April 4, 2010 Pastor Tim Pusey

HIS PEACE…OUR PEACE
John 20:19-31
Easter Morning

So let’s talk about the Resurrection. The Resurrection of Jesus was not a spectacular event marked with crashing cymbals and blaring trumpets and lights flashing. It most likely took place as His disciples slept, or as they tried to sleep through another long night of relentless tossing and turning over questions and the heartache of deep disappointment: Jesus was dead—and they were devastated that it was all over! But as they slept—or tried to sleep, the Resurrection of Jesus unfolded like the quiet dawning of a new day proclaiming the defeat of the night.

The risen Christ met His friends personally at unexpected times and places—shocking the daylights out of them, I might add!—dispelling their grief and their doubts. In a moment, everything changed! There were no spectacular accompanying signs that they observed. The only trumpet fanfares were the ones within the souls of those who encountered the Risen Jesus, for everything suddenly changed! Jesus spoke peace to them, and His peace overwhelmed them! They gained the wonderful assurance that things weren’t all over as they had feared. Jesus is alive!—and that changes everything!

If John’s Gospel—His account of Jesus’ life—had ended with chapter 19, it would not have been nearly as exceptional as it was, for all human biographies eventually end with death. We expect that! Without chapter 20, the whole picture of Jesus would have been that of a man of exceptional character, who did miraculous things, who made extraordinary claims and whose sincerity couldn’t reasonably be doubted. But the story would have ended with a terrible sense of frustration. His claims would have been negated, his aspirations would not have been realized, and his teaching would have eventually been dismissed as too lofty to be true. The major difference between the life and teachings of Jesus and those of any other great religious leader lies in the fact that Jesus rose from the dead and the others have not, however persistent their influence may be.

And in presenting the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection, John deals more with its effect on specific persons than with the material proofs our Western minds might prefer! John assumes the reality of the Resurrection because Jesus appeared to him and spoke to him! Jesus spoke peace to John—and John’s life was forever changed by His encounter with the Resurrected Lord! So John tells about how the Resurrection of Jesus impacted other people in such a way that they could never doubt the Resurrection again! Jesus spoke peace to them! Listen now to John’s Gospel, chapter 20, beginning at verse 19—

[read John 20:19-31, NIV]

If I were to mention to you the name Thomas, one of the disciples of Jesus, what would be the first word that pops into your mind? I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the vast majority of those who know anything about Thomas would say some form of the word, “doubt.” In fact, there are many who probably think that Thomas was his last name and that “Doubting” was really his first name, because we know him as “Doubting Thomas.”

It’s probably not fair. The first three Gospels don’t really tell us much of anything about Thomas. John’s Gospel is the only one that does. Thomas is known primarily by his lack of willingness to believe in Christ’s resurrection until he could see Jesus with his own eyes and put his own fingers into Jesus’ wounds. Wouldn’t you have hated to have that reputation and be known for something so negative!

Let me tell you something you may not understand about Doubting Thomas: He was the first to unequivocally declare Jesus to be both his “Lord” and his “God.” Here is the one place in all the Gospels where the Divinity of Christ is bluntly stated. He didn’t just call Jesus his “Teacher”—He called Jesus “my Lord and my God”! This is the only place where Jesus is called “God” without qualification of any kind. Thomas speaks it with the conviction of one who just learned that 2 + 2 = 4. He may have doubted it for a while, but in some ways he was the first to really come to faith in Jesus Christ!

I suppose it will always be a mystery as to why Thomas wasn’t with all the other disciples when Jesus first appeared to them. They were all terribly disheartened, and perhaps Thomas just couldn’t bring himself to be with the rest of the disciples right then. In his solitude, Thomas missed that first resurrection appearance of Jesus to His disciples. And we might do well to note the way in which Christ often chooses to reveal Himself even now is within the community of the Body of believers we call His Church—and any time we isolate ourselves from the community of Christ’s family we put ourselves in the position of missing out on the full blessings He wants to reveal to us. We really do need one another!

I’ve been intrigued again in contemplating the way in which Jesus invaded the house where the disciples were gathered. They had come together—and they were certainly preoccupied with desperation, not knowing where to go from this point. Jesus had been leading them and teaching them, but now he was gone! What were they to do? They had seen what the religious leaders had done to Jesus and so they could not shake the fear that consumed them—fear that what had just happened to Jesus would soon happen to each of them too.

And because of those fears, the doors were locked. Fear speaks “death” to us. Fear consumes us. It seeks to destroy us from within. But despite their locked-up fears, Jesus broke through! He broke past the locked doors and appeared before them. I don’t know how He did it or what it looked like—I just know that He did! And what was it that He said to them—not once, but twice? “Peace be with you!…Peace be with you!” To their fears, Jesus spoke peace!

