John 20:19–31

¹⁹Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. ²¹Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." ²²And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

Introduction: It doesn't look like much so far. You open the box, and all you can see are one thousand little jigsaw puzzle pieces. They're just rattling around loose in that box, just an interesting variety of shifting colors and patterns. Oh, it's going to be beautiful—a scene from the Swiss Alps or a collage of collector dolls or maybe a patchwork quilt. It's going to look like that, you believe, but so far you have only the promise of the picture on the box. You have to take it on faith that somewhere in that scrambled mess is a beautiful picture.

It wasn't a puzzle or even a picture that came upon the world that first Easter morning. It was the reality of God's deliverance completed. It was Jesus Christ, the Son of God, having really died for the sins of the world, bodily, in the flesh, resurrected to bring the whole world into a right relationship with God. We have heard the Good News of that Easter morning.

On Easter evening, the disciples get to see the Lord for themselves. But then Jesus asks them—and us—to believe something else they can't see just yet—something even more difficult to believe than the fact that Jesus is alive.

Jesus Invites Us to See His Peace.

And what a beautiful thing! To see the peace of Jesus. But what a hard thing to see. Just to see Jesus alive was hard enough for the disciples. They knew what they had seen on Good Friday. They knew that he had died and was buried. The news of the resurrection still hadn't convinced them he was alive. How could it? Would you have believed such a thing? It sure didn't convince Thomas, nor did it convince the others.

But now, suddenly they see Jesus alive. That was an exciting thing. It did bring them joy. But, as St. Luke recorded in his gospel, it also brought fear; they were afraid. In fact, they had more reason to be afraid of Jesus than of the Jewish or Roman authorities. After all, they had betrayed Jesus. They had denied Jesus. They all ran away when the going got tough. They abandoned him at the moment of his greatest need; his greatest suffering. His closest friends were nowhere in sight. Their first question was, "Is this payback time? Is he here to get revenge?"

But instead, the first words out of his mouth were, "Peace be with you." Could they believe that? After all they had done, was he really at peace with them? They could see that Jesus was alive; they could touch him, they saw him eat a piece of fish, at least they had empirical evidence that he was alive. But as to peace, they had to rely on faith. Could they trust his word? Had he really come in peace rather than in judgment for their past offenses against him. They may very well have cried, "kyrie elesion" Lord, have mercy.

Now precisely here we get some insight into our liturgy. Toward the beginning of our worship service we sing a part known as the "kyrie," which translated means, "Lord, have mercy." That was a familiar cry in the ancient world on those occasions when a king or emperor or conquering general rode into town in procession with his army. The question on people's minds was, "Is he coming to destroy us for some crime; to make us slaves or to collect tribute?" The cry from the crowds was, "Lord, have mercy." In other words, "please come to us in peace, not as an enemy." The Kyrie is a prayer that the Lord come to us in peace. It is a prayer for forgiveness of the offenses we may have committed. We have peace with God only because we are forgiven. That is why in the Kyrie we sing, "In peace let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy." And "for the Peace from above and for our salvation let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy." Therefore we enter into the presence of God with a prayer for peace and forgiveness; pleading that he not deal with us according to what we deserve, but according to his mercy.

Then later in the service we have the custom greeting one another with the peace of the Lord. What is this all about? Is this just a brief time-out for a "friendship" moment so we can say we are a friendly church? Not at all. You are giving a blessing to bestow the peace and forgiveness of the Lord to one another. Our Lord said, "Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, I am sending you. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven."

We give the blessing of peace to bestow Christ's forgiveness on your neighbor; as well as to reconcile with your neighbor, forgiving him for any offenses he has committed against you and you against him. It takes place just before coming to the altar to receive the sacrament, as Jesus says, "if as you are coming to the altar you remember that your neighbor has any grievance against you, first go and reconcile with your brother, then come to the altar."

Christ's peace is a beautiful thing. We have all, like those disciples, deserted Jesus. We have all abandoned him, run from him, insulted him, betrayed him and denied him. Every sin we commit is nothing other than a denial of him. Every time we are afraid to speak to someone about Christ we deny him. Every time we refuse to welcome someone into the church to hear God's word we betray Him. Every time we get angry with a brother in Christ or refuse to forgive someone for the wrongs they do we are abandoning Jesus. By all rights Jesus should come to us in judgment. He should condemn each and every one of us. He should spit us out of his mouth and send us to hell. That is what we deserve. They is what they deserved, too, on that Sunday evening.

