“No Darkness is Too Great”
John 21:19-23
On the evening of the day that Jesus rose from the dead we get a picture of a timid, frightened group of disciples.
The doors are shut and locked.
They are in hiding—in the darkness of a room.
Obviously, they didn’t believe Mary Magdalene who had told them that morning that Jesus was alive.
Everything has happened way too fast for them.
One moment they are singing Hosannas as Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey—by the end of the week He is arrested, put on trial and crucified!
They thought He was the Messiah—the Son of God.
But they had watched as He was beaten by mere mortals.
They had seen people laugh at Him, spit on Him and call out: “If you are the Son of God, come off that cross!”
He died the most horrific death known to humankind.
And now, due to guilt by association—they fear that they will be next.
They aren’t only scared—they are terrified!!!
And who are they, after-all?
They are a bunch of nobodies.
They are small town blue collar fishermen.
They are former tax collectors—extortionists.
They have no power, no political clout.
No one will miss them if they just—disappear.
They are the marginalized, the freaky people.
There will be no one to defend them when the Religious leaders and the Roman soldiers come knocking on their door.
They are all alone.
They are extremely vulnerable.
What are they going to do?
You know, it’s a miracle—a True and Real miracle that the Christian faith got past this point.
Just stop and think about that for a moment.
At this moment in the history of the world—they are all that is left of the Jesus movement.
This small band of frightened homeless people is all that is left.
The One in Whom they had put all their hope in is now gone.
In their minds, Jesus is dead.
And if they are found by the authorities, they will be next.
I mean, what are we to make of this?
How did the Christian faith move past this point?
How did this nutty little group of scaredy cats carry the movement forward?
How did they get past their own locked doors?
How did they overcome their fear of the authorities?
Why didn’t they just sneak away, back to Galilee and to the other small towns they had come from?
Why didn’t they just disappear?
I mean, really, their Messiah was dead—they had backed the wrong horse!!!
Why is it that some 2,000 years later we are sitting here in East Ridge, Tennessee singing praises to, praying to, and calling Jesus Lord?
How is it that millions and millions of other people are doing the exact same thing as us all over the world?
What happened?
What are we to make of this?
How did this come to pass?
Where did these disciples work up the nerve to tell other people that Jesus is Alive?
Why would they risk their lives to do so?
And why would anyone believe them?
They weren’t educated people.
They weren’t particularly good speakers.
Most of them couldn’t even read.
And yet, here we are.
The only explanation that makes any sense is that a sealed tomb couldn’t keep Jesus in and a locked door couldn’t keep Him out!!!
In verse 18 of John 20 Mary Magdalene had gone to these disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!”
And then she told them everything that had happened and everything Jesus had said to her—just as He instructed her to do.
That was in the morning.
By the evening, the disciples are still huddled in a bolted room.
Could it be that just hearing the story of Christ’s Resurrection, perhaps even believing what you’ve been told, isn’t necessarily enough?
Could it be that Jesus’ Resurrection is something that must be experienced?
Could that be why the news of the Resurrection didn’t ease the disciples’ fears?
It’s hard to escape fear in this life, isn’t it?
And some fear is even good.
For instance, if we weren’t afraid of getting too close to alligators or jumping into a cage with a lion—we would get eaten up.
But a lot of other fears are not so great, not so healthy, not so helpful.
The famous pop star named “Prince” died from a drug overdose almost exactly a year ago and search warrants from the investigation were released this past Monday.
They reveal that prescription medications were found all over his house.
They had been hidden in vitamin bottles.
The day before his death, Prince’s doctor prescribed three drugs for him: clonidine, which is used to treat high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder, and two anti-anxiety medications.
The star was addicted to opiates.
And this is big problem for many people in America today.
But how does someone so rich, so famous, so talented, so gifted become addicted to all these “pain killers”?
Why did he?
You’d think he wouldn’t need them, after-all, he got all the adulation a person could possibly handle.
Why do so many people abuse substances that make them numb to the realities of the world?
What are we trying to block out?
What are we afraid of?
We do live in a world that is anxious and afraid, do we not?
Older folks are afraid their health will fail them and their savings will run out.
Younger people are afraid they won’t have any savings for old age and they could care less about health.
Some people fear the future and others are haunted by the past.
College students are afraid they won’t be able to find a job when they graduate.
Middle-agers wonder if their lives have amounted to anything and younger people wonder if there’s anything to strive for anyhow.
And all of us live in an age of terrorism, random violence and the threat of nuclear war.
All of us, in one way or another, are locked into our dark rooms of fear, are we not?
So how do we escape?
Who has the key?
On the first Easter evening the disciples’ lives were in ruins.
Their worst fears had come true and now they found themselves caught in a whirlpool of anxiety.
Everything they had hoped for, everything they had lived for, everything they had believed in had turned into a nightmare.
