Peace Be With You

While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’³⁷They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. ³⁸He said to them, ‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? ³⁹Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ ⁴⁰And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.^{* 41}While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ ⁴²They gave him a piece of broiled fish, ⁴³and he took it and ate in their presence. 44 Then he said to them, ‘These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled.’ ⁴⁵Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, ⁴⁶and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things.

Luke 24:36b-48

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:19-31

I love that our lectionary gospel stories for the two Sundays following Easter find the disciples locked behind closed doors in a room, hidden away from the world, scared for their lives, not believing the stories of new life they have been hearing from the women who stayed by the tomb so long they finally found it empty—not believing until Jesus walks in the room himself, wounds healing a bit, giving his best greeting: “Peace be with you.” Our stories find the witnesses, find the first readers of the gospels as they were written down many years later, and yes, all of us, in a state of disbelief that it all really happened, not understanding how Christ has come back to life, doubting the best news so faithfully shared by the women. Thomas, one of the disciples, is MIA for some reason we are not told, and when he comes back to hear the good news, he stares in disbelief: “No way. ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’”

Thomas has been called many things throughout the generations—everything from doubting and stupid and faithless to smart and curious and faithful. I love this story, love Thomas, because he forces us to ask the very same questions ourselves—Are the stories true? Can they be? Is there any way our Savior could have come back to life? And if so, can I truly believe it if I can’t see his wounds and touch his pain? I love Thomas’ story so much because I suspect that a little bit of him lies deep down inside every one of us, the doubt that leads us to deep, tough questions about faith, the doubt that resists easy answers, the doubt that fuels the need for us to truly see and feel and touch and experience to believe.

I think John’s story of Thomas’ doubt, as well as the resurrection story of doubt that Luke gives us are crucial stories for us to hear as folks who claim Easter resurrection. Sadly, doubt has become a maligned concept in some of the more narrow and shallow theology we hear nowadays—that if you are a follower of Christ, you cannot express any doubt, that faithfulness and doubt are complete and total opposites, that you can’t express any doubt in God or in God’s world if you’re a “real” Christian. I’ve listened to our students share stories of folks who have told them they are unfaithful when they dare to express doubt—which is heartbreaking if you’ve ever spent time with them and know how truly faithful they are.

I don’t know why this is. Perhaps it’s because we live in a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional world where there is much gray area, so many moral questions to be faced each day, so much happening that it’s tempting for us to shut down and ignore it all rather than delve deep into the hard questions and tough possibilities. Maybe, when there’s so much hard stuff in the world that tempts us to shut down, we feel that it’s sinful to question God’s actions or non-actions as the case may be, God’s purpose or intention for creation. Where was God when the poorest country in the Western hemisphere suffered an earthquake that destroyed the country and killed 200,000 people? Where is God in a world full of Boko Haram and ISIS killers? Why does God allow good people to suffer? Why couldn’t God have stepped in to save a Son from a ghastly death on the cross? These are hard questions, tough stuff—and I think it’s tempting for the world to see them as faithless questions of shallow doubt instead of faithful questions of crucial, thoughtful doubt to our Creator—our Creator who can take anything thrown his way.

The world encourages us, tells us not to ask these big, huge questions of God, not to question God’s activity in the world. The world tells us that it’s not ok to doubt, that it’s unfaithful. But Thomas tells us otherwise. Thomas has seen so much that is unbelievable over the previous few days—prophecies and violence and murder at the hands of the authorities. He doesn’t believe what the disciples are now telling him, that Jesus is indeed alive—he simply says, “I need to see it, to touch him, to experience it myself.” The world would tell us that Thomas is unfaithful in expressing this disbelief, this doubt—that, as a popular song tells us, Thomas is “of little faith.” But I think the world has this one wrong. In saying that he needs to see Christ for himself, to touch the wounds deep down in his side, Thomas is acknowledging the horror of what he has seen, the awfulness of watching his friend and leader die. He is saying that he can’t allow himself to believe, to live into the possibility of the best news of all, until he sees it, feels it, believes it in his bones. Only then can he open himself back up to the hope of resurrection. This is not a denial of faith, but just the opposite—a deep, abiding, encompassing hope of faith encased in a healthy sense of doubt.

