Note: You can watch this teaching on CrossWalk’s YouTube channel.

John 20:19-23 (NLT)

That [Easter] Sunday evening the [broader community of followers, not just the 11,] were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders. Suddenly, Jesus was standing there among them! “Peace be with you,” he said. As he spoke, he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side. They were filled with joy when they saw the Lord! Again, he said, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I am sending you.” Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

Green Screen. One of the industries everyone wished they bought stock in prior to the pandemic was one related to virtual meetings: green screens.  Green screens have been used in broadcasting for decades to allow producers to superimpose whatever backdrop they desire behind local weather forecasters and news anchors.  Over the last year, green screens have made it possible for us to hide our messy homes while transporting ourselves into any scene or video.  I regularly used a picture of my office and sanctuary when I would host church-related stuff.  Or sometimes I might be at Bodega Head, or Yosemite, or the High Sierra, or just down the street.  Nobody really knows where you are when you’re virtual.  The disciples knew where they were.  They had locked themselves inside a large upper room for fear of being arrested and potentially executed like Jesus.  There was no green screen for them – this was their reality.

Peace in Hiding. Somehow, in the midst of their cowering, they all experienced Jesus there with them even though the doors were locked.  Note that there is no attempt to explain how this happened.  They are simply conveying their experience.  In their sorrowful terror, Jesus showed up in such a way that the entire group of them experienced it.  His common greeting took on deeper meaning: Peace be with you.  When God comes, it is always with this greeting because peace reflects the character and nature of God and also God’s goal in the world – to bring a sense of wholeness, healing to the world.  There is no rebuke here – only love. How does this jibe with your default belief about the character and nature of God?  How does approaching God as loving and peace-oriented affect our openness to God as well as our desire?  How have you experienced this shift?  How’s the level of peace for you right now?

            Peace in Context.  I don’t know about you, but I have discovered that I am at peace at some times more than others.  For instance, when I am in deep sleep in the middle of the night, I am so peaceful I don’t think about a thing – I am completely at rest.  When I watch the news, not so much.  My hunch is that the last year has challenged your sense of being at peace given the pandemic, the election, the ongoing racial tension in our country, the economy, our natural disasters, etc.  I would not be surprised if you elicited symptoms of the lack of peace: irritability, angst, fear, tightness in your body, perhaps stomach issues, strained relationships, impatience.  Peace is easy enough to experience when things are good, and easy to wish for those in a good space.  “Peace be with you” at a wedding ceremony is easy; at a funeral it is not.  Jesus showed up in the midst of terrified followers with the more-than-casual greeting, “Peace be with you.” Knowing that peace is core to God’s character and goal, I wonder what might be involved in actualizing the peace that is called forth in such a greeting. Did they experience such peace?  If so, how?

            Alignment Matters. My first car was a piece of junk.  The front wheels were so out of alignment that driving was in itself a workout.  I’m not kidding, everywhere I went it sounded like someone was taking a corner too fast.  Take your hands off the wheel and you would find yourself making a sharp right turn!  If I had not taken care of the alignment issue, not only would I be exhausted from driving (and a little embarrassed), but I would also find myself buying new tires very often as they would be worn down prematurely.  So it is with our walk with God.  When we get out of alignment, we find ourselves struggling against the flow, the peace disturbed by screeching tires and tired arms.  It shows up in our lives as exhaustion and damaged equipment. Once aligned, the car drove easy.  How aligned are we with the Spirit of God that is (and brings) peace?

Pushed to the Max. I confess that I don’t always practice what I preach.  When the pandemic hit, my workload increased significantly. Producing our virtual services added a full day a week all things considered.  At the same time, in the early months, my volunteer leadership with the COAD commanded two days a week of extra work.  As a pastor-leader, this meant that I tried to help shoulder the stress of those I was helping to lead, hoping to bring some calm amidst the storm.  Of course, I was also leading CrossWalk into an incredibly intense season of unknown and angst.  There were times, of course, when CrossWalkers needed their pastor to pastor them, which I treat as a holy privilege and honor.  Simultaneously, I was a dad to my kids as best as I could be, wanting to be strong for them.  I was also a husband to my wife who lost her job and went through all of the complex emotions associated with it: grieving the loss of a job she really liked and the fading relationships associated with it, the angst of not knowing what would be next for her, money concerns, etc.  On top of that, the stress of the actual virus took its toll on everyone – none of us were operating at 100% (more like 70% tops).  Racial tension around George Floyd’s death, the increased politicization of everything due to the election just made the last year overwhelming.  

Out of Alignment. When the pandemic hit, I was already running on empty from extra work to prepare for a three-month sabbatical rest after 20 years as CrossWalk’s pastor.  I did an okay job treading water, but I could not slow down for very long, and it caught up with me.  Jesus built balance into his life – time to break away and recharge, distancing himself from others for solitude, silence, and stillness.  I have not done a good job with that.  I have been operating out of alignment for over a year, my tires are worn, and my arms are tired.  My personality wires me to constantly perform and drive forward.  I will be taking a sabbatical a year from now, but I simply cannot keep doing for the next year what I’ve been doing for the last year.  I will burn out long before then and have nothing to offer anyone, especially my wife and kids.  I know that the greeting is always the same, “Peace be with you,” yet I do not think I have done much to actualize it, rest in it, float in it, enter into it. I apologize for not modeling this better to my wife and kids, and to you.  You would be the last to know because with you I am always in performance mode.  But my wife especially knows as she has seen me become more of a shell of a person than a whole human being. If you hear about me stepping away for retreat, for prayer, for vacation, know that I am simply trying to reenter the Peace.

