Pentecost Power

Pentecost Sunday 2019

June 9, 2019

John 20:19-23

“Pentecost Power”

Ireneaus, a second century bishop, repeats words from the Apostle John that he received from the elders, possibly Polycarp, who told Ireneaus about conversations he had with John.

According to Ireneaus, John said, “The days will come, in which vines shall grow, each having 10.000 brances, and each branch, 10.000 twigs, and each twig, 10,000 shoots, and in each one of the shoots, 10,000 clusters, and on every one of the clusters, 10,000 grapes, and every grape, when pressed will give 5 and 20 metretes of wine.”

“A metretes was an ancient Greek unit of liquid measurement equivalent to 37.4 liters,” according to Wikipedia.

Can you imagine such fecundity and abundance?

This is a picture of the Kingdom of God. This is what will be when the shalom of God, the peace of God, reigns in the new heaven and the new earth that God promises His people. The first sign of this promise after the crucifixion, death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ comes in four words that Jesus speaks to His closest first followers.

Please open your Bible or a Pew Bible to John chapter 20. We’ll begin at verse 19.

v. 19 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.”

It was the evening of Easter Sunday, and the disciples were still in Jerusalem. They were hidden behind locked doors because they feared the Jewish authorities. Jesus came to them and said four words: “Peace be with you.”

Peace. Shalom. The universal flourishing of all things. The risen Christ gives this blessing to His first followers.

v. 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.

“Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable,

a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages;

let us walk through the door.”

“Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our convenience,

for our own sense of beauty,

“lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,

we are embarrassed by the mirace,

and crushed by remonstrance.”

These words of John Updike from his poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter” speak to the influences of our time that would make Christ’s resurrection a metaphor, an analogy, or a parable. A remonstrance is a complaint or protest, and there are plenty of those hurled at Christians and the Christian faith.

John writes simply that Jesus showed his disciples “his hands and his side.” The risen Jesus was no metaphor, analogy, or parable. He was a flesh and blood human being who was crucified, dead, buried, and was risen from the dead. Jesus showed his followers his hands that were pierced by nails. He showed them his side where he had been pierced by a sword.

“Then his disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.”

These disciples had heard the testimony of Mary Magdalene: “I have seen the Lord” (v. 18).

Now, they have seen Jesus with their own eyes and they are glad. They rejoiced. They were full of joy.

v. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Jesus again offers them a blessing of peace, which he follows with a commission. This is the great commission in the Gospel of John: “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”

Over forty times in this gospel, Jesus is the one sent by God. Now, He commissions His followers as the sent ones.

v. 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus not only sends His followers into the world; He empowers them to do the work that He’s commissioned them to do.

v. 23 “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

The disciples are commissioned by Christ to take the gospel to the world. They are given the Holy Spirit so that they can bring the presence of Christ to the world. They and us are to carry out Christ’s work of making disciples. Those who repent and receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord receive forgiveness; those who don’t, do not receive forgiveness.

As commentators Rod Whitacre and Raymond Brown say, “The ancient church understood this forgiveness and nonforgiveness as referring to admission to baptism” (Rod Whitacre, The Gospel of John, p. 483).

This verse has been also been seen as applying to church discipline. The disciplinary rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer speak of the church’s response to those “living a notoriously evil life.” (1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 409).