A Personal And Purposeful Peace

Last week we met two of Jesus’ followers on their way from the city of Jerusalem to a village named Emmaus which was about a 7 mile roundtrip. If you missed that message, you can go back and listen to it. It was Easter afternoon when those two disciples decided to leave Jerusalem. There were various reports swirling around about Jesus whether he was dead or alive, where his body was or was not and why. And where do we find those disciples who decided to stay in Jerusalem? We find them in the same place you probably would have found any one of us. We’re told, “The disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders” (John 20:19). Can you blame them? They were afraid and rightfully so. They saw what had happened to Jesus just three days earlier. If the Jewish leaders did that to Jesus, what was to stop them from doing it to his disciples?

You might remember last week that the account of those two disciples on the road to Emmaus ended as Jesus revealed his identity during dinner and then disappeared. What did those two disciples then do? They returned to Jerusalem as quickly as they could to tell Jesus’s other disciples what had just happened to them. As they were telling their truly amazing story, that’s when it happened. “Jesus came and stood among them” (John 20:19). No longer did the disciples need to rely on other people’s accounts about Jesus being alive. Jesus was standing there right in front of them. You don’t have to imagine their reaction because the gospel of Luke tells us, “They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost” (Luke 24:40). Startled seems like a bit of an understatement when a formerly dead person is standing in front of you alive. They had a hard time believing what they were seeing. Was this some sort of hallucination of hope – a figment of their imagination? No. The gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus proved that he was really alive by eating food that stayed inside of his resurrected boy. Jesus was definitely alive, standing in front of them, and that had to bring a whole lot of questions. At that top of the list, what was Jesus going to say to them or do to them?

Do you remember when the last time was that most of these disciples had seen Jesus? They were falling asleep as Jesus asked them to pray with him. They ran away when Jesus was arrested. Peter had three times denied even knowing who Jesus was. There was only one of the disciples who showed up at Jesus’ crucifixion and none of them were brave enough to ask for Jesus’ body for burial. Great disciples! There were a whole number of reasons for Jesus to be angry with them, to fire them, to find more faithful replacements. Now was the moment of truth. Jesus was standing there alive. What would he say to them? The first words out of Jesus’ mouth are what? “Peace be with you!” (John 20:19). He points them to the price of that peace as he shows them his nail-pierced hands and feet, and then says it again, “Peace be with you!” (John 20:26).

You know that feeling, don’t you? We’ve all been there, standing before Jesus and thinking, “Jesus, you have every right to be angry with me.” It’s the guilt we feel when we remember the poisonous words that so freely flew off our fingertips in a text or post before we even thought about how they were going to destroy someone’s reputation. Or maybe even worse, we knew exactly how they were going to destroy someone’s reputation. We look at the way we’ve treated the people in our lives, the lack of appreciation for a parent’s hard work, the complaints about those in our government, the loss of temper with a child or spouse that is taking too long to get ready, the jealousy of a friend who still has their job when you’ve lost yours. We might attempt to excuse, “Well, no one’s perfect.” But that’s not really an excuse. It’s an explanation. It’s the fact that reminds us that none of us can stand at peace before God on our own. Attempting to stand on our own merits, what we have or have not done is a scary predicament. The writer to the Hebrew Christians had it right when he wrote, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).

Yet, those are the very hands that reached out towards the disciples on Easter evening – not to punish them or to push them away, but instead to announce peace. Those are the hands of the living Jesus who were nailed to a cross to bring you peace with God. Jesus took the eternal and just wrath of God for our sin, so that you and I would never need to experience that anger from God. As the words of Isaiah 53 so powerfully picture, “But he [Jesus] was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). Like those disciples, our fear is replaced with joy as we fall into the living hands of Jesus, pierced for our sins so that we can stand at peace with God, forgiven and healed.