[Machine transcription]
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Sermon today will be looking at the gospel reading. Please be seated. And I love this gospel reading because it has so many options for preaching in it. And I don’t like this reading because it has so many options for preaching in it. So I’ve decided against the Doubting Thomas event part of it and instead want to focus on what Jesus says here, not once, not twice, but three times. Peace be with you.
Peace. That greatly sought-after and often elusive commodity, wanting peace in your life, peace in your stress and worry and fear. Peace you can’t seem to find. Like the disciples, you’re in good company. They had stress and fear and worry too. Well, for good reason. Their master, teacher, and friend Jesus was dead. He had been crucified just a few days before, and then that morning his body is gone. And there’s rumors that he’s even risen from the dead.
So that first Easter night, the disciples, with their fear and stress and worry, are hiding together in a room behind locked doors. For three years, they had followed Jesus. They were convinced that He was the Messiah. He was God’s Son, sent to be the Savior of the world and to free the Jews from Roman occupation. And Jesus proclaimed peace. And the disciples hoped that he would give peace to the world. But now he was gone. No peace for the disciples.
Same today. There can seem to be no peace today. Stress and fear and worry kind of permeate society sometimes. And then there’s natural disasters, diseases, conflict in our country and all over the world. A Lutheran Christian sermon. And it can really get to you sometimes. And maybe you just feel like throwing up your arms and saying, I can’t do this. Let’s face it, there’s many times in life where we feel less at peace and more like we’re in pieces. Kind of a little bit of a joke, you guys. I just want to know that you’re listening. See, okay, thank you.
And then maybe worst of all, there’s no peace in your conscience when things that you’ve done, said, or even thought were terrible. Cheating, lying, covering things up, being selfish, doing things that hurt other people, saying things that hurt them. There’s a reason why these things are called sins. Because they can do terrible things. They’re serious. They can do terrible damage. They definitely don’t proclaim peace. In fact, they can take people’s peace away. And take away your peace. Making your conscience… A mess of guilt and shame. And it’s like your conscience then becomes a room with a locked door, and you hide in it.
Well, there’s good news. There is peace. There was peace for the disciples because it was true. Jesus had risen from the dead. He had. And there he is standing with them and says to them, not once, not twice, but three times, peace be with you. Boy, they needed to hear that. They needed to hear Jesus proclaim peace to them. They needed to know he was alive and that he had died to bring that peace to them and to the world.
You see, that’s why Jesus died, and that’s why he rose again. That’s why the Son of God did this, to bring God’s peace, to pay for all of the stress and fear and worry of this world, to pay for the conflict and the crime and the violence of this world, but not just by proclaiming peace. He died to provide it.
Yeah, I know this can always seem like such a strange thing. And even each Good Friday and Easter, we question, really, Jesus, this is what you had to do? But yeah, the night before his crucifixion, at the Last Supper, Jesus said this to the disciples. He said, “‘Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give peace to you.'”
See, Jesus came to provide God’s way of peace, not the world’s way, because let’s face it, the world is terrible at giving peace. Sure, there are ways that the world tries to provide peace: peace talks, peace marches, books about peace, meditation, yoga, working out, drugs, alcohol. These ways may proclaim peace, but they don’t really provide it. Or at best, it’s temporary peace. It’s like putting a Band-Aid on a much deeper wound.
And that’s why we need Jesus to provide peace, but not as the world. Because He provides peace at our deepest level. You have a deeper hurt, a deeper need for peace. Your sins can be terrible, and you hurt. And again, you’re locked in this room of your conscience trying to hide from it. But Jesus comes there at that level, at our conscience and soul level, where you need peace the most.
Jesus provides a complete peace, God’s peace, peace in the forgiveness of your sins, peace for your stressed, fearful, and worried conscience. Jesus provides this peace so unlike the world because, like with the disciples, Jesus gets into that place with you. Jesus comes into your locked room of shame and guilt and stands in front of you and says, Peace be with you. The world doesn’t do this. Jesus goes to the deepest level we need.
In fact, he goes beyond our conscience. He goes to the greatest problem we have. He goes to the greatest cause of stress and fear and worry in our world, which is death. And he defeats it. He destroys it. That’s what Jesus’ death and his resurrection are about. Destroying that death. Destroying the thing, the greatest thing that we have fear and worry and stress over and does away with it. The world doesn’t bring that kind of peace. Only Jesus does that.
And yet Jesus died to forgive the sins of the whole world and provide it peace, but he also has died to forgive you and provide peace for you. The world doesn’t do that. The world doesn’t die for you. It only takes from you. And Jesus died to forgive you and provide peace for you. Peace for your stress, your fear, your worry. Peace for the shame and guilt in your conscience. Peace in forgiving your sins.
That’s the way that Jesus gives peace. Not just by proclaiming it, but by doing something that really provides it. Dying, rising again, and then giving it to you. And Jesus continues to give peace to us in very special ways. Every time that you read or hear God’s Word in the Scriptures, Jesus is there and provides peace. And here, after receiving the Lord’s Supper, it’s common to hear the pastor say, depart in peace. You know, the pastors really mean it when they say that because after getting such good stuff here, getting Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, we really should depart in peace.
And it’s not just then in the Lord’s Supper, but many times during the service. Maybe we don’t think about it because we just take it for granted each time it comes up, but during the liturgy, peace gets mentioned a lot. In the Kyrie, the prayer near the start of the service, we pray in and for peace. And after the words of institution, the pastor says, the peace of the Lord be with you always. There you go. I’m just making sure you’re listening.
And then at the end of the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God, we pray for God to grant us peace. And in the benediction, I think this is the greatest thing. Isn’t it great that the very last words that the pastor speaks to the congregation is the greatest thing? It is a blessing of God’s peace to them. And lest we forget that after we receive God’s absolution in our confession, we share that peace with each other. Yeah, peace is a big part of the worship service. It happens a lot.
And in fact, it’s kind of my goal that you walk out of here with some sort of peace in your life. I think of it this way. You might walk in here each Sunday in pieces, and you can leave in peace. Peace from what’s happened in the past week and peace for what’s coming in the next week. Really, Christians should be the most peaceful people on earth. Even with the lack of peace in the world and the lack of peace sometimes in our lives, we can be at peace, and we can share that peace with others.
Yes, by proclaiming peace in the evil and injustice in our world, but also in proclaiming Jesus and how he provides peace in the forgiveness of sins. We can tell that to other people. We can proclaim it to them, especially people that we might know who are really struggling, who don’t know about this peace of Jesus. I hope that you know people like that and may have the opportunity and the courage to proclaim that good news of peace to them.
Maybe they’ll see it in your life that they may say, you are such a peaceful person. You want to tell me about that? Bam, here you go. Let me tell you about Jesus, the one who gives me peace. This can be such good news to people that you know who might be struggling and needing that kind of peace in their life. Because this is peace that forgives. This isn’t peace like the world gives. This is God’s peace.
Peace that heals and comforts the conscience. Provides peace for stress and fear and worry. You can be at peace through Jesus because He doesn’t just proclaim peace. Really, Jesus, He is peace. It’s no coincidence that before He was born, He was declared He was going to be the Prince of Peace.
I have this thing with bumper stickers. I think they’re usually really stupid and silly. There’s a couple of good ones, and I like this one that maybe you’ve seen. It says, Yeah, how true. If you know Jesus, you know peace. It’s common to hear people sometimes talk about their troubles in life and even kind of confessing their sins when they say, yeah, I need to go to church and make peace with God. Don’t bother. He’s already made peace with you through Jesus. May you always know and have that kind of peace, peace that Jesus provides.
Amen. And now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
