Peace Be With You

Sunday, March 30^th, 2008

Second Sunday of Easter

Jerusalem Baptist Church, Emmerton VA

John 20: 19-31

Theme: “Living With the Resurrected Jesus”

 

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” ²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”  

 

                            

We are gathered here today not because we woke up this morning and decided on the spur of the moment to step out of the house and across the yard or into our cars and happened by this building and decided to stop and walk inside – though it would be VERY cool if anyone WERE here for JUST that reason – most of us are here because we have been here before.

 

In some cases, a few of us can’t remember the first time we walked into this building because we were too young at the time.  In other cases, some have been a member of this church since long before the congregation moved into this new building, and remember vividly the first worship service held in this sanctuary.  The point is, there is a history behind our reason for coming here on Sundays and or Wednesdays, or any other day of the week. 

 

If you would, pause for a moment and try to imagine coming into this sanctuary for the first time, having never before been inside a church, never been asked to sit in a padded pew with books in a pocket in front of you, with cards and pencils and odd looking slots and holes inserted here and there. 

 

When you came in you were handed a small folded booklet with a picture on the front and a lot of printing on the inside, and you only had a few minutes before the service started to browse everything that was in there – the announcements, the lists, the calendar of activities, the order of service.  And then the service started and though some things were announced, you still had to multitask and hold the bulletin AND the hymnal, then you had to set it DOWN ENTIRELY during the Jerusalem Hand of Welcome, then you had to flip through a couple of pages to find the responsive reading … if you didn’t know what came next, and were SOMEWHAT familiar with the flow of the service, there’s a pretty good chance you got flustered a couple of times AT LEAST.  For those who have been coming for a long time, it can be equally disconcerting to see a significant change in the order of worship – we are an easily flustered people.           

 

So imagine what it must have been like for the disciples.  They were familiar with death.  They probably saw it every day – whether due to illness, or injury, either animal or human.  First century Palestine was far from a mild society.  The Roman occupation, though relatively peaceful in the broader scope of human experience, at the local level could get pretty ugly.  The practice of the Roman governors was to squash any uprising swiftly and with overwhelming, deadly force, operative word being deadly.  The people of Israel did not suffer their occupation timidly.  There were frequent and numerous uprising by one group or another, trying to rally the rest of the population to take up arms against the occupying armies and throw them out.   

 

The acclamation with which the people of Jerusalem had received Jesus just the week before was probably due primarily to the thought that maybe he would be the one to light the fire that would burn the Governor and his guards out of their land once and forever. 

 

They’d seen more than one charismatic leader rally a few hundred or a few thousand followers to him, to cause an uproar, only to quickly be subdued – and more often than not – also crucified; it had even been the case that the roads leading to Jerusalem had been lined with those who dared attack Rome’s control hanging from Crosses. 

 

The disciples were facing the real probability that they would be following Jesus to death at the hands of the Roman Guards.  They were afraid for their lives.  That was why they went into hiding when Jesus was being crucified.  Things had been quiet since Friday afternoon.  Saturday had come and gone as the Sabbath usually did.  They observed it, and tried to sleep the next evening.  I wonder how much sleep they got – or if they did, how restful it was? 

 

Then, came Sunday morning: they received word that Jesus was alive – or at least that he was not in the tomb where they’d laid him on Friday afternoon.  They’d spent the last three days in hiding, afraid that the fate that had met Jesus would soon be theirs as well, if they were caught and identified as his followers.  Their hearts must have been in turmoil, utter and total chaos.  I imagine them to have been sitting in silence for most of that time.  Sometimes looking at each other guiltily, other times just sitting and staring at the floor, too ashamed of their cowardice to meet each others’ eyes.

 

And suddenly in their midst, there was Jesus standing right there just plain as day.  They COULD literally, reach out and touch him.  He wasn’t an ethereal mist, he wasn’t a semi-transparent image, he wasn’t a sense of presence.  He was a living, breathing, heart-beating, light-stopping, flesh-pressing, finger-pokeable body standing within reach of any and all of them. 

 

And what were his first words to them?  “Peace be with you.”   Jesus knows what they’ve been going through.  He understands that the words they need to hear first were not “Ta-dah!   See?!  I told you so!” but something more to the heart of what they were living.  They were scared.  They were confused.  They were nearly despondent.  And now they were struggling with whether or not to even believe what they’d heard about him. 

