huddling upstairs

 

my first sermon since June 29th

SERMON PREACHED AT St PAUL’S, ARROWTOWN
and St PETER’S QUEENSTOWN
SECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER (April 12^th) 2026

 

READINGS 

Acts 2:14a, 22-32
Psalm 16
1 Peter 1:3-9
John 20:19-31 

Eternal Father, through the resurrection of your Son, help us to face the future with courage and assurance, knowing that nothing in death or life can ever separate us from your love. This we ask through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. 
Amen.

 

A few moments ago I prayed a “collect,” a prayer gathering together in one voice the many prayers, the many angles and nuances that we could whisper in our minds in the guided silence a few seconds before I spoke. There is a reason for praying a collect in that way rather than all “reading” it together – in fact there are a number of reasons, but one in particular I want us to hold in mind as we journey into John’s telling of the resurrection stories. 

And that is that no one person, not, sadly to say even me, has a copyright on the truth of those events on and following the first Easter day. As I will say over and over again we are now into the language of that which is beyond words. So the stuttered whispers in our silence are every bit as valid an expression of our hopes and fears in Christ as are the stuttered whispers of the person next to us. 

A week ago in the Dunston parish I did what I may or may not have done when I was with you, and that was simply to read CS Lewis’ great vision of the end of time from the Chronicles of Narnia. For the doctrines of resurrection, ascension, second coming and eternity take us into realms which our mere words, even the mere words of the gospel writers, can never grasp.

But those words can create a space in which we can dare to believe. The writer of our collect, the writers of all out collects, I hope, knew that. He or she pulled together words that express something of the hope that is brought to us in that unfathomable mystery of resurrection, and with it the unfathomable mystery of Second Coming, the belief that one day our Messiah our Christ will return and wrap up all human and celestial history, and bring us into the inexplicable reign of God.

To turn to John’s resurrection story that we just read, as he tries to narrate these beyond-words events, we find some important navigation aids for the somewhat crazy world in which we are currently living – even in far-from-it-all Aotearoa - New Zealand. Let me confess that I am very conservative in my reading of the resurrection appearances. They seen to me to carry deep truths that operate at both a literal and symbolic level.

The disciples were afraid. Having just lost, in horrific circumstances, their friend and leader, this is unsurprising. It is far worse than waking up each day to find out that a war that we are surprised to find existing, exists. That a war engaged by a man who promised no more wars, is being fought with massive loss of life on one side, by a man who wants a Nobel Peace Prize. That escalating fuel costs and the cost of living are rising almost exponentially, despite promises that were the opposite of what said man said he would implement. 

Of knowing that, despite learning over a 10 year period now that truth and falsehood are slippery concepts, and that the one claiming to be the sole arbiter of truth is the father of lies, knowing that despite all this, our weird 2026 world is not nearly as disturbing as that experienced by those who gathered in the upper room, terrified.

We need to pause for a moment with that phrase “for fear of the Jews.” That phrase  has caused so much aggression towards one racial group on earth. It will hardly be surprising to know that I am no fan of the current state of Israel; neither would I defend the indefensible of singling out any one religion or ethnic group for persecution or genocide. This applies whether the perpetrators are Aryan supremacists, Nationalists of any form, or leaders of any wing of politics. 

If we take time to understand the context in which John was writing we might err on the side of translating “for fear of the Jews” as “for fear of oppressive authorities,” no matter their ethnic or political alignment.

That said we know the disciples were huddled in terror and into that terror broke, despite locked doors, the bodily presence, unrecognisable at first, of the one who had inspired hope in this motley group for somewhere between 12 and 36 months. 

This unrecognisable figure spoke to the frightened few with reality transforming calm and spoke the word “peace.”

Peace in any language is never merely the absence of war, though that would be a wonderful thing, but the presence of justice, the presence of hope on macro and micro scales. Hope in the presence of horrendous international geopolitics, hope in the presence of ecological and economic vulnerability, hope in the presence of our own illnesses, or other aspects of our daily lives that have been wracked by unsettlement, even despair.

So powerful was the transformation that took place in that other upper room, that we hear about it still. Sometimes we too experience our lives touched and transformed by peace and hope that transcends all that we are experiencing personally or globally.

“Peace be with you” is no trivial “chin up mate, but an invitation to open ourselves up to the life and world-transforming hope that was embodied in the very tangible, if not at first recognisable man. This man who incomprehensibly entered the room and the lives of the huddled few who were gathered there, who equally incomprehensively still carried in his hands, his torso, his feet, the scars that human hatred had drilled into his body just hours before.

We are invited. no matter how inevitably inadequate we are, simply to be a people, and individual persons, who allow that hope, that love, that death- and despair-transforming life to infiltrate and direct our lives, individually and collectively.

Those huddling in the upper room, however imperfectly, did just that. So we hear and we are challenged to live their story today.

I finish as I began …

Eternal Father, through the resurrection of your Son, help us to face the future with courage and assurance, knowing that nothing in death or life can ever separate us from your love. This we ask through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.