We like to joke, because it's true, of course, that Easter is a day when most people show up in church. Most people, that is, except Thomas! He wasn't there on Easter Day. So the only way he knew that the Risen Lord had appeared to the other apostles was by their telling him. And he didn't believe it! But he believed it a week later when he got to stick his fingers and hands in the nail and spear holes in Jesus' body. But the Lord says, “Do you believe because you have seen? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” Here our Lord confirms what He did a week earrier when He breathed on His disciples and said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.” With those words, Jesus establishes and ordains the Office of the Holy Ministry and places those men into that Office to do the work of preaching the Gospel and forgiving and retaining sins. Thus, because they were now Christ's preachers, Thomas should have believed them. What Jesus points Thomas and us to, brothers and sisters, is not a vision of Himself that we can see and touch, but the preaching of Him through which He comes to us. Thomas, therefore teaches us our post-Easter repentance: that we are not to seek Jesus on OUR terms but upon His; not looking with our eyes, but hearing the preaching which forgives and saves us.
Jesus says to the apostles: “As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.” God the Father does not save this world apart from Jesus. Jesus, by sending the apostles to preach and forgive sins, teaches us that He will not deal with us apart from the Office of the Holy Ministry which preaches His word. It is true that Jesus accommodates Thomas' weakness by allowing Thomas to see Him and touch the nail and spear holes. But He will not be visible to the world that way for long. Therefore He directs even Thomas to the preaching of the disciples, of which Thomas would also be a part. Through these apostles sent by Jesus, the the forgiveness of sins would be delivered to the world; as these apostles went and preached, so also they ordained men to preach and so on, down through the ages even to the present time, where the Lord still calls and ordains men to be His preachers and to deliver His gifts: Baptism, Absolution, Supper. And it is through these preachers that Christ comes to the world and deals with us, rebuking and correcting us in sins and comforting us with the preaching of the Good News of forgiveness. And it's the way the Lord has always dealt with His people. Consider the valley of dry bones. How did the Lord make these bones come together and come to life? By a preacher. It is the Lord's word that makes these bones come to life, but it is spoken through a preacher. The Lord deals graciously with the children of Israel, dead in their trespasses and sins, but He does so through the preaching of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is an integral part of how the Lord deals with His people, and yet he is just a mouthpiece, so that the Lord Himself can say, after Ezekiel preaches, “I have spoken and I have done it, says the Lord.”
It's strange. Many churches teach—and rightly so—that Jesus' actually rose from the dead, His body was alive! This is most certainly true! After all, Thomas DID put his hands and fingers in the nail and spear holes. But now, today, those who believe Jesus rose bodily from the dead seem mostly to have a body-less faith. As if Jesus, now that He has ascended is just gone somewhere where we can't see or find Him and so faith now means just “accepting” what He did and sort of thinking about Jesus and being confident of His presence by how we live our lives. Such a faith means that a preacher is only the information guy. The pastor gets up, says some stuff about what Jesus said and did, and it's left to us to accept it or reject it. And if we accept it, then we prove our acceptance by some visible and measurable change in our lives. Brothers and sisters, run from such preaching and teaching! If Jesus rose bodily, then our faith, too is a body faith, a real faith, a Jesus who is with us not just metaphorically but actually and for real through the flesh and blood ministry of His preachers. Dear Christians, the job of the pastors that Christ calls is not to be the information guy and just give you some facts to accept or reject. Christ calls pastors to be the deliverers of His goods, handing out the forgiveness of sins that Christ won for you. His pastors are His heralds, announcing His victory over sin and death to the world. They are His bestowers, laying upon sinners the comfort of His life-giving, sin-erasing gifts. The ministry that Jesus sends His apostles to carry out is summed up in Jesus command that they forgive and retain sins. Our Lord doesn't leave faith and salvation up to our wishy washy notions; He gives us preachers to faithfully declare His Word to us and to rightly administer His holy gifts of salvation. In these means, Christ Himself comes to us, not figuratively, but for real, so that we have all confidence that our Lord has rescued us from sin and death.(And, in a real, flesh and blood way, He has given pastors to bind the sins of those who willfully and unrepentantly persist in their wickedness).
