LOVE SPEAKS A WORD OF PEACE!Luke 24:36

While the disciples were still talking, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you."

Why are you here this morning? I would never have the nerve to ask you that if we were standing face-to-face! But from the safety of the pulpit, I can! Why are you in church today? Perhaps it is even more compelling and important for you to ask yourself the question: What am I doing here this morning?.

As your pastor, I assume you are here to rejoice in the resurrection of Jesus Christ and to praise him for the new life he brings you. But I’ve been told that there are other reasons for people to be in church on Easter Sunday morning. Some come to church today because it is a family tradition – the pressure to con-form is too great to resist. Not coming would disappoint too many people.

Some come to church today because this is what Christians do! Christians come to church on Easter. It’s part of the deal. This is, after all, the most sacred day on the Christian calendar. If you were going to come to church at any time, this would certainly be the time! Some come to church today because a friend or loved one invited them – and it would seem impolite to decline their invitation.

Whatever your reason for coming to church today, I am happy to have you here! But the more important question to be answered this morning is Why does Jesus want you to be in church today?. Does he want you here to satisfy some inner need he feels, to scratch some itch of his? Yes! Of course! Without any doubt! He needs you to be here!

He needs you here, but not to boost his ego or to make him feel good that so many would come to cele-brate his resurrection. Jesus is not that petty! No, he needs you here so that he can stand among us all and say to each one of us personally Peace be with you!. Jesus needs you to know that on the basis of his res-urrection from the dead, you now have a peace which only he can give.

Lest you think that I’m playing games with you or taking something out of context or horribly misusing our sermon text for this morning, let’s make something clear. If you look at the words of Scripture in the sermon text and conclude that Jesus’ words are only intended for the disciples in that locked room – and not you, personally – then you haven’t read enough Scripture!

John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son. 2 Corinthians 5:14 tells us that God reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. Luther once commented about these verses that he was glad the name Martin Luther did not appear in them, for if it did he might wonder if that referred to him or to another Martin Luther and he’d never know for sure if he was included.

But by using the words the world Scripture is clear that he is included. That same comfort can be ours as we hear Jesus’ words Peace be with you!. You, personally, are counted among the you to whom Jesus speaks. He wants, he needs to bring you peace which only his death can provide and which only his resur-rection can confirm.

Peace be with you! However, in order to receive this peace, we must travel a rough and often painful path. For the peace that is spoken of here is not a peace of mind because all is going well for you – that you have more than enough of everything you need. Jesus’ peace is not a harmony among friends and family members, or nations of this world.

No, his peace is the declaration that war between you and God is over. His peace does not mean that one side routed the other and now reigns over it as a conquered subject. Jesus’ peace is one in which God, who could simply have thrown us into the pits of hell and been done with it, has decided that instead he will love us and will make us his children, even setting aside an inheritance for us with him in heaven.

All we have to do is acknowledge and accept the terms of the peace treaty! Of course, that means we have to acknowledge our part in the war and our responsibility for starting the war. And that is not so easy. It means we must confess that we, on our part, decided we would rebel against God and choose to disobey him at every point in our lives.

As our Maker, the Lord God certainly has the right to compel us to carry out his will – to take heed of what he wants us to do and not to do. The fact that obedience to each and every one of his commandments brings our highest good to us should have added to our determination to live according to them. But we wouldn’t, we couldn’t do it. We rejected his will for our lives and fight against everything he stands for.

In religious parlance we call that sin. And God decrees that sin should be and will be punished. We are sinners. We sin. We don’t use the good sense God gave us to acknowledge him as God and Lord. We fail to give him the place he deserves in our lives. We do not listen to him, even though he graciously speaks to us in his word, the Bible.

We certainly don’t worship as we ought. And many times when we do worship, we do so halfheartedly or with our minds somewhere else. No, a look at our lives shows plenty of sin, that we are fighting against the Lord all the time. We are the ones at war with him. If you think it’s unfair to count sins against the God we cannot see, then let’s look at our sins against one another, whom we can see!

God’s dictates decree that we love one another as we love ourselves. But that is not what we see in our-selves. We see resentment and selfish criticism of the authorities placed over us. We see ourselves hurting each other with our words, and even with our actions. Even if we are chaste ourselves, or faithful to our spouse, we still see ourselves condoning adultery and sexual perversion in others.

We see ourselves failing to give a full day’s effort for a full day’s pay. We hear ourselves gossiping about the activities of others. We feel our hearts fill with discontent and envy for what others have. Our war against God has most certainly spilled out into a war against God’s creation. We fight against God and his will at every turn. There is no peace between us!

In the end, we will lose the war – we have to! God, as the Lord of all, will look at our list of sins and damn us to the hell we deserve, the condemnation we brought on ourselves. In hell, there will never be peace. We can argue that we don’t deserve it, but we do – we have sinned. We can say that it’s not our fault, but we do – we started it.

In our moments of fear and panic, we do try to make peace with God. We try hard to do something good, hoping that will please God enough to forget the wrongs we’ve done, or at least balance out the evil with our good. Or we reinterpret his commands to convince ourselves that we have kept them. Or we tell our-selves that the Lord really isn’t serious about all that damnation talk. But the One who stands before us this morning shows us that God is very serious about it all.

The One who stands before us this morning is Jesus Christ. He has come to his disciples. This causes them a great deal of consternation. Jesus has been dead since mid-afternoon on Friday. No one expected to see him alive three days later. More than that, he claims he has been raised from the dead by the Father, as he once told them he would be. To prove that it is he, he shows them his hands and feet, and his side.

They can see the nail holes and the gash where the soldier’s spear pierced him through to the heart. They touch him – he is no allusion. He eats something – he is real. Christ Jesus is risen! He is risen, indeed! And the message he needs to convey to them is this Peace be with you!. Nothing’s changed in 2000 years, he comes to us this morning with his need to tell us Peace be with you!

To war-weary veterans like you and me, he comes with the peace treaty he himself authored, which has recently been ratified by God the Father, thus putting it into full effect. It says that one essential element of peace between us is that Jesus must take all our sin away from us and make it his own. Of course, he would then have to suffer the consequences of our sin. He will have to die and go to hell in our place. This he has already done!

The treaty then goes on to say that the other essential element of peace is that the holy life we’ve got to have, must be taken from Jesus and given to us by faith! This happens at our Baptism. No longer can God see anything in us or on us that indicates we are sinners. He may treat us as his very own children. The proof of it is found in the person of the risen Lord!

The fact that the Father raised him from the dead is the visible, positive assurance that our sins are for-given, that a new life is ours, and that we have a place in heaven. Jesus can say Peace be with you!, be-cause now there is peace. The love of God watches over us and soothes away every fear we may have about death. It calms all our anxiety about our sin.

It tells us who we are and why we are here. All the things that trouble us most in life have been dealt with! We can be at peace! In Christ, and only in Christ, is such a peace ours! Jesus rose from the dead on Easter because he needed to tell you all this! You need to hear it! It is more than a day changer, it is a life changer! Amen.