Peace Be With You

2^nd Sunday of Easter - Cycle A

Homily on John 20:19-31

Peace be with you!

(Response: And with your spirit!)

Amen!

            So here it was, the evening of the Resurrection, and Jesus’ disciples were all gathered in a room with the door locked because they were afraid. Jesus came and stood with them and, I am sure, startled them, but then he said, “Peace be with you”. A week later he they were in the room again, still with the doors locked, and he appeared again and said “Peace be with you.”

            And so here it is, the second Sunday of Easter, and we, the disciples of Jesus today, are gathered together. Our doors aren’t locked, but I wonder if we are any less afraid than those first disciples. Are we a Resurrection people? Are we listening to Jesus when he gives us his message of peace?

            The Gospel’s call to be a Resurrection people means that from now on, as followers of the risen Christ, we are to be at peace – first with ourselves, with God, with Jesus, with our families, with our neighbors, with everyone in the town and everyone in the church and with the whole world. From now on, we are a people of peace, a people who have peace within us, a people who shares that same greeting of peace with one another, a people who offers that peace to the whole world.

            The greeting that Jesus gives to the disciples, “Peace be with you”, echoes an earlier passage in John 14 when Jesus says at the Last Supper, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you”. The world’s idea of peace would lead us into the false ideas that stronger borders or more bombs or more military power will give us peace. No, the peace that Jesus calls us to is a peace that refers to the harmony that we experience when relationships with God, with the community and with ourselves are ordered correctly. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers and peace-builders – to create that order in relationships based on justice and right. Jesus breathed out the Spirit on those first disciples and gave them the mission of peace – and he still breathes that mission into us today.

            I was thinking about the call for us to be peace-makers and peace-builders as the canonization approached of these two Popes. For me, one aspect of both of their ministries was their commitment to peace.

            John XXIII wrote a most amazing encyclical entitled “Pacem in terris”, or “Peace on Earth”. There is a great quote from that encyclical on the front of our bulletin today. That document was written shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the building of the Berlin Wall. Some of you only studied those events in history class, but some of us lived them and the fear that went along with them. But as frightening that those events might have been, John XXIII took a very optimistic tone in this writing. He focused on the kind of world that we are obliged to build as Christians – a world where peoples’ rights are respected, where governments truly have the common good as their goal and a world free from nuclear weapons where everyone who has helps those who have not – kind of the world that the Acts of the Apostles portrayed in our first reading today. One result of that encyclical is that every year since then, whoever is Pope issues a message for the World Day of Peace on January 1.

           

            Just as John XXIII saw the Berlin Wall go up, John Paul II saw it go down – and saw the end of Communism in Eastern Europe without a single shot being fired. Four years before that, John Paul gathered representatives of over 160 different religions and denominations in Assisi to pray for peace. There were not just various Christian traditions there, but Buddhists, Moslems, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Zoroastrians – every imaginable faith – to make the point that the desire of each religion, and the human heart, is the desire for peace. And they prayed – each in their own tradition, in their own language, all day for peace. And at the end, Pope John Paul offered a message to all the participants and to the whole world. He said, “Peace is a workshop, open to all and not just to specialists, savants and strategists. Peace is a universal responsibility: it comes about through a thousand little acts in daily life. By their daily way of living with others, people choose for or against peace.”

            Even though we hear the messages of Jesus and these two Popes, it’s very human for us to doubt that peace is possible. We read the paper or watch the news and have a hard time finding any examples of even the hint of peace. We question the possibility of peace in the world – where is the evidence that it’s possible? We wouldn’t be the first ones to doubt what we have yet to have proven to us.

            Thomas was like that. And yet, even in his doubt, Jesus offers his greeting of “Peace be with you” in Thomas’s presence. Two times Jesus shows his disciples his wounds when he gives them his peace, which I think means that Christ’s peace, the peace not of this world, comes not through violence or war or the false security of weapons, but through sharing in Jesus’ wounds, in his cross, in his non-violent suffering and his self-emptying love. When Thomas learns this, he exclaims, “My Lord and my God”. Thomas was making it clear that he was not following any false gods of power, or money, or weapons, or, the kings of this world.  Jesus is his Lord, and his mission is one of peace. Thomas accepted Jesus’ mission of peace. Thomas became a part of the Resurrection people.

Are we like the “doubting Thomas”, or the believing Thomas? Are we a Resurrection people? Are we listening to Jesus when he gives us his message of peace?

Peace be with you!

(Response: And with your spirit!)

Amen! Alleluia!!