A Sermon Delivered by The Rev. John D. Painter at Centenary United Methodist Church Metuchen, New Jersey March 30, 2008 (The Second Sunday of Easter)

Text: John 20:19-31
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, NRSV

“Men at forty close doors more slowly,” says the poet, Dylan Thomas. This is true. I’m well past 40, and I can testify that the longer you live the more you learn to be careful about closing doors. Be careful when you slam the door in someone’s face saying, “I’m done with you! It’s over!” Someday you might have to go back, open that door, and try to resume the relationship that you thought you had sealed shut.

True, part of growing up, becoming wise, is learning when to close a door. Sometimes we keep coming back again and again, going over the same old script, trying to make the unworkable work. It is wisdom to know when to close the door firmly and move on into another room. You’ve got to know when to risk and put down your bet, and you’ve got to know when to fold, when to cut your losses, and close the door on the game.

Thus we find the disciples of Jesus. For about three years they have trooped along behind him on the Galilean highways and byways. They have tried to understand his teaching, which hasn’t always been easy. They have heard him speak of himself as the Christ, the Messiah, and the Holy One of God who is “one with the Father.”

But all of that seems distant to them now—only a dream after the horrible nightmare of the previous week. Can you imagine the trauma of seeing the one whom you thought to be the Savior of the world terribly beaten, whipped, and crucified? Now Jesus has been sealed in the tomb for three days. Pontius Pilate has shut the door on the King of the Jews once and for all.

John says that the disciples gathered that night—the first day of the week. The events of the past week have plunged them all into darkness, and now they are cowering together, filled with fear. The same authorities who had killed Jesus may now be after Jesus’ followers. So the doors to the “upper room” are shut and locked tight.

John says that the doors were shut and locked “from fear.” And they had much for which to be fearful. But some of them also may have been filled with grief. And well they should grieve, for in the death of Jesus they have suffered a great loss—shut the doors. That’s what the disciples have done. They have closed the doors on their past with Jesus, and they are adjusting to the facts. It’s over. It was good while it lasted. But now: Close the door!

And then, at their lowest—in the dead of night—the Risen Christ appeared before them. He said, “Peace,” to them. He breathed on them. He bestowed on them the power to forgive the sins of others. In short, he gave them all the power and all the Spirit that so empowered his ministry.
But perhaps most amazing of all, Christ came through their locked doors. The dark tomb could not hold him, nor could the dark despair and resignation of his followers. He came back to them, even through their closed and tightly locked doors.

Here is Easter hope. The resurrection doesn’t simply mean that Jesus rose to eternal life. It doesn’t simply mean that we hope to see our loved ones when we die. It also means that the very first thing that the Risen Christ does is return to the same cowardly and misunderstanding disciples who had so disappointed and forsaken him. He came through their locked doors.

I say that is the Easter hope because we gather today—just as those first disciples gathered—as those who are occasionally cowardly in our commitment to the way of Jesus and misunderstanding of much of his teaching. We also gather behind locked doors. The fire marshal won’t let us lock the exit doors in this building, but there are still locked doors. There are the doors of our hearts that we have locked down in the prison that consists of despair—“God has disappointed me before, I won’t trust God again” or, “He is hopeless. He will never get over this addiction” or, “I’m dying, and I’m dying alone.”

The claim of Easter—that Jesus was raised from the dead—is so outrageous against our typical patterns of thinking about things, is so beyond the reach of our powers of comprehension, that many people just naturally want some proof of this claim. They wish we knew the location of the empty tomb. They long for some historically verifiable shred of documentation whereby we could prove—historically and empirically—that the resurrection is true.

But you can’t prove that Easter is true by going backward, only by going forward. Because John says that’s where the risen Christ is: on the move, ahead of us, not behind us.

You know what is for me the main proof of Easter? It’s you! And the millions of others gathered around the world today to continue the Easter celebrations. Despite all of the setbacks and the perfectly good, understandable, rational reasons why you should not be here, more than 2000 years after the first Easter, here you are. Jesus told us that where two or three are gathered in his name, he would be there. And here he is—among us, undeniably present.

As your pastor I’ve seen the risen Christ,—not seen him as he was, striding forth from the tomb, nail prints in his hands—but gloriously raised. I have seen him as he is, undeniably present in you. You have shown me things happening in your life, you have testified to amazing twists and turns in your journey, inspiring new hope and uplifted faith that can only be explained by reference to the fact that Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.

Easter is the promise that God will never leave us to our own devices, will not be defeated by us. Easter is the firm assurance that God will get what God wants.

There is great good news here, Easter news. I know that some of you may have trouble believing. You are filled with doubts and some of those doubts are mixed with fear. You have sometimes failed in your attempts to be a faithful follower of Jesus. You don’t know what tomorrow holds for you, and that scares you.

Well, here’s the good news: the Risen Christ can come through locked doors. There is no security system that’s been devised that can keep you safe from his incursions. He came to his first disciples, and he promises to keep coming back to us—to keep intruding among us, to keep pressing in upon us, and to keep opening the doors that we don’t even know how to unlock. Even in the dark door of our deaths, Christ promises not to forsake us, but to keep coming back for us, to keep talking to us, and to keep breathing upon us.

Your faith is based on this Easter miracle. Your relationship to God, thank God, is not based entirely on what you can feel or believe or think. It’s based upon the fact that the Risen Christ came to you, moved through whatever locked door you were hiding behind, breathed his life-giving breath upon you, and raised you up toward himself.

“My life is over,” she said, when she found out that the cancer had spread to her optic nerve and that she was now going to lose her sight, her precious sight that had enabled her to create beautiful things. That which she loved the most was being taken from her. But scarcely two months later, when her Pastor visited with her in her home he was greeted by music—beautiful music—being played by her on her piano.

“I’ve discovered a gift that I didn’t know I had until I had to reach out for it,” she said as she played Chopin beautifully. And her Pastor said he thought it was an example of Easter, how in life’s complete dead ends there is something about Christ that enables him to keep coming back to us, to keep bringing new life out of death and defeat.

Now, earlier I’ve said that Easter is not merely, “Jesus lives forever and we shall live forever.” Easter is also about the ability of Christ to defeat death in whatever form it faces us.
Yet this is our true hope at the end of our lives: That the same resurrected Christ who keeps coming back to us, who keeps talking to us, who keeps making Easter out of death, will continue to work with us, will keep coming back to us, even in our death. We shall discover on that day that our end is not defeat but rather communion with the One who has gone to such great lengths to be with us. On the day of our death, Easter continues…

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PRAYER
Lord Jesus we gather to celebrate your great victory over sin and death that was worked in your resurrection triumph. Preserve us from thinking of your victory as a past event rather than a present reality. Help us to keep seeing signs of your resurrected presence in our world and in our lives. Cultivate in us, we pray, a vivid sense of your vitality among us. Preserve us from the despair that lives as if the resurrection was only something that happened to you and not to us. We pray to you in the confidence that the first thing you did upon your resurrection from the dead was try to talk to and reveal yourself to us. Amen.
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