In my Easter Sunday sermon, I mentioned I’d been involved in some community work with Triangle Trailer Park. I think a lot of you know the history, but just as a very brief overview, for well over a decade there have been on-going problems with Triangle, predatory management practices, unsafe and unsanitary living conditions, threats of violence. Trinity, through Woman’s Co-op and Creating Change, has been involved in trying to support our neighbors in the trailer parks for years. Well this time, it finally seemed like something was going to change. The owners were on the hook for a lot of back taxes, and the park was going to slip into tax foreclosure on Friday. I spent much of Holy Week and last week in meetings with Calhoun County and Emmett Township officials, lawyers, non-profit leaders, and others, trying to create a plan so that the people who live in Triangle would finally get the attention and help they deserved as people. And I have all sorts of thoughts and emotions wrapped up in whether this was a good thing, or just a less bad thing, and I am happy after the service to share more about my thoughts on it, but the point is, it seemed like finally something was going to change. Yes, it was probably going to get a whole lot worse before it got better, but something was going to change. And then Wednesday, we got an email saying nevermind. The back taxes had been paid, at least in part and enough to put off foreclosure until March of 2018. In the meantime, conditions will continue to deteriorate, people will continue to be taken advantage of, and less than a mile from our church, families will continue to suffer.
And I was mad walking out of that meeting on Wednesday. I was mad because how could so many smart, caring, committed people sitting around a table trying to solve a problem to help the most vulnerable among us be totally stonewalled and unable to help. It felt like a huge locked door just fell down in front of us, and no matter what we did, or what key or combination we tried, there was no way to get through that door to our neighbors on the other side. I felt helpless and I felt stuck.
I hate feeling helpless and stuck. I’m a pretty independent person; I don’t like not being able to do what I set out to do. I don’t like feeling trapped and unable to help myself or others. And I don’t normally like putting words in other people’s mouths, but I’ve been your pastor long enough now to know that I am not the only person in the room who hates that emotion. You all are a pretty independent bunch yourselves. This is not a congregation of people who likes to have things handed to them; you all are helpers and doers, you want to be the ones doing the helping. But sometimes we just get stuck. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations where we cannot do it ourselves; we cannot get ourselves out of it. I hate that feeling. And from conversations I’ve had with you all, I know you do to. It stinks to feel vulnerable and alone.
Vulnerable and alone is exactly how the disciples felt in our Gospel text for this morning. “That day” that our Gospel text refers to, “that day” is Easter. This story falls right on the heels of the Easter vigil reading, this is the evening of the day that Jesus rose from the dead. So just a few hours before, Mary had seen Jesus in the garden, and then ran to the disciples and proclaimed, “I have seen the Lord.” And we see right off the bat, that the disciples did not believe her. Or at least, they couldn’t yet process what her words meant. Which, in all fairness to the disciples, the idea that Jesus, whom they all watched be crucified, could be alive again, is some pretty far-fetched news. So the evening of the resurrection found the disciples locked away in a house “for fear of the Jews.”
Before we go any further, I want to unpack this phrase “for fear of the Jews” here. Because remember, Jesus was a Jew, the disciples are all Jewish. Jerusalem at this time was controlled by Rome. And one of the ways Rome exerted authority was to set up puppet governments of members of the community who were loyal to them. So I think who the disciples were afraid of was not your everyday Jewish citizens, which Judaism was the religion of the culture, would have been everyone including themselves. No, the disciples were afraid of the puppet government set up by Rome, Herod and his henchmen, who’s power was contingent on Rome’s continued satisfaction with Herod’s ability to keep peace and keep the taxes flowing back to the Emperor. Herod may have been a “Jewish ruler,” but that was in name only, both his Jewishness and his authority were under the control of Rome. That was who the disciples were afraid of.
And that was who the disciples expected Jesus to set them free from. The disciples were following Jesus because they thought he was the Messiah, which was a political figure in their minds. He was to be the reincarnation of King David, who had ruled over the Jewish Empire in a time of peace and stability. That’s who the disciples were waiting for, who they thought they were following, not a savior in the spiritual sense we have of the word, but a warrior like the stories of old, who would lead a conquering army into battle for Jerusalem, who would destroy all those who stood against God and who would once again raise the Jewish people to political power. If it’s been a while since you’ve read about David, and you like good action-adventure, I recommend First and Second Samuel to you. You’ll get a great sense of why the disciples were so totally confused by everything Jesus did, and it’s just a great story. The disciples constantly misunderstood Jesus because nothing Jesus did ever in any way resembled David. Which, of course, as people who get the whole story, we understand because David was human and Jesus was God. We get that the stakes were higher, that Jesus was doing a bigger thing, but the disciples didn’t have that foresight.
And when Jesus died, all of their dreams came crashing down. They were scared of the Roman government coming after them, they were scared of the persecution they would face, were they identified as followers of this rebel, and they were heart-broken that their hopes and dreams, that everything they’d been working toward, was gone. Jesus had given them hope, he’d given them clout. They had had this brief glimpse of paradise, this brief glimpse of what freedom could be like, and then it was gone. And they were stuck. In the exact same place they’d always been.
But then, as they stood cowered in a room behind locked doors, suddenly Jesus came and stood among them. He didn’t knock down the doors, he didn’t jimmy the lock to get in, he just came and stood among them. And he said, “Peace be with you.” And then, because it seems like they didn’t get it at first, he showed them his hands and his side. And then they rejoiced, and Jesus said it again, “Peace be with you.” Then “he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’” Which, if you remember, is exactly what he’d promised them he would do when he spoke to them when they had dinner together on the night he was betrayed. John fourteen verses twenty-five to twenty-seven, “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not let them be afraid.” Those things Jesus had promised his disciples on the night before his death, that they would have peace and that the Holy Spirit would be with them, those promises came true for the disciples when Jesus came and stood among them, behind their doors locked from fear and grief. He didn’t break down the doors, he didn’t jimmy the lock to get in, he just came and stood among them and promised them peace, until they could open those doors themselves and walk out and be Jesus people in the world. They didn’t have to let Jesus in, Jesus came to where they were so they could unlock the doors and go out.
That’s the promise that I hold onto, when I feel stuck in situations where I cannot see a way out. Be that situation the traps of institutional poverty like we’ve seen at Triangle, or conflict with a family member, or illness, or whatever feels stuck and locked to you. The promise we have, the promise we can cling to is that Jesus shows up behind those locked doors. It may take time for us to notice, one of the ongoing themes of the resurrection story is no one recognizes Jesus when he first appears. But, he kept showing up, kept revealing himself, until the disciples, until we, recognize resurrection among us. God who loved us so much to go to the cross and die for us, loves us enough to come back to life, and in this new resurrected life, to show up in the places were we are trapped in deaths of fear and isolation. Jesus doesn’t stand outside politely waiting for us to invite him in. Jesus isn’t too busy being resurrected to show up in the places we have hidden away. No, the very first thing Jesus did after his resurrection was show up and set free the very disciples who had ran in fear and left him to die. What we see in this Gospel passage is there is nowhere Jesus cannot go, nowhere Jesus will not go. May the peace of Christ, the peace that passes all understanding, be with you all. Amen.
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