Text: John 20: 26-29

I can’t remember her name but I’ll never forget her apartment.  It was either Rita or Rosa or maybe even Rosita. I know her son was Freddie because he was attending Sunday school. He’d just showed up one Sunday by himself, a 12 year old kid hungry to know things about God.  I was calling on-- let’s call her Rosa--to visit with her about Freddie and to invite her to join him at church. It was one of my very first evangelism calls.

Rosa lived a couple of block off Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles in an old WPA apartment. It was a great looking building, once. But it had seen better days and the neighborhood was clearly deteriorating. I ran the doorbell and she called through the door, “Who is it?”  “Randy Spleth, from Wilshire Christian Church.” “Wait just a minute,” she said. Then I heard, click, click, click, then a different sound, a scrape and the door opened.  I hadn’t noticed, until I heard the sounds, that the door had three locks.  When I got into the apartment, Rosa locked back up. Click, click, click and then the scrape. Three locks, all deadbolts, click and then she scraped a chain across the door. Rosa looked at me and said, “This isn’t the best neighborhood. It’s just me and Freddie.  You can’t be too careful.” We were secure behind a locked door. 

It was a pleasant visit, interrupted after about 10 minutes with three clicks, slower this time and Rosa saying, “Just a minute.”  Freddie was unlocking the doors with his keys. Rosa had to slide open the chain and open the door for Freddie.  Freddie came into the living room with her, said hello and started toward his room. But Rosa said, “You forgot to lock the door.” He gave a big sigh, left the room and I heard it again. Click, click, click, scrape. We continued our meeting behind locked doors.

I wasn’t too successful in enlisting Rosa’s participation in worship. She offered as explanation that Freddie was the believer but she had lots of doubts.  And then she added, “I don’t like to go out that much because I’m afraid.  It’s a scary world out there.”  I had a prayer and then we started the routine over as she let me out.  Click, click, click, scrape.  “Thank you for coming” and she shut the door. And once again: click, click, click, scrape. 

On Easter evening, John tells us that “the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear … (John 20:19). It was a scary world out there and the death of Jesus was their prime example.

This weekend we look at two stories that take place a week apart in the same house. It’s an important place and a few romantics have suggested that it was the same house that had an upper room where Jesus ate his Last Supper. It would work for a movie set; you’d only have to have one room to shoot the scenes.  It works perhaps with John’s reporting the Last Supper. In the gospel of John there is no dramatic following of a man with a water jar like there is in the synoptic gospels. They just have the Last Supper in a house so John may have well been thinking that they were in the same place. It fits human nature. During times of grief, we go to familiar places, places where we are comfortable, where we know that others will show up.

An older clergy friend of mine told me that when he was a young preacher and heard the news of the death of President John F. Kennedy, he went up into the bell tower of his small-town church and began ringing the bell. Just ringing and ringing for 15 or 20 minutes, tolling the bell. He needed to do something and that the only thing he could think to do. When he came downstairs and entered the small sanctuary, he was stunned to see the church was full of people. In grief and disbelief the community had gathered in a familiar place. Perhaps that is what the Disciples did. We’ll never really know. Unfortunately, there are no historical or biblical references that tell us that upon the death of Jesus, they go back to the upper room of the Last Supper. They just go into some house and lock the door, afraid.

What were they afraid of?  John says “…the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews…” (John 20: 19b) I think it was more than that, probably a lot more than the Jews.  It is too simplistic an explanation and it’s historically incorrect for us to assume that the Jews killed Jesus. That kind of thinking led to the Holocaust and the death of six million men, women and children. Crucifixion was a Roman tool for torture, used as a political deterrent and to think that the Jews as a religious group could co-opt the Romans’ tool for their purpose is rewriting history.  At most, there were a handful of religious leaders that influenced Pilate.  But the Jews as a whole could no more sway the outcome of Jesus’ trial then you or I can manipulate the health care debate.  To say they were hiding from those Jews who killed Jesus is too simplistic, particularly when you consider the dynamics of hiding behind a locked door.

When you go in hiding, there are deeper reasons.  You hide for reasons of shame, guilt, and embarrassment over personal failure. Tiger Woods and Sandra Bullock went into hiding over personal crises. The disciples were hiding because the movement that they believed in, told family and friends about, maybe even argued aggressively for, was finished. I’m sure they were embarrassed.

It wasn’t just a failed movement. Each disciple failed to protect Jesus. Jesus had warned them saying, “You will all become deserters because of me this night; for it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’” (Matthew 26:31). Despite their bravado, when Jesus was arrested, they deserted him. They’d failed him and were ashamed. They knew the truth about themselves and they didn’t want anyone looking them in the eye. 

