“The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,
when the doors were shut …”
It is, I think, an arresting image. In a few simple words, John sets the scene. “The same day at evening, being the first day of the week.” What day is that? The day of the Resurrection, Easter day. And yet we read this passage on the Octave Day of Easter, today, this morning actually, but how appropriate! Why? Because it is as if we are there, in that moment, still in the meaning of that day, the day of Resurrection. The idea of the octave, a concept belonging to the musical scale, applies to our lives theologically and spiritually, from the first note to the eighth note, the same note. Just so Easter Day and the Octave Day are, in a way, the same day. It is as if time is somehow suspended or better, as if we are in the eternal moment of Christ’s Resurrection. In a way, that is the meaning of every Sunday in the Christian understanding. Every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection.
But the real wonder of this image, at least for me, is in the idea of closed doors. The disciples were behind closed doors on that same day at evening and they were there in the same Upper Room “in the same night that he was betrayed” where Christ had identified himself with the bread and wine of the ancient Passover feast, the festival of Israel’s deliverance by God from Egyptian slavery. And they are there in fear, “for fear of the Jews,” John tells us in a phrase which might trouble us and certainly has had an ugly history in terms of how it has been used, namely, in blaming the Jews simply for Christ’s crucifixion and death. The whole story and, certainly the theological story for Christians, is that we are all implicated in the sequence of betrayals that contribute to the events of Good Friday. They are afraid for themselves because of what happened to Jesus. An inescapable feature of those events is Israel’s betrayal of God and the law but it is part of the larger story of humanity’s betrayal of the truth of God and our betrayal of ourselves.
Closed doors, closed minds. This is the power of this image. It extends to so much of our world and day. I fear that we are often closed off from a deeper understanding of ourselves and God. The Bible is a closed book. We are closed off from the riches of our own Christian tradition that was explicitly about the opening of the Bible in the fullest way possible for everyone, priest and people. We live in the ruins of a revolution that closed the doors of our minds to thinking God and the nature of God’s intimate engagement with our humanity. And yet, in this marvelous passage, it is behind closed doors that “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” It is the unexpected thing and it changes everything. It opens us out to a new way of thinking about ourselves as individuals and as a community of believers. It is altogether about the truth of God who cannot be contained behind the closed doors of our minds.
What is it about? It is about the doctrine of the resurrection. It is about how we learn what it means. It speaks directly to some of the assumptions of our own culture – to the material determinisms of our age which assume that matter is everything, the scientific naturalists who assume that matter can explain mind and morals, culture and experience, for instance. The Resurrection challenges those assumptions. It does so not by denying material and physical reality but by showing how it participates in the spiritual and the intellectual. The Resurrection honours the greater dignity of our humanity as made in the image of God and reminds us that we are more, though not less, than our bodies. It signals the redemption of our humanity which is simply about how we find the truth of our being in God, the God who is with us if we are open to his truth and presence. We need not be trapped behind the closed doors of our fears and worries, the closed doors of our fatalisms and deaths.
The tomb is a room behind a closed door. Our minds can be like tombs when we are closed in on ourselves, literally buried in ourselves. We know only too well what that looks like in the fears and anxieties that beset us and that contribute to a culture of depression and despair. The real antidote is here in this Gospel. Christ appears to the disciples and says “peace be unto you.” This is the peace of God, “the peace that passeth human understanding,” the peace which comes from God and not from us. Christ speaks and shows himself to us. What does it mean? That we need not be defined by the fears and worries of our lives. That we are more than the things which happen to us. That we are more, though not less, than dust and death. Christ appears to the disciples behind closed doors to open our minds to the new and greater meaning and reality of our humanity. We are made for God. We are not merely defined by the parameters of the material world. That world, too, is part of the redemption of Christ, a world which we shall see in the pageant of Eastertide is not simply dead stuff but alive with the will and purpose of God, a world which exists for his praise and glory. And so do we.
This requires that the doors of our minds be opened not closed. It is, I think, the true purpose and task of the Church to proclaim what God reveals. It is, I think, profoundly theological by which I mean we are being given another way to think about who we are by thinking about our humanity in relation to God. To my mind, it changes things and certainly it challenges us. What we need in the world of the Church is the renewal of our hearts and minds by being transformed by what we are given to see and hear, touch and feel, concerning the word of life. It is altogether about our being with Christ.
He speaks to us behind closed doors and opens us out to a whole new way of thinking and living. It is radical new life, a new creation, and it is something which we participate in here and now through the liturgy of Word and Sacrament. It is a powerful feature of the teaching of the Resurrection. It is through the Word audible – things spoken, Christ opening out the meaning of the Scriptures while talking with the disciples on the Road to Emmaus, for example – but it is also through the Word visible – things done, Christ making himself known in the breaking of the bread again upon the Road to Emmaus, Christ showing the disciples his hands and his side in this morning’s Gospel. Word and Sacrament. And so, too, this morning in Baptism and Holy Communion.
New life is bestowed upon Harvie Kenneth Michael. His baptism reminds all of us of the truth and pattern of our lives in Christ. It is altogether about death and resurrection, a dying to ourselves and a living to God and for one another. Behind closed doors we are opened out to a whole new way of thinking and living. The challenge is for us to be open to what Christ says and does. It happens on “the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut.” It happens because Jesus came and stood in the midst and so he does week in and week out in the wonder of the Resurrection.
“The same day at evening, being the first day of the week,
when the doors were shut …”
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter, 2013