View Archived Content

Comments and Observations

Why didn't they go looking for him?

This lection for the Sunday after Easter in the Year C Common Lectionary picks up right where the action left off on Easter Sunday morning. When last we saw the disciples, Mary Magdalene had just burst in with the excited and exciting news, "I have seen the Lord!" Earlier that day, when Mary told these same disciples that the stone had been rolled away, Peter and John bolted out of their chairs and sprinted to the tomb. But near as we can tell, once Mary tells them the far better news that Jesus the Lord is once again up and about and quite undeniably alive, it looks as though no one moved.

Why didn't they go looking for him? Why was an apparent grave robbery seemingly more intriguing to at least some of the disciples than an apparent resurrection from the grave? You would not guess it would be this way. If you told someone that you had just seen her long-lost child at the mall, whether or not this other person initially believed you, my hunch is that it would not take too long before she would hop in a car and buzz over there with only a casual relationship to the speed limit.

Did the disciples simply not believe Mary? Did they, in typical male fashion, chalk up her story to the rantings of an hysterical woman? Was it finally too wild to believe? Is the reason they stayed put because they had rolled their eyes, winked at each other, and suppressed a smirk over what this woman had said to them? Or is something else going on?

Why didn't they go looking for him? Did they believe Mary's story just fine but were not at all sure where to start? Or did they think that maybe Jesus was, as a matter of fact, nowhere to be found? After all, the last thing Jesus said to Mary, and which Mary no doubt reported to the disciples, is that he was ascending to his Father. Did they conclude that this would happen that very day? Did they think he was already back in heaven (wherever that was) and so it would be fruitless to go hunting for Jesus? That seems a little unlikely. And even if they did hold out for that as one possibility, you'd think they still would have split up, maybe into teams of two, and done a systematic search in and around the city.

Why didn't they go looking for him? It's difficult to answer this question, but I think John gives a major clue when he reports that on the evening of that Easter day, the disciples were behind a locked door. The door was locked. The door was locked because they were afraid.

Afraid. They were afraid of the Jews, John said. But as Craig Barnes has said, that doesn't seem a terribly credible fear. There was no evidence that anyone was planning to hunt down Jesus' erstwhile followers. And anyway, earlier that same day, any lingering fears of arrest the disciples may have had didn't prevent at least a couple of them from running straight toward Jesus' tomb. If ever there were a location where they very well could have run into some Roman soldiers or Jewish leaders, the tomb was it. But still they went. Fear didn't stop them when they thought a grave robbery had happened. So why did fear lock them up in a room when resurrection was in the air? Of whom or what were the disciples really afraid? Whom were really afraid of running into in case they went out?

Could it have been that they were afraid of running into Jesus himself? Certainly at least Peter would have had reason to avert his eyes from the Lord in case he ran into him. The last time Peter had spoken to Jesus, his words had been full of confident bluster. But then some hours later a rooster crowed off in the distance, and Peter seriously considered following Judas down a path that had a noose at the end of it. But it wasn't just Peter. The gospels tell us that Peter had said, "Never will I deny you! I will die with you first!" And after Peter had said that, we read that "all of the other disciples said the same." But all of the other disciples had fled Gethsemane like frightened children.

John is honest throughout his gospel about how clueless the disciples often were. Earlier in this very chapter, in verse 9, John admits that they did not understand that Jesus had to be raised from the dead. But if they did not understand that Jesus was to be raised, it's a cinch they also didn't understand why he had to be raised, either. After all, they had abandoned their Lord in his most dire hour of need. And it's not as though the end-result of that abandonment had been something minor like Jesus getting booked on a misdemeanor charge, fined $500, and sentenced to 90 days in the hoosegow. The penalty Jesus got was on the stiff side. They had watched the crucifixion from afar, and to a man they knew they were somehow complicit in what happened.

Why didn't they go looking for him? Because they were just possibly afraid to find him. And so on that first Easter--a day John 20 makes clear began with weeping and lamenting--the day ends with locked doors and great fear. How many of the people to whom we preach each week are not in this same situation? How many of them, therefore, need to hear from us preachers the good news that Jesus enters into their locked-up hearts anyway and when he does, he speaks peace. THAT is the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. We proclaim it boldly and with great joy!

Questions to Ponder/Issues to Address

As Craig Barnes once noted, the fact that on that first Easter evening the disciples were all locked-up and huddled in a room somewhere is emblematic of so much of our lives even to this day. Fear of this or that, anxiety over some aspect of life, makes us lock up the door of our hearts. All of us are familiar with locks. Every door of our houses has a lock. We put sticks in the tracks of our sliding doors so as to make double-sure no one can outwit the door's normal lock. A front door may have a deadbolt lock and, on top of that, a chain. So every day, and certainly every evening, we click these locks and cinch up these chains and double-check that the windows are also locked. We do this, we think, to keep the world OUT but we all know that sometimes it is also possible to lock ourselves IN.

