"Endings & Beginnings" by Deborah Conner
"Endings and Beginnings"
John 20:19-31
Rev. Dr. Deborah Conner
Myers Park Presbyterian Church
May 1, 2011
William Bridges in his book Transitions writes: “Endings are the first, not the last, act of the play.”
It is tempting, a week after Easter, to skip endings and move quickly to beginnings. The empty cross is much easier to focus on than the horrors of crucifixion and death. We don’t like to linger around endings - they contain emotions that are uncomfortable to feel. But, without an ending there is no beginning.
The disciples experienced an ending. Life was different after the death of Jesus. Everything had changed. They couldn’t move around freely or continue their ministry. They were shut up in a house in an unknown location because they were afraid about what the religious and Roman authorities would do to them. Earlier in the day, Mary Magdalene told them she had seen Jesus. He talked to her and gave her a message for them. But, they didn’t believe her. The tomb was empty – they had seen it. Dead people don’t get up and walk away by themselves. They don’t talk. Jesus was gone, and they couldn’t comprehend why or how. They didn’t know where he was . . . no one really knew what was going on. They were in “unfamiliar territory”.
Hidden behind closed doors, all they could see was the ending. Their teacher and friend was killed. Their hopes for the Kingdom of God to be ushered in by Jesus were destroyed by hatred and fear. They couldn’t see a beginning. They couldn’t make sense of what was happening.
Then, Jesus appeared.
They saw him and they believed. There is a glimmer of a beginning emerging out of
the despair of death.
And, Jesus says, “Peace be with you”
This common Hebrew greeting takes on significant meaning in this context given the events of Good Friday. Most of them had abandoned Jesus at his time of greatest need. It startled them to be greeted in this way after what they had done. Peter had denied him – not once, but three times; Judas Iscariot, now dead, had betrayed him. The others, except for John and some of the women, ran away in fear for their lives.
When Jesus says: “Peace be with you”, we are reminded of his words earlier in John when he was at the Last Supper. He said to his disciples: “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be afraid.”
Peace be with you is Jesus’ way of reminding them: Don’t be afraid. I’m here. The disciples needed this kind of reassurance.
So do we.
When we go through endings, we lose a sense of peace. The challenges of life can be so exhausting. Many times in my work and ministry I have prayed that others would experience the peace of Christ in the midst of struggle.
This peace is larger than anything that can happen to us in life. And, when we experience endings, it may be the last thing we can sense or feel. I experienced this first hand when my father died last year. I didn’t feel peace. I felt pain and grief.
But, this didn’t make peace any less real. The peace of Christ was still present in that ending. Jesus’ presence with me was not dependent on my feelings. This reassuring commitment, made by God, sustained me despite my grief.
Jesus was with me. He is also with you.
The peace of Christ is available because Jesus appears in our endings, whatever that ending might be.
There is a story about a . . . “ship that wrecked in a furious storm and the only survivor was a little boy who was swept by the waves onto a rock. He stayed there all night long until, the next morning, he was spotted and rescued. “Did you tremble while you were on the rock during the night?” someone later asked him. “Yes,” said the boy, “I trembled all night – but the rock didn’t.”[1]
The peace of Christ doesn’t take away our emotions or reactions, but it assures us that God is present no matter what we go through. Because of our fellowship with God in the good times, we are offered a place of rest in the endings.
When Jesus gives the frightened disciples peace, He tells them to go out and to continue his work. He equips them with the Holy Spirit.
In a similar fashion, Jesus does the same for us.
When we know that God can be counted on – we are free to move out into the world and tell others about how we have met the risen Jesus in our places of fear and uncertainty.
When the disciples saw the risen Lord, they were able to believe he was raised from the dead. They believed in the resurrection and hope beyond death. They believed God could take any ending and create a beginning.
