Even So, I Send You: An Eastertide Meditation on John 20

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, 

when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, 

came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, 

Peace be unto you.

And when he had so said, 

he shewed unto them his hands and his side. 

Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the LORD.

Then said Jesus to them again, 

Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, 

even so send I you.

And when he had said this, he breathed on them, 

and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost:

Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; 

and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.

In a world nearly 2000 years removed from Jesus’ resurrection, across seas and continents from where the event actually happened, it is not unreasonable to ask what the point of all this is for us.  Today we have cars which drive themselves, spacecraft which navigate between planets, phones with artificially intelligent assistants, and access to data which the ancients couldn’t begin to conceive.  Our people vacation around the world, conveyed by aircraft which travel over 400 miles per hour, while titanic ships circumnavigate the globe nearly autonomously.  We are unlocking the secrets of our own DNA, manipulating the building blocks of life, and genetically modifying our crops to radically increase their yield over anything antiquity could have produced.  We have schools for every level and age of person, together with endlessly growing archives of videos and documents, to train almost anyone in how to do almost anything.  Lurching as we are into the 21st century of the common age, what could we possibly need from a crucified Galilean, even if He did rise from the dead?

Forgiveness.  For all our technological wonders and modern contrivances, for all our geographic and cultural diversity, we are still a people who need forgiveness.  For every gift we’ve been given down through the ages, from medicine to technology to politics, none have stopped us from abusing, oppressing, betraying, and even murdering our neighbors.  Politicians use technology to manipulate and inflame mobs of people, both within and outside their own borders; captains of industry use technology to squeeze every dime out of every person they can, crossing oceans to economically enslave foreign peoples and leverage their low labor rates against the people of their own nation; educators turn classrooms into propaganda laboratories, shaping a new generation into ignorant dependence on an ever growing governmental leviathan; the advances of medicine are smothered under the greed and graft of lawyers and insurance companies, who contrive a system which bankrupts those most in need while enriching themselves; militaries and governments and oligarchic companies race to build, own, and control the first super-intelligent AI systems, which will harvest and thrive upon the nearly incalculable data every person has so willingly given over to closely guarded data warehouses, and via the internet of things, manipulate the world in ways nearly impossible to fathom.  Beneath all our wealth, our prosperity, our technology, and our futuristic hubris, we remain a fallen people whose proclivity is to use every good gift for our own narcissism and hedonism, while subjugating and oppressing our neighbors for our own benefit.

The rise and fall of nations, of cultures, of philosophies, and technologies does not change the human heart, anymore than the passage of time or the location of geography.  People are still people, and hidden under the accidents of particular citizenship, epoch, race, color, or creed, our fallen nature still drives us to prioritize our disordered passions, while ignoring the Natural Law of divine, selfless love upon which the whole universe is constructed.  We harm those we should protect, abuse those we should help, and enslave those we should serve.  No matter how fine our clothing or how refined our aires, we are still guilty of the daily evil which brings death and despair upon ourselves and our neighbors, and disgrace upon the Name of our Creator who gives each person life and a good world in which to live it. 

This is why Easter still matters, here in our time and our place— why a betrayed and murdered Jew of ancient Palestine who rose from the dead just as He predicted He would, still matters to every person who will ever be born.  Jesus’ resurrection proved to every time and every place that He was who He said was:  the eternally begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth, the Author of Life, and the Judge of the world.  As the second person of the Holy Trinity, one God, now and forever, Jesus took our humanity into His divinity, bore the suffering, death and hell we all deserve for our evil, and returned the third day— Easter Day— to bring peace, forgiveness, and life to our fallen race.  Huddled as they were on the first Easter for fear that the treacherous leaders who killed Jesus would next come for them, the Apostles encountered the risen Jesus who gave them peace with each other and with God, breathed on them His Holy Spirit, and sent them into the world as He was sent, to forgive the sins of the repentant, and to retain the sins of the recalcitrant.  What Jesus alone could secure through His life, death, and resurrection, He gives freely to His disciples, that they might freely give it to everyone they meet.

Easter still matters, because we still need forgiveness, life, and salvation from sin, death, hell, and the power of the devil.  We still need to hear Jesus’ Word of Law and Gospel through the lips of those He has sent to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His Name.  We still need the forgiveness and peace which only Jesus can give, so that His love might flow through us to our neighbors, transforming us all into His image.  Hear the Easter Word of the Lord Jesus pierce through your time and place, through the affectations of your circumstances and the accidents of your status, so that you may receive His peace, His forgiveness, and His life which not even death can overcome— and the mission He would give you, to freely forgive your neighbors, just as He has forgiven you.  Hear Him, repent, believe, and live.  Amen.