Pass the Peace
Easter 2C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
What do you do after the worst has happened? After hope is lost? The disciples are having a really bad no good day. They are still where we left them last Sunday, hiding in fear and confusion behind locked doors somewhere in Jerusalem. Their dark little room was as lifeless as the grave. They are not yet aware how they are like seed sown upon soil, already in the process of transformation to bring forth new life. They believed they were at an end. Yet God had prepared a new beginning.
Alleluia. Christ is risen (He is risen indeed, alleluia!). Our gospel is a graceful reminder that we are not the first followers who struggle with what the resurrection means. John’s recounting the story of Jesus’ appearance to the disciples and then again, one week later to Thomas, is not to scold us into a style of believing that is afraid to ask questions, but just the opposite.
Abraham, Moses, and Elijah; the Psalms, and most of the Prophets, remind us that biblical faith is confident enough in relationship with God to ask any question. Questions and the confidence to ask them of ourselves, each other, and God, is not a recipe for weakening faith, but for strengthening it. Wherever you are, whatever your background, regardless of your doubts and questions, you are welcome in this community of faith.
The crucifixion was tragic and stupid. I don’t believe crucifixion was ever really God’s plan. It was God’s expectation, maybe. It was everyone’s expectation. Even the disciple’s expected the authorities in Jerusalem would put Jesus to death. Yet, putting Jesus to a cruel, painful, humiliating death was not God’s plan. It was ours. The human response to the incarnation of grace in God’s son could have been different. Imagine, what if it had been?
Here is my body, Jesus said. He showed them his hands and his side. See, my body is wounded and broken. Many of you carry scars in your mortal frame, some may never heal. Yet I still live and so shall you. Blessed are you for the wounds you endure for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, Jesus says.
On that Easter night, when Jesus appeared, you would expect that it would not be good news for the disciples. You would expect Jesus to be angry for abandoning him, or in Peter’s case, for denying even that he knew him three times. “But that’s not what happened. There were no recriminations, no anger, no condemnation or judgment, not even an understandable ‘venting’ of disappointment and hurt. Instead, the first words Jesus offered were both greeting and gift: “Peace be with you”” (Kate Huey, Sacred Seeds).
Jesus breathed on them. The Greek word emphusao, used here in John’s gospel, occurs only once in the entire New Testament. It means “breath or breathing.” Just as at creation, when God modeled a statue of clay, breathed the breath of life into its nostrils and became a human being (Genesis 2:7); just as when God breathed on the dry bones of the slain and brought them to life (Ezekiel 37:9); Jesus gave the disciples the gift of God’s breath, and said to them receive the Holy Spirit (John 20:22).
Emphusao carries the same root as the English word, infusion. Jesus’ gave them a Shalom infusion. This is the peace we pass every Sunday before communion. We pass this peace throughout our bodies in prayer to find rest, to be made whole, and to come alive. Emphusao. Breathe in God’s peace in your lower back. Breathe God’s peace into your throat to release tension in your neck. Breathe the peace of God’s shalom in your forehead to relax your mind. Pass God’s peace to each other to open pathways of forgiveness and mercy in our relationships. Receive the vital life-transforming breath of God in the dead zones of our lives –into the places in our minds and hearts which have become weighed down or walled off by fear, exhaustion, hopelessness, and/or confusion.
“It’s a great temptation in the life of the church to huddle behind massive, beautiful doors, to hide out from a world in pain and great need, and to make our faith a personal, private thing that has nothing to do with that pain or that need” (Kate Huey). “Jesus comes again and again to these scared and confused disciples. The disciples have not warranted a second visit by Jesus, but they get one, and a renewed gift of his peace” (Gail O’Day). In the same way, if we long to see Jesus, he offers us the same gift of himself, not just once, but over and over.
Howard Thurman was an American author, philosopher, theologian, Christian mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. He had a unique way of describing what it means to come alive to our full humanity. Jesus called it the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate. Thurman called it the voice of the genuine. “There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls” (Howard Thurman). “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
“So as I live my life then, this is what I am trying to fulfill. It doesn’t matter whether I become a doctor, lawyer, housewife. I’m secure because I hear the sound of the genuine in myself and having learned to listen to that, I can become quiet enough, still enough, to hear the sound of the genuine in you. Now if I hear the sound of the genuine in me, and if you hear the sound of the genuine in you, it is possible for me to go down in me and come up in you. So that when I look at myself through your eyes having made that pilgrimage, I see in me what you see in me and the wall that separates and divides will disappear, and we will become one because the sound of the genuine makes the same music” (Howard Thurman, 1980 commencement address at Spelman College).
“God who rose, resurrect us! We’ve belonged to communities, workplaces, and spiritual spaces that have demanded our death far more than they ever advocated for our life…No longer will we mirror the hands of neglect that the world uses daily. Let joy find us today… A joy that is not quick to forget the agony of Good Friday or dismiss the doubt of Silent Saturday. May we remember and rise to meet hope nonetheless, knowing our liberation is whispering up at us from its empty grave” (Cole Arthur Riley, Black Liturgies, p. 263). Emphusao. Receive the shalom of the Holy Spirit. Receive the sound of the genuine. See. We are an Easter people. See. We are a new creation through the gift of God’s grace revealed in Christ Jesus.