A German theologian of the 19th century said it this way:
“The power of (Jesus’) resurrection is something within our reach. New possibilities can dawn on us, and the more we sense these new possibilities, either in our bodies or in our souls, the more we can ask for, the more we can look for higher and greater things here on earth. . . . And for this reason we can bring hope into everything, into our daily life, into everything at which we work and into anything that we touch. The power that comes from God is ready to be brought into our human situation, and in such a way as to transform it. . . . We are simply to ask Jesus to give us more and more of his resurrection, until it runs over, until the extraordinary powers from on high that are within our reach can get down to work on all that we do.”[2]
This past Wednesday, powerful tornados cut a destructive path through Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia. A week prior, other tornados destroyed homes and businesses in North Carolina. Lives have been lost. Lives have been changed. There have been heart-breaking endings and word-defying pain and grief.
One young college student said: “There are no words to describe what this is. Nothing can bring my friend back.”
Where is Jesus in this ending?
One poignant picture shows a woman holding a young child in her arms. They are wrapped in a blanket sitting on the cement slab of what was once a home.
There are no words to adequately describe or explain what our neighbors are going through. Who can give voice to this kind of pain except Jesus? Remember His words on the cross: My God, My God. Why have you forsaken me?
One of my favorite theologians writes:
“. . . at the very center of the Christian faith we hear this cry of the godforsaken Christ for God. We shall always attempt to weaken it’s effect and to replace it by “more pious” parting words. . . . Is this the end of all human and religious hope? Or is it the beginning of the true hope, which has been born again and can no longer be shaken? At the point where men and women lose hope, where they become powerless and can do nothing more, the lonely, assailed and forsaken Christ waits for them and gives them a share of his passion. Our disappointments, our loneliness and our defeats do not separate us from him; they draw us more deeply into communion with him. . . . In him the despair that oppresses us becomes free to hope.”[3]
It is too soon, the emotions are too raw, to talk about beginnings for people in Alabama or any other place where lives and property were destroyed.
It was too soon, for the disciples.
They saw, first hand, the destructive power of sin - the refusal to walk in the way of love, justice and peace. They saw contempt and hatred for anything that challenged the status quo. Jesus’ death was so traumatic to the disciples and the early church that the symbol of the cross wasn’t used anywhere for over 200 years. Generations of believers, who were eyewitnesses to the horror of Roman crucifixion had to die off, before the symbol of the cross could be used to point to God’s power.
The disciples were justifiably afraid. And in the midst of that fear, Jesus appeared to reassure them; equip them and sustain them as they moved into a beginning.
Jesus equips us in the same way.
He appears in the life of every disciple. He appears to the lost or lonely; the hurt or neglected.. Jesus also appears in our lives using us as instruments of his love to offer resurrection hope in those places where there is despair and pain. He appears every time we gather to worship and praise his name. By the power of the Holy Spirit, breathed into our lives, we embody Jesus. Not by doctrine; not by programs; not because we are nice people; but because of the relationship we have with Him. When we know Jesus, like a trusted friend, then everything changes. Hope was given to the disciples on that first Resurrection Sunday and it has been passed down to us.
Have you experienced it?
Some of you are in the middle of endings right now. Something in your life has changed. There was an ending. You can’t see the beginning in your particular ending right now. But, as surely as Jesus appeared to the disciples and said “Peace be with you”, I hope Jesus will appear to you spilling hope into your life through the love of your family and friends, through the prayers of the people in this community of faith, through the supernatural care and compassion of Christ that defies description working in and through each of us.
As the mayor of Tuscaloosa said yesterday: “We are showing people our faith in God and our faith in each other.”
Whatever your circumstance might be today – you are invited to this table by Jesus Christ. He knows all about endings and beginnings.
He knows all about you.
He invites each of us to remember the night he was betrayed, bound and taken away to be scourged, mocked and abandoned.
He invites us to remember his death, the sadness and the terror.
He invites us join Him at this table - to remember that when we have an ending it is the first act of a new beginning. By and through the power of his resurrection, he offers the greatest beginning available – life in his name and peace that passes all understanding.
The peace of Christ be with you.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Sermonillustrations.com
[2] Blumhardt, Christoph Friedrich, Christ Rising, p.355
[3] Moltmann, Jurgen, Prisoner of Hope, taken from Bread and Wine, Readings for Lent and Easter, p. 149ff
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