Suck it up. Some who hear or read this might want to say out loud or in their heads, “Suck it up, Pete!  Good grief!  So, your work life was really hard.  You didn’t lose a house, or a spouse, or your favorite pet mouse, you louse!”  Dr. Suess has always been a vocal critic of mine.  I have just one thing to say in response to such a reaction: I beat you to it. Many times over the last year I have told myself the very same types of things.  Sometimes it helps as it forces my attention to all the things that I am grateful for, which is always a good practice.  But sometimes things can’t be fixed by a positivity booster shot.  I discovered that telling myself to suck it up was in no way redemptive or restorative, and only served to encourage me to dismiss my very real pain and struggle, which means it gets pushed aside and left unaddressed.  Maybe you’ve been dismissive of your real pain and struggle because you’ve minimized it in contrast to others’ pain. Maybe today you stop doing that and instead take a real look at things.  And if you are a suck-it-up-soothsayer while your intent may be good, let me just say that your words suck, are destructive, and add to the problem. Not everybody talking about their pain is a narcissist inviting you to their pity party. There is a place for KCCO, for having a stiff upper lip, for soldiering on.  Yet we also must encourage the courage-required inner work, too, which is, in my experience, much harder than just making it through the day.  Emotional and mental health matters.  When we discourage health, we really don’t know how much damage we do.  Again, I do this to myself – I don’t have sucky people telling me to suck it up.

Remove the Green Screen. We all live with green screens, projecting an image to the world we want to be seen, hiding our dirty laundry, or cluttered closets, or ugly couches from those with whom we interact. What is your current reality regarding experiencing the peace of Christ?  Not your virtual reality that you project to the world, but your actual reality.  What would your closest friend say about your reality? What do you suppose God might say about your reality?

How to hope.  How do we go forward when we are stuck in such muck and mire?  For me, this is where faith comes in.  In faith, I am going to build back into my life the things I have neglected, believing that doing so will help me become more present to the Peace that is always present.  This is the power of Easter at work.  I have been in this space before for similar reasons.  At other times, usually when the pain got unbearable, I realized that I was out of alignment, and took myself in for service.  Sometimes that required counseling.  Sometimes friends helped me see things.  Sometimes books spoke into my life.  Sometimes it has been my wife.  Sometimes getting into nature has instructed me. Sometimes a combination of some or all of those things.  Invariably, when I get back into alignment, slowly and surely, I am able to tap back into the Peace that has always been there.  It takes time.  It took time to get out of alignment.  It takes time to correct out-of-alignment behavior and attitudes. With a car, your alignment is corrected in a single visit and you’re back on the road.  Sometimes, however, even with a car, there are contributing mechanical factors that can cause your car to get out of alignment again, soon. Sometimes it’s because you keep hitting potholes instead of avoiding them. Sometimes you get blindsided and that messes up your alignment.  Alignment isn’t always a quick fix. I know that I can trust that I will return to Peace because I’ve done it before, and the Peace is a constant I can trust to be there.  Maybe you don’t have the experience from which to hope.  For you, the Easter story itself may be cause for hope.  These disciples were in absolute despair and had to be completely exhausted.  They discovered the constant of the Peace that the presence of God brings in time.  Their Easter evening epiphany wasn’t because they were all smoking the same stuff at the same time and then went away.  Instead, they all increasingly discovered that there really was (and is) a “there” there.  There really, really is.  I hope that today the Spirit of God may be nudging you to trust such truth and take a step forward in faith, that you may find Peace once again.

Letting Christ In. There is a story about King Edward vii of England. He and his queen were out walking late one afternoon when suddenly she stumbled and sprained an ankle. In great pain, and with considerable difficulty, she limped along, holding to her husband’s shoulder. At dusk, they approached the home of a humble man. The king knocked on the door. “Who’s there?” came the query.

“It is Edward. It is the king. Let me in.”

The man on the inside shouted back, “Enough of your pranks now. Be off.…”

The king, not being accustomed to such language, was shocked. He hardly knew what to do, but he knocked a second time. The cottager inquired, “What do you want?”

“I tell you it is the king! It is Edward, your king. Let me in.”

In anger the man shouted, “I’ll teach you to torment an honest man trying to get his sleep.” He threw open the door in disgust, only to see that indeed it was his king! With profuse apologies the laborer invited the royal visitors in and sent for help to attend his queen.

Years later, when the Britisher was too old to work, he would spend much time rocking on the porch and visiting with neighbors. He took great delight in reviewing that experience, always concluding with the same words: “And to think, to think, I almost didn’t let him in! To think I almost didn’t let him in!”

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and eat with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). In truth, Christ is already in the room with us, waiting for us to open our eyes, our minds, our hearts, and our full lives to the Spirit.  It is an act that requires something of us – a getting over our perceptions of reality to entertain something new, a repositioning of ourselves to get up and open the door.  The Christ is here, now, with you and me, saying, “Peace be with you!”  What might you need to do to experience it? 

Some helpful related verses...

Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. 

8 And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. – Philippians. 4:6-9 (NLT)

27 “I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don’t be troubled or afraid.” – John 14:27 (NLT)