THE REV. ROBERTO DESANDOLI
2nd Sunday of Easter / Mission Awareness
Acts 5: 27-32
Psalm 150
Revelation 1: 4-8
John 20: 19-31
“Peace be with you”
19 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.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” 22 When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”
24 But Thomas (who was called the Twin[a]), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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.”
26 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.” 27 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.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 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.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. 31 But these are written so that you may come to believe[b] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
These things 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.
It’s always nice, isn’t it, when an author is straightforward with their meaning?
No need to dig “below the surface”
No need to argue with your high school English teacher about whether there is really something going on below the surface of Catcher in the Rye, no need to argue or to fight or (even less) to kill about the meaning of the text of John’s Gospel.
It is indeed “nice” that John makes it plain for us; that he tells us in simple terms that he has written this account so that we may come to believe in Jesus Christ and to have life in his name.
It is “nice.” But it is also a bit surprising.
From the beginning of John’s Gospel, when he brought us all the way back to Genesis and traced Jesus presence in Holy Scripture from even before the moment of creation, John and his Word and his Light and his Truth has NOT been making it easy for us. Rather, he has been making it MORE DIFFICULT than any of the other Gospel writers. John has asked MORE of us. He has asked us to have DEEPER FAITH, to TRUST more in his witness, to hold onto our sense of what IS and what IS NOT more loosely than the other three Gospel writers.
And then at the end, he makes it plain.
He says: these things have been written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
John, apparently, is not so bold as to think that anyone who read his words would ALREADY be convinced. Only that their curiosity would be peaked. That they would want to learn more about Jesus and his mission. That we will at least START to COME TO BELIEVE in Jesus Christ as Lord in our lives.
John “The Evangelist” as he is known, is an excellent role model to all of us who share the Good News of Jesus in our lives: it’s not our job to change minds or to change hearts. Only Jesus does that. Rather, it is our job to STIR CURIOSITY, to be honest when we tell someone WHY we are sharing the Good News of Jesus: because we truly and honestly do want them to come to believe and to have life in Jesus’ name.
If you talk widely enough about Jesus in your life outside of church, it will not take very long to encounter a voice that says something along the lines of:
“Don’t try to push your beliefs onto me! Everybody knows that the church has destroyed lives by forcing people to convert to its way of thinking”
And I will tell you a piece of wisdom told to me by THE greatest living mind in the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Rev. Dr. Stephen Farris:
It’s not our job to refute that voice.
It’s not our job to say that the church has not made mistakes.
It’s not our job to say that the “ends justified the means” or that “it was all part of God’s plan” or any of those unhelpful things.
Rather, it is our job to listen. To listen to those who have been hurt by the church; to listen to those who have been hurt in life and wondered why God did not intervene in their hour of need.
It is simply our job to listen, to offer prayer, and to offer peace in Christ’s name. Because that is all we have.
In the text we have just read, Jesus appears to his disciples on the evening after He first rose from the tomb and appeared to Mary Magdalene.
Jesus appears to His disciples and he speaks five times. In order, here is what he said on those five occasions:
“Peace be with you”
“Peace be with you”
“Receive the Holy Spirit”
“Peace be with you”
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”
Though some Christians have been less-than-peaceful through time and place. Despite the reality of heavy-handed evangelism, despite the Crusades and the Inquisition, despite Indulgences and summary executions, despite mega-church millionaires.
If you look to the man Himself, Jesus the Risen Christ, and hear what He has to say to His church at the moment he called it to be His hands and feet in the world, Jesus Himself has promoted a message of PEACE that we are all called to embark upon.
“Peace be with you”
“Peace be with you”
“Receive the Holy Spirit”
“Peace be with you”
“Blessed are those who believe”
To hear the man, Jesus Christ Himself, He sounds an awful lot like the author John the Evangelist in His intentions:
In His proclamation of peace and his blessing of those who will come to believe, Jesus sounds much less interested in forcing anything than He does in blessing the world with peace and life.
And in reality, it is at the intersection of those two words (peace and life) that we find Christ’s intention for our lives and His hope for our mission.
John, at the end of this reading writes these words:
“Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and […] through believing you may have life in his name”
Scholars (who did much better in their biblical Greek classes than I myself did,) tell us that John had a choice between three different words for “life” when he wrote the original text in Greek:
psyche, bios, and zoe: Each of these words means “life” but gives a different meaning or focus
The first two “psyche” and “bios” refer to what each living thing possesses simply by virtue of being alive. Each living thing, from dandelions to grumpy Canada Geese to single cell organisms to Donald Trump all possess life in the sense of “psyche” or “bios.”
These are not the words that John chooses to make his meaning.
