doesn’t sound like the peace we mean or the peace we want. It doesn’t sound like the peace that will make the fears and chaos and struggle of our lives today go away and make us solvent, safe, and secure again. How can our hearts and minds feel peace when everything around us is going to pieces?

But that’s just the point: Jesus doesn’t give us the peace we want; Jesus gives us the peace we need. This is God’s peace. It does not fix what we have broken. It does give us the power to triumph over fear and despair and anxiety in the midst of all the things in our world that we have broken.

Consider the disciples, huddling in hiding in that house on the evening of that first Easter day. That morning, Mary Magdalene had come racing to them with some crazy story about Jesus’ tomb being empty, Jesus having risen from the dead, even that she herself had seen Jesus and talked with Jesus right there and then. But the whole day has gone by, and nothing has happened to validate Mary’s story.    

What is happening outside that house is the “witch-hunt”: the authorities have dealt with Jesus, the ringleader of these heretics and dangerous insurgents; now they are chasing down Jesus’ lieutenants, his “disciples,” to make sure they clean out the whole nest of conspirators and blasphemers.

For the time being, this safe-house gives the fugitive disciples of Jesus some rest—but it is not peace. They are afraid—the door is locked and barred. They have a sort of peace: no one has found them or caught them or harmed them. But that sort of peace is no comfort; it cannot conquer the fear and anxiety that mounts with every passing hour.
And then it happens: Jesus comes in and joins them. Jesus doesn’t so much “come in”—the door is still firmly locked and barred—Jesus just “shows up.” No mysterious light, no glowing apparition, no spooky swinging open of the locked door—they are without Jesus at one moment, and in the very next moment Jesus is somehow “there” with them. It is truly Jesus, looking fine and healthy and strong as ever, except for those nasty nail-scars in his hands and that big scar from a Roman soldier’s spear in his side.

Before anyone can say or do anything, Jesus speaks with that old familiar voice and says, “Peace be with you.” And suddenly, they are at peace. They are joyful, happy, rejoicing. Who cares how this could be or what has happened. Jesus is alive! And that means Jesus goes on—the message has not died! Jesus still goes on living. The mission has not ended in failure but still presses ahead in triumph!

Which is great; but now what do we do? Despair and anxiety can actually be comforting in an angry and dismal sort of way. We know how to live in despair and anxiety, angry at who or what caused it and seeing the future as only more of the same dismal fate. We know that death is ultimately our end. And we know that our life can be filled with little deaths that cut away at our life even as we go on living.

Except, now Jesus Christ is standing right in front of us: Jesus Christ, crucified, dead, and buried, nevertheless is alive. Death could not hold him. Christ has won the war with death. And Christ has won the war with death, not for himself, but for us.

“Peace be with you,” “the peace of God that passes all understanding,” peace that “will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” and so not locked in despair and anxiety, anger and dismay, helplessness and hopelessness. Christ is risen in victory over death, and in victory over all of those little deaths that cut and bite us every day. Christ is risen and so the last word for us is not death, but his own resurrection new life.

Despair and anxiety are replaced by faith and hope. Anger and dismay are replaced by love and confidence. “Peace be with you,” says the risen and victorious Lord Jesus, and we are created anew, born again into Jesus’ own resurrection life. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you,” says Jesus, and what a moment ago was something so fearful as to seem impossible is now the very thing we want to do. “Receive the Holy Spirit,” and Jesus breathes into us anew that breath of God that the Creator first breathed into us, the breath that sin and wickedness stifled and strangled until we were dead and breathless. Jesus gives us the breath of God’s own holy and divine life again. Jesus breathes into us the Holy Spirit, he “in-spires” us to carry on the message and the mission: the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation in Jesus’ name.

Today, we live in the best possible time to witness in the world to our faith in Jesus Christ. We refuse to sink into despair because of how bad things are, even though things are indeed bad; instead we defy despair by living in faith, the faith that believes that in Christ life always triumphs over death, even the little deaths that seem to be gnawing away at us right now.