They were a shell-shocked, frightened, and disbelieving bunch of people who were living in a sort of hell.
Then, suddenly, everything changed.
“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.”
Peace is the antidote for anxiety.
And it’s not the peace that the world offers—it is the peace of God which transcends all understanding and all circumstances.
Have you experienced this peace?
When Jesus shows the disciples His wounds they become witnesses that the worst that the world can do can be overcome through Christ!!!
What remains to be feared when even death is no longer victorious?
“Peace be with you.”
That is exactly what the disciples needed to hear.
Peace is what they needed most.
They knew their failure.
They knew how they had deserted Jesus in His hour of need.
They knew they had denied Him.
They knew their sinfulness.
And what they needed was their lives, their thoughts, their hopes and their dreams back again.
They needed to be made whole.
They needed to be set free from the guilt and anxiety that locked them in.
They needed what only Jesus could give them—forgiveness, new hope, and a reason for living.
And that’s exactly what He gave them.
And that’s what Jesus does for us as well, if we will let Him.
For some of us, maybe we have been set free by Christ, but when new troubles come our way, when difficulties hit us, we revert to our old ways.
The fear comes back; the anxiety returns with a vengeance.
And we forget God’s promises and act as if Jesus never existed.
Can you relate?
That’s why a regular habit of worship, Scripture reading and prayer is so important.
By making it a regular part of our life, we imprint on our hearts the Words of Jesus so that when troubles come our way and we are surrounded by difficulties, we will not flee and lock ourselves into some dark room somewhere—but we will instead run right back into Jesus’ loving arms.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says.
“Peace be with you.”
“I have conquered death and the grave.
Is there any bigger obstacle than that?
I am the Lord of life and of death and I will always be with you.”
It’s been said that “Every morning has two handles to open the new day—one is the handle of anxiety and the other the handle of faith.”
The disciples grabbed anxiety and found themselves closed in behind locked doors, afraid and abandoned.
Jesus opened the door of faith for them.
And then look what He did.
He gave them a job to do and the means by which they could do it.
Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’
And with that he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”
The Good News of Jesus is never simply the assurance that God has conquered death.
It’s always also a statement about mission.
“As the Father sent me, I am sending you.”
“Wait just a minute,” we may say.
What Jesus was sent to do got Him killed.
And yes.
That is true.
The peace that Jesus’ ministry brings is nothing like the peace that the religious leaders or the political leaders of Jesus’ day wanted—and maybe not even of our day either.
Jesus didn’t come into the world to reinforce the status quo.
Instead, Jesus’ peace is the kind that brings back into the fold the outcast and the marginalized.
It turns society on its head with “the first shall be last and the last shall be first.”
It’s radical in its lifting up of the humble and the serving of others.
Jesus’ peace invites enemies to see one another as neighbors and friends, the Jew to speak to the Samaritan, and the prostitute to eat with the Pharisee.
It’s a new way of being in the world.
And for those who embrace it—it does bring peace.
Not an absence of trouble, but peace just the same.
For it is nothing less than the Kingdom of Heaven breaking into our world through the power of the Holy Spirit.
It is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
But, there can be no doubt that, to this day, truly following Christ brings us into conflict with social norms.
And this conflict doesn’t come without a cost.
That is why, by ourselves, we humans are not capable of following Jesus.
The power of sin is simply too great.
By ourselves we want to fit in, we want to keep our social status, we want our privileges…
…and all these things are threatened by Jesus’ peacemaking activity.
But take heart, we are reminded by our Scripture passage for this morning that we are not expected to follow Jesus by ourselves.
Instead, in the same way that the Resurrected Jesus came and stood among the first disciples and breathed on them the Holy Spirit—transforming them from a little band of frightened, powerless, strange, marginalized people into a unshakeable troop of missionaries who carried the Gospel and transformed millions upon millions of people—the Holy Spirit continues to work in those of us who accept and believe Jesus’ call on our lives: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
On the evening of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, it looked as if all was lost.
The disciples were in fear and in hiding.
But when Jesus appeared to them behind those closed doors, He was saying to them, showing them in a way that they could not misunderstand that there were no doors that could keep Him out.
That what He had taught them for the past three years was real.
That there was no way they could ever be separated from Him.
There was no circumstance in which they would ever be alone.
There was no dark room that He will not enter and there is no person that He does not love.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus said to them.
“Peace be with you,” Jesus says to us.
I don’t care how bad tomorrow looks, how gloomy the outlook might seem, how dreadful the problem is, or how hopeless everything seems.
Jesus says to us that with His presence, we will have peace.
And as the Father has sent Him, He is sending us.
And this has been happening to everyday, ordinary people for the past 2,000 years.
It’s why we are here this morning.
It’s why there is at least one church building on every corner of this city.
And millions more around the world.
It is a TRUE miracle.
What are we to make of it?
What are we going to do about it?
