“Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the
Father has sent me, even so I send you." St. John 20:21
“The doors were locked for fear,”
Saint John tells us. The disciples were
huddling in the dark that first Easter evening, ducking and covering from all
the drama that the spectacle at the empty tomb was likely to unleash. It’s a rather odd postlude to the joyful news
of Easter morning. By sunset, there were
no alleluias in sight. An angel had proclaimed
His resurrection. Christ had appeared to Mary Magdalene. But the disciples didn’t really know what to
make of it all. Their initial excitement
had deflated as they tried to come to terms with what the announcement might
really mean for them.
St. John remembered that they were
frightened of the Jews, the religious authorities, who had a court and a police
force of their own. Jesus had seen the
rough end of their justice a few days earlier, and once the news got out that
there was no body in the tomb, they’d be out looking for someone to blame. Tomb robbery was a serious crime, and though
the disciples were innocent of it, the Sanhedrin didn’t seem to have much
trouble rounding up false witnesses.
Announcing that the true Messiah had been raised by God, that the new
creation had begun--that was even more dangerous, as some of them would find in
a few weeks’ time.
But surely, the disciples were
afraid of Jesus as well. He was their
friend, to be sure, and to have Him back was a great blessing. But if He was really resurrected, they might
be the first to feel His vengeance. As I
mentioned last week, to any ancient Jew, resurrection was first of all about
what would happen at the end of time. Resurrection
was deeply associated with judgment, the destruction of sin, the cleansing of
the world’s abiding evil. If Jesus was
truly resurrected, then He was the world’s true judge, and the disciples were
on the hook for their complicity in all the cruel events of a few days
earlier. Two weeks ago, we closed our
Palm Sunday worship service by singing together one of the great German passion
hymns:
“Who
was the guilty?” we sang, “Who brought this upon thee?
Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone
thee!
'Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied
thee;
I crucified thee.”[1]
And
of course, it true of us, but it was true in an even more fresh and vivid way
for those fearful disciples, those guilty men who hid in the shadows that day.
Jesus appears among them. He doesn’t ask them to open the door. He
doesn’t wait to be recognized or to receive their questions. He speaks first. “Peace be with you,” He says. It is an ordinary greeting in their native
language, the modern Israeli’s “shalom,”
the Arab’s “salaam.” But here it means also those other words He
spoke to them so often “Be not afraid.”
I do not come to you in anger, He means.
I will not insist that you pay for what you have done. Instead, I come to restore you, to fill up
what is lacking in you. In place of your
fear, I give you my peace. It is a word
of mercy, of grace that Christ speaks over them, a precious thing in a world so
filled with violence, pain and fear. It
is the fruit of the resurrection’s victory, because God has made peace with
this sinful world. The resurrection is
the great evidence, as one of our finest collects says,
that He is “carry[ing] out in tranquillity the plan
of salvation; [so that] whole world [may] see and know that things which were
cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made
new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through
whom all things were made,” the only Son,
“Jesus Christ our Lord.”[2]
And then Jesus speaks
peace over them once more—he doesn’t announce peace just once, but peace upon
peace. God had promised just such a
restoration through the prophet Isaiah long before. “I have seen their ways, but I
will heal them;” He
promised. “I will guide them and restore comfort to Israel’s mourners, creating praise
on their lips. Peace upon peace, to those far and near,”[3] says the Lord. “And I will heal them.” There is
peace, healing and forgiveness for the disciples themselves. But peace will also flow through them to
others. “I am sending you,” He
says. "Receive the Holy Spirit. If
you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any,
they are retained." Jesus doesn’t
merely forgive His disciples. He makes them the ones through whom He will
forgive the world. Because they have
tasted of His reconciliation, they can become, as Saint Paul would say, “the
ambassadors of reconciliation”[4] for the whole world.
The Church’s sacred
ministry begins here, in this darkened room, as Christ imparts this peace and
the power to forgive sins. This is the
first Pentecost, you might say, and it is as surely the birthday of the Church
as that splendid morning fifty days later.
In the preaching of the Gospel, in Baptism and the Eucharist, in Holy
Absolution, the church shares out the peace of Christ with the world. And those who share the word, and lift up
the chalice, and pronounce the solemn words of forgiveness, every single one of
them from the apostles to the one ordained yesterday afternoon has this in
common: he or she is a sinner. He or she
stands in need of grace. We give only
what we have first received.
Religious
institutions, you see, are dangerous things.
History shows us time and time again that no power corrupts so easily and
completely as sacred power. A few of you
know this well from personal experience.
Israel’s religious authorities, the men who prayed before the people and
handled holy things, they were the ones who orchestrated the death of God’s
only Son. But make no mistake about
it. Jesus is beginning an institution here, He
establishing a priesthood. And it’s nearly
the first thing He does after rising from death. God’s plan of salvation requires a community,
and like every other community, the church must have its designated leaders,
its hierarchy.
But Jesus does it in an
extraordinary way. He doesn’t choose out
the most promising recruits for this advance guard. He goes to the worst of sinners, those who
knew better and denied him anyway. He
goes to cowards, liars and fools. He
goes to those who can make no pretense of deserving His gift, who can claim no
righteousness of their own. There was
no better way to show that this resurrection gift was for all, that redemption
He had brought must know no bounds. By
giving the means of grace, the keys of the kingdom to the shamefaced apostles,
He was demonstrating, as the great Anglican divine John Donne wrote, that [He] “hath
excommunicated no nation, no shire, no house, no man; He gives none of His ministers leave to say
to any man, thou art not redeemed; He gives no wounded or afflicted conscience
leave to say to itself, I am not redeemed.”
Because there was peace for
those fearful men, there can be peace for you.
Because they were forgiven, so may you, so may anyone, no matter what he
has done, who calls upon the name of the Lord.
Among the fearful huddle, He opens the fountain of mercy whose streams
will flow to the ends of the earth. In
that darkened room, He speaks the word that sets them free and would break
bonds across the generations. “Peace be with you.”
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