Bible reading: John 20:19-22.

Message.

If you enjoy reading detective stories, or watch them on the television, you’ll know that many of them are “locked room mysteries”. Typically, someone isn’t seen leaving their house or coming out of their hotel room for a lengthy period of time; they miss important appointments, they don’t open the door when a visitor comes calling, nor do they answer their phone. Eventually the Police are called and, when they break down the door, they find the person lying in a pool of blood with a knife through their heart. But how were they killed? The windows are all firmly shut, there is no chimney or secret passage by which a murderer could have entered or left, the door is bolted or locked from the inside. It’s up to the detective (and us) to work out how the crime was perpetrated: the answer is often improbably ingenious!   

Well, no-one dies in the story we read earlier – quite the opposite in fact, as it’s all about Jesus proving himself to be alive. But it certainly is a locked room mystery, as Jesus seems to materialise in front of his amazed disciples without having used the door – a door which was securely barred and bolted. I think that the disciples were terrified: we know that they were already frightened because, as Jesus’ followers, they knew that they were in the sights of both the Jewish and Roman authorities; that fear must have increased tenfold because, as Luke tells us, what they thought they were seeing was a ghost – what might that mean? The women had, of course, already told the male disciples about their encounters with the risen Jesus earlier that day; but that was surely nothing more than a fanciful rumour put out by hysterical females. Even Peter’s account the empty tomb could be explained by saying that Jesus’ body had been stolen under cover of darkness.

Although it’s not really the focus of what I want to talk about today, I must tell you that I don’t find these stories of Jesus’ resurrection appearances easy to understand. On the one hand, the Gospel writers are at pains to show us that Jesus was not a ghost, a hallucination, a trick of the disciples’ minds: he breaks bread and hands out the pieces, he eats some of the disciples’ supper, he cooks breakfast on the beach, he can be physically touched and felt. But, on the other hand, Jesus appears and disappears at will; he is able to enter closed rooms and he seems to vanish from sight for days at a time before returning. All this means that we are left with a contradiction: a man whose body is real yet seems to possess supernatural abilities. How do we explain this? Rationally, we cannot; and I’m sure Christians have grappled with this question for centuries. The best explanation I’ve come across is that what we are seeing here is the “prototype” for the resurrection bodies which Paul writes about in his first letter to the Corinthians.

Let’s get back to those disciples on Easter evening. They had locked themselves in because they were frightened of threats – perceived or real – from outside; they’d made themselves safe from intruders but also cut themselves off from participating in normal life and society – no longer were they out fishing or walking the highways with Jesus or spending time with their families or socialising in a bar. In a sense the disciples had become as isolated as mountaineers taking shelter from a blizzard or people cowering in a cellar while their city is being bombed. Such people are in a safe place (or they hope they are), which is good; but they are also cut off from other people; while they are sheltering their lives are basically “on hold”. It’s not a meaningful existence, they’ve effectively paralysed themselves and need to find a way out.

I wonder how many people – perhaps even some of us here today – are feeling “locked in”? There could be many reasons for feeling like this. For instance there are people who suffer from agoraphobia – defined as “an intense fear of being in open places or in situations where help may not be available”. This is the opposite of the better-known claustrophobia or fear of being shut in: agoraphobics are frightened to leave their homes and may be anxious about having a panic attack in a public place. Apparently there are several triggers for this condition, including among other things traumatic childhood experiences such as the death of a parent or sexual abuse, a history of mental illnesses such as depression, anorexia nervosa or bulimia, or having been caught up in a terrorist attack. It’s clearly a crippling condition which severely limits a person’s life; they are “locked in”. (By the way, this is different to the rare neurological disorder called “locked in syndrome” which is caused by damage to the brainstem).

Other people are perhaps locked into their memories; and I’m not just thinking of bad ones, either. I’m sure we’ve all met folk who have a constant yearning for things “to go back to the way they used to be” or a desire to repeat successes which may have taken place many years ago. It’s almost as if these good folk don’t realise that the past “is a foreign country” where things are – whether we like it or not – done differently to how they are done today, and find it impossible to adapt to modern life. These folk, too, are in a sense “locked in” – and dare I say that this is true of some churches and Christians, who seem to think that “if we could only do things like we did back in the 1950s, then our churches would be full again”. That’s a nice thought, but it can’t be done. Like it or not, we have to live in 2025, not 1955!

