1.
Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. In our message from God’s
Word this morning we’re going to look at John 20:19-31 and see how after Jesus
rose from the grave He continued to appear to His disciples offering to them
the best Second Chance of all. The
chance of forgiveness of sins and the ability to offer God’s forgiveness to the
world. The message is entitled, “Second Chance at Easter.” Dear brothers and sisters in Christ.
2.
The
killer about the NCAA basketball tournament during March Madness is that
there’s no second chance. During the
regular season, you can do really bad on a road game in December and still have
the rest of the schedule to get it right.
You can finish third in the regular season, and you’ve still got your
conference tournament. You can even
choke in the conference tournament, and your 30 plus other games can still get
you an at-large bid to the big dance.
But, once the ball goes up in the NCAAs, one loss and you’re out. You leave you’re a-game in the locker room
and you end up going home. This shot rims out at the buzzer, and you
don’t get another one. You get one
shining moment. No second chance.
3.
Today
though, we get a second chance at Easter.
Not only do we—unlike the rest of the world—celebrate Easter again, but
Easter itself is all about second chances.
Those poor disciples had blown their shot to stand by Jesus when the
chips were down, but now Jesus appears to them in John 20:19-31 where the
apostle John tells us, “19 On the evening
of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the
disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said
to them, "Peace be with you." 20 When he had said this, he showed
them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the
Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has
sent me, even so I am sending you." 22 And when he had said this, he
breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you
forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness
from any, it is withheld." 24 Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the
Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him,
"We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in
his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the
nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe." 26 Eight
days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although
the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be
with you." 27 Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see
my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve,
but believe." 28 Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" 29
Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed
are those who have not seen and yet have believed." 30 Now Jesus did many
other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this
book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
4.
Here
in John 20:19-31 we see Jesus appear to the disciples giving them a Second
chance at Easter. Notice what He said to
them first, “Peace be with you, in other
words you’re forgiven.” Here Jesus
wipes the disciple’s slate clean. He
says to them and to us you’re my disciples once more. I know that you sinned, but I died so that
your sins could be forgiven and I rose to set you free from death itself. Jesus even tells the disciples that He’s
going to give them more opportunities to speak up for Him.
5.
But,
here we see something else take place.
Thomas wouldn’t believe when the other apostles first gave him the word
of Jesus’ resurrection, but today Jesus appears a second time and this time
Thomas confesses in John 20:28, “My Lord
and my God.” As a Christian community
here at Christ & Calvary Lutheran Churches we may let Jesus down again and
again, but again and again, Jesus says to us through the words that I as your
Pastor say each week, “I forgive you your
sins in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” When I’m speaking to you as an ambassador
and representative of Jesus, He is speaking those words of forgiveness through
me. When Jesus rose from the grave, He
gave His church the power to wipe our slates clean, to give us another chance
to be God’s people, every time until
the day when every moment is shining in heaven.
6.
In
John 20 we see what a blessing this account of doubting Thomas is for us as
Christians. The reason it’s a blessing
is that it reminds us that those who are skeptical of God and the accounts of
His Son Jesus Christ aren’t totally lost or rejected by God. In fact, doubts and uncertainty don’t lose us
a place in God’s kingdom. Here in John
20 we’re reminded that Jesus willingly comes to us to show us His hands and
side so that we too may believe. He does
this through His Word.
7.
We
see people doubt about Christ, even those within the Christian Church and yet
Jesus continues to forgive them and us when we have our doubts about Him and
His death and resurrection. We saw this
a number of years ago when Mother Teresa’s journal was found and it was found
out that she had some doubts about God in her life. In September of 2007, President Dale Meyer of
Concordia Seminary St. Louis wrote about this in one of his devotional Meyer Minutes. He commented on the fact that the American
media was talking about her faith struggles. But, in reality the American media really had
ignorant, uninformed, and biased…reporting.
Whatever word one chose about how the media portrayed Mother Teresa and
her struggles of faith or even doubting Thomas for that matter from John 20,
people who are earnest students of the faith can identify with their
struggles. Mother Teresa once wrote, “If I ever become a saint, I will surely be
one of ‘darkness….’ If there be no God –
there can be no soul. Is there is no
soul then, Jesus – You also are not true.”
8.
I hope that we can all struggle
with our faith the way Mother Teresa or doubting Thomas did because it means
that we’re truly thinking about our faith and our sin that we deal with on a
daily basis. After all, Jesus Himself
struggled for us dying on the cross to save us from our sins. But, even though He struggled, He also
overcame sin and death for us so that we could have the hope of eternal life in
Him. But, we may often ask the question,
“Why does God seem to play a cosmic
hide-and-seek game with us?” We may
often be puzzled about that? The American writer Flannery O’Connor once wrote, “I think there is no suffering greater than
what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe. What people don’t realize is how much
religion costs. They think faith is a
big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to
believe.”
9.
The fact of the matter
is, if any of us have doubts about Jesus, even as doubting Thomas did, we’re
called to share them. Jesus promises
that He’ll come to us and when we recognize Him, we’ll bow down with Thomas and
cry, “My Lord and My God.” Even though we may feel shock about
Mother Teresa’s or Thomas’ skepticism and wonder why God gives to them a second
chance to believe in Him we need to remember that there are times when we
ourselves may doubt God’s work in our life.
There may be times when we may not feel that Jesus has died for our
sins. But, that’s why Jesus gives to us
His Word and the visible Word of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper to remind us just how much He truly loves us in dying and rising from
the grave to give us the hope of eternal life.
10.
Thomas’s example
demonstrates for us as Christians just how impossible it is for us as human
beings to believe in Jesus rising from the dead through our own human intellect. We must first have the gift of faith worked
within us so that we may truly believe that Jesus has risen from the dead to
show His victory over death for us. Now
as Christians we still will use the factual evidence that Jesus rose from the
dead, but we also need to realize that in the end we need the Holy Spirit to
continue to work faith in our hearts so that we may believe that Jesus truly is
our Lord and Savior. For without the
Holy Spirit’s work in our lives working through God’s Word and Sacraments we
wouldn’t be able to receive that second
chance at Easter, where Jesus comes to us after His resurrection to offer
us the forgiveness of sins and eternal life.
The best second chance anyone
could ever get. Amen.
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