Sermon: "Two Gifts and a Commission" - April 12,2026

The Second Sunday of Easter, John 20:19-31

The Rev'd Ezgi Saribay Perkins, The Rector 

Transcript

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There is a line from T. S. Eliot that captures something essential about the life of faith. In Little Gidding, he writes:
“We shall not cease from exploration
 And the end of all our exploring
 Will be to arrive where we started
 And know the place for the first time.”

Eliot describes that moment when we finally understand something long familiar in its depth. He points us to the fact that fundamental things do not often change, but we do. We find Thomas and the disciples in a similar place in the Gospel this morning.

A week earlier, the other disciples encountered the risen Christ. They had seen him and received his peace. But Thomas was not there. And when they told him, he refused to believe on the basis of their testimony alone, just as they did not believe in the women’s testimony alone. “Unless I see,” he said, “I will not believe.” His is a deeply human response. So, Thomas begins his own journey like the others through doubt, grief, and the seeming impossibility of resurrection. Eight days later, he arrives right back where the others had been. Same room. Same locked doors. Same disciples. And yet, it is not the same.

For the risen Christ stands before him. But Thomas does not carry out the test he demanded. It is enough that Christ has come near, enough that the One who was crucified now stands before him. And from that encounter comes not hesitation, but the fullest confession in the Gospel: “My Lord and my God.” Thomas has arrived where he began, but now he knows this place for the first time.

And is that not the question before all of us? What does it take to believe in the resurrection? What do we require before we can say, with Thomas, “My Lord and my God”? Do we need proof? Do we need to see? Do we need certainty? Friends, the Gospel answers us with a quiet but profound truth: what we need is not less than Thomas had, but it is also not more. We need the risen Christ to come to us, to speak his peace into our fear, to give us his life, and to call us into his work.

In today’s Gospel, the reality of Jesus’ resurrection brings two gifts and a commission into the lives of the disciples.

First, Jesus’ resurrection brings the gift of peace. The first word the risen Christ speaks into that locked room is not instruction, or correction, or explanation. It is a gift.

“Peace be with you.” We are accustomed to hearing this as a greeting, but in John’s Gospel it functions as something more substantial. It is not merely courteous speech; it is a declarative word, a word that establishes a reality. As one commentator notes, it is better heard not as a wish but as a statement, “Peace to you.”

That declaration is better read considering the situation into which it is spoken. The disciples are behind locked doors, “for fear.” Fear of the authorities, certainly, but also fear born of disorientation. The events of the past days have undone their expectations. The one in whom they had placed their hope has been crucified. Even with reports of the empty tomb, they are not yet living as those who believe in resurrection.

And into that unresolved, unstable, and fearful reality, Christ speaks peace.

What is striking is that nothing external has changed. The danger remains. The uncertainty remains. The doors remain locked. The peace is not the result of improved circumstances. It is the result of Christ’s resurrected bodily presence.

This is what distinguishes Christ’s peace from every other form of peace. The world’s peace depends on resolution, on threats removed, on conditions stabilized. Christ’s peace does not wait for those conditions. It is grounded not in circumstances, but in the person of Christ. And more specifically, in the crucified and risen Christ.

This is why Jesus shows them his hands and his side. The wounds establish this continuity. The one who stands before them is the same one who suffered. Leon Morris observes they confirm that this is “the same Jesus they had known,” now transformed not replaced with a ghost.

I think, theologically, his hands and side do more than confirm his identity. They define the nature of the peace being given. The peace of Christ is not a type of peace apart from our suffering, but peace through his suffering. As one reflection puts it, these words now come not from the one threatened by the world, but from the one who has already endured “the brunt of that chaos and hatred” and now stands alive.

This means that the peace Christ gives is not merely a feeling. The disciples, who have failed, who have abandoned him, are not first corrected. They are first addressed with peace. In other words, they are addressed as those already reconciled.

This is possible because the work of the cross has already been accomplished. They have not earned the peace of Christ. It is grounded in what Christ has done. That is why the sequence matters. Jesus speaks peace. He shows his wounds. They recognize him. And then they rejoice.

As Gail O’Day notes, their joy fulfills Jesus’ earlier promise that their sorrow would turn into joy when they see him again. They do not reason their way into peace. They encounter the risen Christ, and therefore their fear gives way to joy. And this has direct implications for us.

We often imagine that peace comes from resolution, from understanding, from having our questions answered or our circumstances improved. But in this text, peace comes from an encounter with a person. It is granted unreservedly.