Perhaps more seriously, there seem to be many people who are locked into their opinions or views and, even if presented with evidence that challenges those views, aren’t prepared to give them up. We’ve seen this in debates about immigration (“they just want to take advantage of our generosity”) or benefits (“they’re all lazy scroungers who can’t be bothered to work”) or gender issues (“watch out for your children”). Somehow these prejudices, however wrong, have become hard-wired into some folks’ brains; thinking them through anew would threaten their comfortable security, so they don’t bother. And, once again, I think we can sometimes see the same attitude in churches – because it’s much easier and safer to say “I know what I believe and I’m sticking to it” than “What if God wants to teach me something I’d never realised before?”. We lock the doors of our minds, not only to other peoples’ insights but also to God’s Spirit. That can’t be right, can it?

This leads me to another group of people: folk who are locked in by discrimination of social class, money (or lack of it), gender, colour or anything else which makes other people shun them. We must be clear that these people have not locked themselves in; quite the opposite, as they desperately want to be treated as full and equal members of society. It’s other people who, perhaps unwittingly, have done the locking. Back in 1929 the feminist writer Virginia Woolf was invited to give a lecture at Oxford University. However, when she went to the college library, “a guardian angel” in the shape of an elderly gentleman wearing a black gown barred the way saying that “ladies were only admitted to the library if accompanied by a Fellow of the College or furnished with a letter of introduction” – hmm! Moving to today, we’ve seen how the transgender community have reacted to the ruling by the Supreme Court – are they to be locked into a box not of their own making? Doesn’t the Bible say that we’re all equal before God?

I could say more, for instance about people who are locked in by debt or illness or other circumstances. And I do want to say that, in very recent history and even today, there have been and are Christians who literally have had to meet in fear and behind closed doors. Those of us with longer memories will remember reading about the “underground” churches that met secretly in Communist countries such as Romania and Bulgaria, countries where being a Christian put one at risk of arrest, imprisonment and torture; I wonder if that’s still the case in North Korea? We must also remember Christians in areas where Muslim extremists are prepared to invade services with machine guns or blow up churches with bombs: I’m thinking of Egypt, northern Nigeria and Pakistan but there may be other places. Would you and I be prepared to worship – or even declare our faith – under those circumstances? Locking church doors seems an obvious precaution to take!

Once again, let’s return to those disciples because, as we already know, something remarkable happens: Jesus appears among them. He proves who he is by showing the disciples his crucifixion wounds and breathes the Holy Spirit upon them (I’m not going into that this morning). We’re told that the disciples are “overjoyed” and we might have expected them to fling open the doors of their room and shout out to the world: “Great news! Jesus who was killed is alive! We want everyone to know!”

But that’s not what happens, because we are told that, a week later, the disciples gather again – and, once again, they lock the doors to their meeting-place. Jesus may have convinced his disciples that he was alive (and he’s about to convince Thomas, who hadn’t been with them on the first occasion), but they were still fearful of being seen in public. In fact, although I think that their confidence grows over the next five weeks, it’s not until the dramatic day of Pentecost that they feel they can boldly face the world and fearlessly declare their faith in Jesus; then, as we know, they really “go for it” and the Church is born.

I talked about locked-in folk earlier; I’d love to promise them that, when Jesus shows up in their lives, everything miraculously changes for the better. I can’t and mustn’t do that, as complex human problems and needs aren’t solved overnight. However – and remembering how Jesus declared that part of his mission was to set captives free, and how he later said, “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed” – I can and I do believe that having a faith in Jesus and seeking help from him can make a real difference to peoples’ lives, that at the very least it can give us both a new perspective on life and new resources to live that life. Indeed, there would be no point in being a Christian if that wasn’t the case, there’d be no point in us being here today.

The poet Richard Lovelace, imprisoned for his political beliefs back in 1642, wrote “Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage”. The Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley wrote of his experience in finding faith, “My chains fell off, my heart was free”. John in his vision in the book of Revelation, heard Jesus saying to the struggling church at Philadelphia, “I have opened a door in front of you, which no-one can close”. Let us ask him to unlock and open our doors as well.