Text: John 20:19-31
It hardly seemed a joyful occasion. Even after Mary had come to tell them what she had discovered. That Jesus had risen from death and that she and Jesus had spoken.
“Go to my brothers,” Jesus had told her, “and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” So she did. She “went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.”
And yet, here they are, on that very same day, locked together in a room, frightened and confused.
What they hoped to have happened had not. Jesus had not freed the people of Israel from Roman rule. He had not rescued them. He had not transformed the world, he had not freed the prisoners, not lifted up the poor and oppressed, not fed the hungry. The rich were still rich and the powerful still powerful. And they, the disciples, were alone and scared.
What they thought had happened was this: Jesus had stood in a cruel trial and had unfairly been convicted of treason and sedition and had been ingloriously nailed to the cross. On which he had died.
They had much to grieve. They grieved their friend and leader and teacher. They had lost the person who glued them all together into a band of healers and witnesses to miracles. A rowdy and hopeful bunch. They grieved their hopes. They grieved the lost chance for a new world, a world founded on different principles, the kingdom of God. They grieved the new kind of life that they had been promised. And most of all, they grieved that, after all Jesus was and had done and had said, that after all that, death was victorious. Once again. Once again. As death, it seemed, always was and had been and, it looked like, always would be.
You can see how Mary’s news was no match for their convictions. Would you have believed Mary? The forces of death always seem to have the upper hand.
Those forces of death have been unchanged since the time and Jesus and long before that: greed, fear, indifference. Cruelty and injustice. People starve while others dine, just like in the days of Jesus. People sell others into slavery, just like in the days of Jesus. And people buy those slaves. People of power send the powerless into battle, just like in those days. People step over the poor and sick, avoiding them as awkward interruptions, just like in those days.
And just like in those days, people choose for themselves things that diminish their own lives, that weaken their spirits. And just like in those days, bad things happen without explanation or regard. Illness or accident or tragedy. The universe itself seems indifferent.
Most of us have firsthand knowledge of life-draining, life-squashing, life-inhibiting events, or things, or people.
The forces of death are strong and the power of fear is great. Moses gave a choice to the Israelites in the dessert, freed from slavery but not yet settled in a new home. I put before you life and death, he said. Choose life. Choose life. As if it were so easy. In most of what we do, in what we buy, in how we treat friends and strangers, how we treat ourselves, in our jobs, in what we hope for, we are presented with Moses’ choice. Think: is what I’m about to do on the side of life or death. Martin Luther said that one reason we should share in Holy Communion is because it nourishes us so that we may engage in a daily fight with the devil. Who is on the side of death. Whom we are right to despise. It seems that just when things are going well, the evil one looks for a foothold, ever ready.
So it must have seemed to the disciples, gathering in fear in a room they had locked. Afraid, all except Thomas, even to go out. How in the world could Jesus be alive in the face of the evil of the world?
And yet. And yet he was. Here he was, in this room, standing here. The disciples rejoiced, the story says. What filled them with joy?
Were they joyful to see their old friend back? Maybe, but I suspect they found that more weird than joyful. I would have. The pleasure of the miracle, though great, would have been overwhelmed by the even greater strangeness of seeing my dead friend walking toward me, talking, wishing me peace.
Were they were joyful because he brought them a taste of the afterlife? Maybe, but he brings them no news of what is beyond the grave, no slide shows of his weekend journey to the dead. On the contrary, he speaks to the disciples of their lives, of his expectations for them in this world. What they needed to do. And he brings them gifts to help them do that. The Holy Spirit, the power of forgiveness. Peace. He spoke to them about their continuing life.
Or were the disciples joyful because they suddenly realized that what they knew about death was all wrong. That they had it wrong. They, not Thomas, had been the doubting disciples. They had doubted the power of life. The powerfulness of life. But Jesus brings them news. Good news. Death does not have the last word. Jesus teaches them to doubt death. And to doubt the conclusions they had held with such certainty.
Like the disciples, we are tempted to give in to death’s public relations campaign. To fear that in the end there is only the end. But Jesus shows us that even with our experience of it, we overrate the power of death. Jesus shows us that death is weaker than we imagine. For the followers of Jesus this is not wishful thinking. This is not whistling in the dark. It is a kind of physics. It is information. Jesus’ presence in the room is a message that life is a strong as we hope. Stronger than we had hoped. That the forces of life prevail.
Desmond Tutu, who knew a thing or two about the power of life in the face of death, said that:
We are able to declare that God’s intention for the world is that all of this ugliness must be transformed and transfigured, that there will be peace, that there will be joy, that there will be laughter, that there will be fellowship and reconciliation… God has made us for goodness, for love, for compassion, for peace, for laughter, for gentleness, for sharing and caring—and God is in charge.
He closed with words that could have come from the hearts of the disciples:
Goodness is stronger than evil,
love is stronger than hate,
light is stronger than darkness,
life is stronger than death.
