2nd Sunday of Easter
John 20:19-31
On the evening of [the day when Mary Magdalene saw Jesus in the tomb], the first day of the week, the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then, the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So, the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But, he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then, he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But, 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 Breath of Life
Right around the time that I was in high school, I started to notice that people would often come to me with their problems. They would tell me about what was worrying them, whatever issues they might be having. Relationship problems, financial problems, family problems, work problems, I guess I just have a face that says, “Talk to me.” My guess is this is a big part of why I went into ministry.
Most people, when encountering a problem, will try to figure out a way to fix it, even when those “problems” are other people. So, it was only natural that when I started my life-long career of listening to people, that I always tried to solve their problems for them. For a long time, I thought that my job, that was why God put me here on Earth, to listen to people and give advice. Never mind that I wasn’t any smarter than any of these people, nor did I have more life experience; a lot less, sometimes. I just thought it was my job to get to the root of their issues, and find solutions for them.
But, people aren’t machines, and because people aren’t machines, their problems are usually not so easy to solve. I would get frustrated sometimes when the same would keep coming back to me with the same problems, over and over again, and I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just take my advice and fix whatever problem they had. Or, if they weren’t going to listen to me, then at least accept their situation and stop complaining about it. Once I got to that point of frustration, I wasn’t a good listener, anymore. I wasn’t receptive to their pain. My heart had become hard.
It was kind of a defense mechanism, you know? People can only take so much pain, even when the pain isn’t our own. I think that’s at least part of the reason why we always try to fix other people’s problems. We hurt when the people we love are hurting. And, if we can stop their pain, then their pain can’t hurt us anymore. But, a lot problems are just too big for us to find easy solutions to.
To say that the disciples were facing a difficult situation after Jesus was crucified is an understatement. They were scared. They had been betrayed by one of their own, and their teacher had been tortured to death for being a radical. They had to be asking themselves if they had been following the wrong guy all this time.
But then, Jesus appeared to them, inside of a locked room, raised from the dead! And, he said, “Peace be with you.” Jesus had come back! Jesus was alive! And, Jesus breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And, they were filled with peace, and hope, and new life.
This word, “breathe,” Jesus “breathing” on them, in the original Greek the word is emphasao, This is the only time in the entire Bible that this word is used. This wasn’t the normal kind of breathing; this is Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit into the disciples.
Can you imagine what that must have been like? Seeing someone that you thought was dead, and feeling his breath, the power of the Holy Spirit rising inside of you, this strange and limitless force like nothing you had ever felt before, the hair standing up on the back of your neck, the lump in your throat, the knot in your belly. This was not something to take lightly. This was something extraordinary, something that would have repercussions going forward into the future until the end of time.
And, here we are now, two-thousand years later in the present day, sitting in this room, listening to the story of Jesus breathing the Holy Spirit into the world. The Holy Spirit who is here now, in this very room, in the air we breathe, in the words we speak.
The Holy Spirit makes us alive, gives us strength and courage, makes us warm and soft. Makes us vulnerable. The Holy Spirit opens our hearts to the world around us, opens us up to love and compassion and trust. We need the Holy Spirit to get past our walls, to make us vulnerable, to soften our hearts so that we can be the face of God to the world.
When I was trying to fix the people that came to me with their problems, I wasn’t really listening to them. I wasn’t hearing them. I was looking for the problem, like a mechanic under the hood of a car. I wasn’t treating them like people. I was treating them like machines that needed to be fixed. But, people aren’t machines. A lot of times, people don’t want to be fixed. Not really. They just want someone to talk to, someone to listen to them.
When I realized this, I stopped trying to fix things and I became a better listener. I’ve learned that most problems just can’t be fixed. And more importantly, it’s not my job to fix them. Our job in these situations is to be as open as we can, to allow ourselves to feel their pain, so that the people reaching out to us know that we are listening. So that they know that we hurt with them.
It’s one of the most important gifts that we can give to other people, to make them feel heard. This why we need the Holy Spirit. As hard we try, there will be times when we will not be the compassionate and loving people that God needs us to be. We need the Holy Spirit to soften our hearts. There’s so much pain in the world, and we don’t have to go far to see it; it’s everywhere. There are people without homes, people sick with cancer and covid, there are victims of accidents and war, natural disasters, famine. There’s so much suffering and pain and fear that we become numb to it. We need the breath of Jesus to make us warm again, to make us soft. We need the Holy Spirit to make us vulnerable, so that we can feel.
We can’t afford to go numb. There’s too much at stake; the world needs us. Jesus started a revolution with his teachings, a new way of looking at the world, giving us a radically new definition of who our neighbors are and what it means to love each other. And when he was baptized, he cast his lot with ours, and he died so that we would never be alone in our suffering. And, he came back and showed us that death does not have the final word. And with his breath, he filled us with the Holy Spirit so that we might do God’s work in the world. We are the breath of Jesus! We are the breath of Jesus and it is we who must be his voice of truth, his voice of love and justice and compassion! We cannot afford to go numb. We cannot afford to let our hearts become hard. Our work is too important. What’s needed of us is too important. And, the things that we do will have repercussions going forward into the future until the end of time. We are the breath of Jesus the Christ, the Risen One, and it is our job to breathe new life into this world. Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
