What Happens When Doors Are Unlocked

[This sermon was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]

John 20:19-31
When we lived in rural northwestern Ohio, we never locked the doors of our church or our house. Having been accustomed to always locking up, we fell into this habit slowly. But I remember the moment when I realized that the habit had fully taken hold. We were getting ready to take a vacation and thought it would be a good idea to lock up. I searched high and low though and couldn’t find the house key. What’s more, it dawned on me that it had been months since I’d even seen a house key, let alone used it!

Why do we lock our houses, cars, garages? That’s simple enough: We’re afraid. Afraid of intruders harming us. Afraid of having our belongings taken. Locked doors are prudent precautions for us all to take.

But, let me ask you this? Are there other doors we lock down tight, doors that maybe we should keep open?

He’d been hurt. Two wives had left him for other men. “Never again!” he vowed. “Never again will I let anyone get in.” So he shut down. He woke up, ate his daily meals, did his job. He socialized. But there was always a wall.

Somehow though, a thought penetrated his fog of fear and loneliness. “Maybe,” he thought, “I need God.” He met with a local pastor. “What can I do?” he asked. The pastor said there was no magic bullet, but he did have a suggestion.

“Start attending worship regularly," the pastor said. "It doesn’t have to be this church. Just go somewhere and really make an effort to get it. Get your brain off your own bellybutoon. Ask God to help you with that.” The pastor also suggested a few places in the Bible the guy could read and they could later discuss. “Do those things,” he told the man, “and come back here in six weeks.”

There were no lightning bolts, or, as one of our old hymns puts it, “no sudden rending of the veil of clay.” But when the man came to the pastor’s office six weeks later, something was different. Some of the doors had been unlocked and opened. God stepped in. Later in that man’s progress, friends walked in. Later still, a new wife walked in. They’re still married. Happily.

God can do wonderful things when we unlock the doors to our lives, wills, and hearts. The risks and the dangers won’t go away. But what that man would tell you—and yes, he really does exist—is that the payoffs--peace with God and others--are worth the risks and dangers.

Today’s Gospel lesson takes us to the Sunday after the first Easter. Huddled behind closed doors, Jesus’ first disciples are a pathetic group. Here they are, recipients of the best news that the world has ever heard—the news that God the Son has died and risen so that all who turn from their sins and believe in Him will live with God forever. It was news that Jesus had spent a considerable period of time preparing them to share this news and His ministry. Yet, they’re not telling anybody about Jesus. They’re not serving anybody in His Name or under His authority. They’re afraid, our translation says, “of the Jews.” But this is a poor rendering. The term in the original Greek of John is Iouadaion and it refers to the people living in and around Jerusalem, Jews like them, many of whom were likely among those who had called for Jesus’ crucifixion just ten days before. This fearful group behind closed doors—the first church—isn’t a lot different from many churches today. Fear keeps them locked behind doors of all kinds.

Bill was the part-time pastor of a multi-point parish, meaning that he did worship and provided some leadership in several small congregations.* This was in rural Suwaunee, Georgia.

“My first visit to one of the churches,” Bill writes, “I found a large chain and padlock on the front door, put there, I was told, by the local Sheriff. ‘The Sheriff, why?’ I asked. ‘Well, things got out of hand at the [council] meeting last month, folks started ripping up carpet, dragging out the pews they had given in memory of their mothers. It got bad. The Sheriff come out here and put that there lock on the door until our new preacher could come and settle things down.’”

That was pretty much the way things went for the rest of Bill’s time at that church. He writes, “The arguments, the pettiness, the fights in the parking lot after the [council] meeting were more than I could take. It was tough and I was glad to be leaving them behind. ‘You call yourself a church!’ I muttered as my tires kicked gravel up in the parking lot on my last Sunday among them.” Here was a church that, truth be told, had padlocked God and neighbor out of its life.

