Peace Be to You
March 31, 2024
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
John 20:1-31
1 Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. 2 So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” 3 So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. 4 Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. 5 And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. 6 Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, 7 and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus' head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. 8 Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; 9 for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. 10 Then the disciples went back to their homes.
11 But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. 12 And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. 13 They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” 14 Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. 15 Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” 16 Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). 17 Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” 18 Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.
19 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.” 20 When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”
24 Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. 25 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.”
26 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.” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
If you’ve ever let anyone down, you know that the anticipation and anxiety before you see that person again can be intense. Maybe over Easter or Spring break, you’ll see some family members you don’t often see, and seeing them can be hard for you. For all the excitement the disciples would have had to see Jesus on that first Easter Sunday morning, I bet they also would have wondered, Does Jesus want to see me?
We’ve been preaching through the gospel of John off and on for almost two years. Now, we’re here in the final two sermons, this week and next. This will be a very short sermon with all the baptisms and the long Scripture reading. Let’s still pray again as we begin. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
Both men and women have certain things that can be difficult to admit in public. Sometimes what we find difficult to admit are the same things that we all have difficulty admitting. Sometimes they are different, perhaps even specific to gender. I won’t give you anything too provocative this morning, but I will tell you something I’d rather not: for too long after I got my driver’s license, I was what most people would call a bad driver. I know, as a guy, I’m not supposed to tell you that, but it’s true. At least I think it was true, in the past tense. In the last twenty years, I’ve not had an accident, and I’ve only been pulled over three times, and two of which only amounted to warnings. Again, I have twenty years of safe driving. Praise the Lord.
My first five years of driving? Not so much. I had accidents that totaled into the double digits. Seriously. A few thousand cars were in my high school parking lot, and several of my accidents happened there. My first major accident involved hitting the brand-new Ford F-150 owned by my father’s best friend. That was a wild one because the friend just happened to be in the lane at a stoplight when I moved over without looking. Once I hit part of our garage. Stuff like this. Almost all of them, however, were at low speed.
I have a picture here of a highway. I would guess that none of you have driven this exact stretch of highway. It’s in another capital city, some nine hundred miles from here in Jefferson City, Missouri.
On a rainy Saturday morning in the spring of my sophomore year, I came around that turn too fast. I would tell you that cars had just passed me up the hill and were, thus, going faster than me. Nonetheless, I skidded or fishtailed three times, scraping the guardrail with the front right nose of my car. I slowed down, pulled onto the shoulder, got out, and saw my front right headlight hanging like a detached eyeball. And the door of the minivan looked like someone had taken a knife, jabbed it in the side, and pulled.
I got back in, drove to the high school parking lot, five minutes away, parked my car at the far far edge of the lot, and walked to the locker room. I had driven to the school to catch the bus to a track meet. Reluctantly, I called my father from the phone corded to the wall. I remember staring at the red brick wall, wondering what he would say. “I messed up, Dad,” and I told him what happened. His first words were not, “You stupid son. How many times have we told you?” Instead, he first said, “Are you okay?” He said other things after that, but he said that first.
I could say a whole lot of true things about this passage. And if this were another Sunday with a more typical sermon, maybe I would. I want to narrow our focus to four words repeated three times—four words said by Jesus three times: “Peace be with you.” After all their failures, these are the first words to these men. Let’s see these words in context. Look at what John writes in vv. 19–21 and 26.
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. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. . . .”
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.”
While the greeting “peace be with you” (shalom aleichem) may have been customary in their day and even still today, peace makes for strange first words to these men.
These men have bumbled along throughout the Gospels. They often take Jesus literally when he meant something more poetic (cf., “Lazarus is asleep” in John 11, cf., “he is Elijah who is to come” in Matt. 11, and “beware of the leaven of the Pharisees” in Matt. 16). In Matthew 17, they could not drive out a demon, even though they tried. In Matthew 18, the disciples argued about who the greatest disciple was. In John 6, after a big confrontation where many followers of Jesus stop following, Jesus knows the disciples are grumbling and asks the twelve if they want to stop following. Their response is okay, but it’s not as great as we might hope. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,” Peter says (John 6:68). This implies they might like to leave but must stay. Again, they just seem to bumble along.
