Second Sunday of Easter (1889)

John 20:19-31 The prophecy of Christ as the Prince of Peace1, the song of the angels over His manger: "Peace on Earth", His promise shortly before His departure to the Father2, is now fulfilled. He has acquired peace with God, peace in conscience, through His struggle and victory and brings them to us for our enjoyment as the King of peace. He thus enters in front of us in today's Gospel. (One should read the wonderful sermons of Luther in the Church Postils.) Christ the Resurrected, our King of peace, 1. He alone is the One in Whom we find peace, a. without Him our heart is without peace and restless. Example of the disciples.3 We neither find true peace in ourselves or in any creature, nor in the Law and its works. For sin has made earth into a vale of tears and made God into our enemy and beaten incurable wounds into our conscience. b. we find peace only in Christ, . through His suffering and death He has acquired it, "His hands and side", . through His resurrection He has brought it to light; as the disciples see the Lord, their hearts are glad and rejoice, . He, the Resurrected, transmits it; 2. it is His Word alone that brings us peace, a. His greeting of peace in the Gospel goes forth into the whole world. This is not an empty proclamation, a mere wish, but because it is Christ's Word, a power of God.4 Through this Word sins are remitted. Every preaching of the Gospel is a powerful absolution to the entire sinful world, b. so that everyone may draw comfort of it, He has appointed the office of the keys, whose purpose it is to bring peace in Christ to the individual ("whose"); 3. it is faith in Him alone through which we obtain peace,

Isaiah 9:6. John 14:27. 3 John 20:19, 21:7; Luke 24:21. 4 Romans 1:16; John 6:33.
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a. as long as a man dies without faith, wants to see and feel, he dies without peace in his self-made torment.5 The Word must be grasped with faith. "Christ has not instituted the authority of him who speaks, rather of those who believe."6 To work such faith, Christ pursues the lost7, b. we obtain peace through faith. We have a "Lord and God" in which our heart can rest without seeing and feeling. Thomas puts not only his finger in Christ's wounds, his heart is previously overwhelmed. Sometimes in this life peace is perhaps clouded, but accomplished in the life to come. Lord Jesus, show yourself to us as our Prince of Peace. J.A. Mller

John 20:24-25. Luther's House Postil for Quasimodogeniti. 7 John 20:26-27.

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