Our Gospel lesson shows us that when the first Christians, the first members of the first Church locked themselves behind closed doors on that first Sunday after the first Easter, something happened. Jesus showed up. “Peace I give to you,” He told them. “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” And a week later, Jesus showed up again, telling a disbelieving Thomas, “Look at My wounds, Thomas. It’s Me. Sin, death, and the devil couldn’t overcome Me and if you stick with Me, they can’t overcome you either.” When Thomas saw and heard Jesus, he issued the most emphatic confession of Jesus you’ll find in the Bible. “My Lord and my God,” he said of Jesus. “It’s good you believe in Me,” Jesus replied, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe.”

In fact, as the man who’d been left by two different wives came to know, even those of us who have never seen the risen Jesus in bodily form can, through the eyes of faith, see Him. And when we do, it will change our lives!

“One day,” Pastor William Self writes, “a man came into my office and asked if I could spend some time with him.” The man showed up and “said he was losing his faith and wanted to leave the church because he was racked with doubts.” Pastor Self told him that he needed to go on a hospital visit and asked this modern day doubting Thomas to go with him. “We drove across town to a large hospital,” Self writes. “We walked through the corridors and found the room of the patient whom I was [visiting]…The patient was a young doctor in his late 30s who was dying…As we entered the room, we noticed all the medical equipment hooked up to his body, but he was very conscious of our presence and wanted to talk. We talked for a moment about life and death. I read Scripture, and we prayed together. My doubting friend was there with me and stood at the foot of the bed as I stood at the patient's side. The entire process in the room took about 15-20 minutes. There were tears in the eyes of the patient in the bed as we turned to leave. We went down the hall to the elevator and then out to the parking deck before either one of us said another word. Finally, on the way back to the church my doubting Thomas turned and said, ‘I see things entirely differently now. Eternity has broken into my life, and I want to start all over with Christ.’"

When we dare to unlock the doors of our lives, the risen Jesus can come in, and change us from fearful people worried about today and tomorrow--maybe yesterday--into confident believers who, like Thomas and the members of the early Church, go into the world with the love of Christ and the message of salvation in His Name.

That’s what happened in that once-padlocked church in Suwaunee, Georgia. A few years after Bill left the church, he met the twenty three year old pastor who was, by that time, serving there. Bill felt sorry for him. But the young pastor began talking about what a remarkable church it was. It was supporting about a dozen poor families in its county, ran a free day care center, and was a place where interracial families, snubbed elsewhere, found a welcoming home. What happened? “I tell you what I think happened,” writes Bill, now a bishop in the United Methodist Church. “I think that…someone greater than I knocked the lock off that door, kicked it open and offered them peace, the Holy Spirit, mission and forgiveness. And now” they can rightly be called a church.

Folks: I believe that the risen Jesus has plans for Saint Matthew Lutheran Church. In you, I see a people willing to open your lives to Jesus, to confess Him as your Lord and God not just with your mouths, but with your lives.

In a few weeks, on the Friday evening and Saturday morning before Pentecost, I want to invite you to participate in a prayer vigil here in Saint Matthew’s sanctuary. From 6:00 on Friday night until 7:00 on Saturday morning, I’ll ask individuals or families to be here for half-hour stints. Your goal?

• To pray for this wonderful congregation and our ministry to the community and the world.
• To pray that the Risen Lord, Who breathed onto that frightened band of disciples in a locked room in Jerusalem, will breathe on us, giving us renewed faith and boldness in sharing His love and inviting others to follow Christ with us here in Logan and Hocking County.
• To pray that we will unlock the doors of our lives and let Jesus Christ into every part of our lives.

I plan on being here to pray that night, too. I’ll be around for. And there will be materials here to help you pray. We’ll have sign-up sheets in the fellowship hall next Sunday. I hope that every half-hour block will be filled with the names of at least two people who will pray. If you can’t drive at night, I ask you to indicate when you’ll pray for Saint Matthew at home during the vigil.

The risen Jesus came to the frightened disciples, gave them His peace, and that band of people then turned the world upside down in the Name of Jesus Christ. Jesus is still risen and still in business. He still has things He wants to do through you and me and through Saint Matthew. When we dare to unlock our wills, minds, and hearts to the risen Jesus, He will enter in. He will give us His peace and He will use us to do wonderful things in His Name!

*"Bill" is William Willimon, a fantastic preacher and able theologian, who told this story about his days as a student pastor here.