Peace Be With You
John 20:19-31
Second Sunday of Easter
Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen. The sermon text for the second Sunday in Easter is the Gospel reading John 20. Many of you know that I worked as a caseworker at the Minnesota Department of Corrections before I became a pastor. I specifically worked with juvenile delinquents. The residents that I worked with were placed in a correctional facility. There was a fence placed around the grounds to prevent escape. We told the residents what time they were to wake up. We told them when to eat and when to go to school and when to go to bed. They were not allowed to wear their own clothing. They had to wear the blue uniforms that we gave them. If they did not do what they were told we placed them in the security unit. They were placed in a small cell with concrete walls. There was no escape. The residents that I worked with lived in a prison for teenagers. While working in corrections I got many opportunities to see adult prisoners as well. In prison one’s freedom is taken away.
We are not behind bars, but we are all capable of making our own prison. That is what happened to the disciples in our Gospel reading. On the evening of that first Easter day they locked themselves in a room. They locked themselves in a room because they were filled with fear and doubt. They were afraid that the Jewish leaders would arrest them. They doubted the women that told them about our Lord’s resurrection. Earlier in the day Peter and John went down to the tomb and saw that it was empty yet the disciples locked themselves in a room. They created their own prison. They should have been overjoyed when Mary Magdalene and the other women told them that Jesus was alive but instead they huddled in a room. When they heard the good news about Jesus they should have walked the streets with confidence knowing that they belonged to the Kingdom of God. They had nothing to fear and nothing to doubt. But they were still in Good Friday mode. They saw Jesus die but they still did not understand the Gospel because they did not believe in the resurrection of Jesus. They were filled with fear and doubt and so they created their own prison and locked themselves in a room. This is the church at its worst. Hunkered down, huddled together, letting fear rather than faith in the Lord control their every thought and action.
That is why Christ came to the disciples on the evening of that first Easter and showed them that He was alive. The first words that He said to them was, “Peace be with you”. He was telling His disciples that He forgave them. He was telling His disciples that through Him they now have peace with God. This was the whole point of what Jesus had just been through. Jesus’ death on the cross was to reestablish the peace between God and man that had been shattered when we first sinned. Sin will always stand in separation between God and people. In sin, we live for ourselves, not for others. In sin, we cannot be in harmony. In sin, we could never be with God, because His holiness cannot be in relationship with unholiness. But by taking our sin to the cross, Christ removed the separation and reconciled us to God, bringing us back into peace with Him.
The whole scene repeats a week later when Thomas, at last, is with the disciples. The doors are still locked, but Jesus comes again. He speaks the same word. “Peace be with you.” Jesus encourages Thomas to touch and see His wounds. “Do not disbelieve but believe.”
Even though two thousand years have passed since that first Easter evening, the church still struggles to get out from behind locked doors and into the world. While we might not fear suffering in the same way as the Apostles, there is much to be concerned about in the twenty-first century as there was in the first century. There are many difficulties that the church is facing in our present age. We hear all the time that the church is aging and in decline. We look at the world around us and we see that it is becoming more hostile towards Biblical Christianity. There are many harmful ideologies and false religions that oppose Christian teaching. We see a culture that is increasingly becoming more pagan. We worry about our family members and friends who are drifting away from the Lord. We are concerned about the world that our children and grandchildren will be living in. It is not hard to list things that bring fear to God’s people today.
The temptation is to focus all our attention on our fear and let that fear paralyze us. When we look at the disciples huddled in the room, we see something very important. It was not about the world locking its doors to the Gospel, but how the church locks itself away from the world. The irony of the disciples’ locked doors is that they weren’t really keeping out soldiers looking to crucify them. The One that they were locking out was Jesus. They locked out the word He had so clearly spoken to them about dying and rising again. When fear becomes our focus, we fall into the same trap; we lock out the Lord, who time and time and time again tells His church, “Do not be afraid!”
Jesus will not leave His people in fear and doubt. If the grave could not keep Him in the ground, the locked doors of the disciples would not keep Him outside the room where they were gathered. And so, He comes and stands among them and us and speaks His word. It is a word that brings the very thing it says: “Peace be with you.”
This is Jesus’s word to you this second Sunday of Easter. “Peace be with you.” “Peace, your sin is forgiven.” “Do not fear the world. I have overcome the world. Peace be with you.” That word of Jesus comes to you and me today, with the same power as it came to those first disciples on the first Easter and to Thomas a week later. The words and actions of Jesus have been written down for us so that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing have life in His Name. In His word, Jesus comes among us today, and we experience the power of His voice. He doesn’t just tell us about peace, but He actually speaks peace to you and me.
The disciples did not remain huddled in that room. By the power of the Holy Spirit, they went into the world and they proclaimed the Gospel and confessed the truth about Jesus. We are certainly not apostles, but we are followers of Christ. We come to church to confess our sins, receive absolution, and to hear God’s Word. We come to church to remember our Baptism and partake in the body and blood of our Lord in Holy Communion. We are strengthened by the Lord’s gifts and then we go out into the world. We go into the world, in our various vocations, and we confess Christ. We hold to the Word of God. We share the Gospel. As we go into the world our voice will not be the loudest, or the most entertaining but it will speak the truth of Christ. It is the truth of Christ that sets people free so that all who are locked behind doors of fear, sin, sickness and even death itself might hear the words of Jesus. “Peace be with you.” Amen.