Sermon Text: John 20:19-31
Date: April 27, 2025
Event: The Second Sunday of Easter, Year C
John 20:19-31 (EHV)
On the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples were together behind locked doors because of their fear of the Jews. Jesus came, stood among them, and said to them, “Peace be with you!” 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. So the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you! Just as the Father has sent me, I am also sending you.” 22After saying this, he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23Whenever you forgive people’s sins, they are forgiven. Whenever you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
24But Thomas, one of the Twelve, the one called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples kept telling him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, and put my finger into the mark of the nails, and put my hand into his side, I will never believe.”
26After eight days, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. 27Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and look at my hands. Take your hand and put it into my side. Do not continue to doubt, but believe.”
28Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
29Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30Jesus, in the presence of his disciples, did many other miraculous signs that are not written in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Jesus Is Sending Us!
How do you climb a mountain? On an incredibly basic level, you do so one step at a time. How do you write that long essay for school? One sentence at a time. How do you have that difficult conversation? One thought at a time. If you’re going to be ridiculous, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Breaking down a big project into smaller pieces can really help the paralysis that can set in when we’re overwhelmed by what’s in front of us. A project that might take tens or even hundreds of hours to complete probably seems less daunting if you take it in 20-minute chunks.
The task Jesus had placed before his disciples must have seemed like the biggest mountain to climb or the biggest elephant to be eaten: taking the gospel's message to the ends of the earth. The reality is that Christians are still embarking on this task to this day, a job that is not yet complete some 2,000 years later.
Our Gospel this morning is a familiar account taking place on Easter evening and then spilling into the following days. At the start of our reading, we meet up with the disciples on the evening of that first Easter Sunday. Now, what has happened already? The women (Luke 24:1-5), as well as Peter and John, found the tomb empty (Luke 24:12; John 20:3-10). Angels spoke to the women (Matthew 28:5-7; Luke 24:5-11). Jesus appeared to the women (Matthew 27:8-10), with special, individual appearances to Mary Magdalene (John 21:11-18) and to Peter (Luke 24:34; 1 Corinthians 15:5). Jesus also appeared to two of his followers as they walked the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus that first Easter afternoon and explained the Old Testament promises about the Savior’s work to them (Luke 24:15-31).
That’s a lot. All of this evidence and these appearances pair with the very specific teaching Jesus had been doing with his disciples when he told them over and over again: “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.” (Luke 18:31-33). So, combine all of that together and we might well assume that by that first Easter evening, the disciples would be sprinting through the streets of Jerusalem, shouting, “Jesus is risen! He is risen indeed!” We could imagine a scene much like the shepherds after they saw the then newborn Jesus in the manger, sharing with everyone who would listen what they had heard, seen, and knew to be true.
But that’s not the scene we have in front of us in our Gospel. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders... I suppose it’s good that they were at least together, rather than scattered to the four winds like they were after Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane. But this is not a group ready to proclaim the gospel, ready to be Jesus’ witnesses. This group of people is uncertain about what has happened, fearful of what will happen, and generally in distress. The greatest miracle that ever has or ever will take place has been proven at the empty tomb, and no one is going out and sharing. Of the global population at that time, hardly anyone knew what happened. Even among those just in Jerusalem, only a small fraction know what has occurred over the last three days.
So Jesus, acting much more like God than they had seen over the last three years, just shows up in the locked room among them with no need for a key or an opened door. Presenting himself among this group, he said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. It is notable that he doesn’t scold them for sitting in their make-shift fortress, trying to hide from the world. He doesn’t rebuke them for their weak faith. No, this evening and the weeks ahead will be all about assuring this group that he really is alive and helping them to understand what his resurrection means for them and for all people.
But Jesus, even this first Easter evening, doesn’t leave it there. What he shares next are words of commissioning, words of purpose, reminders of the work to be done: ““Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
It's subtle, but there is a bit of a rebuke here. “Hey, guys, this is not the plan, to be he huddled together in fear. You need to go out there, into the world, and tell people what has happened. Notably, you need to tell people about the forgiveness of sins—both comforting the repentant and warning the unrepentant.” Seeing the proof that Jesus was alive and the gift of the Spirit breathed onto them seem to have been enough to change their fear into joy, even if they weren’t quite ready to shout this gospel from the rooftops.
But one of their number was missing that day: Thomas. And boy, do I think Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas doesn’t look for much besides what the other disciples had that first evening. They saw his hands and side that night, and Thomas wants the same. Of course Thomas doubts while the rest believe—the rest got to see him already!
