Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

April 24, 2022 | 10:00 a.m.

Peace

Shannon J. Kershner
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 118:14–29
John 20:19–31

There are so many responses the risen Christ could have made to his followers when he appears to them. He could have said, “Shame on you.” He could have said, “How disappointed I am in you” or queried, “Why don’t you have more faith?” He could have asked them forthrightly, “Why did you abandon me?” In this appearance story, the One we proclaim as Jesus our Christ could have legitimately made all these responses and more.

And yet, what were his first words to his fearful, flawed, confused, doubting followers? “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you. Other than “I have seen the Lord,” in this Gospel of John, these might be the most important words of Easter that we ever hear. In this story, an interaction that occurs on that first Easter night, the first words from the mouth of the risen Christ are the words, “Peace be with you.”

He blesses them. He reassures them. He states what William Sloane Coffin later paraphrased as “there is always more mercy in God than sin in any one of us or all of us.” “Peace be with you.” These words from the still-wounded-yet-resurrected Jesus proclaim that God’s mercy will always be more powerful and more all-consuming than any of the various ways we fall short and live out of our brokenness rather than live out of our baptismal identity.

The enormity of the Easter proclamation is one reason why Presbyterian congregations will still be gathered for six more Sundays with Easter lessons as our Gospel reading. For fifty days, we will actively live in the season of Eastertide—a season marked by Alleluias and Easter hymns. A season that does not end until God’s breath of new life is poured out once again, this time on the day of Pentecost.

This tradition of Eastertide comes from the early church. The time frame is built upon our Jewish roots, specifically mirroring the festivals of the Passover and Shavuot. Theologically, though, the season of Eastertide is centered on the reality that the proclamation of the empty tomb—the news of God’s raising our crucified Christ—is a proclamation so explosive and so expansive that it cannot be contained on merely one Sunday.

Indeed, the hope is that by experiencing fifty days of Easter, we will move past trying to contain it or explain it. By experiencing fifty days of Easter, we will take the opportunity to move deeper and deeper into the mystery of it all, until we find our own lives defined more by Easter hope and resurrection power than by Good Friday pain and fear. The invitation of Eastertide is the invitation to consistently remember that the first words out of the mouth of the still-wounded-yet-resurrected Jesus are “Peace be with you.”

I imagine those words ended up being incredibly important to Thomas. You probably remember the contours of Thomas’s story. For whatever reason, he was not in the room on that first Easter evening when the risen Jesus appeared. And when Thomas finally does arrive, all he hears is “You should have been here. I can’t believe you missed it.” It must have been devastating to walk into that room, to hear all the talk of resurrection, and to see all the smiles on the faces of his friends and yet feel so completely removed from it. He hadn’t been there, and Thomas could not even imagine what had happened. So when the others simply stated :We have seen the Lord,” Thomas could not believe them.

I would venture to guess that many of us often stand with Thomas in his struggle. Many of us have moments in our own lives when we wrestle to believe the testimony of others. When their words of good news and hope seem to ring hollow in the reality of our world. When we are unable to see ourselves through God’s eyes, through the eyes of grace and peace.

And yet, perhaps unlike you or me, Thomas refused to keep this struggle to himself. He gave words to his reservations. He gave words to his fear. Thomas stepped out in courage, right there in the middle of his community of faith, and stated that if he was going to believe Jesus is raised from the dead, then he needed to touch and feel the resurrection.

But lest we judge him, Thomas was only asking for what the others had already received—that proclamation of peace and Easter presence. He recognized that he needed Jesus’ risen presence and concreteness before he could make the move from Good Friday pain into Easter resurrection hope, before he could trust those words of peace. He courageously and loudly voiced his longing. “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Such honesty. Such vulnerability. Such tenacious faith.

And according to John, one week later Thomas’s honest request was answered. Once again Jesus entered their locked room, stood among them, and said those incredibly important Easter words: “Peace be with you.” Don’t you imagine that Jesus looked Thomas right in the eyes when he said it? And then Jesus invited Thomas to come to him and find what he needed. Whether Thomas took Jesus up on his offer or not, we see through this interaction that Jesus met Thomas exactly where he was—in the middle of his Good Friday pain, in the middle of his tenacious wrestling of faith, in the middle of his wondering about the promise of peace—and reassured him it was real.

Again, Jesus did not condemn him. Jesus did not judge him. Jesus did not blame him. Jesus met him where he was and blessed him. And in the midst of that God-given moment of recognition, Thomas looked up and said, “My Lord and my God.” Words that dripped of love, joy, and recognition. In that moment, Thomas let go of the need to explain and contain and found himself grasped and embraced by the gracious mystery of Easter. In that moment, Thomas completely knew and embodied resurrection hope. And again, it started with those Easter words: Peace be with you.

