on peace

 

‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’’

John 20.19

‘Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’’ John 20.21

‘A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’’ John 20.26

Twice, just three days after he was tortured and executed, and again seven days later, Jesus says to his apprentices, ‘Peace be with you.’

This would appear to be important, the heart of his message. The word ‘peace’ means wholeness, to be at one with (within) yourself. How can someone so recently and so thoroughly broken apart proclaim wholeness?

It has been said that trauma is not what happens to us, but what happens within us in the absence of empathetic witnesses. (This is why doctors’ bedside manner matters so much in emergency care.)

Jesus went through unimaginable pain, but—contrary to popular belief—was not alone. We know that several of his female apprentices and at least one of the men were at the foot of the cross. The others stood at a distance, looking on, as much as they could bear. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus will lower Jesus’ body from the cross, wash it and anoint it with spices, and lay it in a tomb. Several of the women saw where they laid him. When the women later return and find the tomb empty, Peter and another apprentice—traditionally identified as John but perhaps Lazarus, who himself had walked out of a tomb and would have a particular interest in witnessing that again—ran to the tomb to see for themselves. That they were not taken there by the women, but ran straight there, implies that they, too, had been participating witnesses in Jesus’ burial.

Most of all, it has been claimed that on the cross, God—the Father—could not bear to look. Songwriters have penned words, describing the Father turning his face away. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the text. When Jesus cries out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ he is not describing his experience but praying a psalm, Psalm 22, exploring the appearance of abandonment, precisely to reach out and hold fast to the God who is, in fact, there with us and for us. As he hangs from the executioners’ scaffold, the sky turns black. When God descends, as on mount Sinai, he cloaks himself in thick darkness, so that the people do not die of fright. The sky turns black because the Father has come to hold his Son’s outstretched hand and look upon his beautiful face.

Jesus does not suffer and die alone, but surrounded by empathetic witnesses. And he returns, showing his wounds, not simply to prove that it is he and not some other, but, in a safe space, to take his apprentices back to their own place of unbearable suffering, where each one of them felt abandoned and without empathic witness, and therefore experienced trauma.

Jesus takes them back, right into that place, so close, so real, that they can reach out and touch his wounds. And in revisiting that place, not alone but with the one who has died and been raised to life again, they, too, are empowered to let go. To lower the defences they have thrown up to protect themselves. To experience healing. To be brought back to a place of wholeness.

This is what Jesus does for them.

This is what Jesus wants to do for us, too.

To stand alongside us in the place of our deepest hurt, and speak the word we most need to hear, ‘Peace be with you.’

This is a process, not a one-off event. It is the process that Jesus’ apprentices, the Church, are called to participate in. To be a community that is becoming whole, moving from trauma to peace, as we see one another’s wounds—and his—with love.

 

John 20.19-31

‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

‘But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’