Although the doors were shut Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.”
A cartoon in this week’s New Yorker requires no caption. It depicts a family inside their home: a young man, a young woman, a dog, and a cat. The dog is holding his leash in his mouth. They are all sitting there, staring at the front door, wishing they could go out.
We are all, of course, pining, not only to go out, but to be together. We miss each other. This is poignantly true in the church. We are diminished when we cannot be together. It’s a fact. But it’s not a new fact. It has always been this way. And for now, we are behind closed doors.
St. John reminds us today that some of the first experiences of the risen Christ took place behind closed doors. In fact, it’s an important detail that he includes in his account of the first two encounters the disciples have with their risen Lord.
On that first Easter morning, all those centuries ago, after Mary Magdalene has begun to spread the word that Jesus is risen, he came to his disciples when they were gathered behind closed doors, and the door was locked. But it’s no bar to Jesus.
Then, a week later (today), he came to them again, and John is careful to include the detail that the doors were “shut.”
Now obviously, John did not have the coronavirus pandemic in mind. John was meaning to convey something about the power of the risen Christ.
But something beautiful translates to the current moment: John writes, “although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them.” Although the doors were shut.
Our doors are shut. And your doors are shut. And we have been thinking that these doors - all off them shut between us - we have been thinking that they are a barrier to our communion.
We are not all huddled together, but we are hunkered down, household by household. The doors are shut. We are not going out, and we are not allowing anyone in.
I have to tell you that there are times when I have been inside this church with our little band of disciples - the Ministry Residents and me - and I have heard banging on the doors. You can hear it ringing through the empty nave, as someone tries to insist that the doors be opened.
But they are shut fast.
And sometimes it feels like we are sitting just inside the doors, our leashes in our mouths, staring at the closed doors, wishing we could go out... or at least that someone else could come in.
But, no, the doors are shut.
I never imagined that that specific detail of the first Easter could resound so clearly in my own life, for I never imagined an Easter behind closed doors. But that is precisely what we have had. And while it has been profoundly unsettling, it also puts us in a kind of profound solidarity with the apostles’ experience of the first Easter.
Their doors were shut. They assumed it kept them safe. And they had no thought that Jesus would be able to make his way to them. Yes, they were thinking of Jesus, wondering about Jesus, but they were not expecting Jesus. If anything, they’d have been wondering when it would be safe to open the doors so they could try to find him.
Today is supposed to be all about Thomas, who of course was absent on that first Easter, when the doors were locked, and his friends and compatriots were all together without him, and Jesus came to them and shared with them the gift of his peace.
We’re supposed to focus on Thomas, in the house a week later, and on his declaration of faith, and on Jesus’ pronouncement that we should believe even if we haven’t seen for ourselves.
But for me, this year, the most poignant aspect of these stories is the detail that we most clearly have in common with them: that our doors are shut - yours and mine.
And we have reasonably assumed that this condition of being locked up, separated from one another, has made it harder for Jesus to be with us.
But of course, we are wrong. The doors being shut is no impediment to Jesus, no impediment to our communion.
We want to cry out, “Jesus, we are behind closed doors and we cannot get out!”
“Never fear,” he calls, “I have come to you.”
Notes for a sermon preached by Fr. Sean Mullen
Low Sunday, 19 April 2020
Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia