John 20:19-31
Easer 3 / Year C
Imagine you are in Jerusalem gathered with friends in a room where days
before you had shared the Passover meal.
It had been a warm event, not unlike the Agape Meal we experienced on
Maundy Thursday. Jesus, the host, washed
your feet to demonstrate the power and place of loving one another as he loves
us, spoke cryptically about an insider who would betray him, and, generally
speaking, was in a dark mood. Still, all
things considered, you and the others are tired, but upbeat as you make your
way out into the city and across the Kidron Valley to reach the group’s
nighttime destination in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Then everything changes and changes dramatically. An armed palace guard arrests Jesus. After being tried by the Sanhedrin,
interrogated by Romans officials, beaten, whipped, humiliated, and mocked by
soldiers, he is placed before a mob of fellow citizens who demand his execution. He is forced to carry his own cross on a
torturous uphill route to Golgotha.
There he is crucified – one of the most brutal forms of capital
punishment ever devised.
And now, just three days later, you are huddled in the place where days
before Jesus broke bread with you. There
are many questions and few answers. Are
the authorities looking to arrest you as they did Jesus? Will locals be rewarded for turning you
in? What should your next move be? How do you make sense of everything you had
seen and heard and done over the last three years? Why is Jesus’ body be missing from its tomb,
as some of the women reported and Peter verified? Will you ever be able to get over the
crushing grief of losing your rabbi, your leader, and your friend?
The world on the other side of the door where you are gathered holds so
many unknowns. This much is certain, you
and your friends are at great risk. Fear
permeates the air. No one questions why
the door is locked. If anything, perhaps
some wonder why it isn’t barricaded also.
Nothing compares to the emotion you feel when your entire world
collapses. It is completely
disorienting. It is
all-encompassing. It is a kind of numb
so painful you can barely breath. This
is where you and Jesus’ other followers find yourselves.
And then Jesus appears in the room with you. I can’t conceive of a similar experience we
might have to which it compares. It is
unlike anything else which has happened in human history. Given this, the first thing Jesus says to
those of us gathered takes on a special significance: “Peace be with you.” Some commentators note this is merely a
standard cultural greeting. But given
Jesus says it twice and then again when he appears eight days later, it seems
to carry more weight than “Hi everyone, how is it going?” The root of the Hebrew word for peace
denotes “to join”, “to tie together into a whole”, and “wholeness”. It conveys an image of something shattered
being put back together. In a fractured
and broken world, God’s peace restores us to how God intends us to be.
This is what Jesus brings to his followers gathered in that room. And it is more than words. He breathes on them to impart the Holy Spirit
whose work it is to tie together, to make things whole. This two-fold act, along with the awareness
of the Resurrection, changes everything for those present. Notice it changes nothing about the reality
on the other side of the locked door.
The same thugs and sell-outs are still in charge. It remains as hostile as before. But with Jesus present the room becomes a
sanctuary. All fear is banished. There is only peace and unspeakable joy.
Like those early disciples, we live in uncertain and ominous times. If you ask a thousand people to describe the
world today, I am confident not a single person would use the word ‘wholeness’
or anything like it. And yet this is
exactly what Christ offers to you, to me, and to us. Our faith community is a place where we can be
still and know what it is to be tied together by God’s Spirit, to abide in
peace regardless of circumstances.
I like that our Easter lessons have us reading from the Book of Acts
because they remind us what the disciples say and do in the first weeks and
months after the Resurrection. The peace
Christ imparts on them is anything but a private gift. Rather, it empowers them to witness with
boldness to the very people responsible for Jesus’ death. It enables them to speak truth in a troubling
time. The disciples understand their
wholeness is not intended to be solely a personal benefit. They decern it to be God’s gift to the world,
made possible in Christ. This is what
they proclaim. This is how they live.
My hope and prayer is that as you gather here you will experience the presence
of Christ, that this moment will be a sanctuary for you, that you will sense
all things being tied together and made whole, and that you will go out into
the world bearing the peace of God which passes all understanding.
