Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

The text for this sermon is the first half of the Gospel just read. I’ll read it again, John 20:19-23:

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. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld."

There’s a level at which some passages in the bible seem better suited for some groups of people than for others. I think that we have to say that the Holy Spirit inspired the whole bible for all of us -- otherwise we can fall into traps like thinking that the Old Testament is for Jews and not Christians, or that a lot of the letters in the New Testament were only for the original people that they were written to. But still, the Scriptures are often very specific, pronouncing forgiveness to a very particular sin that we can’t all identify with, or, as is the case today, teaching about a particular station in life that not all of us have.

That station that we have in John’s gospel today is the office of pastor. This reading is great fodder for seminary sermon. 200 guys, all studying to be pastors -- they, I saw we, need to hear sermons on this text. Pastor’s conferences -- those men need to hear sermons on this text. But what about here, today, in the normal congregation? There are a couple pastors here. But even then, it seems a little backwards to have the seminary student preaching to the pastors. It should be the other way around, I suppose. But here’s the clue: all of these bible passages that speak to specific people -- fathers or mothers or children or bosses or servants or pastors or governers or whatever it is, speak to people in particular positions with regard to other people. And I can be more specific than that -- they speak to the particular way that one group of people serves the rest on behalf of Christ.

That allows us to learn something about the office of pastor, without expecting us to all become pastors. There’s something in today’s Gospel for all of us, not just for me and Pastor Umbarger (and Paster Heino). In that Jesus makes his disciples into pastors in John 20, he shows us how they will come to serve us

1) according to Christ’s example

2) to forgive sins

3) with the Holy Spirit.

Dear friends in Christ, the key to living out the relationship between pastor and congregation is knowing what God’s word says about, and avoiding the extremes on both sides that people try to push on us.

The first thing to know, then, is that the the risen Jesus Christ sent his disciples in the same way that the Father sent him. God the Father sent His Son into the world to be His voice to men. He came as a prophet, and whatever he preached was the will of His Father. To know his voice meant ... means ... to know Him, and to know Him means to know His Father in heaven.

You can put that in the negative. Without Jesus, look at the people in the bible. The pharisees had the Old Testament, they knew it, and they still so didn’t know the Father that they had long before Jesus started making him up. They were guessing at what his will was, and for fear that they might be wrong, limiting their lives to far less. Out of uncertainty, they knew only a god that they had made up out of fear.

Look at people today who aren’t Christians. They have all sorts of gods. Many just don’t think too much about it, and so their gods wind up being little more than the next goal in life -- at least if life is going well. If it’s not, their gods are the next failure. Trying to acheive the former or avoid the latter forms their life, becomes the thing that they trust to get them through. And if they have an inkling somehow that there is a Father in heaven? The muslims have a god that they think is the Father in heaven, who is to be above all feared and obeyed -- love doesn’t enter into the equation there in either direction the way it does for us. Others imagine the Father very simply doling out due rewards -- good for good, evil for evil. But when they look, that’s not what they see. Too often it’s good for evil, evil for good. The wicked prosper, and they do not. And so for them, the just Father they imagine comes apart at the seams. Instead, what they find is an arbitrary god who they can only fear, because he’s unpredictable. When push comes to shove, they might just call him evil.

But to be caught with that kind of god, is a sure of sign of not knowing God as he wants to be known -- through Jesus Christ. God didn’t want us to ever guess what he’s like. Instead, he sent Jesus to show us. Jesus who died on the cross and rose again from the dead and came to the apostles and said: Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.

“Peace be with you.” Here, that means assuring them that the Father they came to know in Jesus didn’t die with Jesus. He lives on, and so does their Lord Jesus Christ. He is the true God.

“As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” That means, now he wants them to be the way that the world comes to know him. They are to be his prophets even as He was the Father’s prophet. Through them, people will come to know him, and by knowing Him, they will know the Father.

So the Father wants us to know him through the one whom He sent, the Son. And Son gives us to know him through the men he sends out. The second thing to know is that they’re not free to say just anything. When we speak theologically, we say that the Son and the FAther had the same will. They wanted the same thing, and so anything the Son did was sure to be in line with the Father’s will.