Shame, guilt, and embarrassment over failure are reasons for shutting down, locking up your emotions and hiding out. We do it all of the time. We put on a good face but as quickly as we can, retreat to a private space. Garrison Keillor says that   “We always have a backstage view of ourselves.” We let the audience see only the neatly arranged stage. But behind the curtain all kinds of things are lying around: old failures, hurts, guilt and shame.  Sometimes we have to retreat backstage particularly when we overstep our abilities or are confronted by our limitations.[1]

The disciples are in this place when Jesus appears.  The gospel proclaims that God sends Jesus to find us, to hunt us down like a shepherd searching for lost sheep. They were scattered, in hiding, behind the locked door and Jesus finds them. Locks don’t bother Jesus. When you are locked behind the door, hiding in fear and shame, feeling guilt and remorse, struggling with failure, you need a word of comfort and Jesus offers it, “Peace be with you” (John 20:21b).

But they need more than comfort; in order to move forward, they need forgiveness. So he shows them the marks of our forgiveness, the wounds of the cross. He blows his breath on them, saying “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20: 22b-23).  When you are locked behind the door of failure, when you are wandering around backstage ashamed, there is nothing sweeter than forgiveness. There are four different words for forgiveness in the Bible and the word that Jesus chooses here is “afiemi” which literally means “let go, put it behind you, to give it up and let it be.”  Jesus is telling them to unlock the door and stop hiding in fear. [2]

There is a second half of the story and it comes a week later, but before it happens, we meet Thomas. Thomas is one of the more anonymous disciples. For the most part, he just shows up in the list. Only John has stories about Thomas. For some reason, Thomas is the lone disciple who wasn’t hiding behind a locked door on Easter evening. Throughout the ages, Thomas is labeled a doubter because when told of Jesus’ appearance, he said, “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." (John 20: 24.) I’ve always wondered where Thomas was when Jesus first appeared.

I think that Thomas was out looking for information. When you have questions, you don’t hide. You go out and look for answers.  Thomas is famous for being the disciple who asks at the Last Supper, Jesus “How can we know the way?" (John 14:5b). Thomas is a seeker. Seekers tend to look for information beyond closed doors. They don’t hide, they seek. Peter needs proof before he is going to believe. He gets it a week later.

“A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’” (John 20:26). It was a repeat performance, an identical arrival complete with the blessing of peace. The only difference is they weren’t hiding in fear behind a locked door. It says the door was shut. In my book, that’s significant progress. No click, click, click and scrape. No fear and trembling.  After offering them peace, Jesus looks at Thomas and says, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” (John 20: 28).

He doesn’t touch. This is significant. One of the most famous depictions of this scene is Caravaggio’s painting. Jesus pulls his robe aside and Thomas sticks his finger in the side of Jesus, puts it in almost to the knuckle. While it is a beautiful depiction of the scene, it is wrong. There is nothing in scripture suggesting this.

He just exclaims, “My Lord and my God” (John 20: 28).  It is the first time that anyone, in any of the gospels calls Jesus God.  It’s a story about seeing, not touching. For the first time, Thomas sees who Jesus really is, not the flesh and blood Jesus he followed from Galilee, not the resurrected Jesus that can show up behind closed doors, but the Jesus who is both his Lord and his God. He sees the truth about Jesus. So Jesus says, “Thomas, you believe because you have seen me with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.”

One important discovery of Bible study is to realize that the Bible comes alive when you can become a part of the story. My wife Ann, when she is teaching the Bible 101 class, drums it into her students that to understand the Bible you have to stay inside the story as long as you possibly can. She’s obsessed with that idea; when people come out of that class, it’s the one thing they can never forget. Stay in the story. It’s true: you really can’t hear what a story in the Bible is saying until you get into the story, walk around in it and discover where it connects with you.

I can’t think of a better story to find yourself in than this story. You and I are in the room. In fact, we are there because Jesus says we are there. “There are even better blessings in store for those who believe without seeing.” That’s us, you know. We are part of the people who believe without seeing the resurrected Lord in person. We may see him in other ways, but we were not there like Thomas was. So we are people who believe without seeing.

There are other ways we are present in that room, also.

Sometimes we are like Thomas, needing a sign. We want some proof. We have those moments in our lives when we are in a place of pain or facing a challenging time when all we want is a word from God.  We seek to discover truth. Like Thomas, we desperately need a sign so that we can understand.  God gives us signs in many ways. A family who joined this church a few years ago told me that they were praying for a sign that we were the right church for them, and then they got one of our legendary prayer letters. They thought: “If this church is praying for us, maybe this is God’s sign that this is the right place.”

Other times, we are like the other disciples, hiding behind a locked door. To use Keillor’s image, we are wandering backstage and there is nothing more crippling to our souls than wandering around in guilt, failure and shame. We lock up more and more doors, sealing off more and more rooms of the heart to prevent our true selves from being discovered. We think we are keeping the world out, but in fact we are keeping ourselves locked in. Click, click, click, scrape.

Which disciple are you in the room? What are you struggling with? What do you need? From what are you hiding? The Good News of Easter is this: Jesus is ready to offer you what you need. That’s what resurrection is about. It’s new life, both life over death and life on this earth. It is about receiving the peace that comes from a Risen Savior.  If you happen to be missing, he’ll even come back a second time and find you. And if you are here, waiting, he’ll extend his scarred hand and say, “Peace be with you” (John 20:21b).