Service Sunday April 12, 2026
HIGHLAND HILLS UNITED CHURCH
Minden, Ontario
All are Welcome!
Worship Leaders: Rev. Max Ward
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Music Director: Melissa Stephens
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Message: “Jesus Is With Us!”
Listen to an audio recording of the message below or read it at the bottom of this page.
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Sermon 12th April 2026
“Jesus Is With Us!”
John 20:19-31
Gracious God, be with us today in this place, in the Scriptures and in our words.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts praise your Holy name. Amen.
I want us to imagine for a moment that we are not here.
You may say, “Well, preacher that is usually what I do during the sermon on Sunday morning.”
I don’t want you to imagine that you are on the lake, or sitting in your easy chair.
Instead, I want us to imagine we are in the room that I just read about in John.
That each of us is one of those Disciples.
First of all, forget that you are in a well-lit room.
The room that the disciples were in was dark.
The sun was shining outside, it was probably a beautiful spring day, but the doors and shutters are shut tight.
You see today is the first day of the week, only three days ago Jesus was crucified.
And we were there.
We were all watching as they hammered the nails into Jesus hands and feet.
After what they did to the teacher, Lord only knows what they will do to us his disciples.
They may arrest us and scourge us like they did him.
They may even crucify us like they did him.
We had seen Jesus die but the trouble he started was still going on.
Some people just want to stir up trouble you know.
First, they killed Jesus, now it appears that someone has stolen his body.
On top of all this fear, we are still trying to deal with our grief.
Poor Mary, who discovered this morning that Jesus was stolen, has been doing nothing but babbling on about seeing him alive and thinking he was the gardener.
And Peter and John haven’t said a thing since they got back from the tomb.
So, the disciples were hiding in the upper room for fear of what the Romans would do to them.
Then, all of a sudden, they were not alone.
Jesus appeared in the midst of them.
They probably thought they were seeing things.
But everybody was staring at him so they must see him too.
Then they began to wonder if this was Jesus’ ghost come back to haunt them.
If they had been afraid before they were probably more afraid now.
Jesus knew of their fear and so the first thing he said was “Peace be with you.”
Then he showed them his hands and side.
It was not his Ghost, he was alive and he had blessed them!
Then Jesus told them to go out into the world.
Just as the Father had sent him, so he was sending them.
Then we hear about Thomas.
Thomas was out at the time.
He didn’t believe their story when he had returned.
But who could blame Thomas for not believing.
He hadn’t been there to see Jesus.
I know that if I were Thomas I would have had a hard time believing their story.
The other disciples had not believed he was alive when Mary told them she had seen him.
Why should he believe just because there were a few more people saying the same thing?
Things have not changed that much since then.
In some places in the world Christians still hide from the authorities.
Most of us can gather freely without fear of being killed.
But we still live in a hostile world.
A world that ridicules our values.
A world that attacks us for our belief in marital fidelity and the human rights of all people.
A world that degrades us because we try to help those who the world says are not worth helping.
A world that ignores us when we say that life comes out of death through Jesus.
So many times, we Christians cower in our churches and refuse to go out into the streets for fear that someone will recognize us and ridicule us for what we are.
Like the disciples, we close the doors and shutters tight so that no one will discover us.
But Jesus knows our fear just as he knew the disciples’ fear.
And so, just as he was in the presence of them in that upper room, he is with us here.
And now just as then he says to us “Peace be with you.”
Do not fear the world outside for I am with you.
But that is not all, we are strengthened by Christ’s presence.
In our Gospel lesson there is a curious statement.
It says that Jesus breathed on the disciples.
I wondered what that meant and this is what I found out.
The Greek word for spirit is pnewma and the Hebrew word is ruach.
They both also mean wind or breath.
In the Old Testament this word is used when God breathed the breath of life into the first human.
So here Jesus is breathing the breath of new life into the disciples.
In the same way Jesus is breathing on us the breath of new life and that enables us and empowers us.
Jesus is with us.
We live in a hostile world.
The people outside may want to crucify us just like they did to Jesus.
But we are not alone.
Jesus is present with all who worship in his name.
And he is giving all of us new life.
The world outside may ridicule us if we try to live our Christianity outside these walls.
They may call us names and they may shun us.
Christ sends us out into the world.
He sends us to proclaim the good news of his resurrection.
We do not go alone.
We go with the power of the one through whom all things were created.
We go with the strength of the one who was raised from the dead and lives forever.
We go with the one who breathed the breath of new life.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
