The Day of Pentecost, 2023
ACTS 2:1-21; PSALM 104:25-35, 37; 1 CORINTHIANS 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23

the doors of the house
where the disciples had met
were locked

As new dog owners, Karen and I have been watching Cesar Millan. He has had a number of shows, but they are all very similar—he trains dogs. What makes the shows so compelling, even if you don’t have a dog, is that he has an extraordinary capacity to take a misbehaving, or fearful dog, and just by spending a few seconds with them—the dog simply settles down.

There’s a way about him, like he has an abundance of peace in him, and the dogs respond—the dogs themselves are at peace just being in the presence of Cesar.

I’ve had people in my life like this. People, who when you are having the worst of days, and you’re almost screaming on the inside with fury, fear, or frustration, there are people who have such an abiding peace that when you are in their presence, you can’t help but also feel at peace.

John is keen to make sure we know that the doors of the house where the disciples met, that particular evening just after the crucifixion, just after though they had heard some strange reports that Jesus was alive again, John is keen to make sure we know that the doors of that house, that evening, were locked—and locked out of fear.

The disciples’ memory of the crowds who wanted to crucify Jesus is still too fresh; and as John’s Gospel was written a number of years later, John’s community was suffering too, and afraid sometimes, because John’s community was no longer in community with many of their friends, families, and neighbours over Jesus. As a result of this fear, the disciples had locked their doors; they had locked themselves away from the rest of the world.

Jesus, it seems, has no trouble entering this locked room. And Jesus, it is clear, is not afraid at all. And perhaps, Jesus is a bit like Cesar Millan, or perhaps like those people in our lives who abide in such peace that we feel peaceful with them. Because Jesus is more than simply not afraid; Jesus is at peace with the sort of peace that runs over the side of the cup. So “Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

And in that locked house, as Jesus shows them his hands and his side—the emblems of his own suffering—Jesus opens a whole new world to those disciples, a world they did not need to fear. After all, if Jesus couldn’t be held down in death, and if Jesus could come out the other side of that, what in the world is there left to fear? And so “the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

There are two things that do not happen in this story, and another thing that does happen. First—the thing that does happen: Jesus gives the disciples the Holy Spirit, sending them into the world as the Father had sent Jesus. But strangely, two things don’t happen: we hear nothing about any doors being unlocked; and we don’t hear anything about Jesus leaving, or the disciples leaving, almost as though we are meant to imagine the disciples no longer needing to leave the room, and that in that room they remain, for some unspecified length of time, with Jesus.

As though the world that Jesus sends the disciples into, in the power of the Holy Spirit he has just given them, is a world seen, a world entered into, now, through Jesus himself. Almost as though those open wounds on his hands and his feet are little windows through which the world can be seen anew, almost as though those open wounds on his hands and his feet are little doors through which the world can now be passed into, but a world now no longer closed out in fear but opened up in Jesus. A new world, a new future, brightened by a Holy Spirit that transforms us and the whole world, according to the love of the wounded one, the crucified one, the living one.

This is, in part, what we do today with Annika. What world do we want to welcome Annika into? A world locked out from her, out of fear? Or a world opened up in peace, a world of joy? Today, in the water of baptism, Annika too will die and rise with Christ; and as a result, she becomes fully a member of the body of the risen Jesus, the one who brings peace, and the one who brings joy. And today too, in the waters of baptism, Annika receives the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit that enlightens the world of the crucified and risen one, a Holy Spirit that strengthens us for Christ’s world.

And as little as she is, she too, as a member of the body of Christ, takes part in the peace of Christ, she takes part in the joy of Christ (even if she screams!). We invite her into a world that is not without its dangers; it is not without its broken relationships; but nevertheless, we invite her into a world

that we know, in Christ, as not just one in which there is nothing to fear; instead, through our Lord Jesus Christ—crucified for us, and yet risen—by the power of the Holy Spirit, she is invited, with us, into God’s life in Christ, a life nevertheless of love, of peace, of joy.