On Easter morning, the angel at the empty tomb called the women to remember Christ’s words and promises. In this sermon on 1 John 5:4-10, we are reminded that the abundant life Jesus gives is not defined by worldly wealth or ease, but by forgiveness, peace, and eternal fellowship with God. Despite fear and failure, Jesus breathed new life into His disciples, granting them the Holy Spirit and commissioning them to share His peace with the world. Today, through Word and Sacrament, Christ continues to breathe His Spirit into us, joining us to the fellowship of all believers—across time and eternity. In a world of uncertainty and trials, we find true abundance in the unshakable joy and life that Christ has won for us by His death and resurrection.
Faith Lutheran Church in Pinellas County is located at 1620 Pinehurst Rd, Dunedin, FL 34698. It can be contacted at (727) 733-2657. https://faithdunedin.org
Transcript
Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, at the empty tomb on Easter morning, the angel admonished the women.
Remember how he told you.
Remember, for Jesus is the word incarnate.
His word brings forgiveness.
His word brings life, and it brings salvation to all who believe in Christ, to all who confess him Lord.
He has come not only to bring life, but that you have it abundant.
He says, I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
Abundant life.
What do you imagine this to be?
Great wealth such that you never have to worry about paying for a new roof, paying for your property tax bill, paying for your higher insurance rates after the storms last fall.
Not having to choose between preparing the car or putting groceries on the table.
Enough money to be able to travel, to see those places which you’ve only read about.
We’re having a lot of friends, family, perhaps good health.
Whatever you imagine an abundant life to mean, you’re certainly not picturing the way the disciples were living in Jerusalem in the days after Holy Week.
Sunday following Easter, after Jesus had appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden, after he’d made himself known on the Emmaus Road to the disciples in the breaking of the bread, after the angel had told the women to head to Galilee to meet their Lord, to tell the disciples to do the same.
Instead we find the 12 minus Judas huddled together behind locked doors in Jerusalem, afraid, confused, uncertain regarding what they ought to do, not obedient unto their Lord’s instructions, and our Lord has mercy on them.
Jesus comes to them, and he says, Peace be to you.
Offers them his hands, his side, as proof that he’s not a ghost, that he really lives, and then he changes their life forever.
He changes them from sorrow and doubt, into joy and abundance, saying, Peace to you.
As the Father has sent me, I also send you.
And 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 retain the sins of any, they are retained.
Just a few days before when the Father struck the shepherd, and he gets ceremony on Monday, Thursday, the sheep scattered.
Faith abandoned them, hopeless, afraid, embarrassed, perhaps at their personal and collected failures.
They now meet to ponder the events of this past week.
Now, here on the octave of Easter, the shepherd whose heel was bruised comes again to his lost sheep.
He has restored them to his fold.
He has breathed upon them his Holy Spirit.
He has forgiven their sins.
He has forgiven their personal failings, whether in the garden or elsewhere.
He brings them peace.
He comes to them that they may have peace and that they may take this peace and share it with the world abundantly.
The gift they bear, the abundant life they bring, is the word of God.
The Lord told Thomas, have you believed because you have seen me?
Blessed are those who have not seen me and yet have believed.
The Lord wanted Thomas and the others to remember how he had told them that the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be lifted up and die and rise again on the third day.
He wanted them to remember all that he had commanded them, so they could go into all the world, unto all the nations who make disciples.
He wants them to bear his word into the world, to speak the law, to break man’s pride, to call them to repentance, and then to offer the words of the Gospel.
I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen.
He wants them to bring peace.
Blessed are those who do not have the chance to place their fingers into the wounds on the Lord’s hand or their hand into a side, and yet they believe that their sins are forgiven because he is risen.
He is risen, he is making.
Hallelujah.
John described the abundant life in his first epistle, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.
The life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and declare to you that eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ.
And these things we write to you, that your joy may be full.
That your joy may be full.
This is the testimony of God.
This epistle are the words that were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
John, as he’s writing this, is near the end of his life.
He’s told to write down all that he has heard, all that he has seen, all that he has done, all that he has witnessed firsthand from the Lord, so that you and I can read these words, so that we can hear them, that we can believe and have life, that our joy may be full.
That we purely have fellowship with him.
And by him, I mean both John and God the Father in heaven.
John isn’t only speaking to the people in the region of Ephesus, where he now lives.
He speaks prophetically to you and to me today.
He speaks to everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ, everyone who has been born of God.
And those born of God are members of his body, the church.
And they are in fellowship with not only their fellow believers here on earth, but with the saints through all the ages.