I love how writer and theologian Frederick Buechner describes the scene in that room when Jesus first appears to everyone but Thomas, and then Thomas several days later:  

…in the next few days all the things that everybody could see were going to happen happened, and Jesus was dead just as he’d said he’d be. That much Thomas was sure of…There was no doubt about it. And then the thing that nobody had ever been quite able to believe would happen happened too. Thomas wasn’t around at the time, but all the rest of them were. They were sitting crowded together in a room with the door locked…scared sick they’d be the ones to get it next, when suddenly Jesus came in…he said shalom and then showed them enough of where the Romans had let him have it to convince them he was as real as they were if not more so…When [Thomas] finally returned and they told him what had happened…[Thomas] said that unless Jesus came back again so he could not only see the marks for himself but actually touch them, he was afraid that, much as he hated to say so, he simply couldn’t believe that what they had seen was anything more than the product of wishful thinking. Eight days later, when Jesus did come back, Thomas got his wish…Even though [Jesus] said the greater blessing is for those who believe without seeing, it’s hard to imagine that there’s a believer anywhere who wouldn’t have traded places with Thomas, given the chance, and seen that face and heard that voice and touched those ruined hands (Peculiar Treasures, “Thomas”).

What a fabulous description of that scene! Jesus says to the disciples that it’s more blessed to believe without seeing because he knows the bigger picture, that this story will be told through thousands of generations of Christians who will never be able to see and touch and feel Christ’s wounded body for ourselves; he knows that the story will be told despite doubt, through doubt and because of doubt. But for that moment, for this day, Jesus affirms Thomas, his doubts and all, affirms Thomas as he proclaims resurrection life. Jesus comes to Thomas, opens himself up to Thomas and his doubts and questions and faithfulness, meets Thomas where he is and affirms him. And in doing so, Jesus affirms that there is a bit of Thomas deep down inside every single one of us—affirms that doubt is natural and necessary and vital to our life of faith, affirms that we, too, are all folks who yearn to feel, see, and hope for the great news of resurrection in our lives.

In their stories of the days following the resurrection, Luke and John both tell us that Jesus breaks in to find us where we are, just as he found the disciples, finds us asking deep questions of doubt, expressing our faith in so many different ways. Just as Jesus was determined to get to the disciples then, he is determined to get to us when are asking the deep, profound questions, the ones peppered with doubt, when we are desperate to see him and feel him and touch him and sense him in our midst. He is determined to say to us, “Peace be with you, no matter wherever you are, no matter what you are feeling or believing, no matter what is happening in your lives.” This is fantastic news. But here is the best news of all—although there is a bit of the skeptical, doubting, probing, faithful Thomas in all of us, we are all a bit different from him simply by the fact that we are not bound by our conceptions of who we think he is, what we think he looked like. Unlike Thomas, we don’t know because he lived 2000 years ago. Sounds like yucky news on the surface, but think about it. It opens up a new world of possibility to us; a new world of possibility where the affirmation “peace be with you” can come in so many ways. Serene Jones, the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, says it beautifully:

It is good news, indeed. In the different seasons of our life, Jesus’s appearance is certain to change, and we will not always know him, particularly when hardships have given us many reasons to doubt. One moment he may come to us dressed in golden garb, calling us to celebrate joyously the richness of spirit faith promises. The next, however, he may come wearing beggar’s rags, reminding us that the love which saves is vulnerable and costly, and that the glory which awaits us is humble in texture and well worn in feel. At still other times, he may come to us wrapped in the wool shawl of the wise old grandmother who simply holds us as we weep. Whatever his appearance may be, though, we will know it is he if inside those golden garbs, street-faded rags, or warm knitted cape, we find not a logically argued response to our questioning faith but a surprising proclamation of peace and touching love that is stronger than even violent death itself. In the wonder of those wounds he finds us (Feasting on the Word, Year B)

In the wonder of those wounds, he finds us indeed. Thanks be to God.