Through his Gospel, through the works, signs and wonders of Jesus Christ, through the story of his ministry and resurrection and sending, John wants us to have “zoe” life in His name!
“Zoe” is literally “life of the age”: the life given to those who believe; life given to those who are born of God; life that, in John’s prayer for us, transforms us from merely existing to living in the abundance and eternity of God.
This is the same life that God breathed over the waters at the beginning of creation. It is the same life that endows each of those biologically alive things (dandelions, geese, and single cell organisms) with a spark of the divine. With the unalienable dignity and worth that God intends for all living things (even Donald Trump!).
When Jesus finds the disciples at the beginning of this reading, they are clinging to their “psyche” lives. They are hunkered down, behind a locked door, for fear of what would happen to them if the same people who crucified Jesus would find them.
This is the scene that Jesus appears into.
The risen, Holy, uncreated-yet-begotten divine light called Jesus the Christ walks into that place of fear and wondering and He says “Peace be with you”
Peace be with you, life be with you, “zoe” be with you.
As I have said, this word “zoe” really sits at the intersection of the words “life” and “peace.”
Throughout the Bible, “zoe” is used to refer to life:
“life of peace”
“life with God”
“The new created life that Christ is making within us”
And “zoe” is also used to refer to “peace”
“Zoe” is an active peace.
“Zoe” is not the peace that occurs when nothing else is going on.
“Zoe” is not silence, “Zoe” is not an empty peace
Jesus did not die on the cross and become resurrected in order to preach a watery substance-less peace.
Jesus did all of these things and more: taking on the baptism of the Holy Spirit, healing the sick, helping the blinded to see, raising the dead, teaching, handing himself over to his enemies, being tortured and killed, dying on the cross, and being reborn. He did all of these things and more “which are not written” (according to John) for our sake.
Rather Jesus did die on the cross and become resurrected in order to preach peace to those with none in their lives and life to those with none in their peace.
For the sake of our LIVES and our PEACE: our ZOE.
For the ZOE of not just the disciples, not just those gathered in churches, but for the ZOE of every person in the world who will come to know that we are loved by a God who will not let us go no matter what.
And THAT friends, IS a message worth sharing, even if the world or our culture is hostile to this message.
The hostility to the Gospel that we face in this part of the world is infinitely smaller than what millions of Christians face every day on other continents:
No one is trying to torture us for our faith
No one is trying to kill us for our faith
No one here or in any other church in Saskatoon is under threat of being kidnapped by their government and sent for “re-education”
Of all of the times to be a Christian.
Of all of the places to be a Christian.
We are of the most fortunate and most free to practice our faith without fear.
The greatest threat to the mission of the Gospel in Canada in 2019 is not coercion, it isn’t war or bombings; it isn’t intimidation or state-sponsored terrorism, it is our own lack of faith and motivation.
The greatest threat in Canada in 2019 is not any outside force, rather it is the voice within each of us that looks at Jesus’ Gospel of reconciling “zoe” peace and looks at a culture that prides surface-level watery peace above all and says: “eh, Close enough”
Friends, it is NOT close enough.
Canadian politeness is NOT close enough to “zoe”
This surface-level “everything is basically fine” peace is NOT anywhere close to the life-fulfilling “zoe” of the Gospel.
It is not “close enough” in the same way that our own discomfort of encountering voices critical of the church or critical of Christ is not “close enough” to the persecution of the original disciples or all of those other disciples now imprisoned in China and in Russian and in a dozen places around the world.
To put it plainly: we are not that persecuted AND this peace around us is not that Christ-like.
So what do we do?
How do we regain a sense of urgency? How do we regain a sense of mission? How do we do as the disciples in John’s Gospel did and learn to leave their place of fear and go out into the world as sent people?
Friends, we must start by trusting Christ.
We must start by trusting that Christ has called us to be partners in his reconciling mission. We must trust that Christ has sent his Holy Spirit upon us to guide us forward in our task.
We must start by trusting that just as Jesus came back from the tomb to preach peace to those with none in their lives and life to those with none in their peace that we too have been called into this mission.
Friends, let us start now. Let us start by choosing to have faith that when Jesus spoke to the disciples, He spoke also to us and through us:
“Peace be with you”
“Peace be with you”
“Receive the Holy Spirit”
“Peace be with you”
“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe”
Beloved by Christ, we are called into the greatest mission that any person has ever been called into: the freedom to not concern ourselves with our life of “psyche” or “bios”—the freedom to believe that just as Christ rose from the dead, He will raise us on the last day and give us new life—and that in this freedom to not fear death, we are free to live lives of peace, of “zoe,” proclaiming His Gospel of peace and life.
Thanks be to God for the call, the mission, the “zoe,” and the courage to go forth.
Amen.
