Sunday, April 12, 2026… Second Sunday of Easter
“So Blessed to Be Alive”
Scripture Readings: Psalm 148; Acts 5:29-42; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
Service Order: Divine Service III, without Communion, p.184, Lutheran Service Book
Hymns: “Christ Has Arisen, Alleluia! #466; “Alleluia! Jesus Is Risen” #474; “O Sons and Daughters of the King” #470; “We Walk by Faith and Not By Sight” #720
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Alleluia! Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed!
We use the word “alleluia” a lot, especially during the Easter season, but do you know what it means? “Allelu” (or “hallelu”) is the Hebrew word for praise; and “ya” is Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God; so “allelu-ya” means “praise God!” Praise God! Christ is risen! Praise be to God, He is risen indeed!
Isn’t it great to be alive? I woke up this morning and opened my eyes, and I’m still here! I moved an arm and a leg… yep, still hurts! So it must be time to get up and go.
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it… From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised.” So here I am, Lord, awake and alive; so how can I thank and praise You with this life You’ve given me today?
And when I talk about being alive, I don’t mean just physically. There are lots of people walking around who are alive in their bodies, but cold, sad, and dead in their souls, dead even while they yet live. By being alive, I mean being alive in your soul, alive in the love and mercy of Christ -- alive in thankfulness, alive in hope, alive in faith, alive in the joy of it all; alive to the possibilities this new day might bring; alive in thankfulness for the blessings God has given me; and alive to the blessings I can give to the people around me as this day goes on.
So what does this “alleluia” Good News mean for the life I’m living this day? Our Gospel reading from St. John this morning, being the continuation of the blessed Easter story, is all about the gift of life. This is what we all have to be so happy and praise God about. This is why life is so blessed and good and worth living!
It was the evening of the Sunday of the Resurrection. The disciples had heard the reports from the women about Jesus being alive. Peter and John had been to the empty tomb and seen inside, and seen the discarded linens. But it was still far from a joyful scene in that room they were in; there was doubt, uncertainty, and fear in that place. The doors had been locked and barred, for fear that the soldiers were coming for them next and that they’d be the next to be crucified.
And then Jesus, who is their life, appeared, the locked door being no barrier to Him. (If the stone before His tomb had been no barrier, why would a wooden door be?) And He blessed them with the gift of life. Not “I have condemnation for you” or “I have a rebuke for you,” but “Peace to you! I have forgiveness for you, grace for you, and freedom from your fears.” Again, as had happened with them before, they were afraid, thinking He was a ghost or a spirit that had come to haunt them. But He acted in love to take their fears away.
“He showed them His hands and His side,” John’s Gospel says. In Luke’s account, He even tells them, “Touch Me and see.” And what did they touch? What did they see? Proof of life! A man who’d been beaten to pieces and hung on a cross and who’d breathed His last, and was wrapped in burial linens and laid in a tomb, was standing before them alive again and warm and pink of skin; just as He’d told them He would be. Did Jesus have to keep those scars? I don’t think so. He could have discarded those, too, as He’d left behind the grave clothes, the tomb, and even death itself. He kept the scars for the disciple’s sake, and for ours, as proof of life: “Touch Me and see!” And “alleluia, hallelujah, praise God!” they were overjoyed.
Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Jesus gave them not only life, but life with a purpose. A life has to have a purpose to really be a life, you know; there has to be more to life than waiting around to die. Jesus blessed them with a sending, a purpose, a mission, wanting for them not just life, but “life to the full.”
And with that He breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit.” Do you see what Jesus did there? He took them from the first creation to their re-creation. In the creation account in the Book of Genesis, “God breathed into Adam the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” It was the breath, the Spirit of God, that gave Adam the spark of life and made Him live. And now these dead disciples -- dead in sin, and fear and despair and hopelessness -- are given new life by the breath of Christ and the Spirit of God. And now, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” You and I live today by the same breath and the same Spirit. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, is a divine gift from heaven. We’re alive – not just in our bodies, but in our souls – by the marvelous grace of God.
“What shall we do with such a gift?” is the question. What is our mission, people of God? What is our purpose? What are we doing here, now that we’ve been born again and given new life and brought back from the dead? Jesus gives the disciples their mission, clear as clear can be: “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven." Do you see what Jesus is telling them? From now on, you’re in the business of forgiveness! If you remember that little section in your Catechism, we call this “The Office of the Keys.” Forgiveness for sin is a divine blessing, one to be found nowhere else but in the holy Christian Church. It’s forgiveness for sin that brings us out of death to life.
