Easter 3: Unbelievable Joy

Scripture can be found here

Peace be with you.

On the evening of the resurrection, Jesus steps into a room—by all accounts, a familiar place, filled with familiar and beloved faces.

But everything is different. 

The people who are gathered there had been through a shocking experience, losing everything they believed in, had dedicated their lives to. And now, standing among them, the one they had been absolutely sure was dead, is alive, and saying,

Peace be with you.

Of course they are startled. Of course they are terrified. Of course they think he must be a ghost. Jesus seeks to reassure them. Look at my hands! These familiar hands—the marks of the nails are there. Look at my feet! How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the one who announces peace (Isaiah 52:7), not to mention, they are firmly planted on the floor, not hovering. I am no ghost. Look at me! I’m famished. What have you got to eat?

Jesus tries his best to help his beloveds to grasp some sense of the familiar, achieve some feel of normalcy. But, the gospeller tells us, his friends are joyful, and they are disbelieving, and they are wondering. In the midst of the familiar, they feel like newcomers.

A little, I think, like us.

Nate Kirkpatrick, an Alban Institute leadership guru for pastors, told this little story in a recent article. It happened in an online video conference somewhere, a meeting of religious leaders. Someone made an offhand remark. “When we return, we will all be newcomers.”

“It was just a casual observation, but as soon as she said it, the nods of affirmation and recognition in every Zoom rectangle made it clear that she had put words to what [everyone was] describing but could not quite name.”[i]

When we return, we will all be newcomers.

For Jesus’ beloveds that means reckoning with the full meaning of the resurrection—for Jesus and for the movement he spearheaded. Because you live, O Christ… what, exactly? This is no magic trick, no sleight of hand involving a tomb with a false floor or a Jesus lookalike. This is a divine act, not of resuscitation, but of re-creation. Our hymns tell us the story—the garden of the world has come to flower; the tomb is flooded with God’s resurrection power. Death cannot imprison.

But Jesus’ beloveds don’t yet have those hymns, and so the power of the resurrection, these things we take for granted are not self-evident in the awkward moments when Andrew and Philip and Matthias shuffle forward to peer at Jesus’ hands, or when Mary of Bethany places a broiled filet of Tilapia Galilea in front of him and watches as he bolts it down. (I didn’t make that fish up, by the way; that’s a real thing, a real fish from the sea of Galilee.) These are truths that will dawn slowly, as the disciples do the work of searching the scriptures—the work Jesus commends to them right after he finishes his supper, reminding them that everything written down in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms had to be fulfilled, and so they’d better get about the business of wrapping their heads around it.

But for now, they are newcomers to this resurrection reality, and they are filled with joy, and with doubt, and with wonder, as the Crucified One becomes the Risen One in their presence. They are newcomers, as little by little they come to understand what their own senses are telling them. And they will indeed, need to go back to the beginning, and learn again who is the man they have loved and followed and eaten with and learned from, and who assured them from the beginning, the reign of God is at hand.

This is our truth today. We, too, are newcomers, here, now. We have each stepped into this room—this beautiful sanctuary, this familiar place, filled with familiar and beloved faces. And at the same time, everything is different. Pre-registering. Masking. Distancing. Even vaccinated, hesitating to touch one another, whereas, at another time, we would have gladly hugged without hesitation (well, the extraverts among us, anyway).

Everything is different. We are all newcomers. Which, hear me out, is an incredibly beautiful thing.

Each one gathered here this morning has lived through an historic pandemic that still rages on in many parts of this country and the world. Instead of measuring out our lives with coffee spoons, we have learned what sacrifice means—sacrifice of some of the things we love most, including, in many cases, being together with the people we love most. We have given up large gatherings—including worship—in order to protect one another, in order to love one another as Jesus loves us. Those of us who are front-line, essential workers have continued their work in hospitals and grocery stores, climbing utility poles, teaching our children and youth and college and university students, staffing the Food Pantry and vaccine clinics.

If we hadn’t learned it before, by now we have certainly learned what fear is. And if we had never fully appreciated it before, we have new, startling definitions of what joy is, including, but not limited to, holding someone in our arms after more than a year of separation.

We are all newcomers now. And that gives us a particular opportunity for empathy—knowing what it is like to feel awkward, walking into this place that’s supposed to feel like home. “What was instinctive and comfortable in March 2020 is now, for many of us, just outside the realm of memory.”[ii] Now we know what we can no longer take for granted, what we must never dare to take for granted again.

Peace be with you. If we are all newcomers, that means we don’t yet know the full import of everything that has happened, and everything that will continue to unfold. As Jesus’ beloveds in this time and place, we are still in the staring at one another’s hands phase, still in the taking deep breaths of astonishment phase, still in the joy, and disbelieving, and wonder phase.

And so Jesus says to us now what he said to his beloveds then. Peace be with you. See what love God has lavished us with, that we might be here, in this place, at this time. See and embrace the joy that is all around us in this moment. Feel and acknowledge the parts of ourselves that are disbelieving, even fearful—and know that these are entirely appropriate responses to God’s brand new, still-being-revealed resurrection power. And know that this is a moment filled with wonder, wonder-full, and that means a moment to be still, and to know: God is with us.

Peace be with you.

Thanks be to God. Amen.


[i] Nathan Kirkpatrick, “Greeting our return when the old is gone and the new is here,” Alban Institute Faith & Leadership, https://faithandleadership.com/nathan-kirkpatrick-greeting-our-return-when-old-gone-and-new-here?utm_source=albanweekly&utm_medium=content&utm_campaign=faithleadership.

[ii] Ibid.