Quasimodo Geniti
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 10:39
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The last thing Jesus did as He died, before He said, “It is finished,” was to institute His Church by giving Mary and John to each other. The first thing Jesus did when He appeared to His disciples after the Resurrection was to give His Church the authority to forgive sins. Jesus said to [the disciples], “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (Jn 20:21).
When visiting Christians attend a Lutheran service for the first time, what they generally find most shocking is the Absolution. The pastor says, “In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins,” and the visitors think, “How can a man say those words? Only God can forgive sins.” That statement is partly true. The power to forgive sins comes from God alone. But He has given this power to His Church to be exercised by her ministers. And this is no afterthought. As I said, it’s literally the first thing Jesus does when He appears to His disciples on Easter morning. The very first order of business is to give them the authority to open heaven to penitent sinners, that is, to forgive their sins.
Some people want to know why going to Church is so important. Why can’t I read my Bible at home? Why can’t I commune with God in nature? What’s wrong with listening for God’s voice within my heart? Why is it necessary to gather with a bunch of other sinners, some of whom are kind of weird, every Sunday morning? Because it is here, and only here, that Jesus has promised to meet us and forgive our sins.
If you’ve ever thought that the people who gather in this building are less than ideal Christians, consider the sorry gathering of disciples on Easter morning. Every one of them was plagued by guilt for having abandoned Jesus. Peter was likely still weeping after his triple denial. The Twelve had utterly failed to be disciples worthy of their Lord. In fact, they weren’t even the Twelve anymore—Judas was dead. The Eleven had gathered—but wait, Thomas is missing—the Ten had gathered together in fear and guilt. Maybe that’s why the women came up with the idea to go anoint Jesus’s body—anything to get out of the house away from the brooding disciples. The Ten disciples were at their lowest point ever. They were failures as followers. They hadn’t protected Jesus. They were failures as disciples: They hadn’t listened to a thing Jesus had said, otherwise they would have been expecting the Resurrection on the third day. They had failed in every way except one: on that Sunday morning they had gathered together in the name of Jesus.
Dear Christians, if you get everything else wrong, get this right. Don’t be like Thomas, absent from the assembly of the saints. Be like the other ten disciples. True, they had failed bigtime. True, they had deserted Jesus and fled. True, they were not worthy to be called His disciples. But even so, they were gathered together—whether by intent or by accident, it doesn’t matter. What does matter had nothing to do with the disciples and their poor behavior, and everything to do with Jesus and His promise. He said in Matthew, chapter 18, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Mt 18:20).
The disciples had all broken their promises to Jesus, but Jesus has never broken one of His promises—not to them, and not to you. He told them He would be there, and so, there He was, standing in their midst. Jesus wasn’t about to let the matter of His death and burial stand between Him and His promise to the disciples.
When Jesus shows up, the first thing He says to the guilty and troubled disciples is, “Peace be to you.” Jesus is saying to them, “I know that you forsook and denied and betrayed me. I know that you are frightened, guilty sinners expecting the feel the wrath of God. But listen to the message that God the Father has sent me to give you, “Peace be to you.” I don’t think they got the message, so Jesus tells them a second time, “Peace be to you.”
Jesus begins the Divine Service on Easter morning with the Absolution, just as He begins His Divine Service today. With the words, “Peace be to you,” Jesus tells the disciples that their sins are forgiven, that God is no longer angry with them, that the eternal punishment they justly deserved has been removed. Four-thousand years after Satan enticed man to join his war against God, there is peace once again between God and man—the peace that Jesus purchased, the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.
The disciples certainly don’t understand how this peace can be—it’s too good to be true—so Jesus offers them proof. He holds up His pierced hands and shows them His broken body. Jesus does this for the sake of doubting and timid hearts. He does it for you this morning. Just in case you didn’t hear and believe the Absolution the first time, Jesus gives it again with proof, holding up His broken body and poured-out blood, as He says to you, “The peace of the Lord be with you always.”
And then Jesus says to His disciples, “As the Father has sent Me—announcing this peace and the forgiveness of sins—so I send you. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them.” With these words Jesus institutes His Divine Service and ordains the first generation of pastors to hand-deliver His message of forgiveness and peace. This is the purpose for which the Church gathers: so that the ministers of Christ can speak in His stead and by His command. Everything else you might get from Church is icing on the cake, so to speak, and compared to this Divine Service, nothing else that we do matters.
Our Lord’s first order of business on Easter morning is to announce His forgiveness, and the second is to appoint men to speak it on His behalf. We confess, “I believe that when the called ministers of Christ deal with us by His divine command, in particular when they exclude openly unrepentant sinners from the Christian congregation and absolve those who repent of their sins and want to do better, this is just as valid and certain, even in heaven, as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.”
Dear Christians, never let anyone rob you of the treasure our Lord gives in His Divine Service. Never let anyone sow doubt into your heart, saying, “But the pastor is only a man. How can he forgive sins?” Never let Satan convince you that you have better things to do on Sunday morning than to hear, once again, the blessed words of Absolution. Christ Himself, and not your pastor, speaks these words to you today. The message He brings is the very same He delivered on Easter morning. The Body and Blood you eat and drink today is the very one that Jesus offered to His trembling disciples as proof of the new-bought peace between God and man. Just like the disciples on Easter morning, we have gathered together in the name of our Lord Jesus. And true to His Word, He stands in our midst once again, announcing peace with God and the forgiveness of sins. Amen.