Easter 2 Year C 2025 (John 20: 19 to end) The disciples in our gospel reading today are hiding. They are hiding from fear of the Jews because they are still not willing to die for Jesus. They are hiding and they are terrified. They know Jesus is dead. They know that his body has gone from the tomb, but they have no understanding as to what this might mean. I think they believe what Mary first tells them, that the body has been taken away and they don’t know where they have put him. Mary has since told them that she has seen the Lord, but this just makes no sense to them. It is into this context that the risen Christ appears to the disciples, and he isn’t saying to them ‘Where were you?’ or ‘You abandoned me?’ but, ‘peace be with you’. John then gives us what I think must be one of the greatest understatements in scripture, when he writes: ‘then they were glad when they saw the Lord’. Of course, there is the absolute delight in seeing Jesus risen from the dead, but I think the rejoicing happens partly because in saying ‘peace be with you’ Jesus is saying ‘I forgive you. You thought you were no longer my friends, but you are, and I say ‘peace be with you’. After saying ‘peace be with you’ again Jesus does something else astonishing. He says ‘I send you’. ‘I send you’ is said to this group of frightened men hiding in a locked room who don’t even understand what has happened to Jesus. In that state, he tells them that he is sending them. There is no sense that they need to pass some kind of test first before they get sent out: they’re ready now. Jesus says ‘as the father has sent me so I send you’. Then Jesus breathes on them, just as God breathed on Adam to give him life when he was created from the earth. Jesus is saying that only a creator God can breathe life into something lifeless. And in a sense, the disciples in that locked room are dead and lifeless. They are dead in their denial of Jesus, their sins, in the way they have let God down. Jesus breathes on them and says, ‘receive the Holy Spirit’. In both Greek and Hebrew, the word for God’s spirit can also mean breath or wind. The Hebrew word for spirit is ‘ruach’ – it even sounds like a breath as you say it. So Jesus, the one who until very recently was dead, breathes life, the Holy Spirit back into the weakened disciples. As Paul writes in the letter to the Ephesians ‘even though we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead’ (Eph 2:5). Jesus knows exactly what we need. He knew what the disciples needed to hear and see and touch. In this first appearance in the locked room, he shows the disciples his hands and his side; to show them he is not a ghost but real and can be touched. Thomas isn’t there and so he is afraid that the disciples have just been seeing things, that they’ve had some kind of hallucination. He makes the perfectly reasonable statement that he wants to touch Jesus in the very spot where the nails went in. He has to be sure it’s the same Jesus: that he’s not a ghost and neither is he just a man that looks like Jesus. Jesus, when he appears to them all again it is again in a closed room and again, the first thing he says to them is ‘peace be with you’. In doing this he is saying ‘I meant it you know, I really do forgive you, you really are still my friends, peace be with you’. Then he immediately knows what Thomas needs and offers him the chance to touch the place where the nails were in his hands and feel where the sword pierced his side. Jesus is happy to show him how real he is. This is enough for Thomas, we don’t even know if he takes Jesus up on the offer to put his finger in his wounds, he simply makes the first full profession of faith in the divinity of Christ in the Gospel and says ‘my Lord and my God’. Jesus speaks directly to you at the end of this encounter. If this were a movie rather than a book, this would be the part where Jesus’ head turns from Thomas and looks directly at you and me down the camera lens and says ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is you. That is me. Jesus steps out of this story we are reading directly into our lives. His story is our story. Our story is his story. He comes to us in our fearful, dead, inadequate, failing state and says ‘peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you, Receive the Holy Spirit, you are blessed because you believe in me’.