On the great festival of Easter Day we remembered the tremendous mystery of the Resurrection:  . . . just as Mary Magdalene and another Mary arrive at the sepulchre where the dead body of Jesus has been placed, there is a great earthquake . . . and an angel from heaven shows up to roll away the stone that seals the tomb, . . . but Jesus doesn’t come out; . . . He is simply not there!  . . . He is risen, the angel says.  . . . And today we learn that in the evening of that very same day . . . some others of the Lord’s disciples experience that same wonder of the Resurrection . . . only in reverse.  . . . They are together behind “closed” (by which I imagine the text to mean “locked”) doors; . . . they are behind locked doors for fear that the Jewish authorities who crucified Jesus will not be satisfied with crucifying one Galilean, but will try to do away with whomever else they can lay their hands on; . . . so the disciples are together behind locked doors, bereft of Jesus, and wondering what to do next; . . . and, while He does not come into the room, . . . nevertheless, Jesus is abruptly there!

    Because, you see, the risen Jesus is not a reanimated corpse; . . . He is, rather, a transfigured soul.  . . . And the difference is this:  you are a living soul; . . . a soul being a kind of “compound” creature having both a physical nature which is temporal and a spiritual nature that is eternal.  You are a living soul; . . . you participate in the divine life!  . . . But you participate in the divine life only in-so-far as it is communicated to you by Him Who is divine.  . . . But the risen Jesus is a transfigured soul.  He is a person with a body that still bears all the marks of His physical life, . . . but it is a body which is no longer temporal; . . . it is a body that has been infused with the divine life.  The risen Jesus is neither a reanimated corpse nor is He a ghost; . . . the risen Jesus is a transfigured soul endowed with a spiritual body . . . which neither comes nor goes . . . but which is.  . . . And so, when the disciples are behind locked doors in the evening of Easter Day, and Jesus stands among them, . . . He does not come to them through the lockded doors; . . . rather, He is present to them in all the fullness of His divine life.

    And this is an important thing to pay attention to.  Because, you see, Saint John tells us that Thomas, one of the original twelve disciples, . . . Thomas was not with the others when the Presence of Jesus was known to them.  And not having been with them, . . . some unspecified time later Thomas is told about it by the other disciples.  They say to him, “We have seen the Lord!”  . . . Oh my, I’ll bet they fairly glowed with excitement and wonder and happiness.  . . . But Thomas is not about to be taken in by the hysteria of his fellows.  . . . And so, he says,

“Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

. . . Now, I want to be very clear about the setting of this conversation.  The disciples had seen the risen Jesus . . . but they do not see Him now; . . . and they are having a private conversation with Thomas, . . . who did not see the risen Jesus . . . and doesn’t see Him now.  . . . And yet, today, a week after the tomb into which the dead body of Jesus had been placed was found to be empty; . . . a week later . . . today . . . the risen Jesus is among the disciples again.  . . . And He says to Thomas,

“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.”

. . . Without prompting, . . . Jesus meets all of the requirements for belief in the Resurrection that Thomas had set before the other disciples in private . . . when the risen Jesus was not there.  . . . But, you see, . . . if the risen Jesus had not been there, . . . then how could He know what Thomas required of Him?

    And that’s John’s point in telling us about the Thomas incident.  . . . Because, of course, the risen Jesus is present when Thomas refuses to believe the word of the disciples.  He is not known to be present, . . . but He is.  . . . And this is the meaning of our Lord’s saying,

“Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.”

Jesus is asking Thomas, “Have you believed in my Presence only because you have seen me?”  . . . And then He says, “Well, how much more blessed are those who believe in my Presence without seeing me.”  . . . Because, you see, dear friends in Christ, . . . the power of the Resurrection is not that Jesus is alive!  . . . The power of the Resurrection is that the Lord Jesus Christ neither comes nor does He go; . . . the power of the Resurrection is that Jesus is.  . . . Because Christ is risen . . . you are in His Presence.  And being in His Presence, the divine life is present to you in all its fullness!  . . . Because Christ is risen, . . . your humanity participates in the divine life of God.

    And so, at His appearing the risen Jesus says to His disciples, “Shalom alekem”:  . . . Peace be with you.  The very first thing communicated by the risen Jesus is shalom; . . . the very first thing communicated by the risen Jesus is wellness of body, mind, and spirit; shalom: . . . wholeness of soul.  And this benediction of the risen Jesus is not simply a cordial greeting, a wish that you might have a nice day.  Shalom is His gift!  . . . Shalom . . . mortal wellness and spiritual wholeness; … shalom is the power of the Resurrection:  the risen Lord’s shalom, . . . the peace of Heaven; . . . the risen Lord’s shalom is a gift to all who desire to participate in His risen and continual Presence.

    In the third century sacramentary of Hippolytus, that most worthy bishop of Rome; . . . in the third century sacramentary of Hippolytus, we are told that the catechumens (learners of the Christian Faith who have not yet been baptized); . . . we are told that the catechumens are led from the Church by Deacons at the conclusion of the Sermon in order to continue their instruction.  . . . Only after all the catechumens have left the Church does the Liturgy continue with the Creed, the Prayers of the People, . . . and the Peace.  The catechumens were required to leave after the Sermon because they were not yet considered competent to pray or to convey Christ’s Peace; . . . they were not competent because they, themselves, had not yet received the Shalom of Jesus, nor had they been breathed on by Him with the Holy Spirit conveyed in Baptism.  They were not yet participants in the Presence of the Risen Christ.

    And so, when we greet one another in the Name of Jesus saying, “Peace be with you,” we are doing the heavy duty work of conveying and receiving anew the heritage of our Baptism:  . . . the gift conveyed to us when we participate in the living Presence of the Risen Jesus.  . . . Because, Saint John reminds us, . . . on Easter Day the Risen Jesus says to His disciples, “Peace be with you,” and then He breathes on them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.  . . . If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  . . . It is no small thing we do at the conclusion of the Sermon.  Our Worship; . . . the Worship of the Church which culminates in the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood; . . . our Worship empowers us to do the work which the Father originally gave to the Son.  The Risen Jesus means for each one of us to remember the fullness of the divine life, received at Baptism, which brings us into His (mostly) unseen Presence; … the Risen Jesus means for us to remember the fullness of the divine life that is ours . . . in order that we might be His visibly unanxious presence to the world; . . . so that listening to the Breath of the Holy Spirit, we can participate in the pardon of Jesus; . . . so that feeling the wind of the Spirit, we might participate, from time to time, in the rebuke of Christ to a self-absorbed culture.

    . . . Saint Peter tells the Church that

we have been born anew . . . to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you . . .

For the moment you are a living soul . . . who shall one day be infused with the divine life so as to become a transfigured soul.  . . . But until that day we are each sent from here as the Father sent the Son, . . . to live not so sternly as to be  joyless . . . nor so indulgently as to be reckless; . . . but, believing in the continual Presence of Jesus and participating in His sacred Life, . . . we are sent from here to communicate that life in His Name, . . . to one another . . . and to the world.  For Christ is risen!  Alleluia!