John 20. 19-23

Easter 2 - More on encountering the Risen Jesus
Last week we looked at the puzzle at the end of mark's Gospel, and learned that it is in encountering Jesus that we are set free from confusion, fear and uncertainty. Being Easter people, believing in the Resurrection means encountering Jesus today.  And it means being transformed by that encounter.  We are going to look at one of these encounters this morning.  We will try to learn how an encounter with Jesus will transform our lives.

1. Community... They were together (verse 19).  Behind closed doors, but all in the one place.  Jesus loves to reveal himself to us. He reveals himself to us when we are on our own, but he loves to reveal himself to us when we are together (See John 21. 2) to pour out his Spirit when we are together (See Acts 2. 1, 4 24ff), united in prayer, and to join us ever closer by giving us his spirit (Acts 2. 44).

2. Evidence... We see his hands and side (verse 20).  This is not a ghost.  This is the real Jesus, the lamb of God, different yet the same, bearing the wounds of crucifixion, yet fully alive!  A physical body yet able to pass through walls.   Jesus gives evidence that he is really alive, that it is really him, and that God cares about the physical world.

3. Peace... (verse 19, 21) “Shalom” is Jesus' response to their confusion, fear and uncertainty. Our English word peace is more about the absence of conflict.   “Shalom” is bigger than than that. It is about total well-being.  On the Cross he said “it is finished!”, so now he is able to say “Shalom!” and really to impart peace.    Jesus is our peace, so his creative word bestows peace.  We need to hear the word of God, and to receive what he wants to bestow on us  through his word.  What he speaks about, he speaks into our lives.  Shalom.  Total well-being. And shalom is the springboard for mission.  

4. Mission...(verse 21) As the Father has sent me so I am sending you.  How does the Father send us?

• It starts with God.  Not a double mission but an extension of the mission of Jesus.  “One single action, the great movement of the missionary heart of God.”(Milne)  
• it is incarnational.  Jesus was sent physically.  The word became flesh.  As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.  We are sent incarnationally.  Not just to talk about Jesus as a nice person or a good idea.  But to demonstrate the father’s love and to introduce Jesus as a  real person. 
• It combines submission and authority.  Matthew 28.  18-20 tells us “All authority is given to me..therefore go...” As his messengers we have the authority and dignity of the One who sent us.  But in order to exercise that authority we must live in full submission to him.  The authority to ask “in my Name” (John 16. 23f) is for those who remain joined to Jesus and bear fruit (John 15. 5-8) 
• It is sacrificial.  For Jesus, it was the sacrifice of the cross.  It was being despised and rejected.  In being lifted up form the earth on the cross, people were drawn to him.  We all want to be respected; we all dislike being looked upon as idiots for what we believe.  Now, sometimes we are idiots.  We talk in archaic language and expect people to understand it.  We live in our little religious ghetto that is designed for us, and complain because nobody else wants to come in and join us.  We need to do the best we can in terms of communication, and in terms of understanding and responding to what is going on out there in society.  But once we have sorted that out, we will still find that we are looked on as idiots.   We will still be called narrow-minded, bigoted, out-dated, superstitious. 
  

5. Holy Spirit...(verse 2,2)  Mission is a call to the impossible!  But Jesus breathed on his disciples and said “Receive Holy Spirit!”   Who is the Holy Spirit and what does he come to do in our lives?  Jesus gives an object lesson. The Holy Spirit is breathed into the disciples, just as the breadth of God was breathed into man at the creation.

• The Father's work.  The coming of the Spirit is the beginning of the New creation.  “The ruach – wind, Spirit or breath – of God was moving on the face of the deep” Genesis 1. 2.  In breathing the Spirit into them, Jesus was saying that a new beginning was happening, as the the Spirit comes from the Father to make a new creation.  
• The Son's Presence  In breathing on the disciples "Jesus communicates and commits himself to the disciples" (Wm. Temple). When the Spirit comes, Jesus comes! 
• The Spirit's power.  Alive, pulsing with the life of his resurrected humanity, vibrant with his God-life –he breathes on them.  His life, his God-life, imparted to them,breathed into their lungs, entering their bloodstream, energising every muscle in their bodies and every synapse in their brains. That's what the Holy Spirit comes to do.  To distinguish between what happens here and what happens in Acts 2,  is to miss the point. The Holy Spirit wants to fill our lungs and energise of lives.  If you are not experiencing that respiratory work of the Spirit in the whole of your being, then be assured that is what he wants to do. You need to have Jesus breathe upon you afresh and receive Holy Spirit afresh today.
  

6. Grace... (verse  23)  Jesus says “If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”  It's tempting to tie that in with mission: those to whom we preach the Gospel are those to whom we give forgiveness. Yes, to withhold the Gospel is to withhold divine forgiveness.  But this ministry is a Holy Spirit ministry, and it is a ministry "given to the body” (William Temple).  The whole of life is about forgiveness and grace – in our dealing with one another as well as in our mission in the world.  Loving one another is not a distraction from mission – it is the essential preparation for mission.  The Spirit comes to make us grace givers.  

"Jesus vision is not of a multitude of inspired individuals" but "a community bound together by...the Spirit, sent forth to gather his 'other sheep'"(Milne)

© Gilmour Lilly April 2016