Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Scripture: John 20:19-31
In recent weeks, hundreds of refugees from Central America, many of them Hondurans, have been traveling through Mexico in a caravan. Being in a large group helps to keep them safe from thieves and violent gangs. They are fleeing civil war, organized crime and unrelenting violence in their home countries. Many members of the caravan are children. They are in search of a better life, the kind we all long for: a life free from fear.
In response, the president of the United States has ordered the National Guard to reinforce the Mexican/American border, convinced that the approaching refugees pose a threat to national security. I read the stories of those who are on the road, I see the faces of these women and men whose precarious lives I can barely fathom, and I wonder, what are we afraid of?
Fear is such a pernicious thing. I live with it all the time: fear that I’m using the wrong parenting strategy on any given day; fear that someone I love will get sick or injured; fear that I will fail my call to serve God’s Church: that I will stay silent when I ought to speak, or sedentary when I ought to act; fear that I don’t have what it takes to do everything I feel called to do. Of course, most of those fears are triggered not by real threats, but by my own inner Worry Wort. They are nothing compared to the fears of those who live in an actual war zone.
They are nothing, compared to the fear faced by our friends at St. Matthew’s Baptist Church in Bridgeport, who know that on any given day, they could be pulled over by the police just for driving through a primarily white neighborhood, because they are black and look as though they don’t ‘belong’; or the fear of my friends who mother black boys, and who live daily with the terror that their beloved sons might get caught in the wrong place, falsely accused, shot and killed merely because they fit the description of “a black male perpetrator.”
Those mothers look at the carnage in our country, at one dead son after another, and wonder, What is everyone afraid of?
Fear is a pernicious thing… a reaction to threats real or imagined, it short-circuits our ability to think and act creatively. The disciples were paralyzed by fear. Their leader, the man called Jesus, had confronted the Roman Empire, had publicly suggested that God’s vision for the world – God’s kingdom – was superior to Cesar’s kingdom; he preached justice for the poor and dignity for the outcast. And it all sounded so good at the time, inspiring – but it had cost him his life.
Now the future looked bleak; all the disciples could do was imagine what brutal fate awaited them, should they be recognized by the Jewish authorities or the Romans as Jesus’ followers. So they hid. I probably would have hidden, too.
They were discovered by the one person they least expected to breach their hideout. The one person they thought they had lost forever. On the evening of the day that they had heard and ignored the unbelievable account told to them by Mary Magdalene when the doors of the house were locked for fear of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among the disciples and said, “Peace be with you.”
Peace be with you. Not: “Relax., it’s going to be ok.” Not, “I’m here to take care of you.” not even that classic line, “Don’t be afraid.” No: Jesus said, “Peace be with you.” And right after that, he breathed on them, Holy Spirit breath; divine, life-empowering-breath, and said: “As the Father sent me, now I send you. Be filled with the Holy Spirit.”
The disciples were still registering the fact that Mary Magdalene hadn’t been soft in the head after all; that Jesus who’d been executed by the state was somehow alive again and standing in the room with them. They were still trying to make sense of what they were seeing when Jesus moved on past the pleasantries and gave them a job to do – a job that required them to leave that locked-up room. All of which makes me think that when Jesus said, “peace,” he wasn’t talking about “a peaceful evening at home by the fire, or peace of mind, or even absence of conflict.”
I think Jesus was offering the kind of peace that would help the disciples to get over their fear, or to face it. It was peace, as in, “Have courage.” Peace, as in, “Trust me. Trust God.” Peace, as in: “You’ve got work to do. And it won’t be easy. But you won’t be alone. I am filling you with Holy Spirit power, like a booster shot of divine inspiration. You’re gonna need it, so peace be with you.”
