Easter 2, April 27 2016
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
The first and second readings today paint a picture of life among the Jesus-groupies of the first century. In the first reading we hear that people sold all their possessions and lived in a commune. They met in the temple every day and “ate their meals with exultation and sincerity of heart.” Peter writes to people who “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.” I wish all our church services today were filled with an indescribable and glorious joy. What was going on that made these people so excited?
The Gospel passage today holds the clue. It tells about two appearances of the risen Jesus, on Easter Sunday evening and again a week later. The first appearance of Jesus was to Mary Magdalen on Easter morning after she found the tomb empty. She has told Peter and the male disciples about the empty tomb and about seeing Jesus, but Sunday evening is the first time he appears to the disciples.
Jesus enters through locked doors and gives a standard greeting, “Peace be with you.” That would be Shalom aleichem in Hebrew, Salaam alaikum in Arabic, still a common way to say hello today. The account of this meeting is otherwise decidedly odd. First, the disciples rejoice when they see the Lord. I would not rejoice if someone I loved who had died walked into the room, or just appeared in a locked room. I would panic, or faint.
Then Jesus sends them, but he doesn’t say where he is sending them or what he wants them to do when they get there. And notice the other things he doesn’t tell them. He doesn’t tell them about the doctrine of the Trinity, or what it was like while he was dead, or how it feels to be alive again, or even the meaning of life. Instead, he breathes on them, says he is giving them the Holy Spirit, and tells them that they can forgive sins. Were these really the most pressing things for someone to do or say after they return from the dead?
The weirdest thing here—and for me it’s the key to this whole scene—is when Jesus breathes on the disciples. In Genesis 2, after the Lord God forms Adam out of clay, he breathes into Adam’s nostrils, and Adam becomes a living being, a nephesh chayaah. In Hebrew and in Greek, one word means both breath and spirit—ruah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek. In Genesis 2, God breathes his own breath or spirit into Adam, the archetypal human being, and that makes Adam alive. Jesus’ action here is a clear reference to what God did in Genesis 2. Jesus is breathing his own new life into the disciples. This is a new kind of life or level of life; this is life that prevails over death. It’s a spiritual life, or hyper-life.
The Holy Spirit was not a concept on that first Sunday. There was no doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus is not saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit, which you all learned about in Sunday school.” Rather, by breathing on the disciples, Jesus gives them his breath or spirit or risen life and that is what the Gospel writer is calling the Holy Spirit.
After he breathes on them, he tells them that they have the power to forgive sins. This would have been shocking to a first century audience. It was well known that only God could forgive sins. But Jesus tells them that they also have the power to release people from the burdens of past offenses. Talk about empowerment: the breath or spirit has given them a divine power.
This gives us some idea of why Jesus says, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” In the Hebrew scriptures, the spirit of God acts for God in the world. He is sending them—us—to do God’s work in the world. That is to forgive, to heal, and to bring love to a suffering world.
This is why the disciples in the first two readings “rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy.”