They were overjoyed! And a peace they had not known came rushing over them like a cleansing, refreshing wave. They experienced such marvelous peace in that moment—and they were to continue to experience such peace over and over again. Christ breathed on them the unfathomable blessing of the Holy Spirit (something we’re going to explore further over the next seven weeks), and He sent them out once again on their God-given mission of taking His forgiveness and cleansing to all people.

But Thomas had missed it! While the other disciples tried to tell Thomas, he would not accept it! These were the men with whom he had shared life for three years, the men with whom he had shared the incredible journey of following Jesus and hearing the life-changing words of Jesus and witnessing all the miraculous things Jesus did for people! But for some reason Thomas couldn’t believe them now! He couldn’t trust what they were saying. He couldn’t take them at their word. He was not willing to believe that Jesus was alive on their word alone. They may have had the doors of their house locked once again out of fear, but Thomas was locked-up within because he couldn’t trust. It must have been a lonely, lonely week for him—and it was a whole week before Jesus would appear to Thomas! Thomas was consumed with his own doubts! There had to have been a real battle going on within him throughout that week—and I’m guessing he spent many sleepless nights pondering the possibilities and snuffing them out by his own stubborn resistance to believe!

But our Lord is so patient with us—and so kind, isn’t He? Jesus appeared to that group once again, this time with Thomas present. And Jesus again spoke peace to them—“Peace be with you!” And then Jesus saw the doubter, and He kindly turned to address Thomas, just as He so many times seems to turn His attention to us as individuals and addresses us right where we are! Jesus invited Thomas to place his fingers on Jesus’ wounds. “Enough of your doubt!” he said. “Stop doubting and believe!” And when Thomas could see and feel for himself, he embraced faith in the resurrected Jesus—his Lord and his God! The peace followed faith and trust!—just as it does for us!

Our Lord Jesus sees this crowd today and He sees past our nice clothes and pleasant smiles to see what’s lurking around the corners of our lives. Most of us—if not all of us—have fears! Life gets messy! Fear eats away at us like cancer! Fear steals our joy! Fear snuffs out our hopes and dreams. Fear can consume our lives! And the Risen Lord has a marvelous way of breaking past the padlocks with which we’ve tried to secure our hearts from further harm—and He comes to give us hope and peace! He breaks past the locked doors of our hearts and invades our lives in the most wonderful way!

And do you know what He says to each of us? “Peace be with you!” Don’t you love those words? Jesus speaks peace to each of us today. “Peace be with you, my friend! I am here…you do not need to be afraid!”

The Biblical word “peace” covers the full realm of relationships in daily life with one another and our relationship with God Himself. To be at peace is to be in harmony with others and, most significantly, to be in harmony with God. Peace nurtures a sense of well-being and wholeness in life that is ultimately untouched by difficult circumstances. When someone speaks God’s peace to us, it’s a prayer for the best that God can give to us!—the most full and complete blessings we can experience in life, blessings that exceed that which is material, blessings that reflect harmony with God.

Do you realize that the peace that Jesus gives was announced in Bethlehem before Christ was born? God announced that peace would come through the gift of God’s unique Son. Now we see this baby grown, having spent His life teaching and reaching lost people, having given His life for us, and having risen again to new life—and our peace is still His mission and His ministry.

It is also the mission that He entrusts to us today—the message we are to take to others. Wherever we go, we are to speak His peace—in our words and in the very lives we live. We say to the world, “Peace be with you.” It’s not the peace of our presence, but rather the peace of the presence of God we are declaring on them. Jesus came to bring peace to all who will look to Him for help and salvation! Jesus died in order that there might be harmony between us and God! And oh! What a difference it makes!

A few years ago a student training to do hospital chaplaincy described to me something he had learned from his mentor. He’d learned to pause before entering a hospital room where he would hope to minister to the spiritual needs of a patient he had never met before. In that brief moment, he was to realize once again that our loving Heavenly Father, by His marvelous prevenient grace, had already entered that hospital room ahead of the chaplain-to-be! And with that assurance this chaplain-in-training could step into the room to be the messenger of God’s peace.

And my mind immediately goes to situations into which I have had to step. I’ll never forget as a young pastor when I had to tell a mom and dad that their 18-year-old daughter had been killed in an automobile accident. It was the same parents I had to visit late one night to share the news that a son had been arrested on attempted murder charges. I’ve stepped into hospitals where people were dying, visited a couple who had lost a baby, was the first person a parishioner came to see after catching her husband in an affair, sat with a friend whose wife had just died suddenly in the night, and stood with people when they were facing the most difficult thing they’d ever faced.

How do you do those things? On my own, I would be so consumed with fear, but I’ve come to expect that the Lord has already entered the scene before me—and He speaks peace to my soul and to those to whom I’ve sought to minister. He is the Living God—and He is there! He had already invaded the space! He had! And with that comes a tremendous sense of peace!

