Coming in Peace--April 17, 2023

Coming in Peace--April 17, 2023

"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 Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he had 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]

You know the scene--it's been played out in some form or another in a hundred variations on TV and movies.  The spacecraft ominously hovers over the ground, while tense music plays in the background.  The army has cordoned off the landing zone, and representatives of Earth's leaders [or just of the country where the ship lands] stand at the ready, flanked by soldiers and s to greet whoever--or whatever--disembarks from the flying saucer.  Then, often with a hiss of steam or smoke, and a flash of lights, the strange silhouettes of alien visitors emerge, and then proceed down a landing ramp onto the ground.

And in the span of time between the arrival of the alien craft and the moment of first contact, the question just hangs there in the air: why have they come?  Are they here to conquer?  To exterminate?  To broker an alliance?  To use us as guinea pigs or collect us as specimens?  Could they be reliable if they say they have come with good will? And then, classically, the alien delegates say [sometimes sincerely, and sometimes with ulterior motives], "We come in peace."  

There's something of that same tension for the frightened band of Jesus' disciples on that first Easter evening, isn't there?  They are already afraid of what the outside powers might do to them if they were found out.  The disciples had seen the horror of what the brutal Roman army, the ruthless religious police, and the bloodthirsty lynch mob could do when they laid hands on Jesus.  And so, of course, they were afraid of going out of doors and being caught themselves--they could end up on crosses just as easily. But beyond that fear is a deeper, more ominous anxiety, because they have heard the rumors by Sunday evening that Jesus is alive again.  They just don't know what to expect from a resurrected Jesus.

After all, the disciples all remember how they had left things with Jesus, in the last moments they were all together.  While a handful of the women in Jesus' circle stayed with him at the cross, Jesus' hand-picked group of twelve had all abandoned him, despite insisting that they would all face death before denying him.  Some had just slipped away into the night out of fear when the police and the mob came for him in the garden, and some [ahem, Peter, the "rock" of the church] outright denied even knowing him.  They had literally left Jesus hanging, and many of them had either implicitly or explicitly said they had nothing to do with Jesus--and then he died.  So now that there are rumblings that the tomb was empty and Jesus is on the loose, there's got to be some of that sci-fi alien visitor movie vibe in the room when Jesus just appears out of nowhere, through locked doors, to find them.  Why has he come? What does he want from them?  Is he angry for their betrayal and abandonment?  Has he come for revenge?

With all of that in mind, it makes perfect sense then that Jesus' first words to these fearful disciples is to say, "Peace be with you."  It's not just a throwaway greeting.  It's not a scornful, "Where WERE you guys when I needed you?"  There's no scolding, "Didn't you believe me when I said I would rise from the dead?" And there is no hint at all of, "You thought you could hide from ME, did you?  Well, I've come to settle a score..."  Rather, Jesus says, reliably and emphatically, "I come in peace."

The risen Jesus' first impulse when coming face to face with the whole group of his gathered disciples is to assure them that he's not holding their past failures against them--and he never did.  Jesus does not weaponize the past, but lets it go.  In other words, resurrection and release from guilt go hand in hand. Jesus doesn't rise from the dead in order to get revenge on his faithless disciples [or his murderers], but rather announces that he has come to give them peace.

And almost as if to make sure they didn't miss it or dismiss it as a perfunctory greeting, Jesus says it again: "Peace be with you."  He makes it clear that not even their fearful abandonment of Jesus when things were at their darkest will exclude them now from his community, his new life, or his peace.  And if even that can't get you kicked out of Christ's grace, I can't imagine what any of us can do or say [or fail to do or say] that could exceed the limits of his reconciling presence.  All of this is to say that the resurrection of Jesus is what assures us that God's love in Christ will not let go of us and will not hold our past against us.  God's kind of love just doesn't hold onto our mess-ups that way, and the risen Jesus brings no resentments inside that locked room on Easter evening.

Taking that seriously in our lives will set us free, too.  It means there need be no fear that Jesus has come to zap us like an invading space alien in a movie.  There is no plot twist that he's really out to get us, and there are no shoes waiting to drop.  Jesus has left our past failures behind, and he's not bringing them up any longer.  Instead, he comes in peace.

For so many people around us, all they've heard from Respectable Religious people is to be afraid that God is going to zap them for all their past, present, and future wrongs, unless the adequately go through whatever steps or jump through whatever hoops they have in mind when they talk about "repentance."  Did you pray the right prayer, did you do enough to show God you are serious about changing your ways?  Did you mean the apology sincerely enough?  Did you believe hard enough in Jesus?  Jesus' disciples in the locked room do none of those things, and Jesus doesn't even wait around to be invited into the room, or into their hearts. He comes in and announces peace and forgiveness first, knowing that's the first step to getting them to unlock the door and head out into the world with the same message.

So for you and me today, our calling is much the same--to dare to trust what Jesus says to us, and then to help other people to know what Jesus makes clear from the first words out of his mouth:  he comes in peace.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust your promise of peace and forgiveness, so that we can pass it along to everyone around us, too.