We refuse to give in to anxiety over our uncertainties, even though we are all going through very uncertain times. Instead we choose hope, hope in what Jesus Christ has already done and keeps on doing, raising up life in victory over death.

We turn away from the temptations of anger and accusation. Instead we sacrifice ourselves in love for one another, reaching out with compassion to help each other get up and get back on our feet by the Holy Spirit’s power, by which Christ reaches down and lifts us all out of whatever sort of deaths we are dying.

And then there is Thomas.

Wherever Thomas was that evening, he missed it all. And when he finally caught up with the rest of the disciples, who told him about Jesus’ resurrection and all that had happened to them because of it, Thomas didn’t see the change in them. Thomas didn’t see the faith and hope and love in them radiating from the Spirit of Christ in them. Thomas finds it all very doubtful, unbelievable. People don’t just come back from the dead. Thomas needs proof, to touch the scars of the nails, touch the scar from the spear, see and touch with his own eyes and hands before he can believe something so unbelievable.

For Thomas, like all the disciples, it seemed obvious that when Jesus died, the message and mission died with him. And Thomas could not get past that message and mission of Jesus. His human faith in the message and mission could not rise up to the mystery of supernatural faith—faith in Jesus himself, faith in the unbelievable, that Jesus was and is God Himself.

Thomas doubts; but doubt is really a kind of faith. Doubt wants to believe; it is just afraid to believe. Doubt does not reject faith; it just keeps postponing faith.

And it is Jesus who breaks through the doubt and lets it settle as confident faith. This is what we can expect from Jesus: no one gets left behind. He comes back a week later, when Thomas is there with the other disciples. He offers himself freely to Thomas. Here, put your finger in the nail scars; put your hand in the scar in my side; “do not doubt, but believe.”

And read the story carefully: it is faith that breaks through the doubt, not proof. Thomas does not test or touch Jesus; Thomas does not investigate the scars. He doesn’t need to. He has encountered the living, risen Christ. Christ lovingly invites him: “Do not doubt, but believe.” And in both repentance and adoration, Thomas professes what is the whole of faith in Christ, with his simple confession, “My Lord and my God!”

This is Christ’s call to us, one of promise and forgiveness and reconciliation for all the times when we are tempted to doubt that all this is real: that Christ is risen, death is broken, Christ is living and acting here and now in us and among us and for us. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” “Do not doubt, but believe.” And by the gift of Christ’s Holy Spirit we are able to repent and confess, “My Lord and my God!”

It is easy today to fear and doubt—and by the measure of the world, with good reason. But the world’s “good reason” is exactly the death that Christ has broken, defeated, and over which he has risen victorious. Our faith in Christ fills us with the Spirit of Christ, to give us the courage to live in peace and in hope, which assures us that no death, big or small, is going to win out, because the life of Christ has already won.

Mark E. Chapman, a private scholar and writer within the Lutheran tradition, preached this sermon at the Lutheran Church of the Transfiguration in Cayce, South Carolina on the Second Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2009.

Sources consulted: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11-21 (InterVarsity Press, 2007). St. John Chrysostom, Commentary on Saint John the Apostle and Evangelist, Homilies 48-88, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 41 (Fathers of the Church, 1960). St. Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, 12-24; Tractates on the First Epistle of John, The Fathers of the Church, Vol. 92 (Catholic University of America Press, 1995). St. Bonaventure, Commentary on the Gospel of John: Works of St. Bonaventure, Vol. XI (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2007). Martin Luther, The Sermons of Martin Luther, Vol. II: Sermons on Gospel Texts for Epiphany, Lent and Easter, trans. & ed. by John Nicholas Lenker (Baker Book House, 1983). Martin Luther, Sermons of Martin Luther: The House Postils, Vol. 2, ed. Eugene F. A. Klug (Baker Book House, 1996).