And it is received precisely by those who are not yet ready. The disciples are still uncertain, afraid, and behind closed doors. Yet Christ comes to them as they are and speaks a word that does not depend on their readiness. This is the first gift of the resurrection.

Not clarity. Not confidence. Not even courage, at least not yet. A peace that rests not on the stability of the world, but on the presence of the risen Christ. And it is from that peace, and only from that peace, that everything else in this passage unfolds.

Next, Jesus’ resurrection brings the gift of the Holy Spirit and marks the Church as the agent of reconciliation. Jesus does not merely stand among the disciples and speak comforting words; he acts upon them. “He breathes on them and says to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.” This is one of those moments in Scripture that connects the biblical story into a single action. We are meant to hear an echo of the Book of Genesis 2:7, where God forms the human from the dust and breathes into him the breath of life. What happens here, on the evening of the resurrection, is similar. The same divine breath that once brought life into being is now given again, this time not to an individual, but to a community.

Also in the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet stands before a valley of dry bones of dead people, and it is the breath of God that restores life to what is beyond hope. In both cases, breath is the very life of God, given where there is no life.

Notice also that the new life of the Holy Spirit is immediately directed outward. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” The gift of the Spirit is not given to be private experience, nor for inward consolation alone, but for participation in the mission of God. The same pattern that defines the Son’s relation to the Father now defines the Church’s relation to the world. What Christ has been sent to do, the Church is now sent to continue. And this raises the question that presses upon the text: what, exactly, is this work?

“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” These words have been handled in many ways, not all of them carefully. But within John’s Gospel, their meaning is more precise than it first appears. The Church is not given arbitrary authority over individuals, but rather, it is entrusted with the responsibility of bearing witness to what God has already accomplished in Christ.

Because in John’s context, sin was not first a moral category. It was a theological one. It was the refusal, or inability, to recognize the revelation of God in Jesus. The church’s mission continues what Christ himself has done: to make God known through Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection.

The Church is a Spirit-breathed community, constituted by the life of God, and sent into the world as an agent of reconciliation. As the Second Epistle to the Corinthians 5:18 reminds us, “God… has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” We might ask the question, “But who is sufficient for these things?” The answer is clear: no one. Peter, John, and James, and Thomas were not.

And yet Christ breathed on them. The breath that once animated the first humans animated a new humanity, sent them as people who do not rely on their own strength, but on the transformative power of the breath of God who brought reconciliation.

Lastly, Jesus’ resurrection commissions the disciples to proclaim his resurrected reality and identity to the world. After giving them peace, and after breathing into them the Holy Spirit, Jesus now gives the disciples something they have not yet had. He gives them a direction. “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Up to this point, everything has been given to them. Peace is given. The Spirit is given. And now, what has been given begins to show its purpose. They are sent.

And notice carefully what Jesus does not say. He does not say, “Go and build an institution.” He does not say, “Go and win arguments.” He says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” Which means their task to continue his mission. And what was the mission of Jesus?

In John’s Gospel, Jesus speaks of himself as the one who was sent to make the Father known. “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). His life, his words, his actions, his very being, were a revelation. And now, that same pattern extends to the Church.

The disciples are sent not simply to speak about Jesus, but to bear witness to him, to his identity, and to the truth that the one who was crucified is now alive.

This is why Thomas matters so much at the end of this passage. Because Thomas does not simply say, “I now believe something happened.” He says, “My Lord and my God.” It is striking that the one often remembered as a doubter gives the clearest recognition of who Jesus is in the entire Gospel. And here is where the passage turns toward us. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

This is a word for all who come after Thomas. For all who were not in that room. For all who have not seen the wounds. For all who must rely, not on sight, but on testimony.

That is us. John speaks to us with the words, “These are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

The Gospel itself becomes the means by which the risen Christ continues to be made known. And the Church becomes the place where that testimony is lived and spoken.

The third gift of the resurrection is this: a calling not only to receive, but to go. Because the risen Christ is not only one who comes to us. He is also the one who sends us.

So on this so-called Low Sunday, may we receive that peace of Christ. May we ask for that Holy Spirit of God. And may we say yes to being sent by God to proclaim his glorious new creation through his resurrection.

And when we gaze upon him in the Bread that becomes his Body at the altar, may we acclaim, with Thomas, and with the whole Church, “My Lord and my God.” We have arrived where we start again. Happy Easter! Amen.