Take courage in Christ.

It’s getting warmer, which means a lot of us will be heading to the beach in the coming weeks, and we will come once again to that fateful moment. It’s time to get wet. Some of us will go in slowly, feeling the cool water working up our bodies with each step. Others will simply take the plunge. Often there is that in-between. And in any case, once we’ve enjoyed that cool, refreshing water, when we hear someone complaining about the heat we say, “Come on in, the water’s fine!”

John’s account of that first Easter night is like that sparkling ocean. It is ever-changing, waves rolling in, infinite shades of blue and green, the sun sparkling on the tops of the waves, and a great deal we cannot truly know about it until we get in, until we take the plunge.

We understand and identify with the disciples’ fear.  We marvel with them at Jesus’ sudden appearance. How did he get through the locked door? We note this isn’t a merely spiritual event or group hallucination. “Touch my hands,” he says.

And there is a larger issue afoot here. Good, faithful Christians tend to grasp the deal that if we believe in Jesus, follow him and do the best we can while repenting of our failures to do so, then after we die we get to go to heaven. Well, yes. Jesus did tell the thief on the cross that “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

But there is more, and if we were to stop there then we are really only in up to our ankles. The real plunge is that we are hearing about the dawning of the new creation, which has begun with the Resurrection. Eventually God will finish the work by creating a new heaven and a new earth, pulling everything together under his reign. It has everything to do with our future and the way we choose to live today.

This new creation account actually parallels with the creation story in Genesis. You will recall that in Genesis God creates everything in six days. There are six movements in their first encounter with the risen Jesus. The disciples are in the dark and deeply immersed in chaos. In the creation, first God said “Let there be light.” In this new creation, Jesus – whom John told us in chapter one is the light of the world – stands among them. In the creation, God next separates the “waters from the waters,” which we can think of as the swirling gasses that will become the earth from the rest of space. In the new creation, Jesus separates his disciples from their chaos by saying, “Peace be with you.”

In the creation, God separates solid ground from the oceans. In the new creation, Jesus shows them he is solid by offering for them to touch his hands and his side.

Next, God appoints the sun, the moon and the stars as lights to the world. In the new creation, Jesus sends forth his disciples as lights to the world.

Next in the creation, God creates the sea creatures and birds, then he creates the rest of the animals. Finally, he creates humanity and breathes life into them, or in-spirits them. In the new creation, he breathes on them and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Thus, they become part of the new creation and its agents. They will soon begin to spread it further.

This is an awful lot to absorb. We’ve had 2,000 years to study it, we can document how it has changed and continues to change the world. People say, “But where is it? What about all the injustice and cruelty in the world now and all throughout history?” We can easily judge the past, including the errors by the church and its leaders across the centuries, by the absolute perfection of the new creation the Apostles witnessed in the risen Jesus. That includes the emphasis his resurrection puts on what he said and did before he died on the cross as well.

But the questions are fair and they began immediately. We call him Doubting Thomas but we might call him brave Thomas. He really speaks on behalf of all humanity because he is essentially saying, “Prove it. Before I’m going to give myself over to what you are saying, I must be sure.” Jesus follows up with him, essentially repeating what he had done the prior week, but then he adds that sentence that tells us, it isn’t going to grow this way. It is going to grow by us passing along their witness, which has become our witness. “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

This presents a challenge, one that we each approach at our own pace. It’s like going into the ocean on a hot summer day.

John makes his witness to the new creation as urgent and as personal as he possibly can, “…what we have heard, what we have seen with our own eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life...” Come on in, the water’s fine. That is a word of encouragement, that your life is going to be better if you will just follow me out here where things are different. Perhaps the most important way they are different is courage.

We tend to think of courage in terms of overcoming fear, facing physical danger, like a soldier, or the unknown. But there is a much deeper courage to be gained in the new creation. Recall that a little later in this letter John will make the simple statement that sums up quite literally everything, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8) He will then say,

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” (1 John 4:18)

In the new creation, we do not fear. We don’t fear death because death has been defeated. We don’t fear powers or principalities because we know their power is temporal and temporary. We endure suffering with courage because we know the hope and promise of healing in the new creation. In addition, we are continually faced with issues of moral courage. This casting out fear is the key to living the Christian life. C.S. Lewis sums it up this way, “…courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at its testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to dangers will be chaste or honest or mercifully only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky.”[1]

It takes courage to maintain chastity when temptation is very close at hand, to be honest when no one is looking and no one will know, or to have mercy when the wrong we’ve suffered is real and the fault is very clearly placed on another, and we have every right to exact judgment. It takes courage to persevere in the care of a difficult neighbor a difficult loved one who needs help and you really don’t feel up to it.

And it takes the courage of our convictions to say to our friends and neighbors, “Come on in, the water’s fine.”

Whatever chaos you are facing today and tomorrow, Jesus comes. Peace be with you. He means to breathe new life into you and the Holy Spirit. He means to enlist you and retain you in the new creation. Courage.  Christ breathes it into his disciples and he means to breathe it into you, again and again until his new creation is fully realized in you.

ALLELUIA CHRIST IS RISEN!!!!

AMEN!

[1] The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis, 2016 HarperCollins, 1942 Clays, St. Ives, ch. 29