April 7, 2002
Second Sunday of Easter
Year A
Theme: The disciples didn’t become the church until they moved out of
their fear, until they unlocked the door of that room and greeted the
world that was waiting for their arrival.
This week, and the coming weeks ahead, we find ourselves in the Easter
season…that is, as Michael Piazza reminded us last week in Dallas,
Easter Sunday, is actually the beginning of a time where we literally stay
with the wonder of what the resurrection means, of what it can mean, and
even, even, of what it doesn’t mean. The passage today is actually a
moment where we get a hint of what the resurrection means, a hint of the
doors that are literally opened
because Christ is no longer in the grave. I love this passage because it
has so many layers—it tells a story about faith, a story about fear, a
story about hope literally given flesh and bones. But the word that God
might have for us from this passage at this moment in our lives, perhaps
in this shared journey together that we are on as Cathedral of Hope is
actually found in a very simple truth—in the very simple truth that fear is
not the right response to the resurrection, that locking the door behind
us isn’t the way to greet the living Christ.
The disciples are in that room, and doors are locked, tensions are at a
feverish pitch, despite the fact that they know, except for Thomas, that
the resurrection has happened, that Christ is no longer in the grave, that
Mary has seen him, that she has seen this living Jesus. They sit in that
room, locked up against the world, protected, it seems, from what the
future may hold, stuck in their fear. Resurrection has happened, but you
know what? Something hasn’t happened— these disciples, these men
and women, they haven’t become the church yet. What the disciples
are, at that moment, are some very scared individuals who are incredibly
concerned with their own personal safety. Fear has them locked in that
space and it looks as if its going to keep them there,
at least for the foreseeable future. The reality is that the disciples didn’t
become the church until they moved out of their fear, until they unlocked
the door of that room, of that place of safety, and greeted and welcomed
the world that was awaiting their arrival. It is when they walked out of that
locked room that they became the church. The Spirit will come later, on
the day of Pentecost, and the church will be transformed by that gift of
the Spirit, but here is the moment when the disciples had to decide
whether to walk out of their fear, and, oddly enough, to walk out of the
comfort they thought they found in that fear.
You know, anyone who knows me knows that I am very much the
worrier…one of the things noticed, as I’ve grown older, is that I become
more and more like my family, and I now know that I am very much like
my grandmother on my father’s side, which means that if I was paid to be
worrier,
I would be a millionaire at this point, much to my embarrassment . I hope
the disciples are were not as bad off as I am when it comes to this trait,
but I can relate to this story—I think I would have definitely been in that
locked room, resurrection or no resurrection. I would be worrying about
whether the Romans
were going to hunt me down or whether the religious authorities were out
to get me—I would be there worrying with them—in fact, I would be the
leader of the “really worried faction” of those disciples. But the problem
is that all this worrying, all this fear, about what the future might hold
ends up holding the future
hostage for a ransom no one can pay. The thing with fear is that it
demands a ransom that is unpayable—it demands to know what the
future will hold, what will happen a second from now, minutes from now,
days and years from now, lifetimes from now. And fear won’t let us have
a future without that ransom being paid—it won’t release its hostage, the
very possibility of a future itself, until, ironically enough, fear knows what
that future will be like, what that future will be like for sure. Fear wants to
know what the future is going to hold, that is the ransom that it is asking
of me, of us, of the disciples. The problem, of course, is that nobody can
pay the ransom, except God and God rarely gives us a detailed plan
about how everything is going to turn out, good or bad. The disciples
didn’t know what was going to meet them…the fear stopped them at the
door and it threatened to keep them there forever. But, but, as is always
the case, Christ enters into the picture, literally this time, and he gives
them what they need…one word, one phrase, that he says three times to
them, a word they needed to hear
so that they could walk out of that locked room and BECOME the
church.
“Peace be with you,” he says when he first shows himself to the 10
disciples
and then he says it again to them a few seconds later and then he says
it in a separate visit to Thomas. “In your fear, I give you peace,” he says
to them.
Which is exactly what they needed at that moment—the assurance that
everything is held within the hand of God and that God surrounds us
even when we are scared and even we feel very, very alone. The
disciples needed that peace, that assurance that God was there, even in
the midst of all the unknown that seemed to surround their uncertain
future. Peace was given to them so that they could move beyond their
fear, beyond the four walls they thought would protect them, the four
walls and the locked door that seemed like safety. And it was enough for
them, this promise of peace even in the midst of the real dangers that
faced them outside that locked door, it was enough for them to have the
courage to open the door and to have the courage to tell others about
the Good News of God’s passionate love for the world. That assurance
of peace, even in the midst of their fear, was enough for them to move
out of that place of safety and become the church. So, I know that I
need to hear this message, I need to know that Christ says to me, “In
your fear, peace be with you,” but I also think we all need to hear that
together, as this church, as this community of faith that is sharing a
scary, wondrous journey of faith together. A lot of us spend a lot of our
lives in fear, locked behind closed doors, our future held hostage, held
for ransom by a price that you and I can’t pay—that no one can pay,
which is a guarantee that what meets us outside that door will be all
good, that our fears are completely unfounded. The disciples wanted to
make sure that the Roman authorities wouldn’t come after them, or that
they wouldn’t be despised by the religious authorities. But they weren’t
going to get that assurance—there was no guarantee that their worst
fears wouldn’t come true. Christ doesn’t come into that room to assure
them that hard things won’t meet them in the future—he comes into that
room to assure them that they will have peace to meet the future—that
they will have him with them to greet the best of the future and the worst
of the future. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again—what Christ
promises us outside our locked rooms, out of our places of safety, is not
a lack of pain, but a future of peace, of inward peace. The disciples had
to walk out of that room if they were going to be the church—we too have
to walk out of our places of safety, whether its emotional or job-related,
or relationship-related, or whatever, so that we can meet the future God
has for us. You know, we think—I think—living behind locked doors is
living safely. But its not a place of safety, just as that room in Jerusalem
wasn’t a place of safety for those first disciples. We often find ourselves
at crucial points in our lives living behind locked doors that seem to
promise us safety. We have to make a lifetime of constant decisions to
keep from walking out of that locked room, that locked space, so that we
can be the people that God has called us to be—a people of hope, a
people of grace, a people of goodness, and a people of peace. We
constantly find ourselves making decisions about whether or not we are
going to let fear about the unknown keep the doors locked so that no
one else can get in. No one can get in, of course, but we can’t get out
as well—we’re trapped in that place, in that room. But you know and I
know that Christ will never, never let us stay in that room. In fact the one
person who can get inside our place of safety, that locked room, the
living Christ, that Christ says to us, in our fear about what we do not
know, which, of course, is the future, that Christ says to us, over and
over again, just as he said it over and over again to those first disciples,
“Peace be with you, peace be with you, in your fear, I give you myself.”
And I know and I think we know that THAT will be enough, that peace will
be enough for us to unlock these doors and greet a world that has been
waiting for us and waiting for God’s passionate love to be shared with
them. Amen and amen.
