Sermon for April 11, 2021 – Second Sunday of Easter

“Hearing, receiving and responding to the invitation and the challenge from John’s Gospel to embrace the resurrection and live the new life in Christ – just like Thomas.”

Let us pray.  Holy God, Risen One, we give you thanks for your presence in this time and place, and within each one of us - here in this building and gathered throughout this province.  We ask now that you help us to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

So this is the second Sunday of Easter – we are still very much celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  In fact, there are eight Sundays in total, if you count Easter Day and Pentecost Day, in which we particularly celebrate that resurrection, in addition of course, to doing it every Sunday of the year.

Last Sunday, Easter Day, we really focussed on the event itself – the empty tomb, the first encounter with Mary Magdalene - and explored just how much Jesus’ resurrection meant a whole new creation for our world, a new humanity.  And we compared in great detail all of the similarities between the first creation stories in Genesis and the new creation in John’s Gospel.

Well the theme of new creation continues today.  Our Gospel Reading begins like this: “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”  Back in Genesis, Chapter 3, God comes to visit Adam and Eve in the evening.  Now Adam and Eve are hiding because they are afraid.  They have broken faith with God and God’s conversation with them exposes their guilt.  But now, in John’s Gospel, the risen Christ comes to the disciples in the evening.  They, too, are hiding but it’s out of fear of the Jewish authorities.  And Jesus’ first words to them are not about their desertion of him, but rather, “Peace”, “Shalom” – words of reconciliation, forgiveness – all is well in this new creation.

Now last Sunday, you and I could kind of ‘blend in’ with the rest of humanity and marvel at this great and wonderful event – God raising Jesus from the dead.  This Sunday we can’t hide!  We are pushed front and centre into an encounter with the resurrection just like Thomas.  What are the key pieces of this Easter evening encounter?  First of all, Jesus confirms his identity.  He says to the disciples, “After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”  The vision of the wounds is really important because it verifies the fact that this person is indeed the same one who was crucified on Friday.  It’s not a ghost.  It’s not a look-a-like.  It’s not a wishful hallucination.  And the disciples acknowledge it really is him!  Jesus then reassures them of their complete reconciliation and restoration with God and himself, and says, once again, “Peace be with you.”

Then, Jesus “passes the torch”, so to speak, of God’s new creation on to the disciples.  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’  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.’”  Now, in the original creation story, back in Genesis, Chapter 2, God breathes into the human’s nostrils the breath of life, and the human being becomes a living being.  In the new creation, the living Christ breathes on the disciples and they receive the Holy Spirit.  And it’s important to notice that in the original biblical languages the word for ‘breath’, ‘wind’, and ‘spirit’ is all the same.  So, in a sense, Jesus is doing the same thing in the new creation.  And this command – this command about forgiveness and retention of sins given to the disciples - is a kind of ‘commissioning’ and authority to bring God’s reconciliation and forgiveness to the world.

So these disciples – they’re ready to go!  They’ve accepted that Jesus is alive and with them; they have been commissioned and now empowered and they’re ready to be sent out.  And then – there’s Thomas.  Thomas needs the same proof – he doesn’t need more proof – he just needs the same proof – that the crucified Jesus is in fact the risen Christ.  And there comes this remarkable encounter.  Jesus comes and meets Thomas where he’s at.  And Thomas responds with amazing faith – giving what is, perhaps, the strongest affirmation of Jesus as the Son of God in all of the Gospels.

Now at this point, the author of John’s Gospel suddenly addresses us!  Suddenly, we become the focus. Immediately he shifts from the scene and says, “Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  Now, everyone of us is confronted, and invited, exactly as Thomas was – that comes to believe that Jesus, the crucified one from Nazareth, is the risen Son of God, and as a result, have new life in his name.

Now this is a pretty “up close and personal” question.  It’s not about the other people who are here this morning; it’s not about the people who aren’t here this morning; and it’s not about the people who don’t even want to be this morning!  It’s your question – and my question.  And it’s not a threat!  There’s no sense of Thomas being rejected if he doesn’t respond well.  It just means he isn’t able to embrace the fullness of this new creation life.  As we prayed in our opening Collect Prayer: “may we … have faith and receive the fullness of Christ’s blessing.” 

So what about this new life’ – this ‘new creation.’?  As the disciples of Jesus Christ received the Holy Spirit, we, too, have been granted this new life, as the Holy Baptism liturgy states.  And yet, we’ll still pray asking “to be strengthened in the new life,” in our Prayer Over the Gifts this morning.  And St. Paul teaches about this ‘new life’ of the baptized in the 6th Chapter of Romans.  He says, “We know that our old self was crucified with him, and we believe that if we have died with Christ we will also live with him.”  And yet, Paul finishes the section with these words, “Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”  So clearly, we have been given the new life in Christ, but the old life, the old way, isn’t gone either.  We seem to be on a kind of journey of transformation into this new life.  We have to consciously let go of the old life, and pick up the new one.  When we open ourselves, consciously, to the reality and the presence of the risen Christ, we’re able to live into this new creation.  When we close ourselves off, and lose our focus and stop seeking, we fall back into the old ways.  And sometimes that return to old ways is precipitated by anxiety, fear, pain, disappointment.  Sometimes it’s simply an unconscious familiarity of living without being focussed on the life of the risen Christ.

Here's an illustration that I think can help us.  Many of us, if not most of us, have gone through a similar transition in our lives.  Think about when you were growing up and you moved out of your parents’ home, and began living on your own, or with a spouse or partner.  It’s a new life, isn’t it?  And now there are new choices, new boundaries, new opportunities.  And then you return – you visit your family home perhaps for an extended stay of a week or so.  What happens after two or three days?  You begin to fall back into old patterns, don’t you – old ways of behaving.  Just ask your spouse or partner because they’re really quick to experience in you the old attitudes and behaviours that they’d hoped you’d left behind!

So what do we need to do?  Focus on the woman or the man that you are now!  Regain your new, mature identity, and the peace and joy that comes with it.  This is what each of us needs to do in the presence of the risen Christ.

And actually, this morning, we’re going to be invited to do exactly that in a few moments.  We’re going to be invited to profess our faith – the faith of our baptism into the new life in Christ.  We’ll say, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord; that “he was crucified, died and was buried”, that he rose again and ascended back with God; that I have received the Holy Spirit; that I’m cared for and supported by the communion, the fellowship, of all the disciples, past and present; that I have received the forgiveness of sins; and that I, too, will rise from death and be with God forever.

So don’t just “say” those words this morning.  Speak them to the risen Christ and to the rest of us, and breathe in afresh the new life of Christ.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.