Today is the Second Sunday of Easter, though it is probably equally well known by it’s other name: Low Sunday. Having come off glorious celebrations with packed pews, churches are finding things getting back to normal. Things aren’t quite as sharp, there’s a bit of a letdown. Luckily, our Gospel this day is perfect for Low Sunday and it gives us opportunity to be honest about letdowns. It is also a reminder that our faith, our hope, is not our own creation. Further, it is a reminder that what makes us a church is not packed pews, or special music, or glorious preaching within stellar liturgy. What makes us a church is that the Risen Christ comes and stands among us.

 

I’d like for you to imagine with me the state of the souls of those disciples. It was late in the day, the first day of the week. The disciples had regrouped and were meeting behind closed doors for fear of the authorities. I imagine their emotional state was pretty low at the time. We know they were afraid, ill at ease, unpeaceful. Perhaps they were feeling some guilt for not having done more to support their friend and for having deserted him. Undoubtably they were feeling those things that grief brings--estrangement, disorientation, anger, depression. Perhaps they were also feeling the emotional let down that follows something really big happening—like the joy they felt at reports of Jesus’ resurrection.

And then, into that locked room Jesus appears. Imagine with me what that must have been like. What would he want from them? What would he offer them?--a tongue lashing, a curse in return for their desertion? A reminder of how they had blown it and how disappointed he was? Or would it be something else?

 

These first words that the resurrected Jesus would speak may be the most important of his ministry. These words would have the power to create or destroy the embryonic Christian community. What he would say could either bring something new into life or snuff it out. It could make it happen, or cause it never to happen. What would he offer?

 

What he offers is Peace. He offers Peace. Shalom Alechim. Peace be with you. It is an ancient Hebraic greeting. It is a divine greeting, a holy greeting, a greeting from God to his children, a greeting of angels used to mark something new. Shalom. Peace.

 

Peace, in this ancient holy greeting is not simply the absence of war, strife and disorder. It is more than that. Peace is the state of harmony, fullness, unity and communion with oneself, one’s neighbors, one’s God. It is a word which describes the reality of God’s creation as God intends it to be. It is a sacramental word of hope and a word of immense power.

 

You know, words have terrible power. The power to destroy or the power to build up. I can remember as a child being taught the words “sticks and stones can break your bones but words can never hurt me” and knowing at the time, as well intentioned as that slogan was, it simply wasn’t true. Words did hurt, sometimes cruelly, and I have never met a child or a therapist who didn’t know how powerful words could be. They can hurt or heal, deform or form us in ways sticks and stones never can.

There is a true story about a small country church where an altar boy was serving the priest and accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. The priest turned, took the boy by the shoulders, shook him and said: “Get away from this altar and don’t come back.” In another land, in roughly the same time, another altar boy was serving the bishop in a cathedral and also dropped a cruet. The bishop turned, placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders and bent down, and with a twinkle in his eye said: “Don’t worry, some day you’ll be a priest and will spend your life around holy things.” The first altar boy grew up to be Tito, the tyrannical and bloodthirsty dictator of Yugoslavia. The other boy grew up to be Archbishop Fulton Sheen, one of the more influential communicators of the Gospel in this century.

 

Words have incredible power. These words which Jesus speaks are not simply a formality, but they convey the very reality he wishes for his friends. Jesus appears and confers on them what they could never imagine or muster for themselves. He confers on them the divine gift of wholeness that passes all human understanding.    He blesses them with the grace that the world can neither give nor take away.

 

“Shalom Alechim, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any they are retained.” Over the centuries much has been written about this commission and how in this act Jesus empowers the embryonic Christian community to carry on his mission of forgiveness and reconciliation as the Spirit is breathed into them. Now without denying the profound truth of that reflection, I wonder if something else might be going on as well. Perhaps Jesus is simply stating the obvious. If you forgive sins, they are forgiven. If you retain sins, they are retained. If you forgive someone, then the alienation that exists between you is no longer present. But, if you focus on the separation, the alienation, then that becomes the defining mark of the relationship. If sins are retained—you keep revisiting the things you have done that you ought not to have done, and the things left undone that you should have done; or the things done to you that should not have been done and the things left undone for you that should have been done--then what is real and powerful is the separateness, the estrangement, the dis-unity sin brings. 

 

Jesus bids his disciples to do what he does. He bids them to go and speak the words he has spoken to them, words which the world desperately needs to hear. He bids them go, to pass peace, to speak into being the vision of wholeness, harmony, reconciliation with God and neighbor that God spoke into being in the beginning. Then he breathes his life into them so that it may happen.

 

It is interesting to me that when Jesus speaks these words of peace he then shows them his wounds. He shows them those identifying marks of his crucifixion. Marks that not only identify him as Jesus the Son of God, but marks that identify him, in his woundedness, as Jesus, brother of humankind.   In his resurrection Jesus offers both his glory and his wounds. Both of those are what make him the Lord. Both have formed him as our savior.

 

When we pass the peace to each we offer both our glory and our woundedness as well. What we offer are those marks of ours that identify us with our brothers and sisters around us. We offer our joys and sorrows, strengths and brokenness. We offer our common need for God no matter what sort or condition we may find ourselves in. We offer not only that, but our hope and promise as well. We offer peace, the reality God wishes for us, the reality God wishes to be between God and us, within ourselves, among our fellowship and communities. 

 

That’s what faith, belief, is about. While on retreat recently I recently picked up one of those “Mitford Novels” because I’d forgotten to take light reading material. These novels are about an Episcopal priest in a little New England village, and while they present a rather naïve and pastoral view of church life that might have been idealistically true in the 18th century, there was a gem or two in it. One had to do with faith. A character in the book who had lost his faith regained it and told the priest “I figure it is a no lose situation. Either the Christian story is true or it’s not. If it’s not, then you lose nothing—you end where you’re going to end up whether you believe or not—dead. But if it is true, then you gain everything. You get life in heaven, and everything changes along the way. Might as well live believing for you got nothing to lose and everything to gain.”

 

The poet Wendell Berry has an expression for this kind of behavior. He calls it “practicing resurrection.” To center every day in the Divine “Yes!” that is the resurrection of Jesus. To live out of the resurrection. To live into the Resurrection. To live as a new people, a new being. Practicing resurrection when you say “Shalom Alechim, Peace be with you.”