Now though, the same can’t be said of pastors. They will err. But, so long as they are preaching what Christ gave them to preach, they speak in his place and with his authority, just like he spoke in the place of the Father and with the Father’s authority. What Christ gave them to preach is as clear as it gets right here: the forgiveness of sins. That means preaching Christ himself. It means preaching the cross. It also means preaching about sin -- calling a spade a spade. Only if you repent of your sin, can it be forgiven, and so time and again you have to be aware of it. Jesus didn’t come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it. It means that it didn’t go away for us, only that God already has justice when we fail.

The message, finally, is that only Christ was ever even able to fulfill God’s Law. Even the pharisees, as outwardly righteous as they were, still had this basic sin of making up how they wanted God to be. That sin wasn’t outward sin like killing or stealing, but it was sin against the first commandment. They weren’t satisfied with what God had told them in His word, and so they added to it, made things up, improved on it. They put themselves higher than God.

That exact sin is rampant up to today. It’s a sin we all need to repent of. Some of us study God’s word more and some less. Some of us come to church more and some less. But all of us fill in the blanks where we don’t know what God’s Word says, and all of us think that our own opinions and sense of right and wrong and plans are better than God’s. God’s Word was written by men, its true. But those men were inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures have a power beyond the time and place that they were written -- they do what they say, even today, even in our different context with our different people and different language. This “inspiration” is something we as a church have been trying hard to defend for years. When we think and say that we know better, however subtle it is, we deny that the Holy Spirit worked there. We make it back into just a human book. Changing what God’s word says to suit our fancy is nothing less than opening the back door for the devil.

The message Jesus gave his disciples to preach was simple: “Christ died on the cross for you. Your sins are forgiven.” He told them also, if you retain someone’s sins, they are retained. But that’s not to give them power over us. It’s so they have the authority to preach everything God has to say. It’s so that no one else can remove your sins some other way than by the crucified and risen Jesus.

It means, they’re the only ones who speak with authority given by Christ that trumps all other authority. And again, it’s not so that they can hold something over our heads. That’s how the church used it in the days of Reformation, and that’s probably why there’s a Lutheran church today. Christ did not give pastors the power to retain sins so that they could force people to do what they want. Sins are only retained so that people realize that they can only be forgiven in Christ! No one but God can forgive sins against God, and that’s what every sin finally is. And that forgiveness is also the forgiveness that our pastors, by the power of the Holy Spirit, give to us on behalf of Christ. When he tells you, “I forgive you all your sins,” he acting as one sent by Christ, and in fact, the Holy Spirit is working through him. No one can take that forgiveness away from you. Nothing can nullify that it. It is the most sure thing there is. It is the only thing that you can place your trust in with the certainty that it will not fail you.

That’s why Christ sent them with the Holy Spirit -- so that the power of the Holy Spirit would form their ministry.

One last thing. No one should ever think that their sins are not forgiven if the pastor doesn’t say those words. If you need proof of your forgiveness, look to the risen Christ. There is your proof. Read your bible, and know that those promises are for you. The point today is this particular gift that God has given us -- the office of pastor. He’s put his Holy Spirit into that office, to do the work of His ministry -- to forgive sins, and so to make disciples. Make no mistake -- the commission here to the disciples is the same as the one in Matthew 28, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” This is how Christ built the church, and it’s how He still does that today.

Churches are built like ships to remind us of the Noah’s ark, so that we remember that here, God in heaven guards us from the stormy waves outside. He’s given us the Scriptures so that we can see as we sail the ship, so that we can steer clear of all manner of obstacles, lest we run aground. Nevertheless, waves buffet our vessel. The slam us to the one side, saying “your pastor is no different than anyone else, he just has more education.” And back to the other side, “the pastor has the voice of Christ and the only voice in this church!” And again, “your pastor would be more efficient if he would train you to make visits, and even to preach, instead of just doing it all himself” and back the other way, “your pastor is here to do word and sacrament. Don’t interfere, and don’t expect him to clean off tables.”

Dear friends, let us take a lesson from the disciples. When they were the boat, afraid of the storm, they woke up Jesus. He chastised them, but not for waking him up, but for being afraid. As the waves threaten us, may we also turn to him -- he’ll calm them, and he’ll keep us on course.

Amen.

Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.