# Welcome Back, Now Get Out of Here ## The Rev. Andrew Van Kirk ## Easter 2 (Year A [John 20:19-23]) ## St. Andrew’s Westridge Well, y’all came back. It’s the Sunday after Easter now. We hit the high point last week; for the rest of the spring church attendance tends to take a nosedive. But not on account of folks like you. Y’all came back. And I’m thankful. My sermon this morning is titled, “Welcome Back, Now Get Out of Here.” Take out if you would this great little reading from John’s gospel. This happened, John writes, at “evening of the first day of the week.” This means Easter Sunday, the original Easter Sunday, at the end of the day. The disciples were gathered together in the house; the door was locked because, though they had heard the news about the risen Christ from the women, they were still afraid. Perhaps afraid that the Jews were going to accuse them of stealing Christ’s body and come after them. Perhaps afraid that it wasn’t true. And then suddenly, locked doors not withstanding, Jesus came and stood among them. And then he spoke. And the gist of what he said, at least in terms of the end result for the disciples, is “get out of here.” When the disciples did so, they changed the world. From the locked doors of this house in Jerusalem would emerge the greatest religious and cultural transformation in the history of humankind. This started when, late on Easter day, the risen Lord spoke to his gathered disciples. Today we are his gathered disciples, and I pray the Lord will speak to us. There are four things the disciples hear from Jesus: Peace be with you. I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. And if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. The first thing Jesus said, was “Peace be with you.” He says this right after he suddenly appeared in the middle of them. This appearance must have been very surprising. One time, my grandfather snuck up and suddenly appeared behind my grandmother in the national aquarium. Surprised her so bad she karate chopped him and broke his glasses cleanly in two. He did not, in that particular moment, say “Peace be with you.” All I’m sayin’ is the risen Jesus is lucky he didn’t get himself karate chopped by Peter or something. Anyway, had Jesus only said “Peace be with you” once, we might just chalk it up to his trying to calm down some very surprised disciples. But after he showed them his hands and his side, with the wounds from his crucifixion and the soldiers’ spear, Jesus said it again, “Peace be with you.” This was more than don’t be alarmed. This was Jesus conveying to his disciples his peace. As he said at the meal before his arrest, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you.” There something important here I want you to see. The peace of Christ comes to our hearts the same way Jesus came into that house. Not from the outside in, but from the inside out. The world only knows how to give peace by taking care of the things outside us that threaten peace. Of course this is most obvious in military terms: peace comes when fighting ceases. But this is true even in terms of personal peace: to find peace, end broken relationships, disconnect from your cell phone, address physical pain. Other religions even have it this way: the Buddhist notion of inner peace comes when we let go of all the distractions and cares and stresses outside us. Most of the time when I can’t seem to feel God’s peace, I discover I’ve started measuring my peace by what is going on around me. The peace of Christ is different. It’s peace from the inside out. Like our risen Lord suddenly standing in the inside of a locked house, the peace of Christ comes suddenly to the inside of a locked heart. It’s a peace in the midst of all that is going on in the world and in our lives. This peace it not an absence of discord, but the fullness of Christ. This miracle of Jesus’ appearance in the room — Jesus will perform it again and again in the hearts of his disciples. Most of us (I think I’m not alone here) would be happy enough if God left it at that. If the gift of the risen Lord in this life was just a deep and abiding sense of peace and love — no matter how much excrement was currently hitting the fan and flying in all sorts of directions around me, I think I’d love that. “Yes, go ahead and make my inner man a super man, God. Thank you.” But God’s peace has purpose. Christ’s gift of peace is equipment for our mission. And that’s where he went immediately: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." He…me…I…you. This move to send the disciples happened so fast on Easter, it's hard to escape the sense that this the point. Jesus had shown the way, and now it's the disciples’ turn. This being sent starts with Christ’s peace. An explosion of peace within the disciples’ hearts, in the very core of their being. Peace be with you. And it has to start there because the Jews and the Romans were still on the other side of those locked doors. Jesus didn't take care of them on his way over. They're still there, and they're still angry. But now the disciples had peace on the inside, and it's with that they are sent. In the gospel of John, and we're here reading just a little portion of the very last chapter, Jesus speaks often about his being sent by the Father. He said in his final prayer for the disciples, “They know in truth that I came from you and they believe that you sent me” (John 17:8). The disciples who believed that Jesus was sent, the saw that the work Jesus was sent to do wasn’t easy. But they also saw the power that Jesus’ exercised as he was sent. And that's what Jesus addressed