Locked Doors, Living Savior: Christ’s Peace for Fearful Hearts (John 20:19–31)

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Alleluia, Christ is risen! Easter morning still feels close, but by the second Sunday, the Alleluia's, that Easter greeting might feel a little awkward to shout out like, oh I wasn't expecting that today, and the Easter lilies may be drooping a little, they need a drink of water.

The church calls today Quasimodogenity, from the first line of the intro that we sang in English, like newborn infants, Alleluia, in Latin it's Quasimodogenity infantis, Alleluia, and all of the Sundays of Easter have a name like that from the first couple words of the intro, but it's in Latin so the names are kind of funny.

Quasimodo makes you think of Hunchback of Notre Dame maybe.

Quasimodogenity infantis, like newborn infants.

Babies are famous for forgetting a feeding almost as soon as it's done.

They squirm and whimper and they wonder if anybody's ever going to come to them and help them and pick them up and cradle them again.

That's the mood in the upper room where the disciples are seated behind locked doors, and if we're honest it's often our mood as that glow of Easter Sunday fades and we settle back into life as we knew it.

So how does the risen Christ keep nourishing his newborn church when fear and doubt or just spiritual exhaustion set in after Easter Sunday?

How does he do it for his newborn church according to John's gospel?

How does he do it for us today?

He does it like this, with peace and faith and life by coming to us through his wounds and his word and his spirit.

First, Christ nourishes his fearful church with his peace.

The doors are shut because guilt and anger both lurk outside the room where the disciples are on Easter evening.

The disciples deserted Jesus, so in addition to fear from who might be out there looking for them, shame is seated right there at the table with them.

The authorities who killed Jesus might be hunting his followers next, so they're trying to lay low, and then Jesus stands among them.

No knock, no key, no scolding, he's just there, and he says, peace be with you.

And they say, and also with you.

No, they don't.

They're too stunned to say anything.

The piece that he pronounces is not a soothing mood music track.

It's not like some lo-fi beats that you might turn on if you're going to study, or classical music, or you know, you turn on the radio in the truck cab in its country, and it kind of just like, ah, now everything is as it should be.

It's not that kind of like moody piece.

It is like a legal piece.

It's a royal declaration that there is peace, because the atonement has been finished.

Isaiah once heard God's promise, peace, peace to the far, and peace to the near.

That's from Isaiah chapter 57.

Isaiah 57 · chapter mention

Now the incarnate word, who Isaiah spoke of 700 years before he was born, now he speaks it in person.

Peace to the far and to the near.

And the order here is peace first, wounds second.

His declaration of peace precedes his demonstration in order that the disciples understand the source of the gift.

When he shows his hands on his side, he's like holding out the receipt of redemption.

Here's peace, and here's the proof.

It's paid for forever.

Take a look.

He shows them the mark on his side.

Colossians 1.20 says that Jesus made peace by the blood of his cross.

So their relief, therefore, rests not on emotions, which can be fragile.

You can be relaxed and comfy, and you got yourself situated, and everything is just right.

And then, I don't know, lately we got a lot of birds flying into our windows at the parsonage.

What was that?

And then it's run to the window, and oh, it's a grackle, or it's a flicker, and it's on its back and blinking and dazed, and you know, we don't want to watch it get eaten by one of the neighborhood cats, and so we, you know.

Our peace can get interrupted by things like that, or by very serious things.

Our subjective sense of peace is fragile, which is why Jesus doesn't just say, hey guys, peace.

He shows them that there's an objective basis now for peace between you, and between you and God forever.

And that same peace still invades locked rooms, or at least rooms where we don't expect to see Jesus in the flesh.

The pastor's absolution, when pastors say, I forgive you all of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, that's not like a therapeutic suggestion, that like, oh, you should just feel better.

God has forgiven your sins somewhere.

No, that is like the living voice of Jesus, spoken through ordained ministers, and the basis for that is what we read this morning, when Jesus breathes on his church and says, if you forgive anyone's sins in the church, they're forgiven.

It's like as if I said it.

Now, we have, over the course of church history, built up this office of the ministry so that in public, one man is set aside to do that, but you all have the same priestly authority to forgive sins as I do.

You're all priests in Jesus' kingdom.

Christ's voice opens the padlock on our consciences every time we hear that your sins are forgiven, from his word, from pastors, from each other, in confession and absolution.

Feelings may lag, and let's be real, feelings often do lag behind the pronouncement of forgiveness, but the objective truth is just that.

It's objective.