Then you come to the final weekend. On the night of the arrest, they can’t stay awake when he tells them to pray. Every single disciple leaves him. In one brave moment, Peter, a leader among the twelve, cuts off the ear of a soldier. But then Jesus rebukes him for fighting as the world fights. An hour later, Peter denies even knowing Jesus. While Jesus is going to the cross knowing every sin of every follower, they can’t even say they know him.
We receive their failures as familiar material, hardly shocking because we’ve read it all before. But think of what it meant for these men to admit to all this. Think of what it meant to write what they wrote. Think of what it meant to tell the world you’re a bumbling sinner. Think of what it means to admit to the world that you failed.
Consider their failure in contrast with the women in the story. It’s apparently dangerous to be a follower of Jesus, which is why the disciples hid in a locked room. But not the women; they go early to the tomb looking for his body. In a culture where women were not as valued as they should have been, they were the first to witness the resurrection. They are the first to tell the other disciples that Jesus is alive. Right or wrong, this would have stung far more than me telling you I’m a bad driver.
These are some of the reasons Christians believe in the reliability of the Gospels. Had it not happened this way and had Jesus not been alive and received them so well, they would never have written the story so transparently. But the main reason I bring this up is to establish the context for the four words that Jesus says three times: peace be with you.
How can he say that to them? How can he say that to you and me? Well, maybe Jesus is a nice guy, so that’s why he says peace. If we’re talking about whether Jesus is a nice guy or not, and those are the only two options, then yes, Jesus is a nice guy. He’s not a mean guy. He’s not un-nice.
But can a nice judge just let criminals go? Niceness has nothing to do with it. How can Jesus say peace to them? How can he say peace to you? It has everything to do with a little phrase in John 19:30. From the cross, just before he dies, Jesus says, “It is finished.”
Sometimes, we can dress ourselves up, and we can come to Easter and look our best and put on a good show. And that’s well and good. But the Sunday-Easter-best version of you can trick you into thinking you can hear peace from God; indeed, I should hear peace from God because I’m not so bad.
On that Easter morning, however, these men were not in their Sunday best. There were no illusions. They knew they had failed, and they knew they had deserted, and they knew they were not the disciples Jesus wanted them to be. This allowed them to experience Easter with more joy than when we come with our religious pretense.
Jesus can say, “Peace be with you,” only because he also said it is finished.
Why was the cross so bloody? Why was the cross so painful? The bloody, painful crucifixion was so physically violent to dramatize the violence of the spiritual reality: when Jesus died, he took upon himself all these sins of his followers. And when he did, he died in agony. But when he died, it was finished—really finished. No more wrath.
And when he rose, he can preach peace to them and to you. Listen to how one follower of Jesus put it. Many years later, Paul, a man who experienced the peace of God wrote to a church these words:
For he himself [Jesus] is our peace, [and speaking of Jews and Gentiles who didn’t get along, he writes that Jesus] . . . has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. (Eph. 2:14–18)
All of Paul’s letters begin with some variation of a greeting using the word “Peace”—every one of them: Romans, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon. They all begin with peace because they all describe how it is finished and how he is risen indeed.
For all the excitement the disciples would have had to see Jesus on that first Easter Sunday morning, they would have wondered, Does Jesus want to see me? Maybe you wonder the same. Jesus had more to say to the disciples. In fact, next week, we’ll read of the longer conversation he had with Peter. But these things are written, as John says, so that you would believe that God the Father wants you to have life and peace through the risen Son of God (John 20:30–31).
When I crashed my car on that highway, I mentioned I parked at the far end of the parking lot. I did that so no one would see. When the bus drove away, we went right past my car. Everyone laughed. It hurt to have them see my failure, as I’m sure it hurt the disciples. But the laughter hurt me less knowing my father loved me unconditionally.
And Jesus loves us even more.
Let’s pray and invite the music team to lead us in song. “Dear Heavenly Father . . .”
