Following Jesus’ crucifixion, his disciples hid behind locked doors, in fear. Even rumours of his resurrection – even encounters outside his tomb – did not unlock the door. So, Jesus comes to them. No doors, locked or otherwise, can keep him out. In our own lockdown, for fear of a virus rather than people, nothing can keep him from us and, where we are, he still comes.
Like those first disciples, he comes to open us up to faith, to free us with his peace, and to send us to a fearful world as living testimonies of hope.
Let us welcome him, and worship him, together.
- John 20:19–31 Jesus appears to the Disciples & Thomas
- Acts 2:14a, 22–32 Peter testifies to Jesus Resurrection
- 1 Peter 1:3–9 Born again to a Living Hope
Introduction
Within the general question, in our current crisis, of ‘when will this end?’ are deeper questions: What does it mean for me, for us? How do I live through this, live with this? What will it lead to? Does this change anything, or everything?
The questions are real, and they do not have any easy answers. In part we will have to wait and see. But in part, those answers will depend on how we respond, and what we will make of this in our own lives and communities.
And there is a yearning for change. As, in the restrictions and vulnerabilities that we are going through, we catch a glimpse of what really matters, so many are hoping that things will not just go back to normal. The veil has slipped a bit from our eyes. We have begun to see what was wrong with the old ‘normal’ … and we have begun to hope for something better.
All this all seems so relevant as we think about the meaning of Easter. The same questions and yearning for something better must have been part of the disciples’ response to that awful Friday and the perplexing joy that began to invade their lives that Sunday morning.
Strange Appearances
As witness statements, the Gospel accounts of that first Sunday are a mess – as you would expect from genuine witnesses. The tomb was open and Jesus body was gone – as were the soldiers who were guarding it. The accounts of the first witnesses were unclear, mixed with fear and wonder. Some said that they had seen Jesus alive and some had seen angel messengers.
First Appearance to the Disciples
By the end of the day that were still no clearer, and they were afraid – how would the authorities react to this and what had happened to the guard? So, they were hiding together behind locked doors. And then, Jesus appears, apparently whole and recognisable with words of peace and words of commission.
John does not record what else happened that night, if Jesus said anything else, or how he left. There is just his being with them, physically evidencing his resurrection with two gifts
- Peace – In place of the fear Jesus gives them his peace
- Purpose – In place of their hiding he gives them his purpose
As and aside, we should note that there is no sense of the Holy Spirit actually being given in v.22. The disciples were not immediately changed as they would be when they received the Spirit. Jesus is prophetically enacting what will happen at Pentecost – a dramatic promise
Second Appearance
There were other appearances that day, e.g. on the road to Emmaus, but it was another week before Jesus appears again to the gathered disciples. What happened that week we do not know, except that Thomas (who had not been there that Sunday night) expressed his serious doubts about Jesus resurrection.
So, a week later, Jesus appears to them again. This time Thomas is there, and Jesus calls him to faith in himself and in his resurrection life. Thomas’ response is a dramatic receiving of faith, “my Lord and my God’, which Jesus turns into the promise that many will believe without seeing as Thomas did.
Again, there is a twin gift of Peace and Purpose
Other Appearances
There were other appearances, some of have been recorded for us. So, John records how Jesus deals with Peter’s failure an appearance in Galilee. Central to all of them is this sense of Peace and Purpose.
- Peace that involves forgiveness, renewal and restoration
- Purpose that involves offering that peace to others through the same forgiveness. And such a purpose that involves responsibility; those who they forgive will be forgiven, but those they do not forgive will not be forgiven.
For Faith
But why does Jesus keep appearing and disappearing? Before his death, Jesus had been with his disciples, night and day, for three years. After his resurrection he only appears to them from time to time. I think that John gives us a clue as to why, when he says:
“these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (v.31)
Just as Jesus delayed going to Lazarus to deepen the faith of his disciples and reveal more of his glory, now he rations his appearing to deepen their faith in who he is. Faith that is not dependent on his physical presence. When he says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed”, he means it. Somehow, faith that believes without seeing is greater and its blessing, also, is greater.
Living Hope
Which brings us back to where we are today. I believe that Jesus wants to draw us all – everyone of us – into a deeper faith and blessing in him; to know the Peace that he gives more fully, and to live the Purpose that he calls us to more faithfully.
Looking back, years later, on what living out that Peace and Purpose really means, Peter describes it as a Living Hope. That is a Spirit inspired description of what it is to be a Christian, in the light and power of Easter
Hope that Lives
Through Jesus’ resurrection from the dead – as we believe and trust in him – we are born again to a Living Hope -a hope that is not just future, but changes life now.
Dramatic and radical as the current Coronavirus Crisis is, and much as it has inspired a hope for something better, it has not changed everything. But when we come to Jesus in Faith – when we place our lives in his hands, to die with him and live in him, everything is changed. The world around us may not seem to have changed, but we have. For us, in Christ, everything is made new. Our life is now not as we see it in this world, but hidden with Christ in God, waiting to be revealed.
What that life will be when it appears, no eye has seen of heart imagined. But we have a foretaste of it now in the gift of his Spirit to us. Like Jesus’ appearances, it keeps breaking into our lives and revealing a new peace and purpose.
So, we have a hope for something in Christ – like an inheritance secured by his death for us and kept for us, “imperishable, undefiled, and unfading” – but it is not just a future hope – this hope lives in us now. Somehow it is expressed in our living, now.
For now, life may seem constrained and limited – that is implied in the word ‘guarded’ in 1 Pet 1:5. For now, this new life may seem to be tested (questioned, might be another way of describing this), but this only so that its roots – faith – might be deepened and strengthened. Faith is everything if Hope is to be Living for us.
Following the Disciples in the Way
There seems to be so much that we see the disciples experiencing in the days after Jesus resurrection that echoes with where we are now that I want to frame the questions that I started with in this Easter context:
- What does it mean for me, for us?
What does the whole reality of Easter mean for you? Paul expressed it this way –
“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died, and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” (2 Cor 5:14-15).
Does it feel that radical to you, as if you have died and the life you now live is not your own? People with near death experiences speak like this, can we?
- How do I live through this and with this?
If the current crisis challenges us to live differently, how much more should the reality of Jesus death, resurrection and coming glory challenge us to live differently? It is not without its complications and challenges. Scripture describes it as living as strangers and aliens, citizens of a different country, fitting in where we can, but living by different values and rules. Are we finding it too easy to live in this world, when we are meant to be citizens of another? - What will it lead to?
Just as many are looking not just for an end to the current crisis, but for what it may bring about in changing our world, we are called to look forward to an end to the real crisis of this current world – the deadly virus of sin that denies us the goodness and glory of God. Thinking about the reality of the resurrection and what it means to doubt it, Paul said –
“If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor 15:19)
What are we truly hoping in? The way we live will reveal what it is.
- Does this change everything?
This is the crucial question. The Coronavirus does not change everything. You only have to look at the way people are responding to it to see this is true. But Jesus death and resurrection does truly change everything; now for those who are his through faith in him, and eventually for the whole world. But, has it changed everything for you?
I am the way
We are following those first disciples in the way that they lived through the invasion of the resurrected Christ into their lives. Like them, we ill face doubts and difficulties, failures, and faith.
But Jesus is still breaking in to lives, still making appearances by his Spirit. Let us use this time as his gift; a gift of Peace and Purpose. Like them, we may miss the old and comfortable ‘normal’, but in Jesus there is a better way of living, a better way of being church. Let us hope and pray, with one heart and mind in Christ, until we can see it together.