Sunday Sermon 19th April 2020

John 20: 19-31

Our Gospel this morning is a continuation of the story of Jesus resurrection from John 20, my favourite chapter of the whole Bible. Last Sunday, Easter day, we read that Jesus has been raised – but that is only half the story.

Jesus mission to restore humanity into a right relationship with God, would now depend on his followers.  It would be up to Peter, James, John and all the others who swore that they would follow Jesus forever, even unto death, and who had run away and left him. These were the people on whom Jesus would build his church.  We might wonder if this is such a good idea.

In our Easter worship services, we tend to skip from Good Friday to Easter Sunday, but have you ever really thought what Easter Saturday was like for Jesus friends?  In sharing this story of the disciples, the Gospel writers use their experiences to teach us about the reality of faith.

For us, Easter Saturday is usually a time of preparation.  The church is cleaned, decorated with flowers and food prepared for the great celebration on Sunday. We know that there is to be a resurrection and celebration, but the first believers had no idea what might happen after Jesus burial. Possible arrest and execution for them too. We can read the Gospel this morning and know how the story ends.  Jesus would return and they would carry on his mission of the Good News.  But they didn’t know that: all they knew was shock, fear and pain.

Jesus followers and friends are clearly traumatised by what has happened to Jesus; and I wonder if they aren’t a little disappointed in themselves.  For all their brave talk about standing alongside Jesus unto death, most of them ran away and left Jesus alone to face his fate.
In our Gospel this morning, we find them hiding behind locked doors and probably wondering what  they were supposed to do now that Jesus was no longer with them.  Had they wasted the last 3 years following Jesus around Israel? 

Could they return to their old lives and forget those 3 years? These men and women had believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah.  They had given up their own lives to follow him.  They had seen Jesus heal the sick, feed the hungry, shower love on the outcasts, and give life to the dead. They had believed that God’s kingdom would come because of Jesus and that things would be so different. And only a week earlier, they had watched as Jesus enjoyed the adulation of the people as he rode into 

Jerusalem on a donkey, and the people wanted to make Jesus their king. 

They had been a part of the big celebration and had such high hopes. And now, Jesus has been publicly humiliated, tortured and executed with two criminals.  And they were in hiding.  

The reaction of the disciples to everything that has happened shows us their humanity. The Gospel writers don’t pretend that the disciples are all superheroes.  They are as fragile as we are. We can sympathise with them.  I would suggest that there can few of us who have not at some point in our life been afraid, or paralysed by disappointment, felt rejected, or numbed by grief, or believed that we have made a terrible mistake.  I would be amazed if there were no one, who has not had their own personal Easter Saturday.

And into the disciples’ dark and fearful place, Jesus suddenly appears.

I love the Bible stories of angelic visitations, and the first thing the angel always says is “fear not”, whether it is to Abraham, to Hagar or to Mary and Joseph. A Biblical angel is not a cute little doll, or a little fairy with pretty wings, but rather a superhuman agent, a messenger of God, so I suspect that the angels are well aware that their appearance is a cause of great alarm to mere humans like us.
How much more terrifying to have Jesus, the man they believed to be dead, appear in the locked room with them. What did Jesus want with them now?  Would he tell them they were a disappointment to him?

Here’s what Jesus didn’t say to them:  he didn’t say:

Where were you when I needed you most. 
Why did you run away and leave me to die alone.
Why didn’t you have faith in me.

You are all such a disappointment to me – have I wasted three years of teaching on you? 

Instead of condemnation, Jesus speaks words of love.  Jesus overcomes their shock and fear by offering them the familiar greeting “Shalom” or peace be with you.  A little like the angelic greeting of “fear not”, or “don’t panic”.

We may understand peace as just an absence of stress or the opposite of war, but the Hebrew word shalom is much richer.  In the Hebrew Scriptures, shalom means “wellbeing” in the fullest sense of the word.  May you have health, happiness and good fortune. It gathers up all the blessings of God: shalom means may you live under the fullest blessings of God forever.  No condemnation, only love.

Jesus gives these weak humans authority to continue his mission.  They are to come out of hiding, and go out into the world and share the Good News of Jesus. They would have his authority and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.  They went from fear and uncertainty to men and women who were prepared to take on the world.  From darkness to light.

The man who wasn’t there with the other disciples when Jesus appeared, and who missed seeing Jesus’s scars, is forever known as doubting Thomas.  I like Thomas, because he wasn’t afraid to express his doubts.  He knew that Jesus was dead and the stories his friends were telling him were too outrageous to be true.  When Jesus reappeared and spoke to Thomas, he didn’t call him a fool, or a disappointment, either. No, Jesus told him “look at my hands, look at the wound in my side and believe.  And continue my mission.”  And as we read in the passage from Acts 5, the disciples did continue Jesus mission.  The fact that we are here this morning testifies to that fact.

The Gospel stories were written to encourage us.  Like the disciples, there are times when life disappoints us in some way, and we find it hard to hold on to our faith. Like those first disciples who had no idea what their lives would look like without Jesus, our lives have been changed in a way we could never have imagined. 

We have no idea when our lives will return to normal or what normal will look like.  Like them, we are trying to find a way through.  We can only imagine how lives will have been changed when we are all allowed to resume our lives.

My hope is that we will all have learned not to take our lives, our friends and our families for granted.  I hope we shall all have realised how precious life is.  And I hope that we will all have learned to be kind to each other.                       

When we read the scriptures, we find that we are not alone in our struggles.  Others have struggled as well.  Remember Abraham, who waited a lifetime for a son.  Job, who lost everything he loved.  

David, whose own son turned against him. Peter, who denied Jesus three times and Thomas who doubted Jesus resurrection.  Yet we remember their courage and positive influence on people of faith.  God didn’t give up on them and God never gives up on us either.

Allow the Gospel stories of Easter remind us that we can grow from fear to certainty, from hiding our faith to speaking our faith, empowered by the holy spirit to teach and encourage one another.  We have a future.

We are not alone; we have each other, even though we are apart, and we have God, who loves each of unconditionally, not because we deserve that love, but because of God cannot help but love.

AMEN