Peace be with you

I am not sure how other pastors are feeling after Easter, but I am pretty restless. It’s a combination of many factors. I am trying to put everything I’ve got into Holy Week. Maundy Thursday has developed into a special day to recreate the passion and love Christ had for us, knowing what was ahead.  I want Good Friday to live up to everything it was for me as a Christian growing up—the best service of the year. And Easter is making sure we celebrate this amazing day, but send the visitor home with something they can reflect on. At the same time, I am managing the expectations I’m creating for next year’s Holy Week activities. Thus, I feel restless.  Did I do all that I wanted to do?  Did the message get across? Did it reach my expectations? What can I do now for next year? It may be obvious to you, but there is no way that when I was in seminary I would have been able to articulate the passion behind these services. It is only through time and observing our current culture that these have become more developed. And it doesn’t mean they will be always be this way.  As a kid, Easter meant falling asleep while it was still light outside, having a new suit to wear, candy, biscuits and gravy, and of course, the story of risen Lord. Trust me, I had no clue the kind of energy it took my pastors to go through that weekend. And as a 13-year-old kid, I had no clue what Holy Week would become for me. I knew one thing, I believed in Jesus and wanted to share that message with our world. That pretty much sums up why I wanted to be a pastor and what I am called to do.

I guess most jobs come with intense seasons followed by restless periods. This week I walked into my CPAs office and the first thing they said was, “We were just talking about you.” Let me just say, in most places in my life I am ok with people talking about me, but when my CPA says it, I am not sure what that means. Am I the dreaded client he has to chase around to find missing information? I can imagine they have a lot to deal with right now. Even though Easter isn’t always in March, it is always floating around tax season, which means even with my best intentions, I barely beat their April 1^st deadline. So, maybe there is good reason to be talking about me. Regardless, one would think they have much more important clients to worry about than me. For them, once they have serviced all their clients and finished those that need extensions, they take a break, probably wondering what new taxes will be passed and what new internet crime will be developed. All they can do is take time to rest and then wait until next year.

My second favorite service of the church year is coming up this weekend. As a kid, I was highly critical of myself, and this is the one time I felt like Jesus was good with me. It probably helped it was right after Easter. I loved the powerful line, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” I knew that was me! I hadn’t seen Jesus and I believed! I could make all the excuses why I wasn’t meek, or humble, or any of the other beatitudes Jesus used, but in this one I felt confident. That lasted for all of the service, and then I am sure I figured out something I needed to work on right afterwards. But for those glorious minutes, I felt freed from the cycle of looking at my own sin, and just trusted that I believed in Jesus.   

Now, as an adult, I know I was kidding myself thinking I hadn’t seen Jesus. I see the hand of Jesus everyday. I see Him provide for people. I see a sermon that He helped me write days ago impact someone’s life situation that I just found out about 5 minutes before the service. I get to watch the impact of people at the end of their lives, and how they knew and felt God’s peace. I watch as God uniquely uses someone’s gifts, and how they see the work of the Holy Spirit in their own lives. Sure, I’m not in a locked room, but I see Jesus all the time!

I don’t know what was going through the disciples’ heads as they were locked in that room, but I got some guesses. If they had any clue they were going to be “the Apostles” they had to be freaking out. They would be providing the foundation of Scripture based upon what they said and wrote. That’s a lot of pressure. Pressure like that makes one restless, and question if this is really happening. Maybe because Jesus is gone, Thomas is thinking he just dreamt he spent the last 3 years with Jesus. If so, he doesn’t have all the pressure of telling everyone everything he has seen. Maybe that is easier. But then, Jesus comes from behind locked doors and says, “Peace be with you.” At that moment it is like Jesus makes life stop, and he looks at his child and reminds him he is loved.  Go ahead—see, touch, and believe.

Easter is just the beginning, and I know that may be why I get restless. I try and figure out what is going to happen this year leading up to next Easter. And then Jesus appears in the areas of my life that I have locked down and says to me, “Peace be with you!” In that moment I know to believe. Jesus sends us His Holy Spirit to help us believe and to share this great message. The season of Pentecost reminds us of that.

Easter is just the beginning for you too. Love 1 is part of the Discipleship Model and a strategy of the next steps for those of us who see the risen Lord. In this broken world there are so many people who need to hear what we celebrated on Sunday and to be loved by you. They need to know that Jesus says, “Peace be with you!”  Maybe we have more in common with the disciples and Thomas than we thought.