C, Easter 2 - John 20:19–22 "Reception of Peace and the Holy Spirit"

John 20:19–22 (ESV) 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.”  When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit”.

Today, we in the kingdom of God, hear of God’s first ordination in the evening of Jesus’ resurrection.  Ten men are ordained in very simple fashion.  Twice he says to the ten, “Peace be with you”, before saying,  “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”  (John 20:21)

These men, referred to as disciples, are sent or called to be apostles, by our Risen Lord Jesus, just as he was by his Father.

Earlier in his ministry, Jesus had designated twelve disciples as apostles and sent them out.  (Matthew 10; Mark 3:13-19; Luke 6:12-16)   After his resurrection, Jesus prepares ten of them with peace and the Holy Spirit.  He does this so they can function in the way God intended them to function as shepherds in his body, his church, after Pentecost.

The last time Jesus spoke of peace was to his eleven disciples after Judas had departed to betray him.  Three times Jesus teaches them about why they need peace, and how they would receive it.

Notice two very important things that cannot be separated from Jesus’ peace and love — God’s Word and the Holy Spirit.

 “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.  Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.  “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you.  But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.  Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. (John 14:23–27 ESV)

Jesus then goes on to elaborate about the works of the world’s hatred, and the works of the Holy Spirit in those who love God.  They leave the location of the foot washing and travel to the location where Jesus prays his high priestly prayer.  But before he prays, he places his peace upon them for the third and final time, before his crucifixion, saying, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 ESV)

Three times he leaves his peace with them before his resurrection.  Now after his resurrection he recalls to remembrance and reinstates this peace.  Twice with the ten disciples and the third time a week later with Thomas the eleventh disciple.

When Jesus left his peace with his disciples before his death, he also taught them about the gift of the Holy Spirit.   So too after his resurrection!  Jesus places his peace and breathes the Holy Spirit upon them with his Word. 

God’s love in Jesus Christ, the peace of God, Jesus’ Word, and the Holy Spirit cannot be disconnected and seen in isolation from each other.  Therefore, here after the resurrection Jesus no longer promises the gift of the Holy Spirit, he makes it a command.   Hear Jesus’ command, “he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (John 20:22 ESV)

Although the Holy Spirit is a gift, the ten apostles are commanded to “receive” the Holy Spirit.  Some might say, Thomas did not receive the Holy Spirit a week later.  However, Thomas, the doubting one, receives the peace and then receives the Holy Spirit after Jesus gives him the command to believe. 

Receiving the Holy Spirit and believing are one in the same thing.  If you don’t believe, you don’t receive the Holy Spirit.  If you believe Jesus, you receive the Holy Spirit and allow the Holy Spirit to put off all doubts, as well as beliefs in the self and the world that oppose Jesus Christ and his Word.  One who allows the Holy Spirit to do this, allows God’s Word to remain supreme and lives in peace, despite how much the world hates you for bearing the peace of God.

Jesus ordains the eleven apostles in two ways.  The ten get one command, to “Receive the Holy Spirit”. Thomas, the doubter, however, gets five very practical commands. 

He said to Thomas in the presence of the other ten, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” (John 20:27 ESV)   Thomas then makes the confession of belief, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28 ESV) Not only is Jesus, master or Lord, but Thomas confesses him as God. 

The eleven apostles have received the Holy Spirit and the peace of God which surpasses all human understanding, so their hearts and minds are guarded in Christ Jesus (Phil 4:7).  The eleven apostles and all other disciples need the Holy Spirit to guard their hearts and minds.  The treatment Jesus received, they received and more, as the body of Christ, the church, grew.

We hear the high priest questioned them,  saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us.”  But Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.  The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.  God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Saviour, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.  And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:27b–32 ESV)

Here again, God’s Word and the Holy Spirit are connected.  The Acts of the Apostles are really the acts of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.  The apostles are the means through which the word and the Holy Spirit work.

Today we need God’s Word and the Holy Spirit to function as church.  In John chapter fourteen to sixteen Jesus prepares his eleven disciples with his peace, teaching them about the hatred of the world, loving one’s neighbour, and the coming of the Holy Spirit.

Just as Jesus appointed twelve apostles from the disciples and sent them out.  Pastors have been called and sent to shepherd the flock, to be under shepherds and slaves, of Christ and those sheep whom Christ has called them to serve.  Similar to the apostles, they serve in the love of Christ with the command to bind and loose sinners and their sins, by the power of the Holy Spirit and the word of God, in the stead of Christ.  

We call this the office of the keys in the Lutheran Church.  Those who reject the call to repentance, actively work against God’s work through his servants, to bind their sin to the cross and free them, a sinner.  They’re in danger of sinning against the Holy Spirit, as their sin remains free from the cross, treating Christ’s crucifixion with contempt.

