Anybody else doing a lot of sneezing lately in the last week or so?  Spring is here, and everything is so beautiful!  But for me at least, there is a negative to all that spring color:  sneezing.  My grandmother would say, “Dust on your brain!” whenever someone sneezed, especially in the spring.  It was her theory that over the winter when we’re not outside much, we gather a lot of dust in our brains, and so come spring, we have to sneeze to get rid of it.  Sneezing is like fresh air for our heads!You don’t hear people respond to sneezing with, “It must be dust on your brain!” much nowadays.  Most of us simply say, “God bless you!”  We say that to be polite, but actually when we say, “God bless you”, we are expressing our hope that they will receive a sacred gift from God.  That’s what blessings are—sacred gifts.  “God bless you” is simply a way of saying, hey, it sounds like you might be sick or struggling a little.  I hope you will receive a sacred gift from God today.God bless you.  We might not even think about it, but it’s really a prayer, isn’t it?  It’s really a statement of faith.  With those three words we are conveying our belief that God cares about us so much, God even cares when we sneeze.  Whether it’s the flu, or a common cold, or just the sniffles from all the pollen in the air, saying “God bless you” is a way of saying God cares about all the circumstances of our lives.  God has sacred gifts to give us, even if our biggest issue right now is that we are suffering from too much pollen in the air.In our scripture lesson today, we meet up with the disciples at a time when they have much bigger issues on their minds than spring allergies.  They are gathered together, heartbroken, afraid, and confused.  The Upper Room, the place where they celebrated the Passover meal with Jesus the night he was arrested, is now the place where they sit shiva because their friend has died.  Shiva is still the Jewish custom today, to sit with your family and friends for seven days to grieve together.  But remember, the disciples aren’t just grieving the death of the Lord.  They witnessed the brutal death of their Lord.  The authorities knew they were close associates with Jesus.  The disciples had to be very afraid they might be wanted next.  It seemed like a good strategy, to wait out of sight for things to calm down.  And I imagine the disciples were in the Upper Room together because they just didn’t know what else to do.  They had spent three years with Jesus, traveling throughout the region, teaching and healing and seeing health and wholeness come to so many.  Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion broke their hearts.  But now they had received word that he was alive.  What were they to do with that? Bereaved, afraid, confused.  If anyone could use a “God bless you” right about now, it’s Jesus’ disciples!  They don’t just have allergies or a common cold.  They are in a full-blown faith crisis.  They have hunkered down and are hanging in there as best they can, but they are really in a bad way in our scripture lesson today.  They could really use a sacred gift or two right about now.  Hmm… hunkered down and hanging in there as best as they can—that describes us, too, doesn’t it!  The disciples of long ago aren’t the only ones who could use a “God bless you!” right about now!Well, all I can say to that is, get ready to be blessed!  John tells us that Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.”  A couple of surprises here.  First, the doors of the room were locked, but that was no barrier for Jesus.  The resurrected Jesus can make his way into any place.  And then listen to what he said.  Jesus could have greeted his friends in any number of ways, but he chose to say, “Peace be with you.”  It surprised me to learn that “Peace be with you” was the traditional greeting of Jesus’ day.  The Hebrew word is shalom.  Shalom is a way of saying, “May God give you every good thing.”  Shalom was such a common greeting, it is possible that it lost its full meaning, like when we say “God bless you” and don’t really think of it as a prayer.  But we can feel the weight of this greeting in our passage today.  Three times Jesus says, “Peace be with you.”  Three times Jesus says, essentially, God bless you.  May God give you every good thing.  May God give you ever sort of sacred gift.   And that’s exactly what Jesus went on to do.  He came among these heartbroken, afraid, and confused disciples and offered them exactly what they needed.  With the first, “Peace be with you”, Jesus eased their grief.  He showed them his hands and side and reassured them that they don’t need to grieve, because he is no longer dead.  The disciples rejoiced when they saw for themselves that their Lord was indeed alive.To help them with their fear, Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”  In other words, you are not going to have to spend the rest of your life holed up in this room in fear for your lives.  God has sent me to serve, die, and live again.  In the same way, God called you to serve, die to your illusions, die to your sin, and now to live again! And then Jesus gave them another sacred gift to answer their third issue, confusion.  He breathed on them the Holy Spirit and assured them that they would indeed have the power of God as they went about their work.  Think about it.  No person has the power to forgive sins.  Only God can do that.  Jesus was trying to say, that’s the power you will have at your disposal.  That’s the power that will fuel your work.  The kind of power that only God can give.  Yes, my disciples, you will see many more miracles in your time.  God is still with you, and God is still going to be at work through you.Sacred gifts!  