‘What do you
mean?’ enquires the shop-keeper.
‘Well I’d like
enough religion to feel that I am forgiven but not so much that I would feel the
need to forgive other people. I’d like
enough religion to be part of a church but not so much that I have to get on
with awkward people in that church. I’d
like enough religion to make me respectable but not so much that people might
think I am odd. I’d like enough religion
to think that God is with me wherever I go but not so much that he can tell me
to whom I should go. I’d like enough
religion to get me to heaven when I die but not so much that would turn my life
up-side down on earth.’
‘You won’t want
Jesus then!’ the shopkeeper replies.
You see
Christianity doesn’t present us with a pick-and-mix of blessings and
responsibilities to choose from. It is a
whole package. It is not simply a
hobby. It doesn’t have a part-time
option. There is no retirement date. It’s a living relationship where we are to
walk every moment under the rule of Jesus.
The passage we
are looking at this morning contains both comfort and challenge—blessing and
responsibility. Obviously we are not
supposed to focus on the blessing and close our ears to the challenge. The peace and the commission of these verses
go hand in hand. Walking with Jesus
involves both. Jesus wants us to know
times where we withdraw from the world to be built up in Christian fellowship and
then he wants to send us back out into the world as his ambassadors. The church isn’t just about Sundays and what
happens in these rooms. It is also about
what we do during the week and how we relate to the world around us.
‘Mission isn’t
my thing’, you might want to say.
‘Yes, it
is!’ If you are a Christian mission is
to be a central purpose of your life.
The words, ‘I am sending you’ are the core of what
this passage is about. The commission
these disciples receive is one that we inherit.
Mission isn’t to be the preserve of the mission committee. Mission is to be a part of the DNA of who we
are as a church and who we are as individual Christians. There isn’t a Christian here this morning
that has an excuse to ignore the challenge of these verses.
Jesus
brings his people peace (19-20)
It is the
evening of the first Easter. Peter and
John have seen that the tomb is empty.
Mary Magdalene has told them that she has seen the risen Lord. The disciples are together. Luke’s account tells us that there more than
the twelve there.
Imagine what it
must have been like in that room! There
is not much in the way of conversation.
There is a feeling of shame, ‘we fled from the Lord when he needed
us.’ There is confusion, ‘what are we to
make of the empty tomb and Mary’s report?’
There is uncertainty, ‘what does the future hold for us now?’ The doors are locked for fear of the Jews—in the last couple of days they have witnessed
the Jewish authorities get their way and crucify Jesus, ‘what’s to stop them
coming for us too?’
Then Jesus came and stood among them and said,
“Peace be with you!” It is the
traditional Jewish greeting ‘Shalom!’ He
could have rebuked them, ‘how could you have deserted me?’ But instead he greeted them saying, ‘Peace be
with you!’ While Jesus must have used
that greeting towards many people on many occasions this is the first time in
his gospel that John records Jesus using it.
He wants us to see the significance!
In the Old Testament ‘Shalom’ was associated with the blessing of God,
and especially with the salvation he would bring through his Messiah.
When I was in
primary school I tried to get our cat down off a book shelf (she actually
didn’t need my help). However, I must
have slipped and grabbing the shelf it went tumbling down. As the cat flew by me it managed to grab my
face. I might not have had such a scar
on my face if I hadn’t picked the scratch the moment the blood dried (I thought
that would make the wound disappear). Every scar tells a story!
In between
John’s two mentions of Jesus saying, ‘Peace
be with you’ we are told that Jesus showed them his hands and his
side. Luke tells us that they had
thought that he was a ghost. ‘It really
is him!’ The disciples were overjoyed.
Those scars told a marvellous story.
As Graham Kendrick writes in ‘The Servant King’ these are scars that
speak of sacrifice. They are the scars
that make God’s ultimate ‘Shalom’ possible.
On the cross
Jesus had said ‘it is finished.’ Now he says ‘peace be with you.’ Because
of that finished work on the cross we can know peace with God. Jesus has dealt with all of our guilty. His sacrifice was sufficient for the full
extent of all our sin. The risen Lord,
who has paid our penalty and defeated death says ‘peace be with you.’
The telephone
rang at about three in the morning. It
was the local hospital ringing about a man who was very ill and wanted to speak
to a minister. The minister had never
met this man before, and he wasn’t a churchgoer. But this man knew that he was seriously ill and
he was feeling troubled. The minister
asked if he could help and the man’s eyes welled up with tears. Seeing that the man didn’t know what to say
the minister prompted him: ‘Do you want to make your peace with God?’ The man responded that he did. So in the dead of night, in the quiet of a
hospital ward, with everyone around sleeping, the minister explained that
although we reject God all our loves, and although we deserve to be punished by
God, Jesus took that punishment on the cross for us, so that we can have peace
with God. The minister then prayed a
simple prayer with that man, who prayed along with him. The next morning the minister called into the
hospital but was told that the man had died in the night. The nurse told the minister that he had gone
to sleep after he’d left and that he died, in her words, ‘peacefully in his
sleep.’ He was at peace with God. As that minister latter explained, ‘He was
troubled; he met the Lord Jesus; he understood the cross … Peace with God. That’s what Jesus’ death achieved, and his
resurrection was that guarantee of that.’