Mandatum (Maundy Thursday sermon)

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” ⁷Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” ⁸Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” ⁹Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” ¹⁰Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.” ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, “Not all of you are clean.” ¹²After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. ¹⁶Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. ¹⁷If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them. ³¹When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

John 13:1-17; 31-35

In 2007, Randy Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who at age 47 still had so much life to live and so much love to experience, received the awful diagnosis of pancreatic cancer; he was told that he only had 6 months left to spend with his family and friends, with his students and community. He decided to spend his remaining time being with his kids who were way too young to lose their dad, but he did something else. But, facing his own mortality, he also did something else—he taught. In his professor way, teaching until the end, he wrote a final lecture, sharing the most important things in life, the most important things to remember when all else is stripped away, when all pretenses are gone, when the most important things in life seem to make their way to the top.

In his lecture, Randy wrote these words:

I'm dying and I'm having fun. And I'm going to keep having fun every day I have left. Because there's no other way to play. Show gratitude. Don’t complain, just wok harder. Be good at something. It makes you valuable. Work hard. Find the best in everybody. … you might have to wait a long time, sometimes years, but people will show you their good side. Just keep waiting no matter how long it takes. No one is all evil. Everybody has a good side, just keep waiting, it will come out.”

What beautiful words to leave for us all as he was facing death—deep to think about, but not deep enough to get us confused and cause us to quit thinking; beautiful in their simplicity and ease of understanding.

And this is where we find ourselves this evening, standing in the shadow of death, worshiping and sharing a meal together, experiencing and remembering Christ’s last day on earth, hearing some of his final words to the disciples, to all of us. The time of crucifixion is very near, the reality of what is coming very real. The disciples and friends gathered there, all of us gathered here, want to hear more from Christ, to take it all in, to make sure we haven’t missed anything before he leaves us. We have sung the words to Jesus, asking for his help in understanding one more time: “Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve, the neighbors we have from you.”

Jesus knows that the hour has come, that his time is coming to an end. And he leaves his disciples and friends and all of us with the most important message of all: “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” When his life is coming to and end, when all other hopes and airs, presumptions and pretenses are stripped away, when Jesus and all of us are faced with his mortality, Jesus leaves us with the message of love. And, in case we are too dense to truly understand it, Jesus shows us how to love in the simplest way.

Jesus shares a final, simple meal with his friends. He eats with all of those gathered, with those who have left their lives and livelihoods to follow him, with the ones who will fall asleep on him in the garden and leave him at this death, those who will stay under the cross, shares a meal with the one who will repeatedly deny him, even with the one who has already betrayed him. Jesus invites all of them to the table, opens it to them regardless of who they are or what they have done. He doesn’t turn anyone away, and shares the gift of food with them. This simple act tells those gathered there, tells all of us, that love is about invitation. It is about welcome. That love is about the very hard stuff that comes with forgiveness. That is how you love.

After the meal has been shared, Jesus rises from the table, wraps a towel around himself, and pours water in a basin. He kneels at the disciples’ dirty, tired, and worn feet, taking them in his hands, massaging them clean and washing them dry. These actions are normally reserved for the lowliest of the low slaves among them, actions designed to remind the slaves of their station in lives, reminding them that they are subservient and always will be. In taking on that role himself, Jesus turns the table and shows love to all of them by touching them and their hurt places, by washing them clean, reminding them that we should all serve each other—that love means turning the most menial tasks into acts of love for each other. Through this amazing act, he also reminds them that no one is any better or any greater than any other: “So, if I your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly I tell you, servants are not greater than their master…” He reminds them and us once again that no one is greater or better than any other, that we are called to treat everyone equally, to love them that way. That is how you love.

And in case we haven’t gotten it already, Jesus loves us enough to leave us with a new commandment, to make his last words absolutely clear to those gathered around the table, to all of us: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” In case there was any debate left on the issue, any debate on what Jesus said or didn’t say, Jesus makes it clear—that disciples, that Christians, that all of us are truly known by how we love. Love means sharing meals with those who have never hurt us and those who have. Love means washing each others’ feet and offering waters of forgiveness. Love means getting rid of the terms “servant” and “master,” seeing and treating each person equally. Love means living by Christ’s new commandment through each and every breath of our lives.

Jesu, Jesu, fill us with your love, show us how to serve, the neighbors we have from you.