God’s blessings!  Isn’t it amazing how Jesus came and gave the disciples exactly what they needed?  For their grief he gave them reassurance of his life.  For their fear he gave them reassurance of God’s protection.  And for their confusion Jesus gave them reassurance of God’s power.But sadly, one of the disciples missed out on these sacred gifts.  We don’t know where Thomas was, but he was absent from the Upper Room when Jesus first appeared.  We can imagine what the other disciples must have said when Thomas returned to the Upper Room.  They must have tried to convince Thomas that the news of Jesus’ resurrection was real.  But apparently, Thomas was not convinced.  Thankfully, a week later, Jesus appeared among the disciples again, and this time, Thomas was with them.  Jesus offered Thomas the same loving care as the other disciples.  “Peace be with you.  Put your fingers here, and see my hands.  Do not doubt but believe.” They say every once in a while, the God of the Universe stops doing all the things God does at any given time, and focuses in on one special person for a moment.  Jesus’ second appearance in the Upper Room was that moment for Thomas.  God put everything else on hold to tend to the needs of this one disciple.  What an amazing experience that must have been for Thomas!This week I’ve been thinking about how lucky Thomas was to get that opportunity to see Jesus for himself like that.  To have God put the world on hold to make God’s self known to one person.  We don’t have the Risen Christ with us in that physical way.  We don’t get the same deal Thomas got.  At first, that made me a little jealous.  How often have I wished I could arrange a face to face meeting with God to ask my questions, to see for myself that God is on the job, to know for certain God cares about me. But here’s the good news:  according to the gospel of John, we get an even better deal than Thomas got!  There’s no need for us to be jealous or sad!  Jesus said to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”  Did you hear that?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.  Those of us who came to faith after Thomas, we receive a blessing, a sacred gift, a gift picked out from God just for us, meant to give us exactly what we need to experience wholeness and well-being.Boy is that a surprise!  Jesus made a special stop by the Upper Room just for Thomas’ sake.  That’s a pretty amazing blessing.  How can it be that we are more blessed than that?I think the answer to that lies in what we—meaning, everyone who came to faith after Thomas—what we have to do in order to believe.  We won’t become believers because we saw the risen Christ in the flesh.  We come to faith because we see the SIGNS of the living Christ, and we receive power from the Holy Spirit to interpret these signs.   We need to develop spiritual eyes, eyes of the soul, so we can see the signs of Christ in our midst.  When we see those signs of Christ, we call them Glory Sightings.A few months ago, I got a joke a day calendar on clearance at Kohl’s for a dollar.  I didn’t need the calendar—I just wanted the jokes.  Every day I’d read a few, and most of them were so-so.  But one day I came across this one that made me laugh out loud.  What did the janitor say when he jumped out of the closet?  Supplies!  I left it on my desk, intending to write a note with it in put it in our janitor’s closet for him to see.  But I got busy and forgot about it.  The next day, I found a surprise note on my desk from Joe our janitor.  He had come in to empty my trash can and assumed I had left the joke there for him to see.  Instead of me writing him a note, he left me one that said, “Good one, Pastor Dorry!” This might not sound like a Glory Sighting to you, but that little interaction meant a lot to me.  It was a little sign of God’s love, of how the people of Lima care about one another.  How humor can create community.  How I rarely get everything done in a day that I want to do, but through God’s grace, God’s work gets done.  God’s messages always get through one way or another.It might come as a surprise to us that when Jesus entered the Upper Room, the first thing he said was, “Peace be with you.”  Shalom, the everyday greeting of that time.  But Jesus wasn’t saying it casually.  He truly wanted his disciples to be blessed with every good thing.  He wanted them to know, God cares about our every circumstance.  With those few words, Jesus demonstrated the very nature of God.  God is in the business of blessing us, of bestowing upon us the very things we need in order to fully alive spiritually. It’s no accident that we celebrate Easter during spring, when all of nature is coming alive.  Sneezing is the body’s way of getting fresh air into our heads, of expelling irritants and allergens and things that might prevent us from breathing feeling.  The Easter season is the church’s way of getting fresh air into our souls.  Easter is indeed a joyous day, but rarely does anyone get immediate relief for a troubled soul.  That’s why the early church decided that Easter shouldn’t just be celebrated one Sunday a year.  It should be celebrated for the whole Easter season.  Every Sunday from now until Pentecost we will focus on becoming fully alive spiritually.  And of course, every Sunday of the year is a celebration of Easter, because becoming spiritually alive is indeed our whole life’s work.Jesus comes among us this day and greets us by saying, “Peace be with you.”  Shalom.  It’s like us saying, “God bless you.”  Whatever it is you need today, it is my prayer that you will hear the message and receive the gifts Jesus has for you in those few words.  Amen.