He Is Our Peace

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”  John 8:12

 

 

On the first Easter morning, Mary Magdalene comes to Jesus’s tomb and finds it empty. Simon Peter and the Beloved Disciple race to the tomb to confirm what she has said. They peek inside. It’s empty. Rejoicing, they run into the city and pronounce the resurrection. All of Jerusalem falls to its knees in repentance and professes faith in the risen Lord.

Well, not exactly.

When I was a child, my parents would often ask me to take the trash out to the big cans outside. We lived on a back road in rural West Tennessee, where the nights were as black as pitch. I would dash out to the trash barrels, run back to the well-lit house, fling the door open, and quickly lock it behind me. I couldn’t lock out the darkness, but I could lock out the threat of the darkness. The rustle in the bushes. The thing that goes “bump” in the night.

After seeing Jesus’s empty tomb, this is precisely what the disciples did: they ran home and locked the doors. John’s Gospel tells us that on the evening of the resurrection, ten of Jesus’s disciples were huddled in a room with the door locked “for fear of the Jews.” It is not an understatement to say that the disciples feared for their lives. The same Jews who put Jesus to death would surely come for his closest followers next. It is this same fear which sent them fleeing the scene of Jesus’s arrest. It is this same fear which caused Peter to deny him. They have locked the door against the threat of the darkness.

Then, suddenly, Jesus appears. And suddenly, they have a whole new set of fears to deal with. Who is this? Is this an apparition? How did it get in here?  Whether he passed through the locked door as a phantom or simply materialized in their midst matters little. The resurrected Jesus is there with them, speaking to them, “Peace be with you.” After showing them his hands and his side, he speaks again, “Peace be with you.”

Tim Keller asks, “What’s so peaceful about knowing the risen Lord? Because the minute you have known the risen Lord, you have beaten death.” The peace which Jesus brings in his resurrected glory transcends the peace which comes from the feeble protection of a locked door. The peace which Jesus brings is shalom, the power which sets all things to rights, which restores creation to its proper order, which, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, makes everything sad come untrue.

Upon seeing their resurrected Lord, John tells us that the disciples rejoiced. Like the magi who saw the star rising in the East, they “rejoiced exceedingly with great joy” (Matt. 2:10). And we rejoice with them, because, as the apostle Paul writes, Jesus himself is our peace (Eph. 2:14). Though we cannot lock out the darkness, Jesus has locked out the threat of darkness by declaring, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Grace and peace,

Bree Snow