Seeing the Lord

John 20:19-25

As human beings we were created to move and be moved. That was an essential part of the Easter Message this year, already two weeks ago. One of the biggest reasons that so many people still gather on that day – more than any other Sunday of the year – is that they, that we, want and need to be moved. And Easter Sunday still moves us in mysterious (or not so mysterious) ways, even as other Sundays, or Holy days may not.

In these weeks between Easter and Pentecost, this season of Eastertide, we’re seeking to better understand what that “movement” actually means for us. And we’re doing that in part by staying still! By breathing and giving our hearts to something that’s not only working on us, but within us. On Easter morning we read from the Gospel of Matthew of Jesus’ resurrection. He first “appeared” to Mary of Magdala and the other Mary and told them to tell the other disciples to “move” to Galilee and meet him there.

Last week we engaged the resurrection appearances in the Gospel of Mark – a curious addition to the original Gospel, actually – and chose to consider that “the longer ending” is ours as followers of Christ, so we’ll spend more time this year in resurrection. In the weeks ahead we’ll engage more resurrection narratives in our Gospels, exploring them, explaining them, seeking to be better prepared when we celebrate the arrival of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday, May twenty-fourth.

Pray with me:  Living God, as the risen Christ came into the locked room of the first disciples, may your Word enter into us, by the power of your Holy Spirit – anticipated and present, so that we who have not seen may yet believe and seek to understand. Amen.

So, I do believe that these verses in John twenty are among my favorite in the whole of the New Testament. That’s saying something, what with the Christmas narratives, the Sermons on the Mount and the Plain, and the Palm Sunday-Holy Week lessons in there. But, I looked back and I’ve preached on this passage more than any other in my pastoral ministry here and in my first call at Highland. In fact, I preached on this passage the Sunday after Easter just last year.

Does anyone remember what I said then?  Good … I’ll just say it again this morning, then! … No, no …

Because one of the things that draws me to this story, these verses, this passage is that it feels new every time I turn to it. We always seem to have “locked doors” in our lives, but they’re locked against different things every year. And it’s easy to consider and understand – to experience – the “more than literal meaning” of what is being shared in this passage no matter how many times we visit it. None of us has seen anyone walk through a closed, locked door. None of us have been “breathed on” and felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. But all of us have done both.

Listen for the Word of God.  Read John 20:19-22.  The Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

So … I think I’ve started out this way in virtually every sermon that follows that reading. In the Luke-Acts timeline, Pentecost – the arrival of the Holy Spirit, happens fifty days after Easter, hence the name.  That’s the timeline we’re following this year. But in our journey to Pentecost and our explorations of the various resurrection appearances, this is our “stop” in John. And in John’s “timeline”, Pentecost – the arrival of the Hoy Spirit happens here, immediately, Easter night. It’s a bit like the “here now” but “not fully” reality of the Kin-dom of God in our world. This year, we might consider that the Spirit of God is already with us and within us, but not fully. How might understanding this experience of the Risen Christ in this passage from John better prepare us for what’s ahead? Let’s find out …

As in Matthew, Jesus first appears to Mary of Magdala in John – only Mary in John, actually, not “the other Mary” or Salome. But, unlike the disciples in Matthew – who went to Galilee as Jesus, through the women, instructed them to do – John’s disciples didn’t believe Mary. We know that because even after Mary told them that she had seen “the Lord” and told them what he said to her, here they are behind locked doors, afraid and hiding.

What has scared them so?

John writes, “for fear of the Jews.” The disciples themselves are Jews. Perhaps through John’s mystical and symbolic language so different from our other gospel writers, we might consider that what John is sharing here is that these first followers were “scared even of their own selves”. The trauma of their last few days – trials, sentencing, beatings, crucifixion, silence, the report of an empty tomb, and resurrection – is too much. They are on overload, reacting to every stimulus and overwhelmed. The disciples have closed the door on all of this and locked it behind them. Denial and avoidance, that lead to anger and blame, are easier to deal with than hope and promise.

How does that resonate with you? With what’s happening in our world and within ourselves. On Easter night, “when it was evening on that day”, even after hearing that Christ had risen, the followers of Jesus “entomb themselves” in all the things that lead to non-life.