next: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And he breathed on them. Whole sermons, and much longer ones, could be preached on this. In fact, you may get one of those sermons when we mark the celebration of the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, that day when the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples in the form of tongues of fire and enabled them to speak in different languages. Partly because of this Pentecost story from the Book of Acts, when we think about the gift of the Holy Spirit (if we bother to think about it at all) as it relates to our being sent out, we usually think in terms of preaching, or speaking in tongues, or maybe the gift of healing. Now Jesus’ disciples were (and are) to go out into the world and proclaim the good news with powerful words and powerful deeds — which sounds great for them, slightly terrifying for many of us. And yet preaching is not what Jesus told them to do next in this moment John reveals for us. Look at it there. “Receive the Holy Spirit” is right at the end of verse 22. Then, verse 23: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Go out and reconcile the world! Every Christian has a responsibility to declare God’s forgiveness. Jesus added the retaining sins piece not because he trusts our judgement, but because we must never treat sin like it doesn’t matter. What if we actually took Jesus at his word here? What if we understood ourselves to be a people whose mission, whose purpose, was to go out and forgive people? And I don’t mean just forgive those who have slighted us. What if we used the power of the Holy Spirit offer forgiveness in God’s name, to reconcile them to God and one another? I love this image, especially as I think of what God is calling St. Andrew’s Westridge to be. Look, I have to level with you. Neither our church as a whole, nor this campus in particular, is going to grow so long as we consider our calling to be to gather and meet together with the doors closed. If we’re going to gather with the doors closed, it better to be to receive Christ’s peace and to be sent into the world in the power of the Spirit. And you’re sent out there not to hold a sign that says “Jesus is the only way to heaven” outside the dollar store, or to flood your Facebook feed with Bible quotes (though seriously, given the prevalence of quotes from SomeECards and George Takai, it seems a Saint Paul reference Saint Paul every once in a while shouldn’t be too much to ask, y’all). You’re sent out there to reconcile the world, to show — in your words, in your deeds, in the way you treat others, that God forgives them. Be ready to forgive the sins of any. This won’t mean going around solemnly pronouncing forgiveness all day long. I’m not suggesting you pull up at a red light next to the jerk (that’s a theological term) in the jacked up Ford SuperDuty who cut you off half a mile back, roll down the window, and declare, “In the name of Christ, your sins are forgiven!” Reconciling and forgiving might mean putting up with the moody teenager who lives at your house like a total stranger. Or, if you’re the teenager, it could be just being kind and helpful to your ridiculous parental units. It might not mean saying anything about God directly at all, at least first, but merely showing a coworker or neighbor that you think they’re worth listening to and spending time with (because you know God thinks they’re worth loving). It might be forgiving your ex, or the depressed family member that keeps sucking the life out of family gatherings. It might just be not freaking out when things go wrong or when someone does something dumb. There’s a great xkcd comic (it’s an Internet comic strip). This one is just a single box, like the old Far Side cartoons. There is a person sitting at a computer, and from the other room, a voice is calling, “Are you coming to bed?” The person responds, “I can’t. This is important.” And voice calls, “What?” And the person at the computer replies, “Someone is wrong on the Internet.” It could just be that we could help reconcile the world by avoiding blasting whomever is wrong on the Internet. Or even in wrong real life. We live in culturally fractured community; our nerves are as frayed as our discourse. And we can do something about it, provided we operate out Christ’s peace and in the Holy Spirit’s power. Reconciling the world will, at some point, mean inviting someone to church, not so our attendance goes up, but because you realize that they need more than you in their life, they need your Jesus. They need to come to this place, where his disciples are gathered with the door closed, and be sent back outside with Christ’s peace inside their hearts. One of the most beautiful prayers of the English language, attributed to St. Francis, puts like this: “Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us so love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; there there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness; joy.” Doing this will take words. Being sent in peace with power, we will be called to speak with others about our risen Lord. But these words will not be slogans shouted out above the din of daily life. It will not be preaching at people, but living with people. You will have opportunities — to speak of God, of the forgiveness of Christ, and of what it is to have his peace in this life. This second week of Easter, let the words of Jesus that first Easter be words to you as well. Peace be with you. I send you. Receive the Holy Spirit. And if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them. Now go on, get out of here…after Communion.