You are forgiven because Jesus died and rose again, and so your sins are paid for.

Like a parent that crawls under a child's bed to whisper, like, you can come out, it's okay.

Jesus stoops down into our own hiding places and speaks peace that cannot be overturned.

Next, the risen Christ nourishes his doubting church with his wounds.

Thomas missed that first visitation, probably because his own shame or sense of guilt drove him into self-exclusion.

He wasn't just, like, late or delayed.

He didn't get held up in traffic.

I think him being on his own instead of hanging out with the rest of the guys is how he was dealing with the events of, like, the last two or three days, and that's relatable.

I think Thomas might have been a Midwesterner at heart.

His absence hardens then into this ultimatum.

He says, unless I see the mark of his nails and touch it, and unless I put my hand into his side, I'm not going to believe.

I've preached sermons before on doubting Thomas, saying we should call him believing Thomas, that Thomas gets a bad rap.

I'm kind of starting to change my mind on that, personally.

Thomas, this doubt is not like this kind of fragile uncertainty, like, I just don't really know, and you guys all got to see something, and I didn't, and it's not fair.

I don't think that's actually what's going on this time around, these readings in the church year.

I think what's going on in Thomas is this stubborn demand to dictate the terms of faith, like, no, guys, I'm, you know, that everyone who had seen Jesus risen from the dead, that that is the beginning of the stream of this apostolic confession that is still running by the Spirit's power in the churches today, that Christ died, Christ is risen, and he is coming again, and Thomas is the first recorded person to just say, no, I don't believe the apostolic witness to Christ's resurrection.

I'm not going to buy it, and in fact, I'm not going to buy it unless I get more proof than what you guys had.

Eight days later, that, so eight days later doesn't mean next Monday.

It means the next Sunday.

It's kind of a weird way of counting days, but it's also 2,000 years ago in a culture that's not ours.

Next Sunday, that is, stay with me, this Sunday, the second Sunday of Easter, the Sunday after Easter, they're together again.

Who knows what happened all those days in between.

Jesus returns, not to shame the skeptic Thomas, but to seek him.

He repeats the greeting that put fear to rest.

He says, peace be with you, and then he issues this invitation.

He says, Thomas, come here, like he already knew what Thomas wanted to see.

Thomas, come here, put your finger here, run your hand into my side, feel my heartbeat through the blood vessels here in this wound that the spear left.

The wounds remain visible not because resurrection power failed to erase them, but because the love that Jesus felt that drove him to the cross to save us, that love chooses to display them so that we would not ever forget what he did for us and that the work is done.

And Thomas's confession when he says, my Lord and my God, that erupts more from Jesus' mercy than from Thomas like, okay, yes, now I've got it, Lord.

Now I'm satisfied.

Thomas is humbled.

He realizes that, oh, I did the Job thing where I asked all these questions and acted all high and mighty, and then when I actually came face to face with God, I realized that I should have just shut my trap.

Jesus, you are Lord and you are God.

And you and I kind of get to go to that room even today in 2025, because through preaching, Christ says again, see my hands.

And in the supper, he places his living body on our tongues, basically saying, here, take your fingers and feel the wound in my side.

As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death.

That verb, proclaim the Lord's death, is used several times in the New Testament, and it always carries this idea of announcing publicly, making sure that everybody can see or hear or know.

This isn't something we want to keep quiet.

This is something we want as many people as possible to hear.

We are proclaiming the Lord's death every time we come to this rail and have the Lord's body and blood.

Every Lord's supper is Christ reopening his hands and side so doubters might handle and believe.

Jesus doesn't come to scold Thomas, he needs Thomas to believe.

All of these post-resurrection narratives, why did Jesus appear so many times and do all these things that he did?

He needed the church to believe that he had actually risen from the dead.

One appearance, Thomas is not even there, and then he's gone, that wasn't going to cut it.

Because Jesus knew he was going to ascend to the Father, there was going to be a time when he would not be around anymore and the church would have to take the gospel and spread it to the world.

He needed them to be sure, and today Jesus still comes to us and does that for us because he needs you to take the gospel and spread it throughout the world.

Faith doesn't grow by staring at our questions, faith grows by touching his wounds where answers live.

Now, finally, the risen Christ nourishes his newborn church with his spirit.

After peace is spoken and wounds are shown, we get to the heart of this text.

Right in the center, Jesus breathes on them.

And I wrote my final Greek New Testament paper at Gustavus on this text, so Casey Elitch, if you happen to be watching this somehow, I made it.

