Even After the Worst--April 8, 2024

Even after the Worst--April 8, 2024

"...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...." [John 20:19b-20]

On television and in the movies, it is usually a dangerous thing to ask the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" The big and small screen both appreciate dramatic irony enough that you can generally expect the character who poses that question is about to have some sort of tragedy befall them. "What's the worst that could happen?" someone asks... and then the roof falls down on them... or the plumbing bursts in their face... or the toddler they were supposed to be watching sneaks off, or the bad guys come busting in the door in the next moment. That sort of thing. On TV, you don't get to ask, "What's the worst that could happen?" without something momentously bad happening before the next commercial break.

But in the resurrection of Jesus, and the stories that unfold after his rising, that same question takes on a whole new feel. It becomes a new question entirely when the scene playing out is a resurrected rabbi standing, alive and well again, in front of his fearful disciples huddled within a room they have locked from the inside. When the risen Jesus appears--despite their best efforts to keep anybody and everybody out, and in defiance of the fact that nobody had the courage to invite Jesus in first--all of a sudden, the question, "What's the worst that could happen?" changes. The question that used to sound like it was tempting fate, practically just begging the universe to send some cruel twist their way, now feels like a declaration of victory. After all, really, the worst they could do to Jesus... was to kill him. And he has triumphed over their worst actions and attempts. They did it--the Romans, the religious authorities, the manipulated, stirred-up crowds--they set out to get Jesus killed; and they did it. And even after they did their worst, there Jesus is, alive again, and beyond their power to do anything further to him.

And in that, Jesus has broken the power of the "bad guys" that the fearful disciples are so afraid will bust down the door at any second. Jesus' presence makes it mean something different when he says, "Peace be with you." He is able to actually create peace among us, because Jesus has done something to forever disarm the powers of the day. Jesus' resurrection means that he is victorious even after the powers of death and evil have done their work... they are out of ammo and have spent all their chips trying to get rid of Jesus. And he is still there. He has gone through death and come out the other side. And that means that for Jesus and his followers, we no longer have to be ruled by fear. We no longer have to let fear call our shots, make us cower, make us resort to seeing everyone around us as a threat, or make us play the world's games by the world's rules. We no longer have to have our actions dictated by our fears. The world will not cease being a scary place, and the world will not stop having threatening things in it. Jesus doesn't make the empty promise that he will take away all the scary or dangerous stuff--he just points out that even after all the scary and dangerous things in the world have done their worst, they cannot--and cannot EVER--overpower his resurrection life, which gives us the power to choose whether we remain dominated by fear, or whether we let Jesus be Lord and usurp fear's place on the throne of our hearts.

So often our culture throws around the word "peace" so casually and vaguely that there is no reason to believe it means anything. We church folks are often especially guilty, because we talk loosely about "peace in our hearts" as a sort of groundless warm and cozy feeling that has nothing solid under it--no real reason for peace. But the thing is, Jesus has actually given us a reason for peace to mean something--his resurrection says to us, "Look--even if they do the worst they can do to you, I've got an ace up my sleeve: resurrection!" There's a reason that the followers of Jesus can dare to have peace, because it is our confidence that even if the villains of the Legion of Doom, or the bad guys we are sure are looking around the corner, or even the Roman Empire come face to face with us and do their worst, the worst is not enough to stifle Christ's power to raise us back up. As other voices in the New Testament are fond of saying, we are already dead and resurrected, and our lives are hidden with Christ, where the powers of the day--even the power of fear--cannot reach. That is what our kind of peace means--not a denial of the painful or difficult stuff of the world, nor a naïve ignorance of the real presence of evil in the world, nor of the people who do evil things in the world--but rather, an awareness that even when they all do their worst, the worst is not enough.

Let me invite each of us to ask the question then today: what's the worst that can happen today? Seriously, facing it head on--what's the worst that can happen, the worst that "they" (whoever "they" might be) can do to us? The biggest weapon in evil's arsenal is death--and death has already been outflanked by Jesus' resurrection. If we dare to believe that is true, then the only other question that remains on this day is simply, "How much control will we give fear in our lives... and how much will we give control to the living Jesus?"

Lord Jesus, give us your peace again today... and let it be real and solid.