One of the heroes of my faith journey is Michael Ramsey who is a professor of New Testament at Cambridge and then became the Bishop of Durham and then the Archbishop of York and then in 1961 became the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. Archbishop Ramsey used to love to say, “I invite you into my home, and my home is the Gospel of St. John.”

Now John’s Gospel is a work of grandeur and mysticism, and yet at the same time is written in a form of Greek that everyone in the early church could understand. It is thought to be written a good while later than the first three gospels. It begins not with Jesus born in a manger, that traditional Christmas picture, but with the declaration of the Word made flesh, that mysterious sounding expression that hints of the tone John will take in all twenty-one chapters.

The gospel is full of symbolism and drama, and after all of the Alleluias of last Sunday’s celebration of the resurrection, John moves us right along starting with the gathering of the disciples that very same day as the resurrection. Now often churches call this second Sunday after Easter low Sunday, low attendance they mean, but the Gospel reading today catapults us into two of the most dramatic scenes in all of Scripture, both occurring in what has become known as the Upper Room. Some scholars call it the grand finale of the ministry of Jesus on earth. But it’s easy, however, to be distracted by seeing this passage mainly about Doubting Thomas and the response that Jesus makes to Thomas.

But there is a simple profound act that we almost miss completely, and to be honest something that I have never preached on. Jesus appears to the disciples and he breathes on them giving them the Holy Spirit. So there they sit: the same fellows who had met time and again in this meeting house, that upper room, to drink in their master’s teaching and pledge their allegiance to him, but this night was different. They bolted the doors in fear that they too could be brutally murdered like their master, their teacher. So they sat in anxiety, terror, fear, bickering with each other about what would come next, wondering where their friend Thomas may have ended up because he failed to show up the night of the resurrection. They whispered that some have said that they had seen Jesus alive. And then Jesus appears! In that very room. Through the locked doors, with the wounds on his hands and on his sides as obvious as when they took him off the cross and laid him in the tomb, and Jesus breathes on them just as Adam was given the breath of Yahweh and was brought to life in the Second Chapter of the Book of Genesis.

So begins this grand finale of this part of the story of Christianity because what we may miss is that this passage is not primarily about Doubting Thomas, but about how Jesus comes in Spirit to inaugurate the church by sending the disciples forth not with words or a creed or a vow to seek revenge on those who betrayed him, but with his Spirit, the same spirit of God that brought all of creation to life.

God’s own Son breathes the spirit of love into those who will now be his hands and his feet on earth. And here the church is born and goes then on in the Book of Acts on the Day of Pentecost when multitudes receive that same Spirit. It’s the way by which Jesus started his church. It’s the spirit of love that is the very essence of our God. As it is written in I Corinthians chapter 13: “And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”

You know all around us today is what looks like the mood in the upper room before Jesus appeared. We too live in a time of anxiety, worry, anger, division at just about every level of society. I recently asked a good friend about some folks that I hadn’t seen in a while. And you know nothing good came from his report. He said well this person is going through a divorce; and another one is struggling with cancer treatment; and another looking for a job in a market that he says is just awful. And we are all so in need right now of God’s love for only that love can heal our hearts, bring peace to the world and lift us to a better place, where love is not seen as sentimental or weak but mightier than all the powers of this world drawn together.

You know in all my years in ministry I am constantly having to remind people that there is nothing we can do to make God not love us. Week after week, however, people sit in the pews of our churches holding a different belief in God. The belief that God doles out love on the basis of our merit. While the world is so transactional I can understand that it is difficult to believe that God’s love is greater than our failings, and that God’s love is persistent and will remain available to us at all times no matter how we stumble through life. Christianity is not a tit for tat religion.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, put it: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. So we sing, “Breathe on me breath of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love, and do what thou wouldst do.” Jesus appears to his fearful disciples with the ancient greeting “Peace be with you” on both nights in the upper room. But what is peace if not grounded in love. Peace is only an extension of love. And true peace must assume love. It requires love.

So it may be low Sunday in our churches, but we are hearing again how magnificently the breath of God was imparted to a church of lovers! With his breath Jesus departs to be with his father, leaving the disciples with the task of carrying on his mission. And when we hear that we are to go into all the world to spread the Gospel we know that our Easter Alleluias really mean we are living with his breath, with the Holy Spirit, the love that Jesus Christ has given to us to live out and to know so deeply that at the end, as it is written in Romans Chapter 8, “Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So, in this story, we with the disciples are put to work. We are sent out to spread that love. Thomas for example, who eventually does show up and gets the proof he needs by seeing the wounds of Christ, went on himself to evangelize all the way to India where he was ultimately murdered for being a believer in the one who gave us that love. The great story of the Upper Room may just change the way we see our religion. Jesus comes that night in Spirit to breathe on all of us so our lives become the fulfillment of that divine love that will always surpass understanding. So my friends, take a deep breath and know God’s love, God’s breath, coming in and then going out from us, just right now where you are in whatever place or circumstance you find yourself. Let that breath you breathe be God’s love and trust with that spirit that you and all the world will be at peace. Alleluia! Christ is risen!

AMEN