Locked Doors

2nd Sunday of Easter, Year C
Text: Acts 5.27-33; Rev 1.4-8; Jn 20.19-31

I’m a little entertained by how many of our stories today involve people passing through locked doors. You heard about Jesus doing this twice in St. John’s story, but you didn’t hear it in St. Luke’s story in Acts. Prior to this trial, the chief priest had the apostles arrested and thrown in jail. During the night, an angel came and let them out, telling them to go and preach in the temple. The next day, when the temple guards came to collect the prisoners and bring them before the council, they found the jail locked up tight and the guards on duty, but no one inside.

There are two other stories that I know of in which people are miraculously released from prison. An angel frees Peter in Acts 12, and Paul and Silas are released by an earthquake in Acts 16. I made a comment at the Wednesday text study about how I’m sensing a theme here, that this message simply can’t be contained by locked doors. At that, one of the other folks replied that they were VERY good at containing the message of Jesus. That gave us all a good laugh and got us talking about evangelism.

As I listened during our discussion, I noticed that, when it comes to evangelism, there are a few fears that I hear coming to the surface again and again. One is the fear that we will be mistaken for one of “those Christians,” whatever it is that we might mean by that. Another is the fear of conflict; we don’t like to be confrontational. Yet another is the fear of hurting other people’s feelings, not wanting to be seen as judgemental. It makes me wonder if there’s something wrong with what we’ve all been taught about evangelism. It seems like we all assume that evangelism inherently involves making a judgment that another person is deficient in some way—that something is missing from their life or that they believe the “wrong” thing—and then trying to fix that deficiency.

That’s not at all what I hear in the stories today. The apostles don’t go straight from jail to preach in the temple because they need to save these poor, wretched sinners or because they feel the unbearable weight of being so correct. They seem to have found something that they just can’t sit on any longer. They enjoy sharing it—and the people around them, even if they aren’t ‘believers,’ enjoy them sharing it. And the disciples in the locked house don’t kick Thomas out for being wrong, they continue to gather with him—perhaps because they love him, just as Jesus did.

I wonder if the real reason we don’t enjoy talking about our faith—sometimes even to other members of our congregation—is that it makes us feel vulnerable. Faith is something that is very personal to us. Maybe we’re afraid of what people might think of us if we share this part of ourselves. Maybe we are afraid of being rejected ourselves.

And yet, I notice in the story that the apostles don’t seem to show any such fear. They are all too happy to go straight back to the temple—where they know they will be found—and continue doing what got them in trouble in the first place. And in John’s story, when Thomas refuses to believe his friends’ incredible story, he continues to gather with them for the rest of the week! When the next Sunday comes, he is there among them: they have not rejected him, and he has not rejected them.

Nobody wants to feel rejected, but as I think today about how we protect ourselves from that, I can’t help but wonder just what it is we are trying to protect. Thomas Merton suggests that this “self” I am so concerned about is my own creation, a carefully curated construction, a “smoke-self” as he calls it, that is not a person at all, but simply the image of one. God doesn’t know this person, he says, because God didn’t create him; I did. Underneath that ephemeral self, deep at the core of who I really am, is God’s own image residing within me. This deepest self is who God has created, and that self is one with God.

From what I read today, I think this might be the truth that the apostles have come to understand, which is why they can be so fearless. It isn’t that they have no regard for their own reputation or safety, they just know that those things are smoke. Having been shown who they really are—who they are in God—they are unafraid to let the breeze come and blow that smoke away to reveal the light shining beneath it. It’s a far cry from when they locked themselves away in a house for fear of the authorities.

I wonder if a part of what changes them and takes away that fear is what happens in that locked house. When they continued to meet together, in spite of Thomas’ doubt, when they learned that they could count on one another and be there for each other, when they realized that they didn’t have to retain any sins at all, I wonder if that made them into a support system for one another. I wonder if it was the acceptance and the support of that community they found there that helped make them fearless enough to withstand even the ire of the Council of Elders.

I wish I could say that, as I have become more aware of this truth and begun to experience it in my own life, I’ve become less afraid, but so far that isn’t the case. I am still concerned about what other people think about me. I still worry about whether I’m doing enough as a pastor. I still find it uncomfortable to talk about religion with people outside the congregation. But at the same time, I also don’t feel that my worth as a Christian or my salvation hang on those things.

I do, however, believe that sharing good news can be done in a way that is mutually life-giving, with or without anyone having a “conversion experience.” I’d love to be able to have a conversation with someone in which I can share my experience and listen to theirs in a way that leaves us both feeling affirmed in our faiths, even if they are different. I relish the thought of learning how I might grow in my faith from a Muslim or a Buddhist or an Atheist, and helping them grow in their own faith by sharing my story. And yet, I still feel uneasy even asking people in my own congregation about something as simple as their Lenten practices.

I’d like to think—and I hope—that I am getting better in that way. I’m getting more comfortable claiming my faults and mistakes without feeling ashamed of them or counting them against my worth. I’m getting more and more able to see the light shining through the smoke, so to speak; to separate the things I have done or not done from the person I am, the person God made. I’m slowly learning to trust who God made me to be apart from who I wish I were or who I would try to be.

And that’s an important distinction. Sometimes, I think we tell or hear these stories as though they were prescriptive, as though they tell us who we should be or what we ought to do. As I listen to them today, I don’t hear that. I don’t hear a goal for which I should be aiming, but rather a promise, reassurance to help me continue moving in that direction. The stories offer a vision of what faith can do: it can bring us life that isn’t constrained by fear, kept locked in a prison or shut out of the room where everyone else is.

I’ve come to believe that this is the real good news: not that believing the right thing will get you into heaven, but that God offers us something in Jesus’ story that can help us leave behind an existence of constantly trying to protect ourselves and worry about what God or anyone else thinks of us: and that something is the Truth of who we are in God, and of who God is in us. It is the Truth that allows us to give up binding ourselves and others by the sins we’ve committed or the mistakes we’ve made. It is the Truth that can set us free.

Even if I am never able to let go of that fear entirely, the stories show me what is possible. In fact, it’s more than possible: they testify to the Truth that this is the freedom that awaits us all, because God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and everything in between. Here in the middle, we’re all struggling with fear, all wrestling with doubt, but God is in that struggling and wrestling, too. Even in my fear, the stories remind me that I don’t have to fear. The door may be locked, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way out—or in.