In the Midst of Us.

John 20:19-31

April 19 MMXX

I.

This story of the first appearance of the risen Lord to his disciples begins in both a time of increasing darkness, and behind securely locked doors.  They are as it were sheltering in place due to their fear.  Their defenses are up.  They are in hiding.  Night is falling.  Things are bad.  

Not only does this describe our situation in this pandemic — with it still likely to get worse before getting better, with our doubt about whether we are ever going to get back to anything like “normal" — but it also represents the condition of defeated, demoralized, disillusioned, depressed, despairing souls.

The disciples are wracked with guilt, sadness, grief, confusion, and terror.  It would not be at all unusual for the authorities to round them all up for crucifixion as associates of Jesus.  Jesus’ body is apparently missing, whatever that could mean.  And Mary has been annoyingly going on about somehow seeing him alive that morning: talk about denial and wishful-thinking.  Everything they imagined and hoped about how their careers would turn out, has been demolished.  They lost their best friend and teacher.  And almost all of them abandoned him at his time of greatest need, electing to save themselves.  They gave up everything for this adventure; now it had all turned to ash.

Sometimes we land in these dark, claustrophobic, inescapable spaces and they are horrible.  Like being buried alive in a coffin.  Everything has collapsed in on you.  Outwardly it can be a terrible disease, a failed marriage, your children in danger, an addiction, or getting fired.  Or if you were living from paycheck to paycheck in this economy, and the paychecks have stopped but the bills haven’t, and getting food is becoming a problem….  And you’ve got this weird cough but no health insurance.

Like you were so proud of yourself and hopeful because you were sober for three years… and then that all gets wiped away in one weekend and you find yourself back at the beginning.  Starting over, only now with less confidence, and more bitter awareness of the grip this particular demon has on you.

So things are bad for the disciples, and most of us can relate.  At these times we don’t feel particularly open to new spiritual experiences.  If anything we’ve become pretty cynical about the effectiveness of messiahs and missions and even prayer.  I mean, why bother?  Right?  Three years on the road witnessing miracles gets completely drained and denied by three days hiding in a room with a bunch of other defeated people, having watched the Romans do to Jesus what they always do.  

It was evening, darkness was increasing, another bad night was beginning, and the doors of the house were locked because of fear.  If it can get this bad it can probably get worse.  Where is the bottom?  When can we just go back home and return to fishing, pretend this all never happened.  The smug neighbors will get over shaking their heads and saying “I told you so” after a few weeks.  But we’ll always be those guys who followed a false “messiah” all the way to Jerusalem and had to come back with their tails between their legs.  Whatever.

II.

If they have nothing else at this point, the disciples have memories and they have community.  They have each other.  And they probably do what we all do when someone close to us dies: they remember.  They share stories.  They recall the experiences they had together.  They bring to the table Jesus’ words, teachings, actions.  

Because it just doesn’t really compute, that the man who does the amazing things they witness — like healing someone born blind, or even raising Lazarus from the dead — perhaps Lazarus is even there with them in that room! — and how it makes no sense that Jesus, of all people, would die, especially like that….  

Unless it does.  Does Jesus not say that he would be “lifted up”?  And he was certainly lifted up on that horrible cross.  Does he not also say our pain will turn into joy, and that in a little while we would not see him, and then again in a little while we would see him, that he would would go away but not leave us orphaned, and that some “Advocate” would come?  Doesn’t he predict that we would leave him alone, but we should be at peace about that?  Doesn’t he say he would come again and take us to himself?  Doesn’t he say, the night before he dies, right when Judas took off to rat on him, that he is thereby “glorified” and has “conquered the world”?

Maybe the disciples had to remember what Passover itself is about: How God is in the very business of snatching victory from defeat, bringing life into death, and overcoming the darkness with light.

Maybe they had to remember that this whole experience is about love.  Maybe that’s what they are to take with them into the darkness: living in his love which gives life for one’s friends, that the world would know us by our love, and that the love with which God loves him will be in us and even that he will himself be in us?

