He Sneaks Through Locked Doors

We are now fully in this season of Eastertide (the 50 days between Easter Sunday and Pentecost), where the church is called to rejoice and reflect on the reality-altering good news of the resurrection of Jesus.

But this good news never sandpapers over our grief and disappointment, but speaks in the midst of it. For example, I’ve been sitting with that story of Jesus appearing to his disciples who are hiding in a locked room (this is from John 20:19-23) Here we see what the resurrected Jesus is up to. He pursues the very people he called “friends”––who had abandoned him. People who thought the Jesus movement had died right along with Jesus as he hung on that cross. People who were disillusioned, disappointed, and disheartened.

Have you ever been disillusioned, disappointed, and disheartened?

Especially right now in the midst of our circumstances? Where the world is no longer the same, and what we would have imagined it to be.

You’re in good company.

And you see, the disciples here in this passage are scared out of their wits. It’s night. They’re cowering behind locked doors. They fear being hunted by the religious authorities. They are afraid of all that is happening outside their homes—sound familiar? And then, without warning, Jesus shows up. He’s in their midst. He sneaks through the locked doors. But perhaps more astounding, he’s about to bust through their locked hearts and guarded imaginations. And the first word that comes out of his mouth:

“Peace.”

Jesus says to all his disciples locked behind despair and disappointment:
“Peace. Be. With. You.”

“Peace” is the Jewish word shalom. It means “wholeness, harmony, being connected and seamless.” What if Jesus wants to take all the ways we feel fractured right now and bring it together into a harmonious whole, in him and with him? What if he wants to give us his very Spirit of peace?

I’ve been spending a lot of time within the walls of my house and enclosed behind locked doors, as I’m sure many of you have been.  It’s easy to feel cramped, afraid, anxious, uncertain—about all that is happening right now and all that is going to happen. It’s precisely now, during this season of Eastertide, that the Resurrected Jesus wants to meet us.

I believe this season behind our doors and walls there is an opportunity for encounter, similar to what these disciples experienced. An encounter with the peace of Jesus, where he breathes on us the Holy Spirit. What an astounding image. In a time where we live with such fear of the death breath of a virus, Jesus breathes the very Life Breath of God into us.

So in this season friends, don’t hide from Jesus behind your walls (literal and metaphorical). Be open to receive his presence and his peace. Don’t let the time behind these walls be one of fear. Instead, let it be one of encounter, where you hear Jesus say:

Peace be with you.
Peace be with you.
Peace be with you.