First preached by the Right Reverend Grant Lynn Ford at the Sunshine Cathedral on Sunday, April 10, 1988, again on Sunday, April 30, 2000, once again (with alterations) on Sunday, April 23, 2006.
Acts 4:32-35
32All the believers were united in passion and purpose: one heart, one mind. No one went around saying, “This is mine! I won’t share!” They cared and they shared. 33In the midst of this generosity the apostles were able to declare the Good News of the resurrection of Jesus the Master. Grace flowed freely on them and through them. 34No one in their community was needy! People would even sell property and houses and give the money generously, 35bringing the funds to the apostles so it could be distributed to those who were in need.
John 20:19-31 (abridged)
19It was evening on that first day of the week. The disciples were huddled behind locked doors, afraid that the populace might try to harm them. All of a sudden, Jesus appeared right there with them, saying, “Peace be with you!”
20He then extended his hands to them, and showed them his side where he had been wounded. The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were ecstatic with joy. 21Jesus repeated his greeting. “Peace be with you! In the same way I have been sent by God, I am sending you.”
22And with that he breathed on them and said, “Be completely filled with the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive any person’s faults, they’re completely wiped out. On the other hand, if you don’t forgive faults, they never seem to go away!”
24Thomas ‘The Twin’ was not there. 25Later they told him, “We saw the Master!” But he couldn’t believe his ears! “I’ll have to see the nail marks and touch them, and his wounded side, too. Then I’ll believe it!”
26A week later the disciples were in the same house, only this Thomas were there as well. The doors were tightly locked again when suddenly Jesus appeared among them. “Peace be with you!” 27Then he said to Thomas, “Come on! Put your finger right here in my hand. Take your hand and touch my side. Quit doubting! Believe!”
28Thomas cried out, “My Master! My God!”
29Jesus said, “You believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Those who have not seen, but still believe, are even more blessed.”
A couple of hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. The other hunter doesn’t know what to do. His friend doesn’t seem to be breathing; his eyes are rolled back in his head. The guy is worried: “What if they think I did something to him? What can I do?”
So he finally whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. In his anxiety he gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?”
The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.”
There’s silence, then a shot. The guy’s voice comes back on the line. “OK, now what?”
Fear and anxiety can be deadly!
Ian McLaren said: “What does your anxiety do? It does not empty tomorrow...of its sorrow; but ah! it empties today of its strength. It does not make you escape the evil; it makes you unfit to cope with it if it comes.”[i]
Sometimes we can identify with the anxious, fearful disciples of Jesus. It was the Sunday evening following Jesus’ crucifixion. The disciples were hovering nervously in the Upper Room. The doors were shut, says John’s Gospel, because they were “afraid the populace might try to harm them.”
How tragic it is when the doors of the church are shut because of fear. Today some churches spend more on security systems to keep people out than they do on advertising to get people in.
In case you want to talk about the good old days, church doors were shut back then: shut against people of other races. Today churches are still shutting their doors to gay men and lesbians, to bisexuals and transgender persons, especially refusing ordination to anyone other than heterosexuals — and those who “don’t tell”.
Divorced and remarried people are still often refused communion, and women are frequently blocked out from leadership positions in liturgy. What are these churches afraid of?
It’s also tragic when fear shuts the door of our heart. That happens to people. They draw into their own private world because something “out there” is just too threatening. Robert Burton in The Anatomy of Melancholy says simply: “They that live in fear are never free.”
It was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who challenged a nation with these words: “So let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”[ii]
Eleanor Roosevelt, with her brave demeanor and sensible shoes, tells us: “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”[iii]
How about you? Are you living behind closed doors because of fear? What’s the solution? Who can open the doors to God’s possibilities? Who can set you free?
Let’s look first at the door, and then grab for the key!
Who’s behind the door of anxiety? This was not a group of atheists or agnostics that Jesus had recruited. They were not religious scholars, by any means, but they surely were familiar with the Psalms. They had grown up reciting “The Lord is my shepherd” in their synagogues. They knew the stories of Joshua and Deborah and the other heroes of the Hebrew Bible. They knew that God was the Rock of their Salvation, the One who would never forsake them. Besides all that, they had been with Jesus, some of them for three years. How many times had Jesus told them not to be afraid?