What are we afraid of? In our day and age, our time now, we are once again locked away” for fear of something.  We are quick to condemn, quick to rage, and quick to rebuke. And boy, is there a lot to condemn and rage against, and rebuke. But it’s hard to call out the injustice in our world, and even more in our own country; to hold our leaders accountable for their reckless and violent rhetoric; to expect common decency and love to prevail as Christians ourselves, in ways that are faithful to our Lord and his Way – to Life, with a capital “L”. And so, we revert to judgement and hatred ourselves, and righteous anger and it feels so, so good to reproach the world, the actions of others, and those who “manipulate religion for their own gain”. We want so badly to use this space and this hour, too, to condemn and rebuke and prove our worth as followers of Christ.

And so, it is to all of us that the resurrected Christ of our faith moves past our deadbolted hearts and speaks, saying first, “Peace … Peace be with you.”  And then, “Unlock your doors. Let the promise in and let your true selves out. You need not face life anxiously and afraid, you need not face life angry and vengeful. Life requires courage, hope, and faith in the presence and power of the living God of Love.” Peace.

I don’t imagine that reminder sits well with many of you. You’re still angry, still afraid. I imagine the first disciples still were. In the space in-between verses twenty-one and twenty-two, I hear a very awkward silence. How long might it have lasted? Listen for it again:  Peace be with you. As God sent me, so I now send you … (long silence) … O-okay … you need more … (deep breath) … Receive the Holy Spirit.”

That’s Pentecost in the Gospel of John, isn’t it? No fifty days, no waiting, the holy Spirit is given through the breath of the Risen Christ on the very day we experience resurrection. This term for “breath” – emphusaō – occurs only once in the New Testament, right here.  In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it occurs in Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37:9 as God breathes into the first human’s nostrils the “breath of life” and as Ezekiel animates the valley of dried bones.  This breath, this Spirit-breath, gives new life to all the dust-bound, fear-slain, boney-faithed disciples who dare to receive it.  Do we dare? We’ve come back two weeks in a row to this room where we are intended to experience something “More” than what our own senses detect, to this room, through the Table of remembrance last week, anticipating another arrival, but not sure what it will mean for us again this year, or how long it, and not our own inhuman responses, will animate us.

That’s why I tacked on the last two verses of our reading, the first two of the next passage in John, but didn’t end with the last four of it.

We don’t’ know where Thomas was on the night of Easter. But we know he wasn’t with the others in that locked room, verse twenty-four makes that clear. It’s been fun over the years to imagine where he was, how he got separated from the rest and why. And it’s been easy all our lives to single him out – doubting Thomas. But really, he is acting no differently from the others. His demands are given words in John, but in essence he only demands what Jesus himself gave the rest of us in verse twenty – he showed us his hands and his side, too.

So, we are all doubters. We are all left with the question of “belief”. Our reading today ends with Thomas saying, “I will not believe.” And we are left to wonder about ourselves. What will it take for us … to “believe”, to give our hearts to, to commit to the Way of Jesus that is the only thing that will save this world. We will continue to gather together, to receive and experience the peace of Christ, and to prepare to receive this … “Holy Spirit”, breath of God, so that as Jesus was sent, we too will go, into the world.  To do … what?

These resurrection experiences prepare us to answer those questions. And now we know more than we did even last week:

1. We know that when we choose, if we choose, to share the love of God we have received from Jesus with others, they will experience that Love in their lives.
2. We know that the gospel good news of Jesus Christ works, not through rebuking and reproaching the world and all those in it (as much as we want to scream at them), but by overwhelming all of creation with Love.
3. And we know the Way Jesus lives not because he can walk through locked doors and show his wounds to frightened disciples, but because he breathes new life into those disciples, into us.

Between Easter and Pentecost this year, we will learn more and more who we are because of Easter and what we are supposed to do because of Pentecost. The way that Jesus saves us … he shows us how to love, we know that. And through the sure and certain knowledge of resurrection, our resurrection, we are enabled to carry on his work:  revealing the love of God to the world. We must do that even as we wait. Peace be with you …  

Come you faithful. Raise the strain.

Amen.

(Please rise in body or Spirit and let us sing.)

Reverend Joel Weible, Pastor

Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church / April 22, 2026