Firing up the Church
A sermon for Low Sunday,
27 April 2025.
Acts 5:27-32
Rev 1:4-8
John 20:19-31
Doubt and uncertainty are significant features of our humanity, so the temptation this Sunday is to focus on Thomas and his doubts about the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. There is nothing wrong with taking that line, because it is certainly an important part of the Gospel passage we’ve just heard, but it would come at the risk of missing some other salient points. And that is probably to understate the risk; John 20:19-31 might better be described as an action-packed, theological smorgasbord, which in 10 minutes I hope to unpack – not exhaustively by any means, but enough to see that John 20:19-31 has a richness that is difficult to overstate.
The first section of the piece is fast paced. There, some very significant words and actions of Jesus follow one another in short order. In the second part, the pace slows as the focus shifts to Thomas, his doubts and his encounter with the risen Jesus. Jesus, his resurrection and the good news that represents is clearly of critical importance in this passage, but what I’d like to suggest to you today is that this part of John’s Gospel is strongly – perhaps even primarily – focused on the Church, its origin in the mission of God and its guarantee of continuance through the Spirit as an effective witness to every age.
The words of comfort that Jesus gave his disciples – Peace be with you! – were ones they were very happy to hear and receive. They were a welcome, but also a command – a command for calm during a period of turbulence. The disciples had every reason to be anxious about their situation in Jerusalem at that time. The authorities that had decided to do away with Jesus would almost certainly have been on the lookout for Jesus’ followers, and the fact that Jesus’ body was now missing would only make them more keen to make an example of these troublesome people before rumours spread and the ‘peace’ of Jerusalem – the Roman peace, guaranteed by brute force – was threatened again.
The peace that Jesus commanded was a world away from the peace that the church’s enemies were trying to protect. Jesus’ peace was immediate – effected (made real) by his words and the presence they related to – the presence of God amongst God’s people. The words that Jesus spoke here, and the effect they had, are apparent in other parts of his ministry.
Think of the time, for instance, when Jesus was asleep in a boat with the disciples on Lake Galilee (Luke 8:22-25). A storm arose, panicking everyone on board except Jesus who slept on even when the boat was taking on water. His distraught disciples woke him and, in St Luke’s words, “he rebuked the wind and the raging waves; they ceased, and there was a calm.” (Luke 8:24) When Jesus commands calm, no matter what the circumstances, peace prevails.
The disciples there to witness the appearance of Jesus on Easter morning were understandably overjoyed. How long they rejoiced in their reunion with Jesus, we don’t know. In the Gospel text, St John is more interested to move us on to the next highpoint of that exceptional evening, the commissioning of the disciples or the birth of the church. Jesus, once again commands that peace be with them, and adds the awesome words – “as the Father has sent me, so I send you.” I wonder whether the second part of Jesus command brought the same immediate sense of calm to the disciples as the first? The disciples had witnessed the last few barbaric days of Jesus earthly ministry, and they knew that the earlier part of his mission had not been plain sailing either. To be sent on the same road as Jesus -commanded to follow the same trajectory – must have given the disciples pause for thought.
The party atmosphere may have become quite subdued at this point. That was probably a good thing. It prepared the disciples for a watershed moment in Church history – for that moment when the Church received not just the command to continue Christ’s work, but the power of the Holy Spirit to enable them to do it.
Jesus gives the disciples this enabling power in a profoundly down-to-earth way, by breathing on them. Breathing and life are, of course, physically connected. Across cultures, and throughout our scriptures, there is an intimate connection between the spirit or essence of a person and their breath. This connection is reflected in the Maori expression Tihei Mauri ora, which harkens back to the creation of first woman when she had life breathed into her. Tihei is the sneeze made by a baby as it takes its first breath; Mauri is to do with a force, and ora is to do with life. In the second account of Creation given in Genesis (Gen 2:7), it is a man who has life breathed into him by God after being made from the dust. And at our death we ‘give up the Ghost’ to use the old expression for Spirit, and the breath with which God has invested us, in the words of Ecclesiastes, “returns to God who gave it.” (Ecc12:7).
Somehow, what makes us who we are is spiritual and something we can never properly say we own or possess: it is a gift, which God is happy to supplement – witness Jesus’ breathing on the disciples today. It is something for which we are ever in debt and for which we can only give thanks.
So, Jesus breathes on the gathering and commands the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, adding the words – “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” The words are plain enough. They suggest that the disciples now have the awesome authority to forgive people’s sins, or to refrain from forgiving them. That is to say, the authority that Jesus demonstrated throughout his ministry to forgive sins has been passed on by him to his Church in the world. That is a big deal; it is, as Jesus’ enemies pointed out to him when he forgave sins, a divine prerogative. Still, amazingly, that is what Jesus authorised his disciples to do, and we have continued to do that.
A major part of today’s Gospel deals with Thomas’ disbelief in Jesus’ resurrection. Thomas is a tough customer to convince. The spirit-filled testimony of his fellow disciples does not move him at all, but what does is the reappearance of Jesus a week later, when, right before his eyes, Thomas encounters the risen Jesus. At that point, he has no hesitation declaring Jesus to be his Lord and God. Jesus ticks him off, however, for having to rely on such concrete evidence. The implication is that the testimony of the other disciples – of the Church – should have been sufficient.
In summary, then, what we see in this Gospel is Jesus’ confident launching of the Church. Jesus commissions his disciples to continue the mission that he was sent out; makes them partakers in the same spirit that enabled his mission; gives them the awesome power of forgiving sins, and declares them to be sufficient witnesses to the world. As Christ’s disciples in the world today, this passage from St John’s Gospel ought to give us confidence and hope for the future.
Like the disciples in Jerusalem, on the original Easter evening, we can often feel overwhelmed by what is taking place around us…We need Jesus to step into our lives, declare peace and calm our storms. And when he does come, as he will, we have to accept the Spirit he breathes into us as a community of faith and have confidence that together, as a reconciling, forgiving community,we can navigate our way through the complex issues that confront us all today.
Tony Surman