Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Our text is the Holy Gospel reading which has already been read.

Dear friends in Christ, we recently observed Holy Week and witnessed the final days of Jesus' earthly ministry before dying on the cross for the sins of the whole world and then rising on the third day, never to die again. In those events Jesus accomplished His victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil, but if we did not receive news of His victory, or if we were not allowed to share in His victory, then all our hopes would be lost. And so in the days before His death, and in the days after His Resurrection, Jesus made sure that His victory would get delivered to us through the Christian Church. This morning, we will look at how He made sure His victory would get delivered.

Before He ascended into heaven, Jesus said these words to the apostles: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Before Jesus ascended to His Father in heaven, He left instructions for His apostles to go out and preach His Word and make disciples by baptizing and teaching people. Those are the concluding words of Matthew's Gospel, so they must be important. Those words summarized Jesus' ministry; He wanted the apostles to dwell on them and put them into practice. So like the Lord's Supper, Jesus wants us to consider Baptism and the teaching of His Word to be central to the life of His Church. He wants each of us to recognize that being baptized and being taught by Jesus through the apostolic ministry are gifts that He wants to give us. If we want to be disciples of Christ, we are to be baptized and then throughout our lives be taught the will of God through the church.

In St. Luke's Gospel, some of the last words Jesus said to His apostles were these: "Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in the name of Jesus to all nations." Again, these were some of the last words Jesus said to His apostles before departing, so they are significant and establish our church practice. Jesus said that the message of repentance must be preached by the Church. We must proclaim repentance so that people realize their sins against God's Ten Commandments, become sorry for doing sins and turn away from them, and be given forgiveness of their sins from Jesus. Repentance and forgiveness of sins is the basic message Jesus left for His Church right before He departed from them.

And Jesus left us with a very special way of delivering forgiveness of sins, in the Sacrament of His true body and blood. Ten days ago we celebrated Maundy Thursday, the night on which the Lord Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper. This was just about the last thing He did for His apostles before He died to atone for the sins of the world; in fact, the Lord's Supper was His last will and testament, the New Testament in His blood.

When we realize that our days are numbered, either from a terminal illness or health failing due to old age, we want to make final arrangements before we die. We express our love to our families and friends, knowing that we might not have further chances to say goodbye. We finalize our last will and testament, focusing on the last words and objects we want to deliver to our families.

Our Lord Jesus Christ left us the Sacrament of the Altar as His last will and testament right before He died, indicating that it is one of the most important things He wanted to deliver to us. In fact, He said to His disciples, "Do this as often as you eat and drink it," that is, keep on doing the Lord's Supper often in the Church. Why? Because according to the Words of Jesus, He gave the Eucharist to us for the forgiveness of our sins; for His remembrance-which strengthens our faith in His saving work; and for help as we struggle against temptations. In response we should value the Lord's Supper as a great treasure, use it regularly, and treat it with the utmost reverence. It is His gift to us, to deliver His victory over sin, death, and hell and grant us participation in it.

Let me briefly sum up what we have covered so far. In Jesus' last action before He died, He gave the church the Lord's Supper, His true body and blood for the forgiveness of sins. Not long before He ascended, He told His apostles to preach repentance and forgiveness of sins, and to make disciples by baptizing and teaching them His words. Repentance, Baptism, Lord's Supper, teaching, preaching, forgiveness of sins. Do those sound familiar?

Of course! Those things are what the Christian Church is all about. We're in the repentance, forgiveness, Word and Sacrament business. The Lutheran Church doesn't emphasize these things because we made them up, but we only do them at the bidding of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus; we have taken His teachings and have put them into practice, just like He told us to.

Now I'll admit that at first glance these don't seem like very exciting things. Words, water, bread, and wine don't really seem like the kinds of things an all-powerful, resurrected Jesus would leave behind for His Church. Wouldn't you expect Him to leave behind miracles, health, wealth, and success for His followers instead of salvation from eternal condemnation through these simple things? Wouldn't you expect Jesus to equip His church with powerful works and overwhelming emotions instead of bread and butter, basic preaching, teaching and Sacraments?

I suppose the world would expect Jesus to leave much more impressive things for His church, but the world also wouldn't have ever expected Jesus to die on the cross. What kind of God lets Himself be humiliated, suffer, and die a shameful death on the cross? Wouldn't He have convinced more people that He is the Son of God by breaking the cross in two and coming down, disarming the Roman soldiers and taking vengeance on the Jews who put Him there? Now that would have been impressive. That would have made headlines. But what does Jesus do? He suffers their ridicule unjustly and doesn't say a single vindictive word to them. Instead He prays, "Father, forgive them for they don't know what they're doing." In a world that loves conflict and grudge bearing, even on the cross, Jesus was all about forgiving the guilt of sinners, not counting their sins against them.

Jesus doesn't do what the world expects and He's not the kind of God the world really wants because He's just not impressive enough. That becomes even clearer after His resurrection from the dead. You would expect Jesus to reveal this monumental event of the resurrection by proclaiming it with a booming voice from heaven. But that's not how He reveals it. Last week we celebrated the empty tomb, when the women found that Jesus had risen. They went back and told the apostles, but the men wouldn't believe the women's testimony. In today's Gospel reading from John 20, we find the apostles huddled together behind locked doors on the evening of Easter because they were afraid the Jews would track them down and snuff them out as they had done to Jesus.