Someone said to me a while back that God doesn’t always lay out the whole roadmap when He’s taking us on a journey. He may only lead us town by town. I mused to the one who said this, “And sometimes He only leads us block by block!” Sometimes we feel like it’s merely inch by inch! And if we can dare to trust the Lord for the whole journey even when we can’t see it, then we can embrace the peace that He wants us to enjoy all along the way! It’s the peace that dispels fear!

I’m wondering if much of this is not at the core a trust issue. Thomas couldn’t trust his fellow disciples; and until he experienced it all on his terms, he wasn’t sure he could ever trust Jesus to be Who others were saying He was!

Could it be that the reason why many of us fail to experience peace day after day is that we not only don’t fully trust others but we don’t even trust God! Perhaps that’s why we too easily feel we’ve got to remain in control and call all the shots. When we don’t fully trust God—with every aspect of our lives and everything that we hold dear—we lock the doors of our lives to keep everyone, including the Lord, out! We clutch what we think is ours! We hold on for dear life! And if life circumstances seem to threaten what we’re holding onto so tightly, it does more than just rattle our cages. It shakes us at our very core—because we’re banking on us being in control—and sometimes, we just have to admit that we’re not in control at all! And I honestly don’t believe the Lord ever expected us to be! He knew life would get messy—messier than we expected and messier than we ever wanted!

As gently but as surely as Jesus invited Thomas to put his finger on the wounds of Jesus and to experience the reality of His resurrected body, Christ gently invites us today to set all of our fears aside to touch Him and to have our faith and trust renewed. There will never be peace for us unless we can experience Christ in this way. It requires a little act of faith, but it opens us up to a whole life of peace as we trust in the One who promises to lead us and guide us and to give us “life” in the truest and most meaningful sense of that word! Our trust in Him opens the door to peace over and over again! He speaks peace to us! The Living Lord brings His Resurrection power to my life and to yours—and He gently calls us away from our fears and into His Presence. And that’s where we find peace.

I’ve been wondering this week if we aren’t our own greatest enemies when it comes to having that kind of trust in Christ. We’re pretty good and pretty capable people. We have learned to handle most of life on our own—and so we’re conditioned to think that we can handle this faith thing on our own too. And we’re trying to do our very best at it—and many of us have even gotten pretty good at this “religion” thing! Listen to what one man had to say in response to this—
To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do—to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst—is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from. (from The Sacred Journey by Frederick Buechner)

You see, we can survive on our own!—but our Creator has in mind more for us than just surviving our way through life! He wants us to thrive! And we weren’t created with a capacity of thriving as God intended each one of us to do without the peace of God dwelling deep within us! We need peace with God in order to experience life at its best—and that’s not something we can do on our own, regardless of how hard we try or even how good we are! But the Living Lord, our Resurrected Savior, speaks peace into our lives as we acknowledge Him as Lord and God.

I’m thinking that’s why Jesus said that the rich person has as hard of a time getting into heaven as a camel would have getting through the eye of a needle—because with his credit card in his pocket and with his thick wad of cash, the rich person is so effective at getting for himself everything else he needs that he doesn’t see that what he needs more than anything else in the world can be had only as a gift! The one thing a clenched fist cannot do is accept a helping hand—even from our Heavenly Father!

Let me ask you a question: What are you afraid of? What are we afraid of? Why would any of us grit our teeth and clench our fists to maintain life as it is when God desperately wants to pour out on us His Holy Spirit with new blessings and new graces to equip us for living life at its best? Can we dare to believe that the Living Lord can do something for us that we cannot do for ourselves?

And the peace that Jesus offers is a gift—just as every blessing we receive is a gift. We can’t concoct peace. We can’t produce it. It’s a gift from God Himself—and we only experience it by His Hands and by His grace. We’ll only experience that peace when we learn to place our trust in Him.

The disciples of Jesus couldn’t produce such peace as they gathered together behind locked doors, consumed as they were with fear and questions and confusion. Their sweaty palms and shaky knees could not produce peace. They had absolutely nothing going for them at that moment except that as they were gathered together the Risen Christ pushed through the locked doors and stood among them!

And despite our proud notions of otherwise, we don’t have much going for us either unless, by the grace of the living God, the Holy Spirit slips through our locked doors and all of the things we have tried to concoct and manage and control on our own! We don’t have much going for us unless the Holy Spirit breaks into our lives and takes over! All of our impressive efforts to be good and to live worthwhile lives don’t matter at all unless the Risen Christ speaks peace into our lives!

Oh, may we experience the intrusion of the Living Christ among us! That is my prayer for each of you today! May He help us to relax our gritted teeth and clenched fists that steel us against a harsh world, and may He speak peace into each of our lives today. Will you trust Him for that this morning?