Someone has noted that there are 366 “Fear not!” verses in the Bible — one for each day of the year and an extra one for Leap Year! Hadn’t any of it rubbed off on them? A time of anxiety and they had gone back to the way they were before Jesus ever called them to follow him!
President Roosevelt reminds us: “The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.”[iv]
OK, so let’s see how we can open this door. Henry Ward Beecher once said, “Every day has two handles; we can take hold of it with the handle of anxiety or the handle of faith.” The disciples had hold of the handle of anxiety, holding the door closed from the inside!
That’s the bad news. Now here’s the good news. The Master can penetrate the closed doors of our lives if we’ll let go of anxiety and take hold of faith.
Listen to the reading from John’s Gospel once again: “It was evening on that first day of the week. The disciples were huddled behind locked doors, afraid that the populace might try to harm them. All of a sudden, Jesus appeared right there with them, saying, “Peace be with you!” He then extended his hands to them, and showed them his side where he had been wounded. The disciples, seeing the Master with their own eyes, were ecstatic with joy.”
Right here is the best antidote to anxiety and fear: to experience the Presence of the Risen Christ, that voice within that declares: “Peace be with you!”
A week later, when they were again in the same house, Thomas was with them. He didn’t believe they had seen the Master. He remained without hope for yet another week. Suddenly Jesus again appeared to them. And again he spoke gently: “Peace be with you!”
Thomas, who had doubted to this moment, reached out and touched Jesus’ side and put his finger in the nail holes in his hand. Then he cried out, “My Master! My God!” No longer Thomas the Anxious — this was now Thomas the Affirmer.
So what happens when the door is opened? We see things from the viewpoint of Truth, not from physical evidence. Fact is what our eye sees; truth is what our mind knows and our heart feels.
When we experience the peace of God in the presence of Christ, we grab the handle of faith and throw open the door of our own prison, the prison built by our own fears. Faith sets us free!
Georgia Douglas Johnson expresses it this way:
Your world is as big as you make it,
I know, for I used to abide
In the narrowest nest in a corner
My wings pressing close to my side.I battered the cordons around me
And cradled my wings on the breeze,
Then soared to the uttermost reaches
With rapture, with power, with ease![v]
What happened to those disciples after this powerful, affirming experience? They turned their world upside down! The doors of the church were thrown open wide. On the Day of Pentecost three thousand people heard Peter preach. They responded to his affirmation, and joined this faith movement which continues down to this day.
Ramona C. Carrol says, “Faith is putting all our eggs in God’s basket, then counting your blessings before they hatch.”[vi]
It’s not “seeing is believing”, but rather “believing is seeing”. This kind of faith in God creates faith in ourselves, and revolutionizes our lives. We take our rightful position as co-creators with God in creating a new reality based on Divine Truth, not false assumptions based on anxiety and fear.
The trouble with closed doors is that they keep us from living in the fullness of life awaiting us just beyond the door.
Hear again the words: “Peace be with you!” In the presence and power of the “Christ in you”, you may move from anxiety to affirmation, from fear to faith. You’re your door in faith, and then watch what happens — to you and to your world!
And that’s the Truth!
[i] Ian McLaren, quoted by Eleanor Doan, Speakers Sourcebook II (MI: Zondervan, 1968), p. 32.
[ii]Franklin D. Roosevelt, quoted by William Safire and Leonard Safir, Good Advice (NY: Wings Books, 1982), p. 120.
[iii]Eleanor Roosevelt, quoted by William Safire and Leonard Safir, Good Advice (NY: Wings Books, 1982), p. 121.
[iv]Franklin D. Roosevelt, quoted by John Cook, The Book of Positive Quotations (NY: Gramercy Books, 1993), p. 121.
[v]Georgia Douglas Johnson, quoted by Carolyn Warner, The Last Word (NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1992), p. 39.
[vi]Ramona C. Carroll, quoted by John Cook, The Book of Positive Quotations (NY: Gramercy Books, 1993), p. 122.
My life-doors are open —
to receive all God’s good.No more anxiety —
I live in affirmation.No more fear —
I live in faith.God wants all Good for me —
and so do I —
and I like it like that!And so it is! Amen.
“Faith is the first factor in a life devoted to service. Without it, nothing
is possible. With it, nothing is impossible.”
—Mary McLeod Bethune
