Peace in the Presence of Christ

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

We start our story today the evening after Easter.

There was terror in town this night. The men and women who had followed Jesus holed up in a dark room. The last few days had been wild.

They had followed Jesus for lots of reasons. Some of them were drawn to Jesus because they loved their country and they were tired of seeing it suffer under the brutal rule of the Roman empire. They wanted someone to show the Romans the door, to drive them out and restore their nation, and to deal with their corrupt confederates who benefited from the current regime. When they saw Jesus and how he spoke against their present rulers without fear, they hoped that he would be the one who would make things right.

Others wanted their country to reform. They wanted it to live up to its promise, for all its people to take on a life of holiness. They wanted their people to really devote themselves to God, learning to follow his ways, keeping away from evil and embracing good works. They saw Jesus lived a life of holiness which was different from how they’d been taught before, and better. He had a more expansive and generous view of what it is to live a good life than any other teacher they knew. They wanted to see the life of Jesus become the life of people everywhere.

And lots of them followed Jesus because in Jesus they learned what real love is. Jesus surprised them; he surprised everybody. Jesus embodied generosity and mercy in ways no one else did. He had room in his life for the people everyone else had turned their backs on. Jesus visited with people who had lost all their friends: he ate with them and announced that God’s salvation had come to their house because even they were part of the family of God. In Jesus they encountered the extravagant and very personal love of God, a God who knew them better than they loved themselves, who knew all their secrets and all their issues and knowing them, loved them and gave himself to them without holding anything back. Jesus showed them God was for them in a way nobody else was. And he was for them not out of obligation and not out of a reaction against something else but because when Jesus looked on them he was filled with joy. That joy was contagious.

For all these reasons and more in Jesus they saw the answer to their longings and the fulfillment of centuries of promises.

But this past week, the authorities turned on Jesus. After Jesus entered Jerusalem, at the time of the Passover celebration, he was taken captive; he was arrested and abused and passed from person to person and ultimately condemned to death. His way of life was a threat to the people on top because Jesus promised a world turned upside down, where the old tricks that got you power and position would no longer work any more.

Jesus died. And his disciples were devastated. They had put so much hope into him, and now they had lost everything.

We pick up the story in John 20.

John 20:19-31

That Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

One of the twelve disciples, Thomas (nicknamed the Twin), was not with the others when Jesus came. They told him, “We have seen the Lord!”

But he replied, “I won’t believe it unless I see the nail wounds in his hands, put my fingers into them, and place my hand into the wound in his side.”

Eight days later the disciples were together again, and this time Thomas was with them. The doors were locked; but suddenly, as before, Jesus was standing among them. “Peace be with you,” he said. Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and look at my hands. Don’t be faithless any longer. Believe!”

“My Lord and my God!” Thomas exclaimed.

Then Jesus told him, “You believe because you have seen me. Blessed are those who believe without seeing me.”

The disciples saw Jesus do many other miraculous signs in addition to the ones recorded in this book. But these are written so that you may continue to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing in him you will have life by the power of his name.

It’s the night after Easter, and Jesus is risen but the disciples are living as if they are not so sure. Their Master was taken and killed in front of them, and they know the same fate could fall to them.

But this night Jesus shows up to them, in person. The doors are locked but a locked door can’t keep Jesus out. They aren’t looking for Jesus but he comes looking for them. And when he shows up, he declares peace.

Jesus needs to declare peace - “Peace be with you” - because they are not at peace. The disciples are terrified of the authorities. They are terrified of the crowds. And to be honest, they are now terrified of Jesus.

When Jesus was taken captive, when Jesus was not only publicly executed but publicly pilloried, humiliated in front of all the world, none of his followers stood up for him. None of them seriously stood between Jesus and this future.

So not only are they afraid of the authorities and the crowds on the outside, but now Jesus is in the room with them. Jesus is back and he is unstoppable. What is he going to do? He knows his friends abandoned him. He knows one of them even gave him over to the authorities - he was arrested in the first place because they broke faith with him.

But Jesus doesn’t bring a word of condemnation. He doesn’t hold their feet to the fire. He doesn’t demand that they put wrongs right. No - he announces peace.

