[AI translation] We also begin our services with almost the same greeting that the risen Jesus Christ first greeted his disciples behind closed doors on the evening of Easter Sunday. "Peace be with you!" he said twice to his disciples. "Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom 1:7), we say here. But not only the greeting, but the whole scene: the disciples' coming together, the appearance of Jesus, his speaking, seems to be the archetype of our church worship today, as if it were a model of what true worship and all gatherings of believers should be like! Here we see, as it were, in story form, what we experience, what we can experience, what we should experience every time we gather for worship or any other time of listening to the Word. There are three experiences here in this story that should be, and can be, and are, in all our congregational worship services today, if only we take them seriously. So let us try to make ourselves aware, what are these three?1) Let me tell you in one word in advance what the first one is: the appearance of Jesus. We read that, while the disciples were sitting together on the evening of Easter, carefully locking the doors behind them for fear of the Jews, suddenly, how could it not be - who can explain it, for it is supernatural, inexplicable - that Jesus appeared among them! While they were talking about Him, one and another told of their wonderful experiences of that day, the Lord Himself, in His living reality, stopped among them, in person! Do you know what this means? It is the fulfillment of the promise that where two or three are gathered together in the name of Jesus, He will be there among them. So what the Lord promised his disciples before he died, behold, it is now being fulfilled word for word. And this scene is so significant because it encourages us, it encourages us to believe in the real appearance of Jesus among us. So here, in our midst, the Lord is just as surely and truly present, standing in the midst - as there, in that little circle of disciples - only invisible to our physical eyes, but still tangible through His Spirit and His Word. The disciples then had the great advantage over us of being able to behold Him with their bodily eyes in His risen body, but this was only so that future generations might believe in His appearing, and could count on the promise of Jesus being true for them. The joyful encouragement for us now in this Word, then, is that Jesus is really here now; that His presence among us is a reality which we cannot see in the same way as the disciples, but which we can acknowledge by faith just as they did then.
What we used to sing, "God is here among us" (165,1), is a far more real truth than we say or think! The very point of our gathering, then, is that there is another besides us: the Lord Jesus! Someone might now say: but we are such wretched people, our faith is so weak, there is so much sin in all our being together, we are so unworthy of His presence among us: how can He honour our gatherings with His presence? Well, that little band of disciples was no better. Neither the closed door, nor fear, nor little faith, nor any other weakness of the disciples prevented Jesus from appearing among them! That is the value and gift of our otherwise so miserable gatherings. In fact, it could be said that we come together in His name, two, three or more of us, to experience His presence!
For those who do not come for that: why do they come? Why do you come, and why are you here now? Just to practise a good old custom, to bathe in a little religious atmosphere, to meet a dear friend, or to listen to and judge a human oratorical performance? So this Word makes us aware that yes: Jesus is here among us!
2) The second experience is that Jesus is here among us because he wants to give us something, he wants to give us something! What? There, that night, he said: "Peace be with you!" Although this was the most ordinary form of greeting at the time, it was more than a mere greeting on Jesus' lips. Jesus always fills empty concepts and worn-out words with meaning. This one too! When He says to someone, or to some people, "Peace be with you", it can be taken quite seriously, taken literally. He already promised this peace to His disciples in His farewell discourses, when He said to them, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, so give I it unto you. (Jn 14,27) What he promised then, he has also fulfilled for us on Calvary, with tremendous struggles. So, having promised peace, he obtained it by his death, and now he comes to distribute it to the disciples. So that peace is no longer a promise, but is here. As if to say: Here is what I have promised, I give it to you, you may receive it: 'Peace be unto you' - 'And saying this, he showed them his hands and his side', the place of the terrible wounds he had torn two days before. (v. 20) Would it not have been more natural, more intelligible, if, showing his wounds, he had said: Woe to you! It is because of you that I have these wounds! There is a terrible wrath in heaven because of your treatment of me! Woe unto you! - Would not that have been more understandable?!
But this is not what He says, but He offers peace by showing His wounds, by showing the signs of His redemptive suffering. Look," he says, "here is the guarantee that God is truly reconciled to you, that in heaven he will not be angry with you! Here is the visible assurance that your sins are forgiven! Behold, I have paid, I have done enough for you, I have settled your account! Look, I bring you the peace of heaven! The risen Lord Jesus Christ is present here among us, so that if anyone has come here with a troubled conscience because of his sins; if anyone is sitting here with a heart that is crumbling under the burdens of life; if anyone has a troubled, anxious, fearful spirit; if his faith has grown weary; if his heart has grown cold in love; in short, if he has become poor in any way, here he will hear the offer of heaven: "Peace be unto you!"
