by CCW | 12 April 2026 10:00
They were behind closed doors, huddled in fear and uncertainty. It is an apt metaphor for ourselves and our culture hiding behind the closed doors of our minds in the endless confusion of opinions and uncertainties about ourselves and our world, caught in a maelstrom of conflicting ideas, no longer “assured of certain certainties”, (or, for that matter, chained to our digital devices whose whole purpose is to make us think in a mechanical manner). The closed doors of our minds are like tombs where we are buried in ourselves. Yet in the wonder of the Resurrection the tomb becomes the womb of new life, the radical new and ever renewing life that is Resurrection. This story shows that transformation from death to life most compellingly.
The seventeenth-century preacher, Lancelot Andrewes, preaching on this Easter text in 1609, notes that there are five Resurrection appearances of Christ on Easter Day but suggests that this story is the chief or the most significant. Christ appears to Mary Magdalene, to the women coming from the sepulchre, to the two on the Road to Emmaus, to St. Peter, and now here to eleven of the disciples and those with them behind closed doors. As Andrewes suggests there is something comprehensive and universal in these stories. They transcend, I think, the conflict narratives of competing universalities and point to something greater, more complementary, and inclusive.
He observes that “the first two appearances of Christ are to women, the last three to men; so to both sexes. To Peter and to Mary Magdalene, so to sinners of both sexes. To the eleven as signifying the clergy, and to those with them signifying the laity; so to both those states of life as well … But of all the five, this is the chief for this here is when they were all together rather than scattered.” Gathered not scattered.
Tonight’s 2nd Lesson completes the reading of the entirety of John 20 with Christ’s encounter with so-called ‘doubting Thomas, eight days later, again behind closed doors. Thus on the evening of the day of the Resurrection and on the Octave Day of Easter, Jesus proclaims “peace be unto you” three times and shows us his hands and his side. What does it mean? It testifies to the idea of the Resurrection that the experiences of the past are not simply eclipsed but become the greater means of the teaching about the nature of essential life revealed in Christ. The Resurrection makes visible what was hidden but present in the Passion and, by extension, what is hidden but present in human experience. The challenge is about how we come to know about the essential life of God made known in Christ. We might note that learning this takes time!
Mary Magdalene was told “not to touch,” meaning not to cling or hold onto Christ physically, but to be lifted up into a greater understanding of Christ in his Ascension, in his going to the Father. She is lifted up and set in motion, an “apostle to the apostles”. No mention is made of the marks of the crucifixion in that story, the first in the 20th chapter of John’s Gospel. Fra Angelico’s 15th century fresco in Florence depicts the encounter of the Risen Christ with Mary Magdalene in the garden of the Resurrection. He bears the marks of the Cross. But here in the continuation of this chapter and in its conclusion this evening, the emphasis is on peace and forgiveness shown through the marks of the crucifixion.
They are intimately connected. The peace of Christ is what he seeks for us but it comes at the cost of the Cross. That peace is comprehensive. It includes the peace above us in Heaven with God, the peace within us in our hearts, the peace without us, in earth with all people; in short, the peace of God through the self-giving love of God. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus says, “my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you” (John 14.29), which is echoed here. Only on that basis can he say, “Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Peace, perfect peace, belongs to perfect felicity and the joy of the Resurrection. The lovely Whitsuntide Ember Day Collect builds on the theme of peace: “Regard not our sins but the faith of thy Church” (BCP, p. 213). The Resurrection is essentially about the Faith of the Church. It changes us from death to life.
The contrast between Christ’s noli me tangere, ‘touch me not,’ to Mary, and his telling Thomas to “reach hither thy finger and thy hand” to touch his hands and his side is most striking. Yet it signals an important epistemological point about the different ways of knowing and their interrelation, a form of dialectical reasoning through contrasting and even opposed forms of knowing. Mary and Thomas learn what Christ teaches but in ways that are appropriate to the situation of each. It is an affirmation of his Incarnate and Risen life through which the essential life of God is made known to us each according to the capacity of the beholder to behold; in short, for each according to the nature of their different ways of thinking and knowing.
Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel opens our minds to the greater reality of God’s truth and life made known through these encounters with the Risen Christ. They gather us into a deeper understanding of the essential life of God as that upon which our knowing and our life ultimately depend. Yet it is something that has to be taught and made known in ways that belong to the various forms of human thinking. Far from denying the sense-perceptible and material world, these Resurrection stories raise it up into the all-sufficient and all-embracing life of God. In other words, as Andrewes hints, there is a gathering into unity of the legitimate differences that belong to human knowing.
The take-away points are that we are made for God, that we are more though not less than the things which happen to us, and even the things that we do. Peace and forgiveness flow out of the Resurrection of Christ but without negating the Passion. In the Christian understanding, we are given to know even as we are known in the love of God in Christ Jesus. He shows his hands and his side; the marks of the crucifixion are the marks of his love.
They transform our lives from sorrow and grief, from despair and anxiety, into joy and gladness, a joy that no one can take from us. We are no longer huddled behind the closed doors of our minds as in a grave but opened out to freedom and love. Lifted up, we are set in motion towards one another in peace and joy, in forgiveness and love, the love that never faileth and never ends.
Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter 2026
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2026/04/12/sermon-for-the-octave-day-of-easter-17/
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