Jesus doesn’t require them to make the first move. Jesus doesn’t hold back, waiting for them to get over their fear. And he doesn’t try to strike a deal. Jesus promises peace to those who had done him wrong. Jesus forgives them before they even ask. Jesus opens his life to them all over again, without any reservations.

That’s what love at its best is like. Love isn’t a transaction. Love isn’t a tit-for-tat. Love isn’t about humiliating those who’ve done wrong or holding the past over their heads in an attempt to break their will and break their hearts.

Love is better than that. Real love is free to give and forgive and change the world for the better without waiting for the world to change first.

So Jesus gives peace to people who didn’t deserve it and, in their shock, weren’t even asking for it. And he does something else: he tells them they can pronounce peace too. They can pass along his peace, his forgiveness, his endless grace and unmerited mercy. They can declare peace just as he has. They can forgive people who never asked for their forgiveness. They can testify that this is what God is like: and because this is what God is like, this is what the world can be like.

Jesus has given us the unparalleled power to join with him in breaking the power of sin and death. We can erase shame and get rid of guilt by making peace where there is no peace. Jesus has shown us the way.

And in our story, a week later, Jesus does it all over again.

The doors are still locked. The disciples still might not quite get it. And this time, Thomas is with them. Thomas had given up his life to follow Jesus. He had believed in Jesus. Thomas had put all his hope in Jesus as being the answer to all of their prayers.

And then Thomas saw it all come crashing down. The kind of death Jesus died was designed to erase Jesus from history. It was supposed to humiliate his followers and break up his movement. And it would have done so, except for this: Jesus is alive. He is out of the grave and walking this earth again. Hope is back, and it’s better than they had ever hoped for.

But all Thomas has is stories. All Thomas has is somebody else’s word that Jesus is alive again. But Thomas has already lost hope once. He put all his hope into this Kingdom of God thing - and he doesn’t want his heart broken again. He doesn’t want to be made a fool again. He has already lost so much.

And maybe you know somebody like that. How many people in your world have given their heart away only to lose all hope? How many people do you know who have been betrayed and have felt they have been made a fool? How many people do you know who now find it hard to trust again; hard to hope; hard to believe that love is alive?

They need us to enter their world. People who have lost hope need mercy, the kind of mercy Jesus shows here. You can’t argue your case and convince a broken heart to mend. You can’t talk someone into trusting again. Jesus knows this. He knows that love has to be expressed and experienced. Mercy is not sounds you make with your mouth. Words alone are not enough.

For Thomas to know the peace of Christ, he needed to be in his presence. And it was too much to expect Thomas to come to Jesus on his own. Jesus himself closed that gap, not meeting him halfway but entering the locked doors of Thomas’s heart on his own. Jesus proved his love with the wounds he had suffered and the willingness, the decision, to be at peace anyway.

In Jesus, we see what God is like. We see what God is like for those who have a broken heart. We see that God doesn’t demand what we can’t give, but instead he gives himself to us. This is what we mean when we talk about mercy. This is what we mean when we talk about grace.

Jesus is calling us all to live life with him. And he doesn’t even ask us to get ourselves ready; he is already ready. Jesus has closed the gap with you and with me. He is already in the locked rooms of our hearts. He has already extended forgiveness and welcome. He has remained faithful to you and me no matter how far we feel as if faith is beyond us. And he calls us to agree with him. Jesus asks us to agree with him that he has closed the gap between us. He wants a life of love and faith and offers that to us regardless of anything in our past. Whatever we have done, whatever has been done to us, Jesus has done everything necessary for none of that to matter any more. He just asks us to believe.

Believe, and receive that life as your own. Believe, and begin to experience faith as something Jesus has always had toward us and as something he now makes true for us. Believe, and receive the truth that he has suffered right along with us, and through these sufferings is forgiveness and belonging. Jesus is at home in your heart, and he wants you to be at home in his.

This kind of life is where we belong. Jesus makes a way to for us to share the life of love that has always been true for him: knowing his Heavenly Father loves him, experiencing the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, and for that life of love and not our own pasts to be the thing which is most true for us.

May we know the love of God which surpasses knowledge, and may we be at home in the presence of the peace of Christ.

NOW The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.