Behind Closed Doors - 10:30am

Written by Bill Weisenbach

Saturday, 22 March 2008

Behind Closed Doors Text: John 20:1-22  “Men at forty close doors more slowly,” says the poet, Dylan Thomas.  This is true.  I’m well past 40 and I can testify that the longer you live the more you learn to be careful closing a door.  Be careful when you slam the door in someone’s face saying, “I’m done with you! It’s over!”    Someday you might have to go back, open that door, and try to resume the relationship that you thought you had sealed shut.      True, part of growing up, becoming wise, is learning when to close a door.  Sometimes we keep coming back again and again, going over the same old script, trying to make the unworkable work.  It is wisdom to know when to close the door firmly and move on into another room or stay where you are.  As AA affirms, quoting the great Reinhold Niebuhr, “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”     Thus we find the disciples of Jesus.  For about three years they have trooped along behind him on the Galilean highways and byways.  They have tried to understand his teaching which hasn’t been easy.  They have heard him speak of himself as the Christ, the Messiah, and the Holy One of God.     But all of that seems distant to them now – only a dream after the horrible nightmare of the past week.  Can you imagine the trauma of seeing the one whom you thought to be the Savior of the world mocked, whipped, and crucified?  Now Jesus has been sealed in the tomb for three days.  Pilate has shut the door on the King of the Jews once and for all.     John says that the disciples had gathered together for that night.  The events of the past week have plunged them all into darkness and now they are cowering together, filled with fear.  The same authorities who had killed Jesus may now be after Jesus’ followers.  And the doors are shut.     John says that the doors were shut and locked “from fear.” And they had much for which to be fearful.  But some of them may have been also filled with grief.  And well they should grieve, for in the death of Jesus they had suffered a great loss – shut the doors.     Those of you who have gone through deep grief know how important it is in the aftermath of death to close some doors.  One of our friends in Maine couldn’t bring himself to bury the ashes of his first wife for several years after he had remarried.  We are close friends and I knew it troubled his wife so I said something to him about it.  Some doors have to be closed.  And I remember the great pain of having to go through our son Matthew’s things and turning his bedroom into a guest room, but it had to be done.        That’s what the disciples did.  They had closed the doors on their past with Jesus, and they were adjusting to the facts.  It’s over.  It was good while it lasted.  Close the door.     And then, at their lowest, in the dead of night, the Risen Christ appeared before them.  He said, “Peace,” to them.  He breathed on them.  In short, he gave them all the power and all the Spirit that so empowered his own ministry.     But perhaps most amazing of all, Christ came through their locked doors.  The dark tomb could not hold him, nor could the dark despair and resignation of his followers.  He came back to them, even through their locked doors.     Here is Easter hope to live by.  The resurrection doesn’t simply mean that Jesus rose to eternal life.  It doesn’t simply mean that we hope to see our loved ones when we die.  It also means that the very first thing that the Risen Christ does is return to those same cowardly and misunderstanding disciples who had so disappointed and forsaken him.  He came through their locked doors.     I say that is the Easter hope because we gather today, just as those first disciples gathered, as those who are cowardly in our commitment to the way of Jesus and misunderstanding of much of his teaching.  We also gather behind locked doors.  Not physically, of course, our resident fire commissioner won’t let us lock the exit doors, but there are still locked doors.  There are the doors of our hearts that have locked down in the prison that consists of despair – “God has disappointed me before, I won’t trust God again.”     A woman in my last church woke up one morning to a phone call.  Her husband had dropped dead during the night on a golf outing with his buddies.  He was 50 years old.  She was crushed, vowing she would remain a widow, alone for the rest of her life.     Two weeks ago we got an email.  “Guess what?  I meet a man.  We’re just good friends for now, but I think it’s possible for me to love again.”       There is great good news here, Easter news.  I know that many of you have trouble believing.  You are filled with doubts and some of those doubts are mixed with fear.  You have failed in your attempts to be a faithful follower of Jesus.  You don’t know what tomorrow holds for you, and that scares you.     Well, here’s the good news: the Risen Christ can come through locked doors.  There is no security system that’s been devised that can keep you safe from his incursions.  He came to his first disciples and he promises to keep coming back to us, keep intruding among us, keep pressing in upon us, and keep opening the door that we don’t know how to unlock.  Even in the dark door of our deaths, Christ promises not to forsake us, to keep coming back for us, keep talking to us, and breathing upon us.     Your faith is based on this Easter miracle.  Your relationship to God, thank God, is not based on what you can feel or believe or think.  It’s based upon the fact that the Risen Christ came to you, moved through whatever locked door you were hiding behind, breathed his life-giving breath upon you, and raised you up toward himself.     As many of you know, Jane Fonda made a decision to become a Christian about 10 years ago, but only went public when she wrote My Life So Far, just a year and a half ago.  Her coming to faith is a many layered story, she attended an African-American church in Atlanta, was fighting her way through a life-long eating disorder and dealing with a deteriorating marriage, but she explained her coming to faith in three terse words: God got me.  Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed! He has opened, is opening, will open your door.  Hallelujah.    Amen!

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