What a weak, pathetic group these apostles were! They all had promised to stand by Jesus even to the point of death, but one by one they deserted Him as He marched steadily to the cross. A disciple is a follower, and these men had proven to be lousy disciples. They had failed Jesus. They were faithless, rather than faithful to Him. Even worse, they did not expect Jesus to rise again because they had not believed His promises, and they had given up hope in spite of the women's testimony.

So there were the apostles, a sad, pathetic, weak, disheartened, fearful group with no hope, feeling sorry for themselves, wondering what to do with the rest of their lives now that the Jesus thing hadn't worked out. And then Jesus appears out of nowhere, in their midst.

Now what would we expect Him to do to those men who deserted Him? Wouldn't you think He'd give them a chewing out, send them on a major guilt trip, and tell them to be ashamed that they had failed to fulfill their commitments? That's what we might expect, but what does Jesus do? He says, "Peace be with you." He speaks peace, not spite or criticism. He speaks a word of comfort rather than a word of rebuke. And He shows them His love and forgiveness of their sin by showing them the nail marks in His hand and the spear mark in His side, the signs of His death on the cross. But no longer were those holes bleeding; He was again full of life! Jesus is risen, and He had come to deliver the victory to the apostles. This caused the disciples to be overjoyed when they saw their Lord. Like the women earlier that day, the apostles were encouraged and joyful because the promises Jesus had made about coming back to life were true.

Then Jesus does something else unexpected. He says to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.' And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.'"

There's a whole lot of unexpected stuff in there. First, Jesus tells the fearful, weak disciples who had all deserted Him, "As the Father sent Me, so now I send you." In other words, just as the Father had sent God the Son to preach and save sinners, now Jesus is sending the apostles out to preach and save sinners. How ridiculous that Jesus would send these deserters to preach and teach in His Name! How could Jesus count on them? How could He know that they wouldn't desert again?

They would not fail Jesus again because He had breathed on them. Isn't that odd? This is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus breathes on anyone. We find the true meaning of His breath in the book of Genesis, where we learn that God formed a lump of clay in the shape of a man and then breathed life into Adam. In the Bible, only God gives the breath of life, the Holy Spirit. On Easter Sunday, Jesus breathed upon the apostles with the breath of life and gave life to His Church through the Holy Spirit. What kind of life did He give us? Another unexpected thing.

Jesus breathed on them and said, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.'" The Old Testament teaches that only God can forgive sins. That's why Jesus often caught flak for forgiving sins, because people saw Him acting as only God should. But here Jesus does something entirely new. He speaks directly to His apostles-flesh and blood men-and says, "Whoever's sins you forgive, they are forgiven; if you don't forgive someone's sins, they aren't forgiven."

Do you see how big this news is? Less than twenty-four hours after rising out of the grave, Jesus takes these ten men (Thomas wasn't with them on Easter) and tells them that they can go out and forgive sins and withhold forgiveness. By giving them the authority to forgive and not forgive people, Jesus fulfilled His earlier promise to the apostles when He had said, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matthew 16:19). The men who had heard that promise saw it fulfilled on Easter Sunday.

Jesus told His apostles that they would have the keys to the kingdom of heaven. What does a key do? It unlocks and locks. Heaven is locked to sinners, because sinners cannot safely enter the presence of God's holiness. God's holiness consumes sinners as fire consumes gasoline or as light scatters the darkness. So Jesus gave the apostles the key to unlock heaven-that key is the forgiveness of sins which He won for all people on the cross. Jesus places that key in the apostles' hands and says, "Use this for people who repent of their sins and believe in me. Unlock heaven for them. Deliver victory to them."

The key works for locking too. Jesus had taught that repentance and forgiveness of sins must be preached in His name to all nations, but when people do not repent, heaven is locked to them. When people refuse to confess their sins and turn away from them, the first part of repentance is absent. When people reject the forgiveness of sins delivered through the means of grace, the second part of repentance is absent. In either case, heaven is locked to those who continue to excuse their sins instead of confess them and as long as they reject Christ's forgiveness rather than be given it.

Is God's forgiveness of our sins a big deal? Nothing could be bigger! When our sins are forgiven, God places us under His grace and we are saved by the righteousness of Jesus and possess eternal life. But when we stubbornly hold on to our sins and refuse to repent of them, we place ourselves under God's wrath and are condemned and face everlasting death in hell.

How can we have assurance and security that God has placed us under His grace? How can we be sure that Christ's victory has been delivered to us? Let's step back for a minute and think about where Jesus has said that His forgiveness of our sins is delivered. In His last days on earth, Jesus gave us the Lord's Supper, His true body and blood for the forgiveness of sins; He established one Baptism for the remission of sins; and He established Holy Absolution, where the Word of Jesus is spoken to forgive sins. So when Jesus gave the Apostles the authority to forgive sins, He gave them Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord's Supper as the means of forgiveness. Those are the instruments Jesus left for His apostles to use for the task of forgiving sins. Those are the instruments in which your victory over sin, death, hell, and the devil are delivered, and you are set free. In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.