Jesus gave to the disciples – and through them, to the Church through all history –
the honor, blessing, and privilege of offering people forgiveness for their sin. It’s not cheap grace or cheap forgiveness, as some have said; not at all. We’re not saying, “Never mind about sin, you’re forgiven anyway;” we’re only showing the way to be forgiven. Forgiveness is by awareness of sin, and confession, and repentance; which, by the grace of God, leads sinners to the cross of Christ, where our forgiveness was dearly bought by the blood of our Lord. Where there is confession and a repentant heart, we give assurance of forgiveness, grace, and life. We don’t ever “withhold forgiveness” out of orneriness or just because we can; we don’t make forgiveness conditional on anything but faith. We really do want people to have those precious keys to get to heaven. God is slow to anger and rich in mercy, and we need to be as well.
Now, as a wonderful and living example of how forgiveness ought to work, we have old Doubting Thomas. (I love that man; he’s someone I can relate to!) Thomas was not with them when Jesus came to them the first time. Maybe he’d gone out to buy dinner, maybe he’d gone off to cry by himself, who knows? But he wasn’t there. The other disciples, his brothers and friends, told him the good news: “We have seen the Lord!”
But true to his doubting nature, he refused to believe them. "Unless I see the nail marks in His hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into His side, I will not believe it."
They were all full of faith and joy, and hopefulness, and he was being a downer, poisoning the atmosphere and bringing down the mood. (Negativity is contagious, you know.) The rest of the disciples, to their credit, seem to have put up with him anyway. They could have thrown him out, expelled him from the group, told him to take his doubting, depressing attitude somewhere else. But they didn’t do that; and a week later, he was still there with them.
Jesus didn’t give up on the man either; He never gives up on anyone. Jesus is free and generous with His gift of life, even when we’re having our doubts. When Jesus came to them again, Thomas was with them -- still dead on the inside, still full of doubt, still with his negative vibes. Jesus (for Thomas’s sake, I think) did a virtual replay of what He’s done the week before; the same appearance through the locked and barred doors, the same blessing of peace. And then He turned to Thomas, whom He dearly loved, and gave him what his doubting heart needed, if he was ever going to have “the life that is truly life” – He gave him proof of life! "Put your finger here; see My hands. Reach out your hand and put it into My side. Stop your doubting and believe!”
And Thomas, bless his precious, doubting heart, went right to where he needed to go in order to live. He made the good confession: “My Lord and my God!” Allelu-ya! It doesn’t matter how a person gets there, only that they do, whether it takes a week, a year, or a lifetime, or even a confession on a dying bed. If you believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, you will be saved.
What Jesus said then to Thomas, He says to all of us: "Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." You and I don’t have the “proof of life, hands-on blessing” that Thomas and the other disciples had. Forty days from this appearance of His on Easter evening, Jesus would ascend into heaven, no more to be seen in this world in a physical way, until He comes again in glory. (That day is coming, but we’re not there yet).
We have no scars of His to touch, no audible voice of His to hear. So what do we have, doubting Thomases that we can sometimes be? We have the blessed, Spirit-inspired Word, the eye-witness testimony of the men who knew Him, walked with Him, and saw everything He did. We have the blessed life-giving, faith-creating Holy Spirit that Jesus promised to send, the Spirit that speaks through the Word and guides us to the truth and speaks it to our hearts. If you’re not in the habit of regular Bible reading, I highly recommend it; it will change your life in ways you can’t even imagine.
“These are written,” says good St. John, “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.” “Though you have not seen Him,” St. Peter says, “you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
Isn’t it great to be alive? And not just alive in these bodies of ours, but alive in our souls in the love and mercy of Christ? And not only are we blessed to be alive, we’re “blessed to be a blessing” to the people around us, by telling them about the blessings we have and about the Savior we know. May we who have been blessed with life, now bless the world with the life-changing truth that Jesus lives! Alleluia! Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed! In Jesus’ name; Amen.
Rev. Larry Sheppard, M.Div.
Trinity Lutheran Church, Packwaukee, WI
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Oxford, WI
pastorshepp@gmail.com