Sermon for Quasimodo Geniti: Locked Doors - John 20:19-31
Locked Doors
In the Name of the Father, & of the + Son & of the Holy Spirit
Grace to you and peace from the One Who Is & Who Was & Who Is to Come!
Our text this morning is the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus to the disciples on Easter Sunday afternoon from St. John, focusing on these verses: “On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord”1 and, “Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”2 This is our text.
In the late 80s, on a very hot summer afternoon with a thunderstorm threatening on the horizon, a teenager felt was he described as "a strange sense of static in the air" and heard a strange sound like a pop combined with tearing foil. The was a blue ball of energy about the size of a volleyball, floating in the air. It drifted around, bounced off the ground a couple of times like it was made of rubber, and drifted lazily in the air toward an over two-hundred-year-old oak tree. It then passed into the thick trunk and came out the other side as if the tree were not even there. It floated and bounced toward the old farmhouse, heading toward one of the myriad aluminum lightning arrestors, then quietly sizzled and popped like a giant soap bubble. The air was completely still, and the day was silent until a light breeze picked up and a storm front of thunderheads started rolling in. Of course, no one believed his story. Back then, ball lightning was just another country tale, like bigfoot, despite documented sightings going back centuries. In recent years, the scientific community has more or less accepted ball lightning as a real physical phenomenon, though it is not well understood. Those who have witnessed it firsthand, however, believe without a doubt. Still others take it on faith. However, for most people, seeing is believing where ball lightning is concerned.
Seeing is believing is the default setting for rational human beings. This has been true since the beginning of time and is no less true today. Look at what is going on in our Gospel reading this morning. Some of our Lord’s disciples came to believe Jesus had risen from the dead, but not without difficulty. It took the physical presence of Christ. Their faith is a lesson to those of all the generations of the faithful who come after, including ourselves, who did not see Him and yet must believe, as the writer to the Hebrews and Paul both teach us: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”3 and “as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.”4
The one thing all of the disciples believed wholeheartedly was that the Jews were coming for them next. They had executed their beloved teacher, whom they believed was their God and Lord. Now, they are not so sure. Death is final. There is no coming back. Did they not remember Lazarus? What do they need to see before they will believe? The only thing they are confident of right now is that what happened to Jesus can happen to them. So they are all afraid, hiding behind doors locked as tightly as their hearts and minds.
We do that, don’t we? After all, why do we lock doors? We lock them for two reasons: to keep something out or keep something in. The disciples are doing both. The locked door keeps out the Jewish threat, and their locked hearts and minds keep in their unbelief and doubt. What doors are you locking today? What are you holding on to so tightly that you cannot let it go? What are you locking out?
We frequently lock Jesus up in the church's walls, putting Him away until it is time to get Him back out again next Sunday morning. Out spiritual lives are a pot or cauldron set over a campfire on a sturdy tripod. We weaken our pots foundation when we disregard the health of our prayer life, which is the first leg. When we neglect to dwell in God's word daily, we cripple the second leg. Those are the two ways God communicates to us. We talk to Him in prayer, and He answers us in His Word. Here in the divine service, He distributes His gifts to us in the Means of Grace, which is the third leg. If we neglect any one support in this tripod, our pot will most certainly be at high risk of pouring out into the fire and be of no benefit to us. Supported by all three legs, the soup can be supported and become a nutritious meal, not only for yourself but for your neighbor.
It is not only our own sinful natures that threaten to kick the legs out from under our soup pot. The devil tries to tell you two legs is enough support, or that the new one-legged stand is an attractive modern option, where you just go to church one hour a week (no more, lest it becomes less special, and no less, because that’s “what we’ve always done”!) and that is good enough for anybody. The world tries to tell you soup is bad for you and you shouldn't be cooking it anyway. Pouring out that soup just might save your life!
The world, the devil, and your own sinful nature are all more than willing to help you tear down your tripod at a moment's notice. They all want you to lock Jesus up or lock Him out. Now ask yourselves another question about that locked room where the disciples were hiding. Was that locked door able to keep Jesus out?
No, it was not! [T]he doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came5 and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” The doors were locked, but they may as well have not been there! Jesus came to them, but not by any ordinary manner of approach. Not through the closed doors. In the original language, our text says that He came to be standing there among them without any movement toward that location,6 arriving unseen until that time when He became visible to them and spoke His words of greeting to calm their troubled souls.