So the precious peace that Jesus offers is for you too, for all of you without exception, whoever you are who are here. It is valid for you too! It is valid, it is for everyone, because the Lord has paid the price. Look at His hands and His side: the precious blood that came out of those wounds was the price of that peace! Fear, anxiety, restlessness will only be removed from your heart if you see the signs of redemption, if you accept the peace offered! Yes! In all our worship services, including this one, Jesus Christ, who is present, wants to offer or reaffirm the peace of forgiveness of sins! If you dare to accept the offer of peace, it will become a reality, then truly peace to you, peace within you! A closed door cannot shut out the Jesus who brings peace - as we have just seen - but a closed, locked heart can! Would that your heart were now open to receive His peace!
3) Someone might say that today we are once again fortunate to have reached a certain spiritual peace, the effects of which the world feels very little. Well, yes, it is about inner peace of mind, but let us not be too quick to judge it. There is no getting around it, this peace of mind! For it is there, in the depths of the soul, that the peace we wish to achieve in the home and which we wish to achieve in the outside world must begin! It begins there in the human heart reconciled to God. But then those are absolutely right who do not want to stop there, who are not content with the inner, who therefore long for a peace that is greater than personal experience and living. Those who long for a peace that extends beyond the limits of the individual person are right. And that is the nature of the peace that Jesus offers. It is that he who has received it has received it to pass it on. Christ does not give His peace to someone so that they can retire to quiet solitude with it and enjoy it there, but to spread it!
Peace is not real if it fits into a heart and does not overflow, does not overflow, does not overflow, does not make peace around you! That is why Jesus, after showing his disciples his hands and his side as signs of the peace he had obtained, immediately continues his message. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said to them: Receive ye the Holy Ghost: Whose sins ye forgive, they are forgiven them: whose sins ye retain, they are saved." (vv. 21-23) So when He gives them peace, He immediately makes them peaceable! He who has accepted peace becomes himself a peace-belt in this world: he becomes a propagator, a messenger, a transmitter, an agitator, an apostle of the peace offer which he himself has accepted from the Lord.
To be an apostle is to be an emissary of the Lord, to give a message from the Lord, to proclaim in a clear way that all who believe in Jesus Christ have been forgiven of all their sins, by grace alone, and heaven itself will sound the alarm of this great good news. But the Lord's messenger must also proclaim just as emphatically that whoever rejects Christ is in sin, and if he dies in sin, he is damned forever! And heaven will pronounce an amen on this awful testimony! Every peace-believer will receive two judgments: eternal acquittal in one hand, and the most terrible sentence of death in the other. And he will do so in order to lay them both open to all, for all without exception must choose between them! In your hand, too, are the two kinds of judgment. Oh, how dreadful it would be if, because of you, it were not acknowledged by someone to whom you could have shown it, to whom you could have spoken of it, to whom you should have laid it before, but you did not have the courage to do so, or you omitted to do so because you did not think of it! And yet the Lord calls us to Himself, so that He may send us out from here as a peace offering!
In the congregational worship and in all other times of the Word, we experience the presence of the risen Christ, we receive His peace individually and spiritually through the forgiveness of sins, so that as the Father sent the Son, so He may send us out into the world! He shows us His hands and His side so that in the power of His suffering and death we ourselves may always draw strength for the ministry of peace. It is for this reason that Christ died and rose again and appeared here and now, so that those who have experienced his presence, those who have heard his word, may bring the good news to many, many more: Jesus is the Christ to the glory of God the Father!
True worship always becomes a mission for the church. It is like a great shake-up, a wake-up call, or as one of our new hymns says:
O Zion, wake up, fulfill your mission, Tell the world: your dawn is near!
For he who made the nations will not let any man perish in night or sin.
Be thou a joyful peace-belt, Proclaim the Saviour is at hand!
He'll come again, Sion, before thou canst, To reveal his secret to every heart.
Let not a soul accuse thee, That thou hast not seen him because of thee.
Be thou a joyful, peace-loving girdle, Proclaim that the Saviour is come!
Canto 397, verses 1 and 5
Amen
Date: 26 August 1951.
Lesson
Jn 20,19-23