Peace be with you

During Lent our two Ripon churches had a Lent course using the Archbishop of York’s book on the forsaken ness of Jesus on the cross. I do like Stephen Cottrell’s writing and speaking. He often does a pause for thought on Radio 2. 

 

Here’s his take on Easter:

Easter offers something else, something new. What appeared to be defeat, begins afresh, a new creation. This is the story we celebrate today. 

A new beginning. And it tells us that however difficult life can get, and however hopeless the future seems, there is always hope because the God who raised Jesus to life can raise us as well. And in the darkness of poverty, hopelessness, despair, climate crisis and human conflict we see in Jesus, a new and better way, and the hope for a better future.

So, crack open those Easter eggs. Fill your lungs with Alleluias. Uncork the champagne. Turn the music up loud. Put on your dancing shoes. Celebrate. Today something hopeful begins.”

For the Archbishop, Easter breaks into the world, loudly, vibrantly and shakes things up. It’s a party and it’s to celebrate enthusiastically. For mourning has turned into dancing… 

But maybe, just maybe, Easter doesn’t just come like that. It can also come quietly, pastorally, with healing and with peace. Maybe Easter is also about restoring broken souls to health and putting us back together after a horrendous experience… maybe Easter comes when Jesus meets us as we are. 

 

Let’s remember where Jesus’ former followers are after the crucifixion. They are in a locked room in fear, fear of being found out they were part of Jesus’ failed revolution, fear that those who had attempted to silence Jesus by arresting him and putting him to death would now come after them, fear of the future having foolishly followed him and wondering what to do now, they are in a locked room in grief and bereavement, their bodies numb and their mental health shattered, grief about Jesus being so brutally destroyed by the world around them and grief that God did not intervene. When we go through a period of trauma we need time to just be. And sometimes we don’t need people, we push people away. I imagine the locked door might also have been a comfort, the world has gone away. I imagine they tried to support each other, I imagine there were lots of tears, I imagine they sat and wondered how it had all gone so wrong. 

 

What peace is there for tarnished lives,
when love is challenged, hate survives?

What peace for Peter who denied
his friend who hung, his friend who died?

What peace for those who slept away,
while Jesus sweated blood to pray?

What peace for Thomas full of doubt,
with questions hedging all about?

What peace for those who fled away,
when darkness covered brightest day?

What peace when we have let God down,
denied God’s call and made God frown?

Andrew Pratt’s hymn brings the trauma of that upper room alive. Imagine you are Peter in that room. Do you sit and dwell on your denying Jesus? Do you now wish you’d supported him? A few months earlier you’d been the rock on which he would build his church. What about those who couldn’t watch with him in the garden and fell asleep? Imagine you nodded off when he needed you. Do you now feel guilty? And what of Thomas? 

 

John 20: 19 – 31 is always the passage on Low Sunday. I’ve preached about Thomas so often. I’m just going to briefly mention him today. How do you feel if you are him? Full of doubts and questions. Remember his loyalty to Jesus. When the others panicked about going to Jerusalem and an inevitable clash with the authorities he said “let us also go with him that we might die with him.” Where was he when they locked the door? He wasn’t there. Did the others get fed up with his questions all the time? I love that bit in John where Jesus says “you know where I am going.” And he says “no I flipping don’t. I’ve no idea where you are going. How can I know the way?” Maybe with his honesty and his commitment it was all just too much and maybe he didn’t want to be with the others to grieve on his own.

What peace? 

Here’s something else to imagine and get our heads round today. How in shattered ness and bereavement and feeling rough physically and mentally and everything hurting and your world turned upside down with no hope and no future do you react when Jesus comes through the locked door and stands there among you? Shock? Are you hallucinating?

 I think you think “what is he going to say to us?” Remember you’ve let him down. He’s bound to have a go at you, tell you you are a waste of space, ask where were you. 

Now that he is alive, what would Jesus think of his friend Peter, who denied that he knew Jesus – not just one time, but three times – after Jesus was arrested? And what about the other disciples – Jesus’ closest friends who had been travelling with him for three years? How could they face Jesus after he had cared for and invested in them for so long, and yet the minute he was arrested, they bailed on him: they fled and left him to fend for himself in his most excruciating moments as he was spat on, ridiculed, and beaten, nailed to a cross, and hung from it until he took his final breath? Would Jesus be so infuriated with them that he would give up on them? Would he deny, betray, and even condemn them because they had denied and betrayed him? Would they no longer have a place in the Kingdom of God?

