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SERMONS
Second Sunday of Easter
March 30, 2008
By The Rev. Alston Johnson
Sometimes I find myself in conversations with folks about our faith, and I find that I need to boil some truth of the Gospel down into a singular point, into a nugget, so that they might take it in their hand and carry it with them.
Throughout Jesus’ teaching, there always seems to be a consistent springboard that emerges from within Jesus’ words to his followers; no one, and no thing, has the power to steal your joy, unless we give it that power away. The joy and hope that we have in Christ is unshakable, if we give ourselves unshakably to him.
And this is precisely the spring board that the disciples seem unable to find following Jesus’ death. “ . . . and after his death they were gathered behind locked doors . . .” It may be perhaps one of the only references to “locked doors” that I can recall in the Gospels. I can’t imagine that is what Jesus had in mind for his followers.
But who among us would not be hiding. Their teacher and friend has been essentially lynched in a Kangaroo Court. And Jesus never really gave them an owner’s manual of how to cope with the specifics of surviving in a hostile world. There were seemingly no game plans, no stock tips, no advice, no road map, on the “how to” aspects of survival, other than trusting God, and trusting one another.
Which one us could blame them for hiding?
Some scholars take a bit of a high-handed approach to the disciples at the end of John’s Gospel. One of the writes, “The disciples have failed to believe and commit themselves unconditionally to the one whom the Father sent.” Claiming that the disciples had failed their Lord, and should feel ashamed of having forgotten so quickly, of having thrown in the towel.
Knowing myself as I do, I am not able to join them; knowing others as I do, I am not sure that I know many folks alive or dead, that should point out the disciple’s shame.
I believe the disciples have some very good reasons to be hiding. I believe that they are in hiding adds to the fact that Jesus’s death and resurrection are not a fiction - that it all really happened as the Gospels tell us.
Each of us knows what fear is. The fear that remains after the other shoe has dropped in some situation that suddenly spins far from our control. It is an ache, it is an emptiness, it is a paralysis; it is the deer in the headlights, waiting, powerless, unable to go right or left with all of our coordinates scrambled.
And what makes it especially hard for the disciples is that they thought they had known what they were doing. They thought they had some idea of what was coming. They thought they had read the tea-leaves correctly, found the most important person, and made the fail-safe decision.
But what do they find? They find the world turned against the one they had trusted. They find that Jesus is voluntarily powerless before the world; this leaves His followers exposed. They found themselves facing squarely what it might mean to follow this Jesus. It was all good marching with him in the midst of the cheering crowd waving palms; but it is distinctly different to stand with him when there is nothing but the rubble of a Kingdom that has not come.
These are the hardest failures to swallow in this life; the ones we had no way of predicting would overtake us. Finding ourselves falling in the very places where we have always run with confidence.
I can imagine the disciples. “We knew who we were and who He was as we marched into the city, among the cheers and the hosannas - what happened? What happened in the course of a few days?”
I can imagine our own voices: “I thought I was a good person. I thought that I was a good husband or wife. I thought that I was a good parent. I thought that I was a good disciple.”
And so we can know what the disciples were feeling, because we know what it feels to hide; to find a place, and be small in it. Find a familiar place to hide, lock the doors, never more to raise our heads, never more to raise His voice in our hearts.
“Peace be with you . . .”
That is our Lord’s word to his frightened friends. That is our Lord’s word to us. “Peace be with you . . .”
In the very hour when God might be justified in scolding, might be justified in pointing the finger at us, that is the hour that God completely disarms us with love. That is ultimately how He will conquer us, and win us for himself; by tossing in the olive branch when we might have deserved something else.
In the darkest hour of our fear, of our feeling so small, there is no lock and key, there is no door, there is no hiding place that God means to let stand between his love and our shame, and our fear, and our despair. Because our Lord loves us more than we can love him, there is no longer a “darkest hour.”
And to drive the point home, John tells us about the old doubter - Thomas. “Are the words of your friends not enough for you Thomas? Then put your fingers here, touch me here. Do not doubt but believe!”
Believe that I love you enough to receive these wounds on your behalf. Believe that I love you enough not to make you feel ashamed for abandoning me in your heart. Believe that I love you enough to cover the ground between us, so that you might be mine.
When our castles in the air come tumbling down, as they inevitably will, and all we hear is the rapid and frightened beating of our own hearts in our ears, If we have the courage to listen - we will hear His heart beating with us.
Just on the other side of that door we thought we had locked and barricaded, standing watch in our own Alamo, if we look closely, if we can see, we will find him standing on our side of that door.
Because He is risen, no one, no thing, has the permission to steal our joy and our hope in him.
Jesus goes the distance for us, so that He might come to us, even when we would cover a great distance to move away from him.
“Peace be with you . . .”
“Touch me . . . Touch me friend, so that I might touch you.”
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