“As the Father has sent Me, so I am sending you.” How has the Father sent Christ? He has sent His Son who is true God, to become man, take on human flesh and be born of Mary. He sent His Son into the world to witness to the truth, that God's wrath is upon sinners but in His Son that wrath is turned aside. The Father sent the Son to be flesh and to give that flesh for the life of the world. He sent His Son to teach and to preach that we should despair of ourselves and our works and put our trust in Him, who is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The Father has sent the Son to die. To die for the sins of the world. And to rise, having finished the work of salvation and defeated the final enemy, which is death. In short, the Father has sent the Son into this world to accomplish salvation for doomed sinners. And likewise the Son then sends His preachers forth. He sends them not to accomplish salvation, for Jesus has already done that. Rather He sends them to deliver salvation, to hand it out, to announce it to the world. But He sends them in the flesh. The Lord doesn't just send a message; take out an ad in the paper, put up some billboards. He sends real flesh and blood men, vessels of clay, breakable men to preach and baptize and absolve and serve the Supper. As Jesus came into the world, a man, so the preachers are called, men through whom the Lord Himself is dealing with us so that we may know with certainty and no doubting that our Lord is among us and His Word is active and that we are saved.
St. John, who recorded all these words, also tells us that this ministry of Gospel and Sacraments is the witness to Christ that the Father gives. For, he says in his epistle which we heard, that Jesus comes to us by water and blood. And these three bear witness: the Spirit, the water and the blood. What are these witnesses? The Spirit, who is active in the preaching of the blood; the water which is Holy Baptism and the blood itself which is Christ's Holy Supper. John says that whoever believes in the Son of God has this witness and those who do not believe do not have it. Therefore, dear Christian, never simply talk about Christ as if He only did something long ago or is right now far away. The witness, the testimony is given: Your Baptism—the water; the preaching of the Gospel—where the Spirit is; the Supper—where the blood is given. In these you may be certain that you have Christ. Faith therefore isn't just accepting some facts and saying “I believe.” Faith is a body faith, a faith that lives in the waters of baptism, a faith that confesses sins and hears absolution, a faith that feasts upon Jesus in His Supper. Faith is what St. Peter is talking about when he writes the words we hear in the Introit: “Like newborn babes, crave pure spiritual milk.” Just so, you Christians, crave the Word, crave the gifts given in your baptism and by absolution; hunger and thirst for the Holy Supper of Jesus' body and blood. Eagerly desire and long for the gifts your pastor has been called to give you. Don't live as if faith is some individual “me and Jesus” sort of thing; hunger for the gifts in which Christ Himself is present through the ministry of His preachers to deliver to you all of His saving gifts.
And do this, brothers and sisters, not for yourselves. Do it for your neighbor. Your neighbor needs you to live from the ministry of the Gospel that your pastor carries out. If you don't, you will ever be in danger of making faith all about “you and Jesus” and then having to prove to your neighbor how holy you are. Your neighbor doesn't need to see you act holy; your neighbor needs to be loved and fed and clothed and cared for: wife, husband, children, parents, family, coworkers—whoever—these are your neighbor. Therefore don't get wrapped up in a “what's in my heart” sort of religion. Rather be wrapped up in the gifts Christ gives you solidly, surely, completely, fully, certainly—the gifts of the Spirit, water and blood: preaching, baptism, Supper. These gifts save you because these gifts give you Jesus. You don't have to see with your eyes as Thomas did. The Spirit opens your eyes of faith and you receive Christ in these gifts. As the Father has sent Christ, so Christ has sent His preachers to dish out His saving gifts. And filled with these certain treasures, you go forth, living for the benefit of those around you. In the name of Him whom the Father sent, Jesus Christ our crucified and risen Savior who has sent the Spirit to bring us to Him and who Himself shows us the Father. Amen.