Peace be with you

John 20:19-31

The summer at the end of my first year of ministry I attended a weeklong silent retreat. Mid-way through the week I was sitting outside, reading this very passage, and I was so struck by the idea that on that first Easter night, the disciples were sitting in a room behind a locked door, hunkered down in fear. As I sat with this passage, I recall wondering to myself what rooms were inside of me that I had locked tight out of fear. I remember trying REALLY hard to focus on this, to name some deep, dark fear that I was not yet aware of, yet nothing was readily coming to mind.

Then out of the tree plopped the biggest cicada I had ever seen, right into my lap, staring bug eyed right at me, and I let out the loudest squeal, no doubt disturbing the contemplative silence of the entire retreat center. And I thought… that… I am afraid of that! I remember being greatly amused at this comic relief, but upon leaving the retreat, I became so very aware of the cicada signs all around me – their exoskeletons were everywhere I looked, and their deafening chirping was constant! This odd moment from a retreat actually ended up being a catalyst for a journey that took me deeper inside myself, uncovering the fortresses of fear that were within me.

No doubt that the fears of the disciples were anything as benign as a simple bug. Their fears were definitely real, immediate, and raw. The man they had followed all these years, who had done and said the most miraculous things, was dead. And most of them had abandoned him at that moment of truth. And now Mary Magdalene comes to tell them that Jesus lives, that she had seen him in the garden outside the empty tomb. Maybe some of them in the room were actually a bit frightened that perhaps what Mary said was indeed true. Would he be able to forgive their betrayals and desertion? And the climate outside was certainly heated. What might the resurrected Christ ask of them?

So there they sat, hunkered down behind locked doors, ready to wait out the darkness of the night and the uncertainties that it would bring. It was into this scene that Jesus entered. The door was locked. Yet there he appeared. Not some other worldly being, but the flesh and blood Jesus, wounds and all. He appeared before their very eyes, and greeted them, saying, “Peace be with you.” How often they had heard those words from their dear friend. The scripture then says that the disciples rejoiced. And then Jesus repeats himself, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

Then Jesus breathed on them… what a great line! How earthy, raw, and real… I mean, it’s not like he had a good dental plan or anything, probably hadn’t flossed a day in his life! But he breathed on them. And he said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

What a vivid picture that makes! The first Christian worship service. John’s portrayal of the Pentecost. Yet instead of a mysterious wind that blows through the house, and tongues of fire resting on each of their heads, Jesus himself is present to this band of friends. They don’t know which end is up. They are lost, they are sad, they are frightened for their lives, they are huddled together, locked in a room, isolated from the world around them.

Yet through their barriers, the risen Christ appears to them. He doesn’t bust down the door, he doesn’t come in explaining the mysteries or telling them about the literal hell he has experienced over these days. He simply appears to them, where they are. He does not judge them, nor does he coddle them. But he extends them a greeting of peace – of wholeness; he breathes on them, inviting them to receive the Holy Spirit.

One of the things I love the most about this passage is that it truly integrates body and soul – a vivid reminder that ours is an incarnational faith. This is by no means “pie in the sky in the sweet by and by” stuff. This is real, earthy, tangible, immediate. All the senses are engaged. Those in the room see Jesus, touch his wounds, feel the warmth of his breath upon them. Kinesthetic learning at its best!

Like the disciples, for some reason we employ a similar defense, boarding up the doors of our hearts, closing off parts of ourselves. Yet there are no hidden rooms within us where God cannot freely enter. “O Lord, you have searched me and known me,” the psalmist wrote. While in the end that is good news, there is a frightening vulnerability to this as well.

We have our hidden rooms, our locked doors, for a purpose. Parker Palmer has written a great deal about this, and the necessity for living the undivided life, for “rejoining role with soul.” He uses this great visual to describe this process. Take a regular strip of paper. Imagine one side represents your public self, and the other your private or inner self.

Palmer proposes that we enter this world with our inner and outer lives fully integrated, as a congruent, authentic human. But over time we lose a bit of that child-like innocence as we are hurt by others, recognizing how vulnerable we are, and we begin to build up a wall of separation between our inner and outer lives. We learn that it is not always safe to trust our truth to the world. We build our walls higher, wider, and thicker.

