He is risen! He is risen indeed!  Good morning and welcome. Let’s practice that ancient creed of the early church again. “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!”

 

It’s easy to forget that in the stress and strain, fears and frustrations, the threats and troubles of our daily lives.  Nukes in North Korea and Iran, earthquakes, uncertain economy, and a host of other real and perceived threats that the news keeps spinning in order to keep us tuned in.

 

I wonder how much difference it would make if we spent as much time each day in praise and prayer for the world as we do in fretting and listening to the news and gossip about the world?  What if we turned off the news once in a while and spend that time in prayer?

 

Let’s open our Bibles to Gospel of John 20:19-23.  It’s the evening of that first Easter morning. It’s been a long day filled with confusion, fear, uncertainty. Jesus is missing or I should say his body is missing. When the women reported the empty tomb, Peter and John raced over to check it out but found nothing. Later, the woman reported seeing Jesus alive, resurrected and that he had talked to them and given them a message for the men.

 

Let’s pick up the story at John 2:19 “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews…”

 

We aren’t told where the disciples met. It may well have been the upper room where they gathered with Jesus on Thursday night before the nightmare started. In any case, they were all there, all except Thomas and Judas and of course, Jesus.

 

The doors were locked. The disciples are hiding; afraid of being blamed by the Roman soldiers and the Jewish leaders for breaking the seal on the tomb and robbing the grave.

“… Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’” John 20:19   The Hebrew word is - “Shalom”.  It means health, peace, prosperity, blessing, forgiveness, restoration.

 

Try to imagine the shock, the rush of adrenaline that surged through the disciples. If Jesus suddenly showed up physically among us this morning, would your first impulse be joy or fear?

 

I can’t ask that question without thinking about how people respond on the golf course when they find out I’m a pastor. Some say “That’s great!”  Some just get silent and don’t know what to say.  Some start confessing their sins or making excuses for all kinds of things I know nothing about. Others start complaining that I have an unfair advantage because God is on my side.

 

Occasionally some have even gotten angry and defensive that I would dare get in the way of their game by showing up and shoving my religion down their throat. I want to say, like we did way back in my college days, “Peace, baby!  Chill out!”  I’m not here to condemn you!

 

Remember the last time the disciples had been with Jesus they had all fled and abandoned him to the cross. I’m sure the guilt was so thick in that room you could cut it with a knife. And Jesus says to his less than perfect disciples whom he loves. “Peace, baby!  Chill out!”

 

These aren’t just mere words. They are spoken by the One who called the universe into existence. This is the One who said to the raging sea, “Peace, be still - and it was!”

 

I can’t help what the disciples had been whispering before Jesus showed up? How tempted were they to start passing out blame for what happened? Fearful people behave badly. We scapegoat, blame, resent, hide, harden, hate. We start feuds and wars. What kind of fruit might have grown out of their fear if Jesus hadn’t shown up and said, “Shalom”?

 

Many years later, the old apostle John wrote these words, “Perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not perfected in love.”  1 John 4:18

That’s certainly what happened in that room that night. By perfect, John means, mature, grown up, fully developed – like Jesus’ love for us. Most bad behavior is motivated by fear! We are afraid of being found out. We are afraid of being rejected. Yet the One who knows us completely, the One from whom no secrets can be held, loves us perfectly and in the midst of all our failures comes through our fears and locked doors and says “Shalom, peace baby!”

 

So why is it that when Jesus says “peace” it happens and when the world says “peace” it’s just wishful thinking?  Jeremiah the prophet, points to those who are in denial of the wreckage caused by human sin and go around saying “Peace, peace when in reality there is no peace!”

 

Jesus didn’t just talk about peace, he gave his life to become the source of our peace. “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” Col 1:19-20

When the world says “peace”, it is merely wishful words, an escape into a pretend world. Abused children quickly learn that in order to survive, they need to create their own special pretend place to withdraw. But the peace Jesus brings isn’t like the peace of the world. It doesn’t withdraw from the world, it overcomes the world. Jesus became our peace through the sacrifice of his life and the shedding of his blood that paid the debt of our sin.

 

Vs 20 “After he said this, he showed them his hands and side.”  Why was this so important for the disciples?  Three reasons! First, he wasn’t a ghost. Second, he wasn’t an imposter. Third, he fulfilled all the OT prophesies about the Messiah suffering, being killed, and being raised to life.

To understand this, we need to go back and remember why the Father sent Jesus into the world. Jesus told Pilate that he had come into the world to testify to the truth.  Jesus began almost all his teaching with the words, “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

 

 

 

Jesus told Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that he gave his One and Only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” John 3:16-17

 

God could have abandoned us to a life governed by fear, death, separation from God and from each other, locked in that upper room forever. But instead he intervened on our behalf. Let’s read these words together from Ephesians 2:13-18

 

 

In many ways, the disciples in that room together, locked behind those doors for fear of the Jewish leaders, is a metaphor for the world in which we live. We live in the midst of a culture of fear, blame, hiding, shame, separated from God and from each other. And no matter how we fiddle with our politics and economics hoping to find the secret strategy to free us from our fear, we fall short.

 

What a hopeless place, until Jesus shows up!  Vs 21 “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them…”  Do you remember another time when God breathed on a human being? At creation, God formed Adam out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and Adam became a living being. The coming of the HS is no less than the beginning of a new creation.

 

And then Jesus said, “If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive, they are not forgiven.” John 20:23

 

This is no less than a transformed, renewed culture, a culture where perfect love drives out fear. Doors are unlocked, sins are forgiven, shame, guilt, resentment, revenge are wiped away. A new world where Jesus breaks in to the prisons of fear that still hold us captive with his peace and forgiveness and then sends us out with opened hearts and opened doors to share that love and forgiveness with others.