Greetings friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighborhood monk in dogs.
Welcome to day 41 of our Lenten journey in the wilderness,
Still held,
As we walk through John's Gospel to Easter.
Today as we begin,
I invite you,
As always,
To simply bring yourself fully into this space,
To arrive here,
To bring yourself into this moment,
As we listen to the voice of the Spirit speaking to our hearts and as we seek to allow that seed to root deeply in our lives.
Today we continue in John chapter 20,
Where the resurrection story continues in a very human place.
The disciples are gathered together in a house and John tells us the doors are locked because they're afraid.
You see,
The crucifixion has shaken everything that they thought they understood about the world.
Their teacher's gone,
Their future feels uncertain and so they hide.
Many of us know this place,
The place where we pull back from the world,
The place where fear quietly closes the doors around us and it's precisely here that something extraordinary happens.
Jesus comes and stands among them.
There's no fanfare or dramatic entrance and he doesn't even walk in and get cross with them for being afraid.
He simply greets them with the words,
Peace be with you.
And notice what this might mean,
That peace is the first gift of the resurrection.
Peace.
Resurrection isn't here to give us evidence or proof,
It's here to bring us all peace.
And this is important for those of us who walk a spiritual journey because resurrection hasn't removed the disciples from their world.
It doesn't take them somewhere safer,
But quite the opposite.
As we'll see when we keep reading and move into the book of Acts,
It literally restores them to the world that they were already in.
Same cities,
Same tensions,
Same fragile human realities.
But it's the fact that something within them is different that's important.
Peace.
Peace has entered the room.
And then something even more intimate happens.
Jesus breathes on them.
A quiet act,
Breath to breath.
In the Scriptures,
Breath has always been a sign of life.
From the beginning,
When the breath of God is breathed into the first person and that breath animates them and brings them to life.
I love that my New Zealand brothers and sisters,
Particularly those who are indigenous to New Zealand will greet each other by coming very,
Very close and touching their foreheads and literally breathe each other's breath.
And here again in this story,
Breath is given.
The spirit moving gently into human hearts and with that breath comes ascending.
The disciples aren't simply comforted.
They're commissioned.
Peace.
Peace received becomes peace carried.
And peace carried,
Well that becomes peace given.
And this is the pattern of spiritual formation.
When we learn to abide,
When we allow God's presence to slowly reshape our inner life,
Something begins to grow within us.
A deeper steadiness,
A quieter trust,
A peace that doesn't depend entirely on circumstances.
But this peace is never meant to remain contained within us as we've just mentioned.
It moves outward.
Presence becomes witness.
And this witness doesn't have to come through dramatic acts or long testimonies or even short ones,
But through the quiet way we inhabit the world,
Through patience in difficult conversations,
Through kindness in ordinary encounters,
Through the calm steadiness that we bring into anxious spaces,
The peace that we have received slowly becomes a gift for others.
And this is the purpose of the wilderness seasons of life.
The times of waiting and uncertainty,
Times when the old ways of living no longer seem to work.
They're the seasons that aren't wasted because they prepare us,
They reshape us inwardly so that when we return to the world we return differently,
Grounded,
Spacious,
More able to carry peace.
Take a moment now just to gently reflect on your own life and ask the question what peace has begun forming in you?
Yes it might be still small and it might be only a little shift in how you respond to things that once unsettled you.
Maybe it's just a small awareness that you're not alone.
But I encourage you today to let that peace be acknowledged and then ask this,
If you're carrying even this little bit of peace which could grow into the sense of acknowledging a great deal of peace,
Where in the world might you be being invited right now to bring that peace?
A workplace?
A family situation?
Friendship?
Or just the ordinary spaces of your daily life?
You see resurrection and transformation doesn't call us away from the world,
It calls us back into it.
But now we're carrying something,
A presence,
A living peace,
The spirit breathing through ordinary people in ordinary places.
And sometimes the most powerful witness is simply this,
A person who carries peace into a restless world.
Take one more slow deep breath and as you breathe imagine the peace that you've received settling gently within you.
See it as something that you're learning to carry and as this time comes to a close today,
May the peace that you have received move through you into the life of the world.
And may you go gently into your day,
Fully within that peace,
Today and every day.
Amen.
Until tomorrow my friend,
May all the peace that's within you be recognised.
Amen.