What do you want
for Christmas? At Christmas time we tend
to think of the things we want or even believe we need. There is nothing that we need more than we
need peace with God. There is no gift so
precious as his forgiveness and life. If
you haven’t accepted this gift I hope you won’t go another year without
it. If we know God’s acceptance I hope
we are thankful!
Jesus
sends us to share his peace (21-23)
This peaceful
life that Jesus offers is not an unchallenging one. He has great plans that we would have the
privilege of being used as his witnesses.
‘Peace be with you. As the Father sent me so I am sending you.’
They were being commissioned to carry on Christ’s work. Mission is at the heart of what it means to
be a follower of Jesus. Mission is to be
central to who we are as a church. Our
goal as a church is to be based of Christ’s commission. We have good news to share. We want to be a church that is good at caring
for the needs of our members but we also want to be a church that thinks of the
spiritual need of those who are outside of God’s kingdom. Jesus is to be the model for our mission—he
was intentional in going out and sharing the gospel, he had a heart for the lost,
and he was willing to associate with the despised and rejected. If Jesus was willing to come from heaven to
earth, and die on a cross, for the sake of the lost should we not be willing to
get to know that neighbour, speak to that person at work, and talk about our
love for Jesus with that family member who might label us a ‘Jesus-freak’?
Bobby Loney
prays every day that God would give him the chance to share the gospel with
someone. Do we long for such
opportunities? Caroline attached a copy
of Mark’s gospel with the Christmas letter to her relatives. During the year she wrote a letter to her
granny to explain what the gospel is about.
How might we go about sharing the good news?
There was
nothing easy about Jesus’ commission.
Remember that Jesus was sending them back into the world from which they
were in that room hiding. He had earlier
warned them, ‘In this world you will have
trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.’ Now he points them to the means by which they
will accomplish this mission. And with that he breathed on them and said,
“Receive the Holy Spirit …”
There is
confusion about how this giving of the Spirit here fits with the giving of the
Spirit fifty days later at Pentecost. It
may be that Jesus was giving them an acted parable of what would happen then or
that Jesus was giving them a foretaste of what is to come. Either way the important thing to note is
that it is the Holy Spirit that equips us for the task of mission. Look at what happens to these sacred men after
the day of Pentecost—they become courageous witnesses. Since Pentecost every believer receives the
Spirit at conversion, so let’s pray that he would give us the courage we lack
and the words to say.
David and I
believe that prayer is one of the big things that we need to work on as a
church next year. You see the success of
our mission depends on God. We can’t
convict people of their need of forgiveness, we can’t open the eyes of the
spiritually blind and we can’t give the inner witness that testifies these
things are true. The Holy Spirit
does. If we are a church that believes
that mission is central to what we do, and that mission is dependant upon the
work of the Holy Spirit, then we will be a church that wants to call out to God
as we depend on him in prayer!
It always
frustrates me when the closing verse of a passage is difficult for at this
stage in the sermon you may be struggling to keep on listening. Please hang in there for a couple of more
minutes.
If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive
them, they are not forgiven.
This last verse
might seem to endorse the Roman Catholic idea of a set aside priesthood with
the power to absolve people of their sins at the confessional. There are actually a host of reasons why this
is not the case, including the particular Greek tenses that are used here. I suggest that you look up a commentary if
you want to find out more. One argument
I will mention is that such a practice is not what we witness happening in the
book of Acts. What we see there is the
sharing of the good news.
What this verse
is saying is that as the church proclaims the gospel message of forgiveness of
sins in the power of the Holy Spirit, it proclaims that those who believe in
Jesus have their sins forgiven, and that those who refuse to believe in Jesus
do not have their sins forgiven. We proclaim the gospel of forgiveness
reassuring those who genuinely turn in repentance what God has decreed in
heaven—their sins or forgiven, but warn those who refuse him of their peril!
Conclusion
‘I’d like five
pounds worth of religion please.’
Maybe we look at
this passage and want to ask, ‘can I have the peace without the
commission?’ ‘Can I have the comfort
without the challenge?’
Such a view is
to fail to understand life with Jesus.
But I would also want to say that such a view would be to fall short of
the joy that Christ wants us to experience.
He wants us to know the privilege of being involved in mission. He wants us to know the joy of speaking of his
love. He wants us to know the
satisfaction of being a part of his purposes.
In 1909 J.
Campbell White, secretary of the Layman’s Missionary Movement said, ‘Most men
[people] are not satisfied with the permanent output of their lives. Nothing can wholly satisfy the life of Christ
within his followers except the adoption of Christ’s purpose toward the world
he came to redeem. Fame, pleasure and
riches are not but husks and ashes in contrast with the boundless and abiding
joy of working with God for the fulfilment of his eternal plans. The men [people] who are putting everything
into Christ’s undertaking are getting out of life its sweetest and most
precious rewards.’
It is not the
person who steps out in faith and engages in mission that loses out, it is the
person who hides from their calling and stays within their comfort zone that is
to be pitied. It is not the church that
established a pleasant social club of likeminded people which is to be envied;
it is the church who engages in the messy lives of those around it with the
purpose of sharing the gospel that knows the joy of service.
May each of us
know the peace of this passage and be compelled to share this good news with
others.
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