From Adam until the end of the days.
When you were baptized into this church, into the church, anointed with God’s own name, cleansed of all your sins, filled with the Holy Spirit, you became part of the body of Christ.
The fellowship of believers.
As you kneel before the altar of Christ to receive his body and blood, you do so in communion with every saint throughout the world, with all the hosts of heaven.
Our communion rail, this nice, new, beautiful communion rail is a half-circle because it symbolizes the church here on earth.
The other half of the circle is completed in heaven, filled with those saints who have overcome the world by the blood of the Lamb, those saints who held fast to their confession that Jesus is the son of God.
You, however, would know none of this, would confess none of this if the Lord had not first breathed upon you with his Holy Spirit.
Apart from the Holy Spirit who caused the seed of faith to grow in your heart, you would have received none of the blessings of your baptism, or the body and blood of our Lord which you received at his table.
Now, these gifts are what they are regardless of whether or not you possess faith or believe them to be so.
They are because God’s word says they are.
Your baptism would still be valid and the body and blood of the Lord still present in the bread and the wine.
But apart from faith in Christ, you would not receive their blessings.
Apart from faith, you would not believe your sins forgiven in those blessed waters.
Apart from faith, you would not believe Christ is present for you for the forgiveness of your sins at his table.
Apart from faith, you would not live an abundant life.
You would not be at peace with God.
Apart from faith, you would cower behind the locked doors of your good works, hoping that you could be nice enough, hoping that you could do enough good or be pleasant enough, that you could earn enough karma, or that you would have a valiant death, and perhaps a valkyrie would swoop down and haul you off to Valhalla for whatever other pagan shrine you sought after.
But you would never truly be sure that you had done enough, were good enough, were valiant enough.
You would never truly find peace.
This is why John’s testimony matters.
This is why God’s word matters.
This is why we’re to remember all that he has said, that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, and that by believing have life in his name.
That you know without a doubt that this is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only, but by the water and the blood.
The spirit is the one who testifies because the spirit is the truth.
For these three testify, the spirit and the water and the blood.
These three agree.
We receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater, for this is the testimony of God that he is born concerning his son.
The Lord has come to you in the water of your baptism, in blood and spirit, marking you as his own child, sealing you with his testimony, forgiving all your sins.
It is the blood shed by your Lord at Calvary that is sprinkled upon you in the font, making you sons and daughters of the king, enabling you to overcome the world, enabling you to live abundantly, at peace with God and one another.
The abundant life, however, is not without strife.
John was the last living apostle when he wrote his Gospel.
All of his brothers in Christ had at this time been martyred.
You, too, can expect to feel the pressures of life, especially as our society continues sliding into godlessness.
You will face cravings of your sinful flesh, lust of the eyes, temptation of pride and boastfulness.
You will face heresy, all stochron and enlightened reasoning, which all seek to turn you away from God’s word unto yourself.
These same assaults drove the disciples from the garden, and they were unable to reason out why the Lord, his son of God, was seized by the priests, why he would be allowed to be sacrificed in such a way.
But the great fear for the disciples after the resurrection is fear, fear of physical punishment.
This fear drove them behind locked doors.
They feared that they would be next.
They feared that they would be killed.
They feared that they might be put out of the synagogues, that they might not be able to go shopping, that they might not be able to go to school.
Today we call this cancel culture, and it’s no less effective.
Whatever the form of the enemy’s assault upon your soul takes, whatever his assault upon the church manifests as, we can take comfort knowing that our Lord has overcome such assaults.
These things lost their power on Good Friday.
Whoever believes in the Son of God has his testimony within.
And those who cling jealously to the word of life shall live as Peter confessed.
You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
And our Lord replies to Peter, on this rock, his confession that he is the Christ, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
Those words sound familiar.
Those words take us back to the upper room in Jerusalem, behind the locked doors, together with the disciples, gazing upon the wounded hands, feet, and side of our Lord.
Together with them, as we contemplate the meaning of his resurrection, we receive his peace and his forgiveness.
We receive his Holy Spirit.
We receive his commission to be about the work of sharing the Gospel with all nations.
We go forward remembering all that he has said, all that he has given us to be used to bind up the wounds of the broken hearted, to pronounce their sins forgiven as they repent, that they too might overcome the world, that they too would join us in confessing that Jesus is the Son of God.
We go forth that those who hear and believe shall find salvation and the abundant life in his name, uniting all the faithful in fellowship, both here in time and in eternity, with John and all the saints and all the heavenly hosts, that in the joy of the saints, their joy may also be complete.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
