Locked doors.
Knocking knees.
Nervous looks.
It doesn’t sound like a party anyone would want to attend. Yet here were the disciples, gathering in the wake of the greatest loss of their lives: Jesus was dead. Their rabbi and mentor had been tortured and murdered and there was nothing they could do about it. They could only feel helpless and hopeless.
So what did they do? They gathered as they always had to pray and console one another.
Then Jesus arrives… without using the door! It’s almost an off-handed miracle. They had barricaded themselves and all of a sudden Jesus is there joining the party. And what is the message that he needed to bring to this nervous, frightened group of doubting believers?
"Peace be with you!"
Of course! This was the Shalom greeting that they had exchanged so many times. It is the relative equivalent to our “Hello” or “God bless ya!” But it carried so much more meaning on this night. Peace was in extremely short supply since Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion. The disciples had no way of knowing what was next on the Sanhedrin’s agenda. They were just waiting for the next sandal to drop. After all, if they could get to Jesus, they could get to any of them. Would it be Peter? Would it be John? What a way to live.So Christ lets his first words to them after his resurrection be the gift they needed: Peace. It means more than the absence of conflict. It is the quality we all seek in our lives. It is the gentle hand of God on our shoulder reassuring us that He is there, that we are not alone. It is the comfort that comes from knowing this crazy world will not have the last word. God is on his throne and he is faithful.
“Peace be with you.” It didn’t mean that there would be no more challenges and no more heartaches. But it did mean that God would be with them as they walked through those dark times. I wonder if that was what Paul had in mind when he penned these words to the Philippians “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
May the resurrected Christ give you the peace you need this week!
- Jeff Walling
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