A very sensitive and troubled young woman whom life had dealt some very hard blows — profound physi-cal and relational dysfunction — spent six days in Yosemite Park in California. She needed to heal and get her footing.

One day while hiking she spotted a little tuft of grass growing out of the broad surface of a huge rock ledge. This was like an epiphany to her — a miracle in which God spoke! Out of the hard, barren, sterile soil of her life, God can bring life out of death!

The resurrection of our Lord is an even more decisive and dynamic disclosure of what God can do. It is God’s grand opening of hope and life and joy and peace!

I. Jesus Christ Comes to Meet His Own (19-23)

The episodic appearances of Jesus during the forty days are transitional, preparing His disciples for their life ahead without the cons-tant physical presence of our Lord.

Easter Sunday has been a great day but emotionally very taxing. Jesus has appeared to Mary Magdalene (and to Peter?), but the disciples gather “with the doors locked for fear of the Jews..” What a picture of our lives oftentimes and the Church today.

Twice Jesus greets His own with the traditional: Peace! Meeting them now for the first time together since His passion, it is significant He does not say: shame on you! Rather He speaks of the health, the soundness, the wholeness which are the very essence of what the Gospel brings, (Acts 10:36.)

Then He shares Proof. Christianity is not afraid of investigation. Jesus want us to be sure. The disciples were overjoyed. Quickly He moves them to their Purpose. In John’s version of the Great Commission, our Lord directs them to their calling — “As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.”

But their need for the endowment of Power is addressed as He breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Is this a prophecy, a prayer or a plea? Now they are ready to face into their Prerogative (think of the systems of error built on these words on the forgiveness of sin). They must mean that Christ’s own have the message of forgiveness and the privilege of assuring those who truly pray for forgiveness that they are indeed absolved in accordance with the promise of Scripture and the provision of Calvary.