Maybe they remember what happens in this same room, a few nights before, when Jesus washes their feet.  He performs this amazing act of selfless service, demonstrating to them the essence of his life and ministry as this self-emptying love for others, and for all, which is now to be the guiding principle of their life and mission together.  

After three days of these ruminations, and after the puzzling mysteries of that morning when Peter and John find no dead body in Jesus’ tomb, and Mary says she actually meets Jesus himself….  Jesus comes and stands among them, in the middle of them all, and says “Peace be with you!”

Darkness, walls, and fear are no barrier to the risen Lord, who appears right there in their midst, with a word of peace.

III.

I wonder if the secret to healing and transformation isn’t the memory and community shaped, informed, flavored, and defined by Jesus Christ, which is to say memory and community in tune with the Way, the Truth, and the Life he embodies and gives to us.

What leaves people in despair sometimes to the point of suicide is dwelling on bad memories, stewing in bad stories, wallowing in bad thoughts, and having either no community or being stuck in systems based on judgment, condemnation, retribution, blame, exploitation, and carelessness.  Bad memories and bad community exist in opposition and contradiction to Jesus Christ, and therefore to the will of the Creator. 

This is what ego and Empire desire and foist upon people, then and now: the corrosive idea that whatever happens to you is your own damn fault, that your value is determined by how much wealth you make for your employers, that your happiness is measured by how much you are able to take for yourself, and your security is based on violence and threats of violence.  It says that we do not and should not care about each other, support each other, help each other, or organize ourselves to assist each other in times of crisis.  It asks why I should pay for someone else’s health care, for instance.  And it blindly puts me, my family, my race, my nation, my species first, sacrificing all else, including the planet, to my immediate self-gratification.

It is the mindset that is willing to let, or even in effect force, others to die for “the economy.”  The world that leaves us alone and vulnerable, under vast pressure to keep working and producing so we can overpay for what we need, which is still unavailable when we need it most, that world is not real.  Powerful people invented it and forced it on us for their benefit.  

In his final prayer with his disciples Jesus describes these attitudes as “the world.”  The world is the regime of the Evil One; neither Jesus nor his disciples “belong to” the world, but they are nevertheless “sent” into the world for the purpose of witnessing within it to the Truth of God’s saving love, revealed in Jesus.  They are sent into the world to form an alternative community, a gathering based on compassion, generosity, inclusion, forgiveness, non-violence, and love.

That’s what has to be communicated to people, cowering in the increasing darkness with their doors locked.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  Indeed, it isn’t this way at all, really; this is not the world God creates, redeems, and sustains.  Not only is this not the only possible world, but we will show you a different one.  We will show you a world based on love.  

That is what Jesus empowers the disciples to do and be when he breathes on them the Holy Spirit, his own life-giving, comforting holy breath, his living presence with and within them, their Advocate wedding them to him and empowering them to love one another with his love.  It is not for some return to “normalcy” that he gives them the Spirit.  It is for the overcoming of the world in his name, with his peace.

IV.

With this Spirit within them, they may now represent Jesus Christ as his agents in releasing people’s sins, and even in his work of taking others’ sins on themselves, retaining them, absorbing them, processing them, and defusing them, so they can do no more harm to anyone.  That is the work of this new community, that is the work of love in Jesus’ Name; to first of all forgive sins, which is to say, to let go of what separates people from God and their true nature, and secondly when necessary to retain others’ sins, which is to say, take on ourselves the consequences of people’s wrong-headed actions, making ourselves a living sacrifice after Jesus’ example.

In no case do we leave people alienated, alone, isolated, to fend for themselves.  In no case do we shrug off another’s pain, hunger, fear, disease, and degradation.  But in every case we find a way to say, as Jesus does in his final prayer, we are One.  We are one with God, with each other, with all creation.  No one is separated.  No one is lost.  No one is forgotten.

Christ is in the midst of us.

He is and ever shall be!

+++++++