During Jesus’ ministry, he also sent out seventy-two disciples ahead of where he went.  The post-Pentecost church is a church of disciples and disciples called in the apostolic tradition to be pastors.  Disciples are learners of Jesus Christ, students of the Holy Spirit.  Parishioners and Pastors, alike, are all disciples in the body of Christ. 

John tells us what being a disciple is, at the beginning of Revelation, “To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” (Revelation 1:5b –6 ESV)

Every one of us are priests in God’s kingdom, called to practise our priesthood in the world, by loving others with forgiveness as the Father has forgiven us.  Inside God’s church, however, we live in a two-fold priesthood.  This has been the case throughout the history of God’s redemption of humanity.

God called Moses and Aaron to be his mediators or priests for Israel, so he could consecrate Israel through them, saying, “if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5–6a ESV)

The Apostle Peter picks this up calling all disciples of Christ’s body “living stones” and Christ “the corner stone”.   He says, “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 2:4–5 ESV)

In these days of disobedience, it seems God’s peace has disappeared.  To some it has for the very reason that they have not received the Holy Spirit, nor have they hung onto God’s Word.

John speaks further to this in our situation today, saying, “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge.” (1 John 2:18–20 ESV)

You have been anointed in baptism, as one in the royal priesthood of believers.  Don’t be ignorant to God’s Word nor the world’s influence on you and God’s church.  Remain in God’s kingdom, remain in Jesus Christ, receive his Word, allow it to breathe the Holy Spirit on you, and the Holy Spirit to breathe Christ in you.

And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7 ESV) Amen. 

A, Easter 5 - Acts 7:55-60 "Homothumadon"

Acts 7:55–60 (ESV) But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.  And he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”  But they cried out with a loud voice and stopped their ears and rushed together at him.  Then they cast him out of the city and stoned him. And the witnesses laid down their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.  And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep.

Extraordinary things occurred in the early days after Jesus’ resurrection.  The believers acted with one accord.  The title of this sermon bears the Greek word Homothumadon, translated “in one accord, in one mind, or with one voice”, and it literally means with “one passion”, or “one hot breath.

This acting in one accord is recorded only eleven times in the New Testament, ten in the book of Acts, and once in Romans. [1]

Eight out of the eleven occurrences homothumadon refers to the worshipping of God in one accord by the believers of Jesus’ resurrection.  Three times homothumadon, is the oneness of passion with which mobs of unbelieving Jews roared and breathed against the believers.  At Stephen’s death, men from the synagogue of Freedmen, cried out, shut their ears to God’s call through Stephen, and rushed at him with homothumadon, dragging him out of Jerusalem and stoning him.

Stephen with the witnesses and believers of the resurrection sought to proclaim the actions of man in the death of Jesus Christ, and the actions of God in sending him in the incarnation of human flesh.  He was sent to serve as the Son of Man, and submit as the sacrificial Lamb of God, for the Jews first, and then the Gentiles.  The actions of Jesus Christ glorified our Father, when together with the Holy Spirit the Trinity acted in homothumadon.

In these days after the resurrection, we hear homothumadon occurring amongst the believers as the Holy Spirit moved in them and spoke through them to save others. 

First, Peter was reinstated by Jesus with a three-fold call to “feed my lambs, tend my sheep, feed my sheep”.  Jesus spoke into Peter the homothumadon, the one accord, to love others as he loved him, loved the disciples, and loved all sinners, in his death and resurrection.

Then, in the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter begins by continuing Jesus’ love at Pentecost, standing up with the eleven, in the peace of God, with homothumadon he calls all people to repentance.

One could say this had a positive outcome as the crowd was cut to their hearts because of their sin, and three thousand were baptised for the forgiveness of their sins and received the Holy Spirit.  Peter promises resurrection for them and their children and calls them to, “save themselves from the current generation”.

So, from one man going to the cross for humanity and then being raised from the dead, Peter is resurrected, the other ten Apostles are resurrected, then three thousand.  The Holy Spirit continues the work of Jesus, the Son of God, the Son or Servant of Man, proceeding from both the Son and the Father, to do the will of God, and bring humanity into the oneness of Jesus Christ.

Those gathered, by the power of the Holy Spirit, sought to gather others.  With strength and courage, they waited on the Risen Lord, despite the very real threat to their lives.  But it was to those who threatened their lives that they testified the love of God because only through the power of God can anyone be re-erected in a way that pleases God our Father.

God had become displeased with Israel, his chosen people.  But in his displeasure with humanity and the Jews, he sent his Son, to be human, a man, a Jew, to save the Jews and humanity.

God the Holy Spirit was calling people into a new temple, a gathering of living stones, built on the Corner Stone, Jesus Christ.  This homothumadon was the gathering breath of the Holy Spirit, calling one holy apostolic church to be gathered in and around the resurrected Jesus Christ, the Corner Stone.

