Easter People, raise your voices...

..sounds of heaven in earth should ring.

On Sunday morning, I delighted in the liturgical response all good Methodists (and plenty others) know so well. Pastor: Christ is risen! People: He is risen indeed! In fact, I got a text message at 6:30 Sunday morning from a friend who simply sent "Christ is risen." I responded, sort of in my sleep, with the joyous response. "He is risen indeed." Where, oh death, is thy sting? Lord, you have delivered us from captivity to sin and death! ...But, oh how quickly the joy of Easter morning can fade. I have worked two days this week and I am worn out. I've had five of my patients die in these two days. I have not been in one single joyful room. I am a little weary, and it's only day two of my week. So, for comfort I turn to the familiar Easter evening text in which the disciples felt weariness in even greater measure than I feel right now at 8:30 on Wednesday evening.

John 20:19-23
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors 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 side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.

Again Jesus said, "Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." And with that he breathed on them and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone his sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven."

First of all, with absolutely no statistical support for my claim at all, I will say that of the pastors who preach on the Jesus' appearance to the disciples after the resurrection this Sunday, 70% will talk about Thomas (who appears in the next few verses which I have not included). Old Doubting Thomas. Remember, I made that number up, but I bring it up because of how often I've heard about that Thomas character who has forever gained the title of doubter.

I doubt, I question, and in a week like the one I'm having, I would be a hypocrite to be hard on Thomas. And really, is it so far a stretch of the imagination for you and me to understand how Thomas's mind might not have been able to stretch far enough to believe someone who was dead had somehow come back from the dead? I, for one, could use a break as I doubt and fear, so I am going to give Thomas a break as well.

The others in the upper room that day weren't all that prepared either. There they were, sitting in that room with the doors locked. They were sitting on their hands in fear and perhaps a little regret. They'd not stood up for their teacher when it mattered most. They'd not showed up at the cross. They had fallen asleep in the garden, denied the one they had been following, and found themselves powerless and afraid. And then something so strange happens. Jesus appears. He came right through the locked doors and appeared among them. He drew so close to them that they could touch his wounded body. Rather than giving them the scolding they may have deserved for their faithlessness, he loved them. In moving past the locked doors of the upper room, he moves past the locked doors of our hearts--doors that have been locked by fear, sadness, worry, anger, and hatred. He moves among us and rather than chastising us for all our failures, he draws so lovingly near to us that we can feel his breath on our skin. For a brief moment, in the midst of utter chaos, there is peace.

As he breathes out the Holy Spirit on us, we are empowered and challenged to show that same peace to the broken and hurting world. In the world around me, I can see the marks and wounds of Christ's body. I am so close I can touch them. What I do everyday, the sad and broken places I enter into, what that's all about is reaching out and touching the holes in hands and putting my hands in the wounded side of Christ. And what I can and should do is draw near, as Christ has done for all of us, and share the peace that I know in Christ's resurrection and the power of the Holy Spirit. Quite honestly, that's the reason I make myself get up every morning and go to work. That's what it means to be an Easter people, I guess. Peace making and peace showing. Easter people, let us sing. Alleluia and Amen!