Second Sunday in Easter

April 11, 2021 | Sermon Text: John 20:19-31 | by David H. Brooks |

Can you imagine a more dour, sad place than the room where the disciples gathered to face the end? As the evening shadows fell, and they stared into each other faces, do you think that they really spoke at all? Everything that they had believed, staked their lives upon was ashes. They had hoped for glory, victory, vindication, joy—now there was only bitterness and fear. Their leader, their teacher had been grabbed and whisked away like a leaf, turned into one of those who simply disappear until the time is right for the authorities to make a definitive statement: we crush movements like yours, we grind up dreams like yours, we bring down upstart kings like yours. Look on him as his lifeblood flows out, and hope that we do not decide to do the same to you.

So they hide behind locked doors, but no door will hold at bay what pursues them. Guilt and grief find them easily. It was their fault—for all their bluster and pride, their statements of loyalty, their desire to see this through—they were failures, and they had followed a failure. From within their own circle had come the weapon that the religious and political leaders had used to bring Jesus down. The ones that didn’t flee into the night hung around on the edges, useless and afraid, reduced to standing around, watching him die. They had done nothing—even the women of their group had ventured out, done right by Jesus in death, gone to anoint his body so that the man could have a decent burial. Worst of all, the burial committee had come back with a fantastic, impossible tale of talking to him, alive, not just barely alive but wonderfully alive, filled with energy and power. The women had said that Jesus was looking for them…

Better make sure that door is locked tight.

Again, no door will hold at bay what pursues those dispirited disciples, because life itself is on the loose! Jesus appears among them, as easily and casually as if they had encountered each other on the sidewalk.

Did they cringe? Did they draw back? Were they ready for blows, for punishment, for execution? Perhaps that is why the first word that Jesus speaks to his companions when they meet on the glorious side of the Resurrection is “peace.”  Peace! Peace to you all! Peace as only I can give. This, for John, is an echo of the Communion: Jesus is present to his followers. His very body, showing the evidence of it being broken, nonetheless restores koinonia: community, relationship, life. He invites his disciples to hold him, touch him, embrace and kiss him, even as we hold and kiss the precious, holy bread and wine of the Eucharist. Thanksgiving! Such a thanksgiving, for their failures are not the last thing to be said about them, but God has overcome sin and turned their grief to joy!

And with the restoration of community, Jesus gives them the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, the Breath of God, that wild wind that blows where it will—and it blows them into the future, through those locked doors into a world that will be astonished at their message. No authority can crush them, no power can grind away their Godly vision, no earthly rule can bring down the Kingdom that travels on the feet of those who bring Good News!  Jesus gives them Godly power and a Godly purpose, and what happened in that room long ago now reverberates in this room here today.

It is this, the seventh, most glorious sign that Jesus performs that, according to John, launches the Church. The peace that Christ alone can give is here among us, restoring us, uniting us, binding us into a community, into life. The Holy Spirit that Jesus bestows dwells within us, reminding us of God’s good, kind, and wondrous purpose for us. We may have failed our Lord, but he does not fail us! We may have doubted, but he has confidence in us! We may want to hold back, stay on the edges, but he is giving us his own life, setting us humming. We may think that dreams are pointless, but God is granting us a vision that is moving us through shut doors out into the world with Good News so impossible it can only be true. Look out world, here we come! Amen.

The Rev. David H. Brooks

Raleigh, NC USA

Pr.Dave.Brooks@zoho.com