Easter Day 7pm

Sunday
7.00pm

Easter breaks out

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 had 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.” (John 20.19-23)

This is another of those critical encounters with the risen Lord. When Cleopas and his wife arrive back at the room where the disciples are, in St Luke’s Gospel those there are full of joy at the news that Peter has seen the Lord. In John’s Gospel it is evening but the disciples are locked away for fear. And then into their locked space Jesus breaks in and says, ‘Peace be with you’, and to prove it he shows them his wounds, his hands and his side.

In the Upper Room, on the day of resurrection, the church’s ministry is formed. The risen Christ forms us as a eucharistic, reconciling, peace-filled community, alive in the Spirit and in his resurrection. Is this the church we truly are? Do we bring peace, do we bring reconciliation, do we witness effectively to the reality of God, the reality of Christ? I love the church, but I love Church more, and where we fail Christ as his church then we need to look again at our life in the light of resurrection. The good news we have to proclaim is ‘Peace be with you’.

And that should be good news for every person, in every place, at every time, in real time.

If that is not the message that people hear us proclaiming then we are not the people of the Upper Room, of the empty tomb, then we are not the Easter people of God, the children of the resurrection.