Storms that knock out electrical systems make us mindful of how dependent we are upon power. High winds deprive us of power. When we do not lose power in devastating storms we are most grateful, realizing how dependent we have become on the utility companies. However, it is significant that the primary definitions of power do not relate to the matter of energy or force. The first definitions of power have to do with the possession of control, authority, or influence over others. There is a whole battery of synonyms for power that describe power as the ability to direct or restrain others. We, of course, confront that kind of power daily in our vocations in working with others, in our homes, regulating the lives of our family, in all organization of life all the way to the ruling of nations.

We also know how some people have the natural gifts for applying power. Some are born to power. Others seek power. Some abuse power. The whole matter of authority, jurisdiction, control, command, or dominion is an extremely intriguing one. Often we are locked in international and national debates as to how we should or should not use power. The Holy Gospel appointed for today announces how our Lord Jesus Christ conferred enormous powers upon his followers when he appeared to them as the Risen Christ. That story places at your disposal the same kind of Easter power.

The Evidence

The Fourth Gospel account of our Lord's resurrection appearance takes place on Easter in the Upper Room where the disciples had gathered. The appearance appears to be substantiated by the other Gospel account in Luke. The disciples were quite obviously in a state of shock. They were completely drenched with fear because of what might happen to them in the light of the disappearance of Jesus from the tomb. They are locked in the Upper Room as a defense against anyone who might be seeking them out. However, it is Jesus who looks them up.

According to the Johannine account Jesus comes and stands among them unannounced. This is a strange new way for him to come to his disciples. He is not confined to the normal and natural ways for a human to come into the room. Yet the Risen Christ is able to communicate with the disciples. The very first thing that he does is to give them the evidence of what had taken place. He reintroduces himself as their Lord and Master. His credential for claiming his place in the center of their lives is a scar. He is able to show them the badges of honor he wore because of his crucifixion. He has five scars. They are the nail prints in hands and his feet and the wound where he was lanced in the side as proof of his death. John says that what he showed that evening were his hands and his side, the living proof that it was he, Jesus of Nazareth, who was among them. The scars were also the visible signs that he had been dead, and that it was he who was now alive among them.

Shalom

When Jesus appeared to the disciples, his greeting was, "Peace be unto you." The Hebrew word shalom, for "peace," is a most comprehensive word, covering the full realm of relationships in daily life and expressing an ideal state of life. The word suggests the fullness of well-being and harmony untouched by ill fortune. The word as a blessing is a prayer for the best that God can give to enable a person to complete one's life with happiness and a natural death. If the concept of shalom became all too casual and light-hearted with no more significance than a passing greeting, Jesus came to give it new meaning. At Bethlehem God announced that peace would come through the gift of God's unique Son. The mission and ministry of our Lord made it quite clear that Jesus had come to introduce the rule of God and to order peace for the world. However, this rule stood in stark contrast to the warring factions of the world which seek to find their own peace in other ways.

Jesus came to witness to his unbroken relationship with his Father as the chief sign of peace. In a world of adversity and strife this was his gift to his disciples and was to contradict any other form of security offered by the world. Jesus also taught that this gift of peace was dependent upon his complete victory over sin and death. It should not have been unexpected then that our Lord would greet the disciples warmly with "Peace," and display for them the scars which are the signs of his victory over the arch enemies of sin and death. So it was that the community of the faithful came to look upon the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ as God's Gospel of Peace for the whole world. Apostolic greetings also were to announce the peace that finds its power, meaning, and significance in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord.

A Breath Of Life

In addition to this most welcome greeting for his disciples, our Lord "breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit.' " That scene reminds us of another in the Garden of Eden. "Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being" (Genesis 2:7). On that Easter evening our Lord made new creatures of his disciples. Paul wrote later, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

The One who comes from the grave brings with him the new life, the life that has conquered death and reconciled us to God. As the One victorious over death breathes, he breathes into his disciples the new life in which reconciliation with God is the new and perfect relationship that makes people blameless in the court of the living God and enables them to do God's will among people. This new life, which is conferred by the power and force of the Holy Spirit, is synonymous with eternal life. The Holy Spirit enables those who share in the victory of our Lord to opt for decisions that make for peace and are conducive to actions of freedom and love. It's a new way of living.

