Sermon text: John 20:19–31
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The gospel lesson before us is standard fare for the second Sunday of Easter. It’s a familiar text, and so familiar one would think that preachers would run out of things to say about the resurrection of Jesus and the events recorded in John chapter 20. But not so — at least not for preachers that let the text do most of the speaking. In John chapter 20, it’s one of the most fertile texts in all of the four gospels. There’s so much here. There’s the resurrection itself at verse one and following: the appearance on the eighth day, the fact they gathered on the first day of the week, the fear of the Jews, Jesus’s greeting of peace, the breathing out of the Holy Spirit, the dynamic that takes place between Thomas and Jesus themselves, the office of the keys, the forgiving and retaining of sins, the office of the work of the Holy Spirit, the battle between faith and doubt, between seeing and believing, and seeing and not believing, and all kinds of details in the text that point to the very profound nature of the Christian faith.
We want to keep it simple in our generation. But the fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, the Christian faith is a mystery beyond all mysteries: one that requires true Christian faith given as a gift by the Lord God Himself. This morning, we’re going to focus on just a couple of physical and theological realities that are expressed in one way or another in this morning’s gospel lesson. The point of the sermon, the point of the reading this morning, is that the resurrection of Christ — the person and the work of Jesus Christ — is meant for the whole body, for the whole soul, and for the whole mind. It is a complete faith for everything that ails the human being.
So let’s start first of all with Easter morning, a part that wasn’t covered by our reading this morning. After Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene, He says to her, “Mary,” and she turned and said to Him in Hebrew, “Rabboni!” which means Teacher. Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” When Mary realizes that it’s Jesus, the resurrected Lord, standing in front of her, her first natural reaction and instinct is to grab, to get hold of Him. The Greek word indicates that she’s clinging to Him. She’s got her arms wrapped around Him. She’s not going anywhere as long as Christ is there. But in that moment, Jesus denies Mary the privilege of touching Him, as He said, “I have not yet ascended to my Father, but go and tell my brothers and I’ll meet them.”
These things took place early on Easter morning, but Mary and the disciples would not have to wait long to touch their Lord and their Savior Jesus Christ. Later that Easter day, when therefore it was evening, the text says, Jesus returned to His disciples as they hid behind locked doors for fear of the Jews. Jesus suddenly appears, and He greets them in a way to bring calm and assurance to them: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when He had said this, He breathed on them. That is, He touched them with His breath. And He said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
Jesus does a remarkable thing. He vests the power of heaven and earth in a new office: in the office of pastor, apostle, disciple in the church. He vests men of real flesh and blood with the office of the keys. And what do the keys do? What are they for? What do they open and what do they close? Heaven itself — to those who have received the forgiveness and remission of all of their sins.
You see, unlike various movements that have happened in the church over the centuries, unlike the way in which a lot of people talk about Christianity now, Jesus is no Platonist. He is no mystic. He’s not a person that tries to escape the physical world because of all of its trappings. The Christian religion, you see, has nothing in common with all the other religions of the world that try to escape this world of time and space, flesh and blood, by some kind of meditations or ideas or philosophies about how evil and bad the flesh is. Jesus does and did, through the means of grace, deal with all that that ails our human bodies: the word of God and the sacraments, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. And some Lutherans like me: we include confession and absolution — that thing that we do at the beginning of each and every service in preparation for receiving the body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. Namely, the sinners confess their sins. We do it in the general confession. And the pastor, in the stead, vested with the office of keys, forgives them their sins — not by his own integrity or power or person, but in the stead and by the command of the Lord Jesus Christ. The command we just read in John chapter 20.
In the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, we find two imperatives regarding the office of ministry, or the office of the keys some would say. The first is to forgive and retain sins. The second part of the imperative appeared in Malcolm’s vows: the vows about baptism, staying in the church, clinging to the correct doctrines of the Evangelical Lutheran church, and the like.
You see, confession and absolution can be thought of, and has been thought of, as a sacrament by many of Lutherans over the centuries, because it in fact fits the definition. It has physical components that are joined together by God’s word of promise, namely the gospel, and receive and impart the forgiveness of sins to the penitent repentant sinners who offer here their confession of faith. When the word is spoken, physical sound waves travel through the air to the ear canal. Those waves hit the eardrum, which travels along the auditory nervous system and is translated into sounds in the mind which have meaning. The point is: confession and absolution is a physical thing to which God has attached His word promise, the gospel.
Listen to Romans 10:13 again, in light of that confession and absolution: “For ‘everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ But how are they to call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” It’s so common — this confession and absolution — is so rare these days in liturgical churches. Others have forsaken it because it’s too depressing to think about sin, and it’s something that’s supposed to make you happier and healthier and wiser when you leave. But the whole nature is rather profound. It’s a profound, whole process. Absolution is a spiritual event. But it is carried along and delivered through physical means: sound waves, the ear, the mind, the hearing, the speaking, the voice of the confessor — you — and the voice of the pastor, all of the called and ordained servants of the word who stand in the stead and by the command of Christ, who have been vested with this great power to forgive and to retain sins. We forgive them when they’re repentant. We retain them when they are not.
So when a person is baptized, a person is also touched by water and the word, the spoken word. So also with the Lord’s Supper: the words are spoken over the bread and the wine that are then joined with the body and the blood of Jesus Christ for the purpose of the remission of all of your sins.