But there is something for us to consider here. Thomas would not believe based on the eyewitness accounts, of the message of the fulfilled promise in the mouths of his friends and colleagues. He had to see for himself. And so Jesus, ever patient, does exactly that. “Put your finger here…” But then Jesus says something astounding: “Because you have seen me, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Over the next several weeks, Jesus will make repeat appearances to the disciples and, we’re told, over 500 other people. Later, he will appear to the apostle Paul to prove his resurrection. But the number of people who will actually see Jesus alive and still bearing those tell-tale marks of his death will be tiny. Right from the start, the disciples will be witnesses of this resurrection to many people who had not seen the risen Christ with their own eyes. Thinking of that first Christian Pentecost day that is not so far away from these appearances, three thousand would believe on that day alone based on the Word of God shared by the disciples. Few, if any, of that group would have seen Jesus alive and well after his crucifixion. And how much less once the gospel goes beyond Jerusalem and the region of Judea on its way to the ends of the earth!
And so this gospel message has traveled across time and nation, to reach even us here today. Even in this “post-Christian” era that we are living in in our nation or our culture, still the Word does not pass away nor does it return to God empty. Fewer and fewer people in our nation believe in Jesus as their Savior—but there is always a remnant, and for that we can rejoice. All the more that we are part of that remnant!
But that also means we have a lot of work to do, right? A daunting mountain sits in front of us, waiting to be climbed. You have the message that many people, in ignorance, are going on without. They don’t know their Savior; they might even be suppressing the natural knowledge that there is even a God at all. You cannot drag Jesus along with you, to have everyone put their hands in those clefts left in his body. But you do take the powerful message of the gospel, through which God promises to work. And it doesn’t matter what someone’s heart is like or what the culture around us says about these notions of sin and forgiveness, death and life, hell and heaven. “Just as the Father has sent me,” Jesus says to us, “I am sending you.”
How’s that going? Oh, this might be the moment in the sermon where few want to make eye contact. Are you happy with how you have served as a witness for Jesus? Are you happy with how you have shared him in your day-to-day life, both in how you’ve lived your life and how you have directly witnessed about him? I can assure you that my answer to that question is a resounding, “No!” And this work, ostensibly, is my full-time job.
So, let’s talk about it. What things get in the way of us going as Jesus has sent us? What seems to be the unclimbable mountain or the uneatable elephant? What things get in our way when we think of sharing our faith or inviting someone to hear what God has done? We saw examples in both the disciples collectively and Thomas specifically of internal factors causing a relatively slow start to this work; fear and doubt got in the way. Is the same true for us? What is it inside of you and inside of me that would lead us to be unwilling or feel unable to do the work Jesus has sent us to do—to be his witnesses to the world?
Fear can envelop a lot of what stands in our way. Maybe not exactly the same fear that the disciples had that first Easter evening—that they might be arrested and crucified just like Jesus—but still, there’s plenty for us to fear. I might be afraid I’ll get something wrong or not have the answers someone wants. I might be afraid that sharing my faith—even an innocuous invitation to worship or some other church event—might be taken the wrong way and cause irreparable damage in my relationship with the other person. I might be afraid of what people will think about me if they know how important my faith, my Savior, is to me. I might be afraid of standing out and being different in a world where like-mindedness is often praised as a virtue and disagreement with the cultural norms is likely to have a sweeping, negative impact.
Quite frankly, all of those fears are rational and even reasonable. The true Christian faith, no matter how “Christian” a society might appear, is always counter-cultural, because it runs afoul of the way we think by nature. By nature, we think that we’re doing our best and that will hopefully be good enough. By nature, we think that some good on our part should eliminate some bad that we have done. By nature, we think we can work our way back into God’s good graces through a life well-lived.
But all of those thoughts die when we meet God’s truth head-on. The message of sin and the need of a Savior means that we are not enough on our own—truly, that we are worthless in this task. No one wants to hear that. Not the cold-call canvassing recipient, not the friend who knows you well, not the first-time visitor to the church, not the person who has been a Christian for decades, not you, not me.
But we are not here to say what people want to hear. Jesus is not sending us out to scratch people’s itchy ears; he’s sending us out with the truth. My like or dislike of this message, my faith or doubt in what it says, changes nothing about its truth and importance.
And John underscores at the end of this Gospel just what this message means and does. These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. God works through his Word, recorded in the pages of Scripture and, yes, even stammering and wandering out of our mouths to produce faith in the heart of others and to strengthen the faith of our fellow believers. As Jesus did for the disciples in that locked room, so he gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit—the peace beyond all understanding through faith in him. Your sins are forgiven, you will live eternally with him in perfection; this is a gift for all people.
So, how do you be Jesus’ witness? How do you climb that impossible-feeling mountain? One God-empowered word at a time. One person at a time. One invitation at a time. And much like the steep trail up that imposing hill, it won’t be long before you look back and realize what progress you’ve made, or more accurately, what progress God has made through you.
My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus is sending you! Don’t be afraid, don’t let doubt paralyze you. Instead, share this message in every way and at every opportunity that God presents to you. Tell that person about your faith; invite them to church with you; live your life to glorify your Savior. You have the greatest message in the world to share, a message that means life in his name. Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.
