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Jesus Breathed on Them. Does That Strike You As Strange?

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Jesus Breathed on Them. Does That Strike You As Strange? Jesus Breathed Jesus breathed on them. Does that strike you as strange? When you greet your family or friends, do you breathe on them? Maybe you shake hands; maybe you hug them; maybe you even give them a kiss on the cheek. Some of us like to give high fives or fist bumps. Eskimos rub noses; Japanese bow to each other. But have you ever heard of greeting your friends by breathing on them? John tells us that Jesus breathed on his disciples. Why did he do this? Did Jesus exhale one really big breath that reached all the disciples in the room, or did he breathe on each one individually? John doesn't tell us how many breaths Jesus breathed on the disciples, but I think he breathed on each one individually, one at a time, looking each one in the eyes, maybe resting his wounded hands on each one's shoulders while he breathed a divine breath on each disciple's face, a breath that entered each disciple's nostrils. Why did Jesus do this? As he breathed on them, he said, "Peace be with you; receive the Holy Spirit." Peace and the Holy Spirit carried on the breath of Jesus. What's so special about breath? The Bible teaches us that breath is something holy and sacred. In the book of Genesis, "The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being. In the book of Job, Job says, "The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty gives me life." In the book of Ezekiel, the prophet sees a valley filled with dry bones. God tells Ezekiel to say to the bones, "I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.” In his second letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes, "All Scripture is God- breathed. And in John's gospel, peace and the Holy Spirit are carried on the breath of Jesus. 1 The disciples are hiding in a locked room on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, trembling in fear of the Jewish leaders who handed Jesus over to the Romans to crucify him just three days ago. Jesus appears to the 10 disciples --10 because Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus and then killed himself, is not there, of course, and Thomas--for some reason--is not there. Jesus breathes on the disciples and shows them his wounds. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Then they rejoiced. Why weren't they rejoicing already? Didn't they know that the tomb was empty, and that Jesus had risen from the dead? Mary Magdalene, Peter, and one other disciple had seen the empty tomb--empty except for the linen burial wrappings that had covered Jesus. Peter and the other disciple didn’t know what to make of this, so they returned to their homes, but Mary Magdalene remained outside the tomb, weeping. Jesus appeared to her and called her by name and spoke to her. So Mary Magdalene went to the disciples and told them, "I have seen the Lord." But the disciples remained in hiding, terrified of the Jewish leaders and the Roman soldiers. Didn't they hear what Mary had told them: "I have seen the Lord?" They heard, but they didn't yet believe. They didn't believe until Jesus appeared to them and showed them his wounds. Then they rejoiced. But Thomas wasn't there that night. Why not? Where was he? Was Thomas more afraid than the others--or maybe he was less afraid. You remember earlier in John's gospel that when Jesus wanted to go to Judea after his friend Lazarus had died, the disciples warned him, "The Jews tried to stone you in Judea, and you want to go there again? Don't go; it's too dangerous." But Thomas said, "Let us go with Jesus that we may die with him." So Thomas was no coward. We don't know why Thomas wasn't hiding with the other disciples that first Easter Sunday evening. Maybe--maybe--he was out alone in the dark of night trying to find out what had happened to Jesus, trying to find out if the tomb was really empty, if it was safe for the other disciples to come out of hiding. 2 Maybe he was brave enough to do that alone in the dark of night. We don't know for sure where Thomas was or what he was doing. But when he came to the room where the other disciples were hiding, they told him, "We have seen the Lord." We shouldn't be surprised that Thomas didn't believe this wonderful news. The other disciples didn't believe it either until Jesus appeared to them and showed them his wounds and twice bestowed peace upon them and breathed the Holy Spirit into them. A week passes. It's the Sunday evening after Easter, and the disciples--this time Thomas included--are in the house again. Jesus appears and tells Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side." Then Thomas exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" Let me ask you this: who in the gospels believed in the resurrection of Jesus before they saw the Risen Christ with their own eyes? Did Mary Magdalene? Did any of the disciples? Who in the Bible believed in the resurrection of Jesus before they saw the Risen Christ with their own eyes? Nobody. Does this mean that it's hard to believe in something you haven't seen with your own eyes? How many of you have seen with your own eyes the dark side of the moon--the side that's always facing away from the Earth? Do you believe that the moon has another side, even though you haven't seen it? In one sense, we often believe in things we haven't seen with our own eyes. So why was it so hard for people in the gospels--good people like Mary Magdalene and the disciples--to believe in the Risen Christ until they had seen him with their own eyes? Maybe it's easy to believe in things we haven't seen with our own eyes if they're like other things that we have seen, things that make sense to us. We can believe in the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco even if we haven't seen it because we know there are such things as bridges--we've seen some bridges. 3 So why was it so hard--impossible even--for anyone in the Bible to believe in the Risen Christ until they saw him with their own eyes? Was it hard for them to believe in the Risen Christ before they saw him with their own eyes because a Resurrection was not like anything they'd seen before? What about Lazarus? You remember that only a short time before Jesus was crucified, he raised Lazarus from the dead--they rolled away the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb, Jesus shouted, "Lazarus, come out," and Lazarus walked right out from the tomb. So the disciples had seen a dead man come back to life. Why was it so hard for them to believe in the Risen Christ? Here's why I think the disciples found it so hard to believe until they had seen him with their own eyes. When Jesus was mocked, scourged, and crucified like a common criminal, it broke the disciples' hearts. It ruined their lives. It crushed their spirits. It dashed their hopes. It destroyed their faith. I think that, in a way, the disciples had to be resurrected along with Jesus--they had to recover their faith, their hope, and their lives. They had to rise again from the depths of despair to the heights of joy. It's hard to do that just because somebody tells you that everything's all right after all. The disciples had to see Jesus, to feel his breath on their faces, to hear his voice saying, "Peace be with you," maybe even to touch the wounds in this hands, feet, and side. The disciples had to be resurrected along with Jesus. They had to be restored to life just as he was restored to life. Believing in the Risen Christ meant a great deal more to the disciples than the resuscitation of a dead body. The resurrection of Jesus was something much bigger than that, something they had never seen before. You might say that in the resurrection, the man the disciples had known as Jesus of Nazareth became for them Jesus Christ, the Son of God. They finally understood who he was, who he always had been and always will be. 4 You might say that Jesus wasn't the only one raised to a new life in the resurrection. When the disciples saw him face-to-face and believed in the power of the resurrection, they were raised to a new life along with him. They were lifted up to a new life of hope, peace, love, and joy. Us too. So are we: lifted up to a new life of faith and blessed assurance. So, who believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ before they had seen him face-to-face with their own eyes? Not Mary Magdalene; not any of the disciples. Who believed in the Risen Christ before they had seen him with their own eyes? You did.
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