My friends, there’s none of that. 

Today I want you to quietly celebrate where Easter begins. The first words of the risen Jesus are these “peace be with you.” Peace. Peace for tarnished lives where love is challenged, hate survives. 

Peace for those who deny God’s call and make God frown, peace not blame for the denier, the doubter, those who flee to save face and not get involved. Peace. 

I dare to suggest to you this is where the Church begins. It begins with forgiveness and a new call, it begins with healing, it begins with Jesus just meeting us, and it begins with a gentle quiet breathing into us of the Holy Spirit. Yes the Holy Spirit comes exuberantly at Pentecost but first those shattered and demoralised disciples are given strength to pick themselves up and find the confidence to unlock the door and go out into the world, a world that hasn’t changed, but they have. Easter is a pastoral act, it’s intimate and restorative. Jesus isn’t interested in the past, but the future. He doesn’t give up on us. He quietly and gently encourages us to start again. He doesn’t ridicule our trauma and our brokenness, he starts his work in us dealing with those things. Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. 

Even behind locked doors, Jesus shows up. And yet, he does not appear to them in the way they had expected and feared. Jesus doesn’t show up angry, bitter, and judgmental. He doesn’t order them to give him answers to why they denied, betrayed, or even hid from him. He doesn’t demand that they ask him for forgiveness. 

Instead, he just shows up, holds out his wrists so that they can touch the holes where he had been nailed to the cross and points to his side so they can see the gash where he had been stabbed with a spear, and he says: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

 

You see, instead of coming with vengeance and wrath – as the disciples had feared – Jesus just shows up to them – in the midst of their fears and failures – and immediately and freely offers them the peace, love, and grace of God – before they even have the chance to open their mouths to explain their actions or to ask him for forgiveness. Jesus just shows up to them in that small room  where they were hiding from and avoiding him – because Jesus wanted them to know that no matter what, they are claimed as God’s beloved children and are cherished and loved by God unconditionally.

 

You see, even in our times of fear, doubts, and questioning – and even when we choose to deny, flee, and hide behind closed and locked doors – Jesus has and will show up. And when he does, he claims us as God’s beloved children – no matter our failures or actions against him – and he offers us his peace and grace before we can even ask for forgiveness or even acknowledge our wrongs.

 

And even if we, like Thomas, miss the first or second or third time Jesus shows up and even if we shut our eyes, turn the other way, Jesus will keep on lovingly and patiently returning to us over and over and over again until we are ready to open our eyes to see him, reach out our hands to touch him, and accept the peace, forgiveness, and unconditional love he offers us.  

 

For: “not even death nor life, not even angels nor demons, not even the present nor the future, nor anything we have done or will do – can separate us from the love of God.”

After the peace, after the Spirit,  John gives us what I think must be one of the greatest understatements in scripture, he writes: ‘then they were glad when they saw the Lord’. I think the rejoicing happens because in saying ‘peace be with you’ Jesus is saying ‘I forgive you, you thought you were no longer my friends but you are still my friends and I say peace be with you’.

Then he does something else astonishing, he says ‘I send you’. He hasn’t thrown his old team out. He recommissions them. Isn’t that amazing?

I understand the Archbishop’s call to an Easter party. But I also need Easter to come pastorally. As I said in my letter for the notices this week at Allhallowgate, we need to let Jesus Easter in us. Maybe Easter should be a verb!  Sometimes we can be like the disciples in that room. 

What peace is there? Well, hear this: Do you feel afraid? Jesus says ‘peace be with you’ Do you feel you’ve let God down? Jesus says ‘peace be with you’

Do you hear God calling you? Jesus says ‘I am sending you’ Do you feel empty or inadequate? Jesus says ‘receive the Holy Spirit.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer could have preached a far better sermon than me today. In a letter in 1940 he wrote this: remember there was little peace going on around him. “We know that God has not abandoned the earth, but has reconquered it, has given it a new future, a new promise. The same earth that God created bore God’s Son and his cross, and on this earth the resurrected appeared to his disciples, and to this earth Christ will return on the last day. Whoever affirms Christ’s resurrection in faith can no longer flee the world, but neither can they fall prey to the world, for in the midst of the old they have recognised God’s new creation.”

 

What peace is there for tarnished lives,
when love is challenged, hate survives?
Remember in that Upper Room,
Christ came and offered peace.

Alleluia! Amen.