Purposeful Peace

Image courtesy of http://www.cruzblanca.org/hermanoleon/

Before I get started: I want to take a quick sidebar and clarify what John means with his term “the Jews.” This phrase comes up with regularity in the fourth gospel and what John means with this term is the religious authorities, not the entirety of the Jewish people.  It may seem obvious to state this but just to be clear: John was a Jew; Jesus was a Jew; all of the eleven are Jewish people.  They weren’t in hiding from their kin or from themselves, they were hiding from the religious authorities and specific people who were responsible for the death of Jesus.  Certain folks, historically and even today, want to use John’s phrase as a way to indict the Jewish people, and since this evening begins Yom HaShoah, the commemoration of the Jewish Holocaust, I wanted to take a time out to clarify that phrase.

I spent a lot of time in trouble as a kid.  Not in school or in juvenile systems, but at home, I spent a lot of time in my room thinking about what I’d done.  I also spent a lot of time in my room waiting for my father to get home.  You know what I mean: “Just you wait until your father gets home.”  It’s not that Mom was unable or unwilling to give discipline; no, she gave plenty.  But that particular phrase was the one that let me know I was seriously in for it.  It was a phrase that is perfectly designed to strike fear in the hearts of children.

So when I read that the eleven were locked in the room for fear of the Jews—the religious authorities, I understand what John means.  They are in the house waiting for what they feel is the inevitable; their arrest, their mock trial and their deaths. 

This is still the day of the resurrection in John’s timeline.  None of the eleven have met with Jesus; Peter and John have seen the empty tomb, the whole group has heard Magdalene’s testimony of having seen the Lord, but they themselves have not yet encountered the risen Christ and they are paralyzed with fear;  life has become frozen in a moment; they are imprisoned by what may be if they show their faces to the community.

One author writes: “On each birthday, the women of a certain caste in India add four rings of heavy brass, one on each ankle and one on each arm. By the time they reach middle age, they walk with difficulty under this senseless burden. But this is no more senseless than weighing one’s self down with inward fears of failure, of the future, of sickness, of being dependent, of the opinions of people and so on.” (E. Stanley Jones—The Way)

Into their fear-driven imprisonment and paralysis walks Jesus with these words, “Peace be with you.”  The same word that Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves which calmed them in a single moment, he speaks to those who are frozen in fear, “Peace be with you…Peace! Be Still!”  

Maybe the challenge that we face with these words is that we can choose to block their power.  The wind and the waves they respond.  We fearful humans, we hold on to questions, we wonder whether or not the peace of Jesus can truly calm the troubled waters of our souls.

But for the eleven, the word of peace sticks with them and they can see Jesus for who he is.  He shows his wounds, proof that God can transform any horror, proof that death has lost its power and they rejoice.  

But it seems that Jesus knows how susceptible we are to fear because he speaks those words again: “Peace be with you.”  But this peace isn’t about the disciples’ fear of what has been; this peace is to calm the fears of what may be.  Because Jesus follows this instruction of peace with words of commissioning: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

I’ve mentioned before, I think, the way in which my call to ordained ministry began.  I was sitting with my friend Mark and we were talking about Church and I blurted out, “I think it would be kind of cool to be a priest.”  Those words hung there between us for a few moments, and as their seriousness and their gravity sank in, I mentally began trying to pull them back.  The idea that we are called and sent to continue the ministry of reconciliation that God offers in Jesus is seriousness business.  We need to know that we have the peace of Jesus with us as we set about this work, because the peace is for us AND this peace is for others.

Jesus continues by breathing the Holy Spirit onto and into the disciples and he tells them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Please let those words, and their implications, sink in.  If we forgive people their sins, they are set free; if we don’t, they remain in bondage.  We have been given, with the gift of the Holy Spirit, the power to set people free from the rooms they are locked in.  And that freedom comes from the words: “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”

And so here I am today carrying the blessed burden of needing all of you to know the Peace of Christ; needing all of you to hear those freeing words, “Your sins are forgiven, be at peace.”  Because it is in the community where those words, exchanged between those who have encountered the risen Christ, that transformation happens and people are set free.