What do you think would be different about your life, different about our world, if those Easter words of “Peace be with you” defined you, defined us? What could be if the most important thing we believed about ourselves was not our guilt, not our fear, not our doubts, not our accomplishments and successes, but rather that we are loved of God? What could happen in us and to us if we took the risen Jesus’ first Easter words of “Peace be with you” and actively remembered them every single morning and every single evening?

I imagine many of us would be so much more rested, for one thing. Perhaps we would be freer to show care and concern for others, for another. We could be raised up out of our incessant fascination with either our failures or our triumphs. We could have a life larger than our own small horizons, have a sense of God’s participation in our lives at every moment. We could be unlocked by love, living as God’s instruments of peace. “Peace be with you,” Jesus said.

Now I fully realize that all of this can seem like such an act of cognitive dissonance: living as an Easter people, trusting that Jesus’ words of peace are central to who we are, while still being a part of an obviously broken, not yet fully made whole, world. But we can see from the disciples’ story, from Thomas’s story, that this struggle of dissonance has been ongoing from the very first Easter evening. The struggle of dissonance might just be an integral part of what it even means to be a disciple of the crucified and risen Jesus.

And it might well be that if you do not share this struggle for faith; this mixture of joy and disbelief; this suspicion about if God’s love really is the defining characteristic of who you are; then, as Frederick Buechner once wrote, you are either kidding yourself or you are asleep. Because it is neither easy nor simplistic to live as God’s Easter people in this world, to live as those who trust that Jesus’ promise of peace is primary to our identity.

Yet we are called to be a people who claim that “he is risen” as we make sandwiches for our Meals Ministry program or call on a fellow church member or friend undergoing treatment for a mean cancer. We are called to be a people who hum the “Hallelujah” chorus while interviewing for job after job after job. We are called to be a people who purposefully call a service after a death not a funeral service but a service of witness to the resurrection. We are called to be a people who do what we can to remember the promise of resurrection power, of Jesus’ first words of peace, even after the season of Eastertide comes to an end.

Yes, it can be difficult to stay rooted in that joy. It can be a struggle to trust the Easter testimony of others when we find ourselves back in our Good Friday pain and fear. And when that does happen again, which it will, my prayer is we will again remember that the first thing the risen Christ said to his friends—the friends who had betrayed him, denied him, abandoned him, and doubted him—the first thing he said was “Peace be with you.” Not shame on you. Not how dare you. Not why did you forsake me. Just “Peace be with you. I meet you where you are, and I offer you peace.”

In a few moments, we will have the honor to bear witness to a bunch of eighth graders who are ready to proclaim their own faith for themselves. Many of them are ready to become adult members of the church. But I have no doubt that even as you confirmands stand here among us, that many of you, like many of the rest of us, struggle like Thomas and the others did to trust that Jesus’ promises are true—true about them, true about what will be in our world, true about who God is. I am sure that many of you confirmands, like many of the rest of us, struggle to trust and believe that the truest truth of who we are is that we are some of God’s beloved ones; that Jesus meets us right where we are, regardless of questions and shame and doubt, and offers us peace.

And yet this central proclamation of our resurrection faith is why many of us were baptized as babies or young children. We administer the Sacrament of Baptism to little ones because we trust that in our helplessness, in our smallness, in our total dependency and vulnerability we are loved and claimed by God, first and foremost. We are loved and claimed by God for being just who we are because of who God is—a God whose first words to his scared friends were “Peace be with you.” We baptize babies because it is an embodied announcement of God’s faithfulness, not our own. That sacrament reminds us who and whose we are.

It highlights the truth that in every moment of our life and even in the moment of our death, God pronounces a blessing, a benediction over us. “Peace be with you.” This promise is the epicenter of our Christian faith. This promise is the explosive and expansive proclamation of Easter—the reason we have to celebrate it and drench ourselves in it for fifty days each year. This promise loudly claims that there is far more mercy in God than will ever be sin in any of us.

It is my prayer that as you confirmands continue on your own journeys of faith, that as you and I continue to make our way through this Eastertide season, that we will find moments each day to imagine the risen Jesus saying to us “Peace be with you.” Because I imagine that spiritual practice could just lead us into joining our voices with Thomas’s and proclaiming “My Lord and my God” with the same kind of love, joy, and recognition he had on that day. Allowing the risen Jesus’ promise of peace to be our center, our primary definition of ourselves—just imagine how freeing that could be. Amen.