Palmer talks about his own experience with this, and the dangers he faced: “At first I needed a wall to hide my vulnerabilities from the assaults of the world. But selfhood hidden from strangers soon becomes hidden from intimates as well: the wall I reinforced to protect myself at work was not easily dismantled in the company of family and friends. I began, without even knowing it, to keep true self tucked away in my personal as well as professional life. Then – and in retrospect, inevitably – I began hiding my truth from myself as well.” (Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, p. 43)

Many people stay in this place for a long time, “safely” hidden behind such elaborate fortresses. In fact, we often reward people well for such skillful compartmentalizing – but we know where that leads… how many people of great power and influence come crashing down after their lives become so out of whack, as they become so separated from their true selves, and do the most horrific, or at least foolish and self-defeating things. Just read the papers. It is unfortunately an all too frequent occurrence!

One way we move from this place of detachment from self is to become better acquainted with ourselves. This is an important aspect of the spiritual life – self examination, prayer, awareness of the person God created us to be, aware of gifts, weaknesses, joys, wounds, strengths, all of it. But we can’t stop there. For while in this mode we may well be more in touch with our own inner truths, we continue to remain so separate from the world. The truly integrated life that God calls us to requires that we are not only aware of and in touch with our inner life, but also with the world as a whole.

The integrated life, Palmer proposes, looks more like the Mobius strip, where the “two apparent sides keep co-creating each other… whatever is inside us continually flows outward to help form, or deform, the world – and whatever is outside us continually flows inward to help form, or deform, our lives. The Mobius strip is like life itself: here, ultimately, there is only one reality.” (Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness, p. 47)

“Peace be with you,” Jesus said. Shalom, a greeting of wholeness and wellbeing. Remember those words Jesus spoke to the disciples just before entering Jerusalem that last time, talking about this moment when he would rejoin them? “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” (John 14:27) MY peace I give to you.

You know, every week we extend the peace of Christ to one another. This is no casual act we engage in. For the peace of Christ has no boundaries, and makes itself at home in the most hidden places of our lives. If we are willing to receive it, Christ’s peace will transform us, make us whole, and call us to take that peace out into the world, as a catalyst for wholeness for all whom we encounter. And yes, that can be confronting, this inward, outward journey, life on the Mobius strip.

But Rowan Williams reminds us that “We are in most danger when we deny our own poverty or neediness, and that the presence of the powerless is painful in large part because they reconnect us with that unwelcome need. They do not live in the world we like to think we live in, the world we can organize, so they tell us that our world is smaller than we thought...For Christians it is therefore extraordinarily important, radically important, to live in a context where we are not protected from the visibility of the powerless.” (Rowan Williams, Christ on Trial: How the Gospel Unsettled Our Judgment, p. 67)

Living the undivided life means being so in touch with our inner selves that we are seeking at all times to remember who and whose we are, and then to take that knowing out into the world. To do the inner work, it takes time, patience, surrender, silence. It often feels like fallow time, maybe what the early mystics called the dark night of the soul. It also takes a trusted community, the cloud of witnesses surrounding us, holding us up, helping us constantly to discern which voices are of God.

And living the undivided life means that we don’t stop there, but instead move out into the world. Part of this we do by sharing our stories with each other, opening our hearts to those we encounter. During our Wednesday night Lenten discussions, one person in the room told of a colleague who had been continually annoyed by stranger who stood along her commute and asked for money. Finally, the woman decided to stop and listen to the stranger’s story, only to hear a gut-wrenching tale of a series of devastating events and deep loss that could frankly drive any one of us over the edge of sanity. The woman was deeply moved by the stranger’s tale. She was willing to open herself up to another, and in that moment was able to see herself mirrored in, or at least connected to, this stranger.

What would our world, our church, our lives, look like if those of us in this room were practiced enough in knowing who and whose we are that we carried that strength out into the world, calling forth peace, shalom, wholeness, from those we encounter? Receiving Christ into our well-defended internal fortresses, and seeking him out in the world around us? It surely must look a lot like the kingdom of God, don’t you think?

A band of followers, gathered together in a room, behind closed doors. And Christ transcends these doors, appearing in our midst. We are greeted with the peace of Christ, receiving the proclamation of forgiveness, and being sent back out into the world to follow Christ’s path… sound familiar? This is a story we repeat at least weekly, coming together, being reminded of who and whose we are, with Christ transcending the barriers we have built up within us, then being sent out into the world to share forgiveness, peace, wholeness, the very essence of Christ, with every soul we encounter. Opening ourselves to the world around us, touching the hearts of others, only to experience Christ transcending the barriers that we have built up even between each other… abiding in Christ, in the world.

“May the God of peace make you whole and holy; and may you all be kept safe and blameless in spirit, soul, and body for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:23)