The Hebrew word for peace is shalom, a word that implies more than the absence of war. It means wholeness, peace with justice. To greet someone by saying ‘shalom’ is to say something like, “May you be full of well-being.” To speak of God’s shalom is to conjure a world that has been mended of its brokenness and a people reconciled of their divisions, the place where that lion and lamb hang out together; and enemies break bread at the same table. In short: the world Jesus came to inaugurate. The disciples assumed that the mission had failed when Jesus was crucified. But they were wrong. The mission had just begun. And the disciples were about to graduate.
“It’s on you now,” Jesus said.
This episode tends to be invoked to shame people who express doubt. To be called a Doubting Thomas is rarely meant as a compliment. To insist on proof is considered a failure of faith. If you’ve ever had doubts, then come back next Sunday; we’re going to take a closer look at those claims, and consider whether doubt – all the queries and the questions we have – may actually be evidence of faith, not its opposite.).
For now, I want to suggest that focusing on a Doubting Thomas (or any Doubting Disciple) misses the point of this episode. It’s not what concerned Jesus. He didn’t scold any of the disciples for their lack of belief – even though every one of them (not just Thomas) needed to see Jesus in the flesh before they were convinced that he had really risen.
No, Jesus had another agenda. Jesus wanted to stir up those disciples (and all of us) who were paralyzed by fear. He wanted them (and us!) to go out and start something, to spread God’s peace, not to keep it – and ourselves – hidden away.
So here we are, two thousand years later, living in a world that is still full of death-dealing forces – where refugee families and black boys are labeled as hostile; where real wars continue to rage; where poverty persists and racism retains its grip on our communities … and what are WE to do? Read the daily news – all those stories about displaced people and reinforced borders is enough to drive any of us into a securely locked room. Surely, we don’t have what it takes to resolve the world’s problems.
When you feel paralyzed by fear; overwhelmed by the world’s brokenness, what do you do? I’ve been thinking about this, about the alternative to paralysis. Because my fear, my paralysis, doesn’t help me or anyone else. So I googled it. And found “7 ways to move forward” at www.powerofpositivity.com. Actually, it’s a pretty good list. Here are my four favorites tips, tips that Jesus might have liked, too:
#1. Breathe. As in, take a deep and spirit-filled breath, the same kind that Jesus breathed on the disciples in that locked up room. There’s nothing like a deep breath to clear the head, ground the feet, free up the imagination and give us time to consider the possibilities…
#2. Do what scares you. This is brilliant. To heck with fear. As Brené Brown would say: Lean in. Not ready to unlock the door? Well then, open a window. But do something to unleash your courage and see how it feels.
#3. Give up an ‘all or nothing’ mentality. None of us is called to do all the work. So let that go. Choose something. One thing. Do that. See where that takes you.
#4. Replace “I can’ts” with “I cans.” What can you do, to contribute to greater justice and mercy? To cultivate shalom? What can you do to change the conversation, ease suffering, or diffuse fear (your own, or someone else’s)? Who could you invite to sit at your dinner table? Where could you go, beyond the safety of your own living room? What letter could you write? Whose story could you learn? We can all be faithful disciples, one ‘yes’ at a time.
So what ARE we afraid of? Losing. Fear is fundamentally about losing something – a way of living, our safety and security, love and belonging, dignity or our very lives. So, we cling to what we have. We hunker down in locked rooms, where no one can make demands on us. We reinforce the borders, so no one new can come in; we shoot from the hip at the first sign of trouble… convinced that we are preserving the peace.
But the Risen Christ will have none of that. He didn’t defeat death just to see us hunker down in locked-up rooms. He did it, to demonstrate once and for all that fear may be a pernicious thing, but it is not the most powerful thing. On the other side of fear is healing; lambs confronting lions; families living together in safety; black boys growing up to be young men with gifts to share and their own children to raise; communities with more bridges than walls… on the other side of fear is shalom, and the only way to get there is to take a deep and spirit-filled breath and walk out that door, together.
May it be so. Thanks be to God.
Scripture
John 20:19-31 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
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), 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 that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.