But Jesus comes and says, "Peace be with you." Jesus says, "In spite of all the things you have done to me; in spite of how you have treated me, denied me, abandoned me, left me alone to suffer and die, all is forgiven." And so he says to each one of you, "In spite of what you deserve, or how you have treated me, or what you have done or said, all is forgiven. Your sins are forgiven!" "Peace be with you." God's peace is the forgiveness of sins.

But why does he come in peace, not seeking revenge? Because Jesus himself paid for those sins of yours on the cross. Jesus took your sins—and God's anger which they deserved—upon himself. Whatever punishment your sin demanded, Jesus said, "Give it to me." Therefore, when God raised Jesus from the dead, it was God's announcement that he is no longer angry over your sin. That means he is at peace with you. The resurrection is God's absolution.

And what a beautiful thing that is! At peace with God, everything's right with the world. At peace with God we can be sure that God is giving us everything that's truly good for us, even in the midst of our sorrows and our sufferings. Even in the midst of our pain, our sickness, our aging, our lives that seem to be crumbling around us. Even when we are mistreated and hated by others, or taken advantage of. Even when we fail those we love; or do or say things that hurt them, as we do to Jesus himself so often, Jesus is setting all things back to rights.

Because Jesus says to you, "Peace be with you," you know that you'll live forever with God in perfect joy and harmony. And when we are at peace with God, we can then live at peace with all people, gladly yielding to their needs, serving them by sacrificing our lives for them to supply all their needs, because we know that our needs have already been met.

Notice the past tense here. We gladly serve others and meet their needs not in order to gain some prize in the future. Not because, as we say, "What goes around comes around." Not so that they or someone else will do us a good turn in the future. No! We gladly serve the needs of others because ours have already been met in Jesus Christ, our Lord.

But this peace isn't easy to believe when every day we see what we see. Our eyes see war and violence. Our eyes see divorce, abandonment, conflicts with children, conflicts at church, people not getting along, not speaking to one another about something, not forgiving someone, and not reconciling with someone we have hurt.

What we can see easily are circumstances that make us feel that God isn't at peace with us: illness, death, disappointments, and especially our own feelings of guilt and of not being worthy of God's love. We sense that we haven't lived up to God's expectations; that because of some fault or sin of ours God has turned his back on us; that things aren't right between you and God; that we don't have a good relationship with God right now. Those are the things we see. Christ's peace is not something we can see because it is an attitude in God's heart. Instead of seeing Christ's peace, we have to trust his word. "Peace be with you...Peace I leave with you; my peace I give. I do not give you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled; do not be afraid." If we have peace with God, all is right with the world.

But seeing this peace is like looking at a jigsaw puzzle; by faith we believe there is a beautiful picture there, but what we see is a scrambled mess.

That's the way Christ's peace looks to us. All we can see is the mess of our lives and of the world. We see just Christ's pastors and his people, and the truth is, they don't look like much. They often look more like a bunch of squabbling little children. To see Christ's peace is a matter of faith, not of seeing.

But Jesus tells his disciples that he gives them his peace so they can share it with others. Here he also says, whosoever sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Here he commissions his disciples and gives them the authority to forgive people's sins on his behalf. That is call the Office of the Keys in the church, it is the special authority God gives the church to forgive repentant sinners and to withhold forgiveness from the unrepentant.

When sins are forgiven, we have that whole beautiful peace of Christ.

But can that be true? Can we believe it? All we see is the pastor. That's not a very impressive picture! Can we believe we have Christ's peace without seeing peace itself, without seeing Christ himself? All we have is Christ's word. But Christ's word is all we need. For Christ does not lie. And he says, when the pastor speaks my words of forgiveness you're hearing me. Those are my words which I have given to my disciples to forgive your sins. That is my forgiveness. That is what Christ promises to us. In those words, "your sins are forgiven," you have peace with God.

Conclusion: The puzzle isn't yet assembled for us to see. But the blessing of believing that Jesus is alive, the blessing of believing God is at peace with us, the blessing of believing our sin is forgiven is in believing without seeing.

The disciples finally saw and understood what that meant for their life with God and with others. Do we see how this continues in our world? You have the picture. Peace and forgiveness are proclaimed in the public ministry as those called and ordained servants lead you to confess your sins and hear Christ's Absolution. And peace and forgiveness are proclaimed by you, when you speak a word of forgiveness to your spouses, families, and neighbors. Thus the love, healing, and reality of the living Christ reaches our world.

Amen.