The Absolution

The victory our Lord achieved by dying to destroy death for us was a significant victory. This was no hollow victory. We think of the problems we have in trying to determine what we have achieved in our swift and brilliant victories in previous wars. Sometimes our victories haunt us. Sometimes they are ambiguous. Too often the victories are only momentary. Not so with our Lord's decisive victory over the grave. Jesus comes from the grave with an authority he could now share in a meaningful way with his disciples. What God achieved through the death and resurrection of his Son could now be put into universal practice. God had reconciled the world unto himself. God said there was now a basis for God and people to live together. That was our Lord Jesus Christ himself. His death and resurrection became the action or act by which God reconciled the world to himself.

Consequently, Jesus could give the authority from heaven to his disciples, "If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained." That is divine authority. That is authority more powerful than any human authority. With that authority you can make lives new. By that authority you reconcile people to yourself. By that authority you can reconcile people one to another. By the same authority you can withhold the forgiveness in the hope that the objects of your love will awaken to their need to seek out the goodness and mercy of God. You can withhold the forgiveness of God from those who neither love nor trust the God who created them.

The Effect

The effect of the power that Jesus brought from the grave is far reaching. It is the real power the world needs for being healed. The brokenness of the world is its inability to live in harmony in marriage, family, work, community, political, national, and international relationships. That should be obvious and apparent to everyone. We all suffer from the problem at one level or another, and generally from more than one level at a time. However, what is not so obvious is that people are inept at overcoming the destructiveness of bad human relations. The nursery rhyme is correct about Humpty Dumpty, who had the great fall. "All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again." But God can and does through the power of the forgiveness he shares with us.

Husband and wife can forgive each other to make their marriage new every day. Parents and children can forgive all the failures they have in their daily efforts to live together in tranquility. Relationships at work will fare far better with those who are forgiving people than they will with those who hew legalistically to the personnel manuals. In the community, progress will be and can be made when there are significant persons who are able to be advocates and reconcilers in the human relations that always suffer from the push people make for their individual rights and for their special agendas. The people who have the real power at the top in international situations are those who can practice the art of reconciliation. One editorial stated that one of the problems we had in the Middle East was that our Secretary of State came at his task out of Christian traditions, and it is difficult to work with those peoples who do not have the same convictions. Yet how important it was that he tried.

Faith

As the Risen Christ bestowed the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the twelve, he also empowered them to believe. John's account of this meeting in the Upper Room is the Johannine version of what happened at Pentecost. The disciples received the gift of the Holy Spirit that they might believe and understand how it was that Jesus was the Messiah. Their fear turns to joy and they are able to witness to the Christ. When Thomas returns to the Upper Room after his absence for the meeting with Jesus, the disciples are able to report, "We have seen the Lord."

Thomas cannot believe the account the disciples gave him. He says that he can believe only if he sees the scars of our Lord's death. It is interesting that he demands the signs of death rather than of life. However, Jesus does return a week later when Thomas is present. Jesus offers to let Thomas touch the scars as Thomas had requested. Thomas is able to forego that request and confesses his faith. Jesus then says to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." Jesus certainly did not intend to put down Thomas or his faith. What was important, however, was to make it clear that faith is a miracle. It is the Holy Spirit who has the power to create faith in the hearts of people. The Holy Spirit works that miracle in helping people to believe in the Christ who has achieved our salvation for us. Believe!

John concludes his Gospel with the words, "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 phenomenon of the Christ Event, the Easter Christ, the Risen Christ, is that power is now available to us that enables us to be assured that as certainly as Jesus rose from the death of the crucifixion for sins, we, too, shall rise again. In the meantime we have been placed on special status. Jesus said to the disciples, "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." As God's reconciliation of the world was achieved through our Lord Jesus Christ, so now God sends us into the world as the practitioners of this reconciliation.

Begin where we will, we will have no end of opportunities to share with people the need they have for the forgiveness of sins. Our own lives beg for forgiveness. Wherever there are people, there is need for the forgiveness of sins. And it is within our power. One does not have to be a bishop or a pastor. Every Christian has the power to forgive, and when he or she does, "it is as valued and certain in heaven also as if Christ, our dear Lord, dealt with us himself." The baton has been passed on. Jesus confessed that the work he did was given him by the Father. Now he passed on the gift and powers to the Holy Spirit, who serves as his clone in the role of counselor. And now it has been passed on to us."