Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

You know, every now and then I will be in a conversation with someone and I will hear something like "if only we could be like the early church." Usually it is a comment made in reference to some contentious issue, but not always. I understand the sentiment, but the truth is that in some respects we are a lot like the early church. We think of it as the ideal, "a miracle a day," or "everyone came to prayer meetings," or "they owned all things together," or "they were constantly together in worship and in breaking bread." We think of it as ideal, but the early church was also quite contentious at times.

Go all the way back even before the early church, all the way to OT times and you find Moses with a temper problem, Noah gets drunk, David falls into temptation and commits adultery. In the NT, Paul and Peter had issues, Paul and Barnabas split up over whether to include John Mark on a mission trip, Stephen and six others are anointed to serve because of disputes over Hellenic widows being shortchanged. Those are just some of the issues.

So what do we find on the evening of "that day, the first day of the week" when the disciples were together. Would that be the first example of "Sunday evening fellowship"? So what do we find there?

Well, we find fear, not joy, not love, not teaching. Doors were locked, some of the fellowship (Thomas and the Judas who killed himself) were not there. No singing, no Lord's Supper, no preaching, no passing of the peace. That is the picture we get of the disciples that evening.

But what is our picture of God?

Jesus is risen! After man did his worst, God did his best. After scourging, spitting and mockery, crucifixion and death, followed by a hasty burial, Christ is risen! The Life of God cannot be vanquished by the power of man or by the power of sin and death!

Jesus does not knock on the door like a neighbor would have done, nor does he batter down the door as the authorities might have done. Instead he simply appears in the midst of them. He greets them with the words "peace be with you." Here I think Jesus means more than the customary "shalom," a Hebrew greeting which means peace. Instead I think this peace is synonymous with the salvation that comes from faith in the Messiah. Not a peace that we think of as an inner tranquility, that is something that is personal, but instead I think it the way Pastor Brian Stoffregen puts it: "the way people and all creation and God will relate to each other -- a harmonious existence."

Peace be with you is tied directly to the last three words of Jesus on the cross, "It is finished." Jesus gives the gift of his kingdom, he gives a right relationship with God. Peace be with you is a blessing! It is reconciliation, life from God. When we exchange the peace it is much more than a simple greeting, it is a blessing, the blessing of right relationships.

Then Jesus tells his disciples, "As the Father has sent me so I send you." Jesus was obedient to the point of death on the cross, and so a place has been prepared for us because of his mission from God. And now he sends us, which is present tense.

It seems that we often limp into God's church, into his presence, with gaping needs in our lives, but once our needs are met and the hurt is gone, all too often so are we. We come to get help but we do not want to give it. We come to be served, but not to serve. We come to know God but not to make him known. Then Jesus tells us: "So I send you!"

He breathed, exhaled; it is the same Greek verb used in the Septuagint for God breathed life into Adam. He breathed and the disciples were made into new creations, so too are we. The group received it and the church was conceived even as Mary was conceived of Jesus. The church was born on Pentecost and the Spirit manifested in the disciples.

Once again we are coming off a rummage sale week. Once again we are coming off an incredible turnout on the part of our members, former members and neighbors. Those preparing food, those setting up tables, those who work the sales, those who carry stuff in and who carry stuff out for others. Once again I witnessed a Spirit-filled church, in many respects near to the best parts of the early church, a church that is, for that particular moment time, a church that is in a harmonious existence. Once again I feel that this kind of service is something we need to export, to send as our members go about their daily routine. We have been and are talking about our mission, we are getting near the time when we will, led by the Holy Spirit, come to embrace our mission fully. I can hardly wait!

Peace be with you brothers and sisters! You have received the Holy Spirit! It is the second Sunday in the Easter season and we are Easter people, and we as Easter people are sent to forgive sins, and reveal a life in a right relationship with God! We are sent!

AMEN