What did they most need right then?  Right before Jesus presented them with the fact that he HAD, in fact, been raised from the dead, and that he was ready to empower them to go out and take the good news to the rest of the world?             

 

Twice, in that first meeting he said it.  “Peace be with you”.  As a father, there’s an echo of ‘settle down!’ when I read that in my head.  Sometimes you just want the kids to be still for a minute to let what you are telling them sink in.  There’s also a good bit of “it’s going to be okay” in there as well.  Calming reassurance.  And who better to give it than the Lord Jesus?

 

We know the story.  Thomas wasn’t at the first meeting, and when he was told of what happened, he gave the now-famous response: “unless I see the mark of the nails and put my hand in his side …” An interesting detail to make note of:  and for this I have the lectionary comic strip Agnus Day to thank.  You’ve heard me mention the two sheep, Ted and Rick, before.  In this week’s strip, the topic at hand is Thomas’ nickname.  Not the one he got AFTER this event, but the one he had BEFORE.  If you’ll look at verse 24 you’ll see it: 

 

²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.         

 

See?  Did YOU know Thomas was from Minnesota?  I didn’t! J   Anyway, Ted, the sheep that is more like the disciples, comments that it is weird that scripture points out that Thomas was a twin, but doesn’t tell us WHOSE twin.  Rick, the sheep that is a little more together, responds by saying “I like to believe that THAT makes it possible for him to be MY twin.”   The laugh comes at Ted’s response, which is “that’s funny, you don’t even look Jewish!”

 

But the point is made.  I’d never thought of that particular aspect of the passage.  Thomas’ twin ISN’T identified, and if you think about it, maybe that is a good thing.  It gives US a chance to connect on a very personal level with the most flustered of the disciples.  The one who least wants to accept the new reality they are living in: the one where they are witnesses to the fact that death, which up until the last three years and most especially up until the night before last, had been the most permanent, final word they would be confronted with in their life.  It was no longer that.  There in front of them was the reality of a risen Jesus.  The one who was dead was now alive.    

Now, here’s the thing.  We’ve known this story for nearly two thousand years.  The CHURCH, throughout those intervening centuries, has incorporated the story of doubting Thomas into not only ecclesiastical culture, that is, the culture of the church, but it has, over the course of time, become a cultural term as well – in that part of the world that has been influenced by the Christian tradition in some form or other.  We live in a culture that still has some part of that IN it, but it is a culture that is in transition.  It is no less spiritual, but it IS probably more materialistic, more sense-oriented.  The underlying assumption of modern western culture is that something needs to be scientifically proven in order to be valid, to be believed, to be accepted.  I say that, and then I look back at the passage, and read Jesus’ own words from 1,900 plus years ago and realize that it may not be all that different – then and now:    

 

²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

 

It would seem he’s talking to us here today as well.  Because even though we have HEARD the story all our lives, we have not SEEN the risen Lord with our own eyes.  And yet, we are so used to hearing it that it has become part of our identity.  It is part of what we believe to say that “Christ is Risen”.  At some point, if we have taken on the life of Christ by asking him to be Lord of our lives, we HAVE believed that he DID INDEED rise from the dead, and ascended to heaven, and will some day return to Earth. 

 

But can you imagine the hurdle it would have been for those first eleven disciples and the rest of the folks who followed Jesus HAD HE NOT ACTUALLY BEEN THERE TO SHOW THEM IT WAS HIM?  The degree to which they would have been flustered and confused would probably blow us away – as it did them at first.  As it did Thomas. 

 

So what does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton, the Sunday after Easter, 2008?

 

It means we need to understand that the message we are usually so comfortable with, the claims and affirmations of our faith that are so comforting TO us, WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY BE SO for folks who are NOT so familiar with them.  Remember the words of Paul in his letter to the Corinthian Church: 

 

“Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles”

 

It IS an incredible story we tell.  Let’s be aware of that, and with humility and patience share the story, but more importantly, the LIFE of the risen Christ through our own times of blessed assurance, as well as through our own times of doubting and struggle, because we do, all, at some point in our lives, bear a striking resemblance to Thomas the Twin. 

 

Let’s pray.