This was a calling of people out of death into life, calling them to daily die to self and live in Jesus Christ, allowing the Holy Spirit to bring them out of darkness and into a royal, holy nation and priesthood.  This is the homothumadon into which people were being baptised to the glory and pleasure of God.

But the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit, the oneness into which the Spirit was seeking to work through the Apostolic Servants and the newly re-created and resurrected Priesthood of confessing sinners living under forgiveness, was not appreciated by some.

For four hundred years God had withdrawn from the people of Israel and left them to their own devices.  Kingship and the Levitical Priesthood was rife with corruption.  Murder, chaos, and buying of power was common as warring factions in Jerusalem jockeyed for supremacy.  The Sanhedrin looked more like question time in parliament, rather than leading of the Jewish public in a God pleasing way.  Men like Herod the Great and his adulterous Son Herod Antipas were the legacy of this time.

Outside of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee the world was in a state of flux.  Years before, Alexander the Great had conquered the world, and having been tutored by Aristotle, he encouraged diversity of thought and ideologies.  This helped the spread of Judaism through the Greek world, but monotheistic Judaism struggled to come to terms with the polytheistic nature of Greek Hellenisation that traversed lands from the Himalayas in the east, to Greece and Egypt in the west.

Between Alexander’s reign and the rise of the Roman empire, the lands of Israel found themselves in a great tug-o-war and Judaism became a part of this political struggle.  By the time God sent his Son Jesus Christ, Jerusalem, a place which bore the name meaning flowing peace, was more use to the flow of human blood, at the hands of those who should have been spilling the blood of animals, for the atonement of their sins and for those whom they were meant to serve.

So, with one accord, with the homothumadon, with the unified fierce breath, in which Jesus was crucified was not new to Jerusalem and the Jews.   Paradoxically, the oneness in which these political assassinations occurred in the lead up to Jesus’ death, further splintered and disintegrated God’s chosen people of Israel.  The spirit of the age was every man for himself, not all that different from today!

However, the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit is different because people were being brought into the oneness of Jesus’ resurrection.  He who proclaimed himself as the Son of God, now had a faithful following growing mysteriously, a strange phenomenon of believers repenting and confessing, calling others into the same homothumadon of forgiveness by the Holy Spirit. 

Two homothumadon are revealed at this time.  One was that of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ, the other was that of the human spirit.  One tasted and saw that the Lord was good, the other didn’t see that the Lord was good.  Christ’s call to repentance and his resurrection did not please their taste, rather it was a puzzling enigma and another suspicious power needing destruction. 

With those gathered by the Holy Spirit into Jesus Christ, they were one in him with a peace that surpassed all understanding, allowing them to freely confess sin and live in forgiveness in the face of death and tribulation.  They looked to Jesus knowing the threat of death and separation was a blessing of eternal life in Jesus.  They tasted and knew that the Lord was good.

Stephen tasted the Lord too!  He wanted others to be freed from the confusion, chaos, and the corruption of the age.  His wish was for those who lived under the bondage of death to be made free in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Stephen proclaimed with the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit, the one accord of the Holy Spirit and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Those who debated against Stephen, were from the synagogue of the Freedmen.   Literally in the Greek, the synagogue of the Libertine.  They may have been freed in the sense of freethinking and free to indulge in their pleasures, but they were bound by their thoughts and pleasures that were leading them to death.  When Stephen sought to free them from death and the spirit of the age, they cried out and shut their ears to the Holy Spirit speaking through Stephen and murdered him.

Each Sunday we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the face of death.  Today might be the last day I have, to proclaim with the homothumadon of God to you, calling you from the spirit of this world into trusting the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It might be the last time you hear with the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit, the one rushing breath of the Holy Spirit.  Today may be your last breath to confess your sin, to confess the forgiveness of your sin to others, to proclaim Jesus’ death and resurrection, bringing another into the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit.

It was Stephen’s last opportunity.  It cost him his life, but it also blessed the church, as it pleased God to bring a young man called Saul from the homothumadon of Jewish human desire into the homothumadon of God’s resurrected Kingdom, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Finally, the name Stephen needs to be looked at.  Stephen comes from the Greek word stepho which means wreathe, a badge or symbol of honour, or even a crown.

As your  pastor, it is my duty to call you to taste and see that the Lord is good.  To lay your sin at the foot of the cross, to forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.  To receive the homothumadon of the Holy Spirit, so you leave here in the peace of God, and pass on the peace of forgiveness to others in your royal and holy calling, in the priesthood of all believers, baptised into the forgiveness of sins and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Like Stephen, let your homothumadon be a Holy Spirited one accord with Jesus Christ, bearing the  homothumadon badge of honour, and crown of eternal life.  Amen. 

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[1] Acts 1:14, 2:46, 4:24, 5:12, 7:57, 8:6, 12:20, 15:25, 18:12, 19:29, Romans 15:6