Acts 4:32-35; 1 John 5:1-6; John 20:19-31; Psalm 118
April 11, 2021
Randy Plett
From John:
“On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
1. On the evening of that first day of the week, the disciples hid behind locked doors, for fear of the religious authorities. This is the same fear that drove their flight when they abandoned their lord during his arrest, the same fear that caused Simon Peter to deny knowing him. Fear mixed shame and guilt-- a toxic insufferable cocktail. Maybe they blamed themselves for not seeing what Judas had been up to. Fear, shame, guilt. And grief, of course. But a complicated grief. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to have been the Messiah? Disappointment this heavy becomes resignation. Tragic resignation would explain why they had ignored Mary of Magdalen, who had told them she had seen Jesus.
What has fear, guilt, shame and resignation has looked like in your life. What is the nature of your locked doors? For myself, I’ve never locked my doors for fear of religious authorities. I have hidden, though, behind the locked doors of my addiction, for fear of what people thought about me, of rejection; for fear of facing ugly truths about myself. My locked doors isolated me from others, myself and God. I think the same can be said for all sin.
I’m not guilty of running away while my master was arrested, but I am well acquainted with guilt over things I have repeatedly done and left undone. Unconfessed to God and to those I’ve hurt, and hidden behind locked doors, guilt mutates into shame. That is, “I have done worthless things” becomes “I am worthless”.
I haven’t known the tragic resignation of the disciples, when their Messianic hopes were so shattered that they were deaf to Mary’s good news. I’ve known a different kind of resignation. I’ve thought, “I’ve been a Christian for a long time, but I keep sinning like this.” And so I finally gave up on mercy. It’s just too disappointing, so don’t try to get my hopes up again. Like the disciples, I might have answered our Easter phrase “Christ has risen” with (sarcastically) Christ has risen. Indeed.
2. Then Jesus walks through the locked doors, and his first word is “shalom”: a word of reconciliation and renewed friendship. He doesn’t speak a word about their desertion or denial or their disbelief of Mary. Neither does he scold them for their reluctance to believe their own eyes, but shows them his hands and side.
Notice that no one in this story opened the door. It is Christ who takes the initiative to liberate them from barriers of fear and guilt.
I love this story, because I get it. In my own way, Christ has walked through the doors I’ve locked by my own fear, shame, and resignation. Into this place where I do not, cannot love myself, or another, or God, Christ walks, wounded by love, right through these walls and with a word recalls a joy I never thought possible.
Christ comes to liberate us from the prison of self.
3. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.
I love how swiftly, almost dismissively Christ sweeps away the past and sends the disciples out of their locked room to be his ambassadors of peace and reconciliation. These disciples- scared, ashamed, and resigned to disappointment- are made into a community of love. Not “made into”, but inspired. In-spired: It means ‘breathed into’; Jesus does exactly that.
What happens to average, self-centered people when Christ walks through a wall, says Shalom, and breaths on them? A release of inner tensions, sure, but then what? After they unlock the doors? We heard what happened to the frightened apostles in the reading from the book of Acts. They became part of a movement of reconciliation. “All the believers were one in heart and mind.” They played God- that is, they gave everything away. ”No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.”
In my own life, since Christ walked through my own locked doors and said Shalom, I’ve had more modest moments of reconciliation. In fact, I’m writing this homily now, a few hours after making amends with a dear friend who I’ve avoided for years. It might not seem as epic as what we heard in the Acts of the Apostles, but then again, the Apostles didn’t name their book. Editors did that much later. If they had, I’m sure they would have called it Acts of the Holy Spirit. Because just as Christ took the initiative in walking through the doors locked by fear, shame and resignation, so his Spirit filled the sails of his early church. So also in our own way, Christ walks through our virtual walls at G of W, saying Peace be with you. Now go, say and do Peace with one another.
- Why is this the natural law of grace? 1 John reading.
1 John is the easiest book in the bible to read in Greek. John uses simple words and he shuns synonyms. He repeats words to make a point. Here is my attempt at keeping the original words as close as possible:
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God, and everyone who loves the begetter loves the one who is begotten. 2 This is how we know that we love those who God has begotten: by loving the begetter.
In other words, you are parented by God. So naturally, you love your parent. If you love your parent, then the child—yourself! And love the children.
So we know we really love God when we’re loving ourselves and other people, and we know we really love ourselves and other people when we’re loving God. If you get dizzy listening to John, that’s what he wants. John wants you to discover something true by going around in this circle. Love of God, love of self and neighbor, bound like two sides of a ring.