Before Easter, I spent every morning for two weeks meditating on the story of Lazarus. Since Easter, my meditation is on the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the locked room after his Resurrection.
In the Gospel of John (20:19-31) Jesus appears to the disciples who are huddled in a locked room for fear of the people of Jerusalem. Evidently, the city is still in an uproar after sending Jesus to be crucified and the disciples are afraid that they will share their master’s fate. Jesus enters the scene and says “Peace be with you” twice which underlines the terror of his followers. Then he shows them his wounds and breathes on them.
Sharing this moment of Jesus breathing on his friends is fun in Children’s Chapel, because the kids immediately get the weirdness of the gesture. Yet this breathing is Jesus passing on his Spirit – the animating core of his life, his inner peace – to his followers. He is breathing them back into life. The locked room is the tomb their fear has created. The breath of Jesus is the ‘ruach,’ (in Hebrew “breath” or “spirit”) of God which moved over the chaos of creation and brought the world into being as told in the book of Genesis. Jesus is making them a new creation, a patch of new goodness in a sea of chaos, fear and violence.
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Appearance of Christ to his Disciples by Anthony Van Dyck |
Jesus also shows them his wounds. What an interesting detail. The one who is risen is the same one who was brutally executed. The signs of his death are not removed or healed by his new life. The wounds assure us that the life Jesus lived that led to his death is the life that God is vindicating through the resurrection. The way of life-giving sacrifice for the other is the risen life that God favors.
For me, meditating on these wounds is incredibly liberating. I can be incredibly punishing of myself. The hurtful and hateful things I think about myself on an hourly basis are as familiar as they are toxic. The same negativity – I hate to say – is something I too often inflict on the people and world I love. When I meditate on Jesus’ wounded hands and imagine the wound surrounded by and overcome by his risen body I can say, “Thank you Jesus for taking all of my negativity and toxicity into yourself. Thank you for absorbing and defeating it. Thank you for showing it to me, so I can grieve the pain I cause and learn to give life instead.”
This is not masochistic thinking, but just the opposite. I am learning to recognize my hurtful fault in a spirit of hope and redemption, absorbed into a greater life that will lift me into a new creation.
I invite you to meditate on this story and to see how it speaks to your heart. Simply breathe in the breath of Christ and receive his peace. Breathe out your fear and all that keeps you locked away and stuck in an airless room. Follow the breath and see where it leads.
- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
