From Behind Locked Doors

"From Behind Locked Doors"--April 19, 2017

"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.' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the lord. Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you'." [John 20:19-21]

Jesus, you will notice, does not knock.

For that matter, let us take note: Jesus does not ask for volunteers, but rather sends out his disciples like EMTs being sent out on a call. 

This is because being moved outward is not an option for the followers of Jesus--it is at the core of what following Jesus means.  Taking the Easter accounts seriously means knowing that the risen Jesus is going to move us out beyond whatever locked doors we have been hiding ourselves behind.

Again, think of it for a moment like the crew of an ambulance, or a fire corps--when the alarm starts going off, even if the crew in the station were asleep or about to eat dinner, they go.  The dispatcher gives them the information, and perhaps a supervisor assigns who will go where, but there is no long deliberation over "whether you feel like going" to help the person who is out there somewhere having chest pains, or whose house is on fire.  No one is terribly interested in that matter whether any of the EMTs "feel" like going, and nobody on the fire crew says, "Can't we reschedule this fire for another day after I've gotten some 'me' time?"  This is the sacrifice made by first responders, and it is worthy of honor and recognition.  But let's be clear: nobody knocks politely at the door in the fire station and says, like some office middle-manager with a coffee mug in hand, "Hey... I don't know if you've got the time, maybe, but if you could get around to it... and if you feel like it... there's a three-alarm blaze going on the edge of town... and it would be great if you could go ahead and get to that fire, maybe."

Well, if we are clear on that much, then we can be clear about what happens with the resurrection of Jesus and his followers.  Instead of lulling them into a state of passive comfort behind locked doors while they just talk to one another about one day going to heaven, Jesus breaks in to the room where they are huddled and gives them a commission.  Granted, that mission comes with his gift of peace, but it is a restless sort of peace.  It is a moving and urgent thing, something that drives them outward.  If Jesus wouldn't stay confined within the stone walls of a tomb, his followers will not be allowed to stay locked up by their own fear.

And that's just it: unlike the tomb of Jesus that was sealed by the Romans (pathetically!) from the outside, now the disciples of Jesus have locked themselves in, because they are afraid.  They are afraid of the religious establishment that invoked the Almighty while calling for the death of Jesus.  They are afraid of the Empire that callously doesn't care who it executes as long as it gets to make an example of somebody to keep everybody else in line.  They are afraid of the crowds of ordinary innocent bystanders who got swept up in something horrible and either started crying for Jesus' death, too, or were just silent and too afraid themselves to speak up.  Put all of those together, and Jesus' disciples are just plain ruled by fear of a laundry list of "what ifs" and "who might be out there" fears.

Given that fear, there's no point in Jesus politely knocking from the outside and patiently waiting to be let in.  The disciples will never let Jesus in on their own--that's the vicious circle they are caught in!  They are so afraid because they think they are alone that they will never let in the One who would remind them that they are not alone!  So Jesus could play the old-fashioned gentleman or polished lady of manners and wait outside until someone greeted him at the door... but meanwhile the disciples would be dying of fear on the inside and too paralyzed by that fear to even let in the One who could pull them out of it.

So, as I say, Jesus doesn't knock.  This really is something for us to be clear about, too, because an awful lot of (bad) theology out there actually tries to hang everything on the notion that Jesus knocks at the door and must wait politely to be let in to our hearts.  This, it turns out, comes from a blatant misreading of a lone passage in the book of Revelation about Jesus "standing at the door and knocking," but it also comes from our perennial proud tendency of giving ourselves too much credit.  In a culture like ours where we are told to see ourselves supremely as "customers" and "consumers," we like the illusion of control to things--we have to decide first if we are going to let Jesus in... we have to make the smart decision first... we have to choose to accept Jesus... and so on.

The only trouble with that picture is--that is literally never how it works in the Bible!  Jesus is always crashing the party because people are too paralyzed by fear or their own pride to let him in!  It's the disciples in the upper room here after the resurrection... it's Jesus looking up into the sycamore tree and inviting himself over to Zacchaeus' house for dinner... it's Jesus interrupting the funeral procession for a stranger to waken a dead boy back to life... it's the risen Christ knocking Saul of Tarsus off his high horse on his way to Damascus.  Look, as much as we might think we want a Savior who has read his etiquette manual and sits meekly outside our front door knocking until we work up the nerve to let him in... the truth is that we would never let Jesus in if that were his way of operating.  We have a way of letting the fear rule us--and once you let fear rule you, it has a way of boxing you into smaller and smaller spaces and making you more and more paranoid about "what might be out there," until even the sound of Jesus knocking seems scary.

Jesus, therefore, does what any fire crew does when they know there are people behind the other side of the wall suffocating to death--he just crashes in.  Jesus appears behind locked doors because his disciples are now suffocating on fear, and they will never find the nerve to let him in on their own... but they will never find the courage to open the door until he is already inside.

And from there, once Jesus is there, his peace becomes real.  It is not "magic," like all he had to do was say some secret mystical formula to make the scary stuff go away.  And it's not trite or empty sloganeering, either, just trying to motivate the disciples to stop being afraid by empty self-help or cheerleading.  It is Jesus' presence that makes the difference, and finally smacks those fearful disciples upside the head to decide just how much they want to let the fear rule their lives.

And once they see that the One standing among them has endured the worst that the Empire could do... and has defeated their most powerful weapon (death), well, all of a sudden, something is new.  Resurrection, along with the peace of Jesus' presence, pushes them outward--out of the doors they had locked to keep everyone else out.  Resurrection won't let them stay put.  Resurrection won't let them be imprisoned by fear any longer.  "As the Father has sent me... so I now send you," Jesus says.

With that, there is transformation.  Whereas just a minute ago, the disciples were the ones needing rescue from the firefighters because they were suffocating under the thick smoke of fear behind the door, now they are sent out, too, as if they now are the first responders, sent out to free any and all who are still imprisoned by fear, and the cruel way that fear, like carbon monoxide, poisons the air all around it and chokes us faster.  Now the disciples are the ones sent out into a world that doesn't want to admit just how much it lets itself be ruled by fear--fear of death, fear of the enemy, fear of scarcity, fear of being alone, fear of some ambiguous picture of "those people", fear of any and all of the above. 

And we are sent, too.  Whether you and I recognize it or not (that is, even if we still live under the illusion that Jesus waited until we asked him to come into our lives to start getting our attention), Jesus has already shown up in that locked room inside your and my own hearts.  Jesus has already invited himself over for dinner, and he has already broken open the door to rescue us from suffocation in there.  And the same living, risen Jesus speaks to us the word, "Peace," and then immediately follows it up with, "Now... you go, too."

What can we do today but go? After all, we are the ones on call for this day.  We are the ones Jesus is sending into a world that is choking on its own fear.

Go.  You're up.  This is not a drill.

Lord Jesus, wake us up and shake us up and break into our locked rooms to save us from our fears, so that we can be sent to speak your liberty to everyone still ruled by fear's power.