But Thomas was not with them. When Thomas arrived sometime later, he scoffed at their tale of Jesus' miraculous appearance and uttered his famous words of doubt. Then one week later – another Sunday, another Lord’s Day, when they were gathered in the upper room once more behind locked doors, Jesus appeared to them a second time as out of thin air. Only this Sunday, Thomas the skeptic was present.
Thomas' doubt is our own. Perhaps the other disciples understood this as well. After all, they knew that Jesus had risen from the dead. The women had told them. Peter and John had seen the empty tomb. Yet all the disciples locked in that room were still afraid, and all of them were astonished when Jesus appeared among them. Doubt and skepticism are running rampant. It is no different than the doubts we hold in our hearts today or the skepticism and outright unbelief in the world that seems stronger than ever.
The doubt of Thomas and our own doubt is the result of a heart for whom the good news of Jesus Christ risen from the dead seems too good to be true. He could not believe His Lord, who was dead, was now truly alive. Could He be a ghost? That is what the other disciples thought at first. If Jesus has really come back from the grave, then why, Thomas thinks, am I the only one who has not seen Him? The seat of Thomas' unbelief and doubt is not his own insecurity or even his faith. The root of his skepticism is that he could not understand the compassionate nature of his Lord in appearing as soon as possible to His frightened followers.
There is a tremendous difference between someone who nurses their doubts and doubting Thomas.7 There is a vast difference between one who doubts and wants to get rid of it but cannot. These are the ones who are sorrowful and downcast in their doubt. These doubters love God. The other kind of doubter, one would say the modern doubter, does not love God, does not want to hear about God, and will not receive what God offers to them. God will take care of the first kind, the honest doubter, as He took care first of the gathered disciples and later of Thomas.
The dishonest doubter makes their skepticism the basis for their unbelief and the justification for their sinfulness, carelessness, and ungodliness. But as for us, we tend to be Thomases. We shut God out and try to do everything ourselves. But Jesus will have none of that and comes into the repentant heart. We all have doubts and moments of unbelief, but at our core, we know better. The Holy Spirit is still at work in us. Jesus appears before you, unstopped by the barriers we erect. He delivers you His righteousness won for you on the cross and through the empty tomb and clothes you in it. His Word proclaimed is not stopped by the figurative fingers with which we cork our ears.
We often enjoy putting "doubting" Thomas down for not having as strong a faith as the others in the upper room. By extension, we unfairly magnify our own faith. But Thomas was really no different than any other disciple locked away that morning. Jesus showed His wounds to them as well – without first being asked to do so! Then "Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.’ And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.’”8
Jesus is commissioning fragile but peace-filled and joyful disciples. It is a peace bestowed by the very-much-alive and physically present Jesus. The risen Christ is leading these somewhat fickle disciples through their hesitation and doubt into authentic belief. Their mission will be to spread belief in a Jesus not seen by eyes or touched with hands from here on out.
The Lord stooped to the level of our feeble understanding when He worked the miracle of invisible power to satisfy the doubts of the unbelieving minds in that upper room. Likewise, Jesus stoops to your level to take away your fear and equip you to bear your burdens in life. We may not see Him with our eyes, but our unbelief and fear are assuaged by other senses. We hear His Word. In His Word, we hear the accounts of the faithful who previously doubted. We come to understand the root of our unbelief and fear is sin. And in repentant joy, we receive the most fantastic news of all: Jesus is physically present here for you in Word and Sacrament.
The only antidote for fear is belief. Faith nullifies fear. Unbelief is overcome by allowing God to love you and not reject Him. Our lives may be difficult, but they aren't lives for ourselves. They are lived to dispel unbelief and fear in others' lives, that they, too, may be at peace. In the Name of Jesus. Amen.
May the peace which passes understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
1 John 20:19-20 (ESV).
2 John 20:24-26 (ESV).
3 Hebrews 11:1 (ESV).
4 2 Corinthians 4:18 (ESV).
5 ἦλθεν, ēlthen, third person singular, aorist active indicative of ἔρχομαι, erchomai, to come.
6 “ἔστη εἰς τ. μ.] Compare [Luke 24:]36, ἔστη ἐν μέσῳ. The εἰς, as in ch. 21:4, denotes the coming, and standing, in one—the standing without motion thither, which in ordinary cases would be standing as the result of motion thither;—so that in this case ἔστη itself is the verb of motion.” Henry Alford, Alford’s Greek Testament: An Exegetical and Critical Commentary, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Guardian Press, 1976), 909.
7 W. Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Sermon Outline Bible: John 4–Acts 6, vol. 8 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1958), 304–305.
8 John 20 21-23 (ESV).