Sent in Peace - As the Father sent me so I send you.

Sent in Peace - “As the Father Sent Me, So I Send You” - A Reflection on John 20:19–31

There is something very human about the scene in our lectionary passage today from John’s Gospel.

The disciples are gathered behind locked doors. They are afraid and disoriented. Unsure of what comes next.

This is not a triumphant church. This is not a community full of certainty and bold faith. This is a fragile, anxious, uncertain gathering of people who have lost their centre. And it is precisely here we are told, not later, not once they have sorted themselves out - that the risen Christ comes and stands among them and says:  “Peace be with you.”

John places this moment in Jerusalem, behind locked doors, on the evening of Easter Day itself. 
Unlike Gospel of Matthew where there is no Jerusalem encounter with the disciples, and where the commissioning happens later, on a mountain in Galilee, here in Gospel of John the sending happens right in the midst of fear on Easter night.

There is no delay between the events of Good Friday and the commissioning on Easter Sunday evening. There is no spiritual preparation course, and no requirement of perfect belief.  Just fear… and presence… and peace… and sending.

And perhaps that is the first thing John wants us to see: The mission of the church to live in the way of Jesus does not begin when we are ready. It begins when we are met by the Divine Presence and a word of peace is spoken into the midst of our fear. 

John tells us the disciples were afraid of “the Jews.” But many scholars remind us that this is better understood as “the Judaeans” - those associated with the religious and political centre in Jerusalem.
This is not a blanket statement about a people. It is a symbolic contrast.

The disciples, who are themselves Jewish, are however from the margins, from Galilee, the edges.
The “Judaeans” by contrast represent the centre of power, control, and religious authority.  And so the tension here is not ethnic, it is spiritual and social: The way of Jesus emerges from the margins… and often stands in quiet resistance to systems of power that cannot recognise it.

And as the narrative unfolds, we find that three times Jesus says: “Peace be with you.”
Before any sending, before any commissioning, before any instruction: Peace.

This is peace, not as a vague feeling, but as a grounding presence. Because the work to which they are called cannot be sustained by anxiety, fear, or striving. It must flow from peace.

And then comes the commission: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

This is John’s version of the Great Commission and echoes the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel.  But notice: Jesus does not say, “Go and build a religion about me.”
He says, in effect:  “Live the same life I have lived. Embody the same way of love. Become what I have been.”

This is a call to growth, a call to human maturity. In John’s Gospel Jesus represents not just the Divine Presence, he also represents the fullness of what it means to be a mature human being.  The commission to the disciples is to become what Jesus is in the world: As the Father sent me, so I am sending you… How was Jesus sent by the Father?  According to the opening chapter of John’s Gospel, he was sent as a light in the darkness, he was sent as the bringer of life in all it’s fullness, sent to enable others to become children of the Divine, sent as one who was full of Grace and Truth. And this is now the task of the disciples… and us. As the Father has sent me to I am sending you. 

Then comes one of the most profound moments in all the Gospels: “He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” This is John’s Pentecost moment. Not 40 days later, as in Gospel of Luke and Acts, but here, and now in this room on Easter Sunday evening.

And the imagery and symbolism is unmistakable.  It takes us all the way back to Book of Genesis, 
where the first Human Beings come to life when the Divine breath is breathed into them. This is not just empowerment. This is new creation… The fearful disciples are being re-created, re-animated, re-born into a new way of being – breathed into with the peace of Christ… breathed into to live in the spirit of Christ.

But notice again: Nothing external has changed. The world is still dangerous. The powers that crucified Jesus are still in place. But something within them has changed.  The Divine breath of life and peace has entered their fear… and transformed it into a vocation.

And then comes one of the most puzzling and often most troubling of verses. Jesus says to them: 
“If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” What exactly does this verse mean?  In the Catholic and Orthodox traditions, this has been understood as priestly authority to grant or withhold absolution. 

But what might it mean here, in John’s symbolic and spiritual language? Perhaps this: To live in the Spirit of Christ is to become a bearer of reconciliation.  When we forgive - truly forgive - we release others. We loosen the chains of guilt, shame, and estrangement. But when we refuse to forgive - when we hold onto resentment, bitterness, judgment - we participate in the retaining of those chains.

In other words: The Risen Christ is reminding us that we have enormous power and responsibility.  This is part of what it means to grow to full human maturity. We the power to create worlds of freedom… or worlds of imprisonment.  Not through divine decree, but through the way we live, relate, and love. The question is how will we use that power? How did Christ use that power?

And then in the narrative we meet Thomas.  Honest, courageous Thomas. “I will not believe” he says “unless I see… unless I touch…”

And a week later, we read that Jesus comes again. And this time, Thomas present and  is invited:
“Put your finger here… See my hands… Reach out your hand and put it into my side…”
Now, what do we make of this? Are we meant to imagine a literal physical verification? 
Or is John inviting us into something deeper?

Throughout this Gospel, “seeing” is never just about physical sight. It is about perception., recognition and awakening. Perhaps what Thomas represents is this: We do not come to faith by avoiding the wounds. We come to faith by entering them.  To “touch the wounds of Christ” is to participate in his way of being, to stand with those who suffer, to love in the face of rejection, to give oneself for others.

And it is there, not in some kind of abstract belief, but in lived participation that we come to see and understand the way of Jesus. And so Thomas responds: “My Lord and my God.” Faith arises from ‘touching the wounds of Christ’, from participating in the way of Christ, sharing in his sufferings, touching, as it were, his wounds.

And what does that exclamation of Thomas mean; My Lord and my God? Earlier on in John’s Gospel, Jesus quotes from the Psalms and says: Don’t your own scriptures say: You are gods? It is the same word Theos in both instances. When Thomas says ‘My Lord and My God’, he is not just recognizing the Divine in Jesus… he is seeing in Jesus a reflection of his own true nature… he too was made to be Divine… to be a barer of the Divine Nature. 

And so the passage ends with a word for us: “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” This is not a statement about blind belief.  It is an invitation.

We may not see Jesus with our physical eyes, like the early disciples who knew the historical Jesus.
We may not have dramatic encounters. But we are invited into the same path: To receive the breath.
To live the peace. To embody the love. To touch the wounds. To participate in the mission. And when we do that we too will see… not with our eyes, but with an inner knowing and an inner understanding: ‘Ah, now I see what Jesus was all about’!

And so we return to that central line:  “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

This is not just a commission, it is a calling into identity.  To be sent as Jesus was sent, is to live as an expression of divine grace and truth in the world, bringing life, shining light into the darkness.

It is to go where there is fear - and bring peace. To go where there is division and embody reconciliation. To go where there is suffering and dare to love.  And perhaps most importantly, to discover that it is in the going…in the living… in the sharing of that life… that our doubts begin to soften, and our inner vision begins to clear…That we come, in our own way, to recognise: The risen Christ is not only someone we are invited to believe in… but a life we are invited to live. Amen.