This verb, breathed on them, reaches back to Genesis 2-7.

In the Greek version of the Old Testament, it's the same verb form.

God forms Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathes life into him, and Adam became a living being.

And we're also supposed to think of the Old Testament reading we heard today, the valley of the dry bones that were very dry, and God does the same kind of thing.

There's this rattling sound, and sinews, and flesh, and skin covers the earth, and these bones, and it gets to the same kind of point where Adam is right before he's alive.

These bones have sort of come back to life, but they're not really alive yet.

And so Ezekiel was told, say to the winds, breathe on these slain that they may live.

So Jesus, in this upper room, with the echo of God breathing life into dust, and the echo of the spirit wind reanimating dry bones, this new creation happening is, sorry, this new creation is happening in a Jerusalem living room.

He breathes on them, and he probably just breathes like, he doesn't walk up to each one's face and breathe right in his face, and he just says, receive the Holy Spirit.

And the first assignment that that spirit empowers is forgiveness.

He says, if you forgive the sins of any, they're forgiven.

Christian ministry starts not with philanthropic projects like, you know, clean water, and feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless.

Christian ministry doesn't start with strategic plans for the next five, or ten, or fifteen, or twenty years.

It starts, is built on, and it kind of ultimately is always about the forgiveness of sins.

And we do all of those other things that are good and needful, so that hungry bellies can be made full, so that ears are open to hear forgiveness.

And those left out with no shelter can be warm and safe, so that they can hear that their sins are forgiven.

That the love that's shown to them is felt by the God who created this world, and wants to live forever with them.

Forgiveness of sins is at the foundation of the ministry of the church.

And that breath still today inflates the lungs of Christ's newborns.

Not newborn babies, but all of us.

Like newborn infants, like we sang about.

Scripture, water, bread, and wine are these conduits that are saturated by the Spirit.

Jesus says that everyone who hears without seeing is blessed.

And blessed means, like, declared, enviably happy.

That's what it means to be blessed.

That if you believe in Jesus without having seen him, man, like, that is the place to be.

Everybody should want that.

Thomas and the apostles who got to see and believe, we're more blessed than they are in this sense, because we have believed in Jesus without having seen him.

They were nourished for life by sight, and that was so that every generation after them might be nourished by testimony.

Spirit, water, and blood, John writes in our epistle reading today, continue to bear united witness.

Spirit, water, and blood should make you think of the sacraments, the blood of Jesus, the water of holy baptism, the Spirit of God that brings the dead to life and sustains and preserves our bodies and souls to everlasting life.

We are like infants who, you know, we can't diagram out the nutritional components and contents of the gifts that God gives to us, and yet by consuming them, we still grow.

You don't have to understand your food in order to be fed by it, right?

So, as we wrap this up this morning, what are your locked doors?

What are the rooms that you are hiding in, either from fear of what's out there or shame of what's in here?

It might be clinical anxiety or chronic disappointment or some secret shame that you have kept from everybody else in your life and are planning to take to your grave, but behind every shut door, no matter what it is that you're hiding from or what it is that you're trying to hide from others, the crucified and risen one is still going to show up in that secret place and he'll say, Peace.

Peace.

He still extends his wounds that purchased peace.

He still exhales the Spirit who forgives and revives.

Guys, you're not ever left outside by Jesus.

You are summoned inside, brought right into the center of his living body.

So, guard the habits that bring you to where he has promised to meet you.

Treat worshiping with the church.

This church, your home church, if you're traveling, a church on vacation, whatever it is, treat that as, well, the way newborn infants treat milk.

Non-negotiable.

We need to be fed.

It doesn't have to be here, but we do need to be fed.

Confess your sins and listen for the absolution that is stronger than your own memories of shame and sin committed.

Approach the altar like Thomas did, invited, not coerced, and let the body once pierced and now living.

Hush your conditions for believing and kindle your confession of faith.

Open the scriptures at home, even, because his breath still moves his word of life and truth and grace into our lungs.

Receive what he gives, the word that absolves, the water that regenerates, the bread and wine that carry his own life.

Because it's in these gifts that Christ feeds his fussy newborns with peace for fear, faith for doubt, and life for death.

Food that sustains us all until the day that he appears again, not through walls, but in glory, coming on the clouds with a commanding shout, with the sound of a trumpet, and when he raises the dead.

Until then, the menu that we grasp by ear and mouth and heart remains unchanged, and it's more than sufficient.

His wounds, his word, his spirit for you, newborn infants, as we all are.

Now, the peace of God that passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Amen.