You see, our God is a touching and touchable God. A God of flesh and blood in Christ. The entire ministry of Jesus is marked by this touching and being touched. Right? Matthew 8:2 and 3: “And behold, a leper came to him and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, if you will, you can make me clean.’ And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, ‘I will; be clean.’” There it is: the physical touch, the words, and the remission of all of his sins. Matthew 8:14: “And when Jesus entered Peter’s house, he saw his mother-in-law lying sick with a fever. He touched her hand, and the fever left her, and she rose and began to serve him.” Or Matthew 9:28: blind men came up to Him, and Jesus said to them, “Do you believe that I am able to do this?” And they said to Him, “Yes, Lord.” And He touched their eyes, saying, “According to your faith be it done to you.” In another instance, Jesus took a deaf man aside. He put His fingers into his ears, and after spitting, He touched his tongue with the saliva, and looking up to heaven, He sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
You see, our God didn’t leave us with a vague Platonic notion of the Christian faith or of the remission of sins or of the person of the work of Christ. He did not leave behind the physical resurrection of his Lord. He didn’t raise Him just spiritually. He raised the whole person, so that on our last day, our whole person will be raised, forgiven all sins, and put into the new heaven and new earth.
On that first Easter Sunday, Jesus came to His disciples and offered up His hands and His side to prove to His disciples who He was. Eight days later, He had to do the same thing for the named doubting Thomas, who had previously said, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” In the wake of the crucifixion and the burial of Jesus, Thomas needed His touchable body. That’s what had walked with him for those three and a half years. No other God would do for Thomas. He needed what the other disciples had already been given: the physical presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, the touch of his heavenly brother. He had heard the word “resurrection,” but he found the hearing of the news confusing and nonsensical.
So one week later, Jesus came, the doors being locked, and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then He said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” And Thomas immediately replied, “My Lord and my God!” From doubting Thomas to one of the boldest confessions in the Bible: my Lord and my God.
The person and the work of Jesus Christ, the atoning sacrifice and the resurrection, are not fiction and fantasy. They are necessary components to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Nor are they wishful thinking or an empty hope. It is not something that’s going to be done in the future. This remission of sin: it’s here and it’s now. And it’s accomplished by the touch of God’s word spoken. It’s touched by the waters of Holy Baptism. And it’s touched by the bread and wine, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. All three for the remission of all sin. And where there is the remission of all sin, there is life and salvation, Luther rightly observes. For in the new heaven and the new earth, there’ll be no sin. And therefore, there’s no need of forgiveness in the new heavens and the new earth.
Most people think they have forgiveness because they have the idea of forgiveness, but they aren’t actually really forgiven. Why bother confessing, by the way, to a pastor any kinds of sins if in fact you just need to think about forgiveness and there you’ve got it? Why bother attending church to listen to a pastor preach and have some man in a robe pronounce absolution? Most people don’t think that they need anything like this. After all, they have a loving God who, as the commercials now say, “gets us.” Poorly. They have their idea of Jesus, and they seem satisfied with a Jesus who simply by mere thought absolves all sins from our lives. But that’s not the true Christian faith. It’s not the true Christian religion.
The same touchable God who took on flesh, touched and was touched, died and rose from the dead, still touches believers through the ear canal and the eyes and the speaking of the word and the law and the gospel and confession and absolution. He touches with the waters of Holy Baptism, and His words, and sins are gone. He touches the penitent through the word, the bread and wine, the body and blood, and the sins disappear. They’re taken away. That’s last week’s sermon: “Take and eat. Do this in remembrance of me.” He says it’s a command for our own good. All this He does in and through the church and the divinely instituted office of ministry, as for the purpose of bringing the forgiveness of sins to you in a way that instills confidence and comfort to each and every repentant Christian.
Jesus lived a perfect life in our stead. He was crucified as the atoning sacrifice for our sins. He rose on the third day on account of our justification. And He ascended into heaven and left us with His word, His means of grace, the church, the office of pastor, the forgiveness of sins right here on earth where they are all needed desperately. John 20:22: “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 withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’” Jesus also said to Peter elsewhere, “I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
Don’t confuse that with all the pope news this week. The pope isn’t the only vicar of Christ. Every ordained pastor who’s rightly called and placed into the office is a vicar — that is, stands in the stead of Christ himself. Luther speaks of this reconciliation when he writes the following: “Preaching the forgiveness of sins is nothing else other than to absolve or pronounce freedom from sin. This is done in Baptism and the Sacrament, which are likewise ordained to show this forgiveness of sin and to make us certain of our forgiveness. To be baptized or to receive the Sacrament is also absolution, because in these, forgiveness is promised and announced to each one individually in the name and by the command of Jesus Christ. Hear this, as often as you are in need of it, and receive and believe it as if you heard it from Christ Himself, because it is not our absolution but Christ’s command and Christ’s word. Therefore, it is just as good and valid as if it was heard out of His — meaning Christ’s — own mouth.”
When we, like Thomas, are troubled by fear and doubt and sin, as we should be, we come to the church and we hear the call. That’s why Malcolm took his vows, his confirmation vows, pledging himself to the life and the service of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, whose doctrine is drawn straight from the Scripture itself, void of all kinds of alien viruses of philosophy and immorality. He heard the call: “Repent and receive the forgiveness of your sins.” And he answered the call by receiving the sacrament.
This is why confirmations like Malcolm always take a vow at the end of their vow to remain faithful to the church. To remain faithful in the church is to remain faithful to Christ. To remain faithful to Christ is to have your sins forgiven, life and salvation. For where there is the forgiveness of sins, there is your eternal home waiting for you. For it is in places like this little church, and bigger churches, and other churches, and in the divine service of Christ that we receive the body and blood through the bread and wine, and all your sins are forgiven. We have a touchable God, and soon He’s going to touch you again. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.