We have lots of ways to lock ourselves in. We refuse to go out because we're too ashamed, too blue, or too afraid we will run into so-and-so and, frankly, we can't stand the thought. Sometimes we stay away from even church for the same reason. We get Caller I.D. on our phones so we can see, well before picking up the receiver, who is calling. And if it's someone we don't want to talk to or can't bear talking to out of shame or fear or whatever, we just don't answer. Again, we lock ourselves in just as often as we lock the world out.

Shame and fear are cousins. First cousins. If you are ashamed of something that is known already, you are afraid of being seen by people in whose eyes you will catch flickers of disapproval. If you are ashamed of something people do not yet know about, you are afraid that just by being out and about in public, someone will discover it, and it scares you half to death. For every last one of us, there are things we have done whose discovery we fear. For every last one of us, there are things that we simply are that we fear make us unworthy.

If, as John 20 presents it, Easter began with the lamentable sadness of death's reality in our world, that same day ended with the lamentable sadness of shame. The disciples were ashamed of what they had done, they were ashamed of what their cowardice revealed about who they simply were as men. So they locked the door, telling themselves they were keeping the Jews out when really they were maybe keeping themselves locked in. But then Jesus did what he always does for anyone locked up in his own shame: he comes in anyway. He enters the room, he enters the heart, he breaks into the shame.

John records for us no reaction of the disciples, not initially at least. But he does make clear that Jesus leaves no quarter for fear because he no sooner pops in on them and he says, "Peace to you!" He says it immediately the way he always does. He says "Peace." He says "Shalom." He says it's all right. He speaks a word that is the opposite of fear and so squelches shame, puts away and banishes any thoughts the disciples may have had about Jesus' bearing a grudge. Jesus never says a word about their past actions, their betrayals and denials. He does not even overtly say, "Forget about it" or "I forgive you." Instead he gives them a Spirit that tells them, in a way more compelling than words alone, that of course all is forgiven. He even sends them out into the world with a mission of forgiveness. Peace. We think that having a sense of peace means a lack of conflict. But more than that, peace in the sense of "shalom" is that settled sense that everything is in plumb, everything is in its proper place as we are all together webbed into relationships that are mutually edifying and upbuilding.

One of the more famous images of Scripture comes from that line in Revelation when Jesus says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." Ordinarily when someone knocks at a locked door at your house, you know that it's up to you to get up and unlock the door and open it. The good news of Easter is that even if you are too afraid to do that, too ashamed or too paralyzed by this or that feature of your own life, the lock won't stop Jesus. He will appear right in the middle of your locked-up heart and before you even have the chance to say or do a blessed thing, he will say "Peace to you!"

Hear the good news of the Gospel.  Hear it and be exceeding glad!

Textual Points

As usual, the text of John 20 does not throw in descriptive phrases to say how any given sentence is spoken. Rarely in the gospels do we read lines like, “At that point Jesus said, his lip curling as he did so . . .” or “With laughing eyes and grinning lips, Jesus said . . .” So when in John 20:27 we are told that Jesus told Thomas, “Stop doubting and believe,” we don’t know how Jesus said this. Was it said sternly and, thus, as something of a rebuke? Was it said calmly, matter-of-factly? Was it said while Jesus really was grinning from ear to ear, eager to share the joy of his physical presence with this doubting friend? How we imagine Jesus’ face and tone of voice has a great shaping effect on how we read this text and then how we go on to preach about it. But it seems more likely that Jesus did say those words with a smile. Thomas could hardly be blamed for his earlier skepticism—it’s actually too bad that he has forever been tagged as “Doubting Thomas.” So when Jesus addresses Thomas on the evening of that Easter day, it seems very unlikely that he did so with a scowl or frown. Jesus is inviting Thomas into the joy of that day and all that it portended for the entire future of the universe. It was not a day for sternness. It was a day to laugh!

Illustration Idea

Some of you may remember the old radio program "Fibber McGee and Molly." I confess that what I know of this show is limited to what I learned about it from watching “The Waltons” years ago! But a running gag on that show was that no matter what they did to be and look respectable, at some point someone would open Fibber McGee's closet, out of which would come tumbling the whole messy flotsam and jetsam of life--the very things you want to keep hidden. That's what closets are for as much as anything.

Indeed, when a gay person says publicly that he or she is gay, the traditional phrase for this has been "coming out of the closet." We talk about having "skeletons in the closet." All of us have closets in also our hearts, little chambers into which we toss the shameful things we've done and the shameful things we think we are that make us unworthy individuals. We toss them all in the closet and lock the door so that what people can see is just the neat and tidy and orderly living rooms of our lives. But ever the Fibber McGee-like fear is with us that someone might inadvertently open the wrong door, and out our shame will tumble for all to see.

But there comes a point where eventually we discover that we have locked up so much in the closets of our hearts that, as it turns out, most of our very selves are in there. And when we reach that point, we live with fear indeed. Not the fear that this or that aspect of our lives will be discovered but that we ourselves, the totality of who we are, will be outted, and so our unworthiness will be on full display and we will not have a friend left in the world. And if you want to talk about a crippling fear, this is it: the fear of yourself.