John 20: 19-23

Our reading begins
Inside a house
In Jerusalem.
Maybe it was the one
Where they shared a last meal with Jesus
We’re not told
It doesn’t matter.

We are told
What the temperature is:
Frozen
With fright;
Fear sets them on edge
Like a draught escaping from their cold hearts
Chills the room.

Whenever footsteps tap the cobbles outside
Voices they don’t recognise
Call out
Laugh
Converse or argue.
They hold their breath

Its the terrible modesty of terror, they feel,
Where you don’t want anyone to notice anything about you
You want to be invisible
Like a dog trying to keep out of everyone’s way.
They are hiding.

Because the Judeans could come at any minute.
The soldiers fresh from crucifying Jesus
Boots bursting open the door
And dragging them out
To their own shameful end.
No one in the room
Suspected it would come to this
3 years of following
To end in arrest and crucifixion.

We are not told by John,
What conversation there was,
Maybe they had no words left to speak
And only by glances and stares
Was anything left to be said.

Anxious hands maybe checking the doors again
The irrational reassurance
When they already know they are locked.

And then
Without the bolt being drawn
Or a window opened.
He’s is there.
With them
Alive again.

Peace to you:
Are the first words Jesus says.
A greeting?
A blessing?
Or maybe this
A promise being made to them
Through his return.
I‘ve come back, his presence says
So Peace is now yours.

The first words
From the only human being
To come out at the other end
Of his own dying
Are shalom.

Whenever Jesus appears
In the places we have bolted up
For fear of what’s happening to us
For fear of what we’ve become
His words are the same:
Peace be with you.

Words on their own
Don’t have any authority.
Their power comes
From who says them to us.

If the lolly pop lady
Inspects the lump I have on my arm
And says
You’re going to be alright.
Then, her words
However well meaning
Don’t carry much weight.

But if a consultant examines me
And says
It’s only a bit of gristle
You’re going to be alright
I feel I can relax
He knows.

When the crucified
Risen Jesus,
The one who faced death down
Says:
Peace is yours
His words have the authority
Of someone
Who has the power to make that peace real.

Peace Jesus says
Between who you are
In the dullness of your falling short
And the bright perfection of God;
Peace in your lives
Despite the things happening to us or around us.

The risen Jesus
Carries with him
The peace he speaks.
To be in his presence
Is to be invited
To be at peace.

But as we will see
Receiving the peace of Christ
Is never a private affair.
We receive
To give it away.

So Along with these words of peace
Jesus stretches out his hands
To show where the nails had held him
He touches the place
Where a spear once checked
Whether he was dead or alive.

Hands and side
Marks of recognition
Jesus’ Passport from a terrible journey;
Scars that speak to his friends:
It’s me.
It’s really me.
Not that they seem to doubt it.

For in hearing his words
And seeing his wounds
In finding him alive, and among them
all fear is gone –evicted from the room.

The mood inside has totally changed
Like blinds have opened to let the light in;
Like lilies in a vase
have brought the smell of the garden
Into the stuffy room.

And it was as if the words of psalm 16
Were being acted out in front of them:

“Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
My body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to shoel
Or let your faithful one see the pit.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence is the fullness of joy
In your hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Jesus,
Risen from the dead
Is at the very least
God’s verdict
On the destiny of those
Who take Jesus seriously enough
To follow him.

Jesus resurrection states
In it’s own poetic way
That who we are
In whatever number of years we are allotted
Through whatever wounding
Life scourges us,
will not end
With our last breath;
God will not leave us
In the dark pit of death;
in the solitary confinement of Hell.

In the risen Jesus
God has shown us the path of life,
In his presence
We find our greatest pleasure
Holding hands
With our deepest joy:
That God has judged death
And found it wanting
And that my death and your death
Has been drawn into that Judgement.

Death has been defeated
By Christ’s rising again.

No wonder the verses from psalm 16
Are the very words Peter uses
To address the first crowd
Who gather around him at Pentecost
When 3 thousand folks
Respond to his witness
About who Jesus is
And what he has done.

But how was Peter able
To make the leap
From frightened deserter
To confident preacher
In the city that had crucified Jesus?

If we go back to the room
Where the risen Jesus appeared
We will find all the reason we need.

Standing among them
Passing his peace
Showing his wounds
The risen Jesus speaks to them these words:

“As the father sent me,
So I send you.”

Jesus life
Wasn’t lived on a whim,
The things he said and did
Were not his own good idea.
The healings
Weren’t his own well meaning attempt
To sort out the world.
His teaching about God
Wasn’t the best efforts of a human mind.

Jesus life
Was lived out seeking the will of God
Like a dancers feet keeps time to music;
Jesus was saying and doing
What he had been given
By God to say and do.
Like a musician plays from a musical score.

God intended to make peace with the world
Through Jesus
Despite the worlds best efforts
To throw him off track.

That was the musical score God had written
And Jesus played it out
in his living, and dying and rising
And now
His followers
Were being given the vocation
Of making that song their own.

The peace the risen Jesus had brought into the world
They were to hold
To Make known
Pass on.

And Just
As the Spirit
Descended on Jesus
And equipped him at his baptism
For the task which lay ahead,
So too
Would the Spirit
Enliven Jesus followers
To be and do the peace of God
Back in the world outside.

Jesus
Took a long breath
Drew it into his lungs
And the oxygen of the room
Filled his chest
And mingled
With his own risen life,
And from his breath
All of who he was,
In his risen-ess
In his deathlessness
In his obedience to God
Jesus breathed into them.

Receive the Holy Spirit
He said.

And so the cowering Peter
Finds his feet
And a voice
And a courage
by the power of the Sprit living in him.

When someone breathes on us
They have to come close
You can’t breath on someone
From the other end of the room

Probably the most intimate place
We exchange breath
Is in a kiss.

And maybe that’s something we need to remember today
That Jesus presence
Doesn’t empower us from afar
He comes close to us:
In worship, word and sacrament
He Invades our personal space
Kisses us
With the breath of heaven.

Why?
So we can be and do for the world
What he would have us be and do
In our time and place.
Just as peter did in his.

It’s out of an intimacy with Jesus
The intimacy of worship
We are called
To go back into the world
And carry the peace Of God
To an indifferent,
Ungrateful,
Reluctant
Disbelieving world.

If the church needs anything today
It needs to get close enough to Jesus
To receive the Holy Spirit
So we can face up to that forgotten task.

Only the Holy Spirit
Can enable us
To leave behind our fears
To out grow our misconceptions
About what it is to be this thing
Called a Christian.

In the end
Being a Christian
Is not about believing in God
If what’s meant by that
Is that we think there is this being called God.

Being a Christian
Is about making contact with that God
By committing ourselves
To Jesus Christ
And seeking to be and do in our time
Who he would have us be
And what he would have us do.

Years later
What is it Peter writes
To the Christian churches growing up in Turkey?
It’s words he could be speaking to us today:

“You never saw him, yet you love him.
You still don’t see him, yet you trust him –with laughter and singing.
For you re receiving the outcome of your faith,
The salvation of your souls.”

Jesus never looked for people to agree with him
He asked people to cleave to him
Trust him
Love him enough
To go and say and do
In likeness to him.

That was true then
It’s no different today.
Jesus isn’t looking for your money, or high regard
He wants to come close enough
To breath his risen life into you.
And in that there’s a timely reminder
That whatever Church is about
It is firstly and fore mostly
About being empowered
To receive the peace of Christ
And together
Together
Together
To hold, carry and make known that peace
Outside of our worship places.