If you carefully read the Book of the Acts of the Apostles in your Bible, . . . it becomes evident that the people of the Way (the believers in Jesus, Son of the Living God; . . . the believers who would eventually come to be called “Christians”); . . . if you carefully read the Acts of the Apostles, . . . it becomes evident that communities of Christians started out with one of several Apostles as their spiritual mentor from whom they took their identity.  One such community was the Johannine Community, which had the example and teachings of the Apostle John as their model for the Christian Life.  . . . But it is a mistake to think of such communities, so close in time and place to the ministry of Jesus; . . . it is a mistake to think of them as harmonious and immune to what some ecclesiologists call “church fights”.  Because that is the very thing which troubled the Johannine Church, and which inspired the Johannine Epistles, a portion of the First Epistle which we have heard today.

    You see, in the Johannine Community there arose a group of “progressives” who felt that the more “orthodox” members of the Community were stifling the Gospel.  And so, the progressives began preaching a more liberal and less literal understanding of Holy Scripture in general and the Gospel of John in particular, asserting that the salvation which Jesus brought to the world was a spiritual salvation . . . and that, since the salvation of Christ was spiritual, it was a mistake to become obsessed with ethical behavior and the commandments which spawn it.  The thing that mattered for a “real believer”, the progressives claimed, . . . was to love God with an undivided heart.

    Does any of that sound familiar?  Are any of those terms recognizable to you in the context of the church fights that are happening in the Episcopal Church today:  progressive; . . . orthodox; . . . a less literal understanding of Holy Scripture; . . . we do not sin if love is our motive?  I point this out so that if anyone is tempted to despair at the state of the Church in our day, . . . you should know that it has all happened before.  . . . It happened at the very beginning.  We twenty-first century Christians are not unique in our ability to make trouble for ourselves; . . . that talent is as old as Original Sin.

    To overcome this talent we have for making trouble for ourselves the Lord God Almighty sent His Son Who, at the Place of the Skull (on the hill called Golgotha), made a path for us through sin.  And so, Saint John tells us that on the evening of the very day that the tomb in which the crucified, dead body of Jesus had been placed was discovered to be empty . . . the disciples are gathered behind locked doors because they are afraid.  Both Peter and John have been out to the tomb to verify that it is empty, and confirmed it to the others.  Everyone has heard Mary Magdalene’s nutty story about talking first with angels and then with Jesus … and no one believes her.  . . . The Church is gathered on the evening of that first Easter Day, Saint John tells us, . . . and there is not a shred of faith; . . . not a shred of belief in a literal Resurrection; . . . only speculation and mistrustful sideways glances.  The Church is gathered on the evening of that first Easter Day, and they are about to make trouble for themselves.  . . . But Jesus is suddenly among all those confused and mistrustful disciples.  Jesus (in spite of the locked doors) is suddenly among His disciples, and He says to them, “Peace be with you.”  Or, in His native tongue, Jesus says “Shalom”, which is a word that means considerably more than “peace” as we understand the notion of “peace”.  “Shalom” means more than a cessation of hostilities or the institution of tranquility.  “Shalom” means “completeness”.  It means “to be mortally well and spiritually whole”; . . . Jesus bestows upon His doubting disciples the blessing of mortal stability and spiritual sanity.

    Jesus did this on Easter Day, . . . and one week later (today, in fact) Jesus is suddenly among His disciples again.  And He says to the discomfited Thomas, who was not present at Christ’s first appearing; . . . Jesus says to the discomfited Thomas, “Peace be with you.”  . . . And Thomas, seeing the wounds of Jesus, just as Jesus had shown them to the others; . . . Thomas believes and confesses Jesus to be Who each one of us confessed Jesus to be at our Baptism and at its Confirming:  . . . my Lord and my God; . . . your Lord . . . and your God.

    The thing that overcomes Original Sin is Jesus; the thing that overcomes our ability to make trouble for ourselves is Jesus.  Jesus is among us and He says to us, “Peace be with you”; . . . be centered and focused upon God; be centered and focused upon Jesus; resist the temptation to make dogmas out of sentiments, or demands out of needs.  “Peace be with you,” Jesus says:  . . . be mortally stable and spiritually sane.

    . . . Saint John tells us that when Jesus came and stood among His disciples on that first Easter Day, He said, “Peace be with you.”  . . . And then, John says, Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”  The disciples are given a “double dose” of “Shalom”, as it were.  They are given a dose of “Shalom” for themselves, . . . and then they are given a dose of “Shalom” to share.  Jesus gives His disciples a second dose of “Shalom” … a second dose of God’s Peace . . . to bestow upon the world, . . . even as the Father had commissioned Jesus to do.  In other words, as well as the joyful reality we share among ourselves, once again, this Eastertide; . . . as well as the joyful reality that (as Isaiah puts it),

Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise.  O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy!  For thy dew is a dew of light, and on the land of the shades thou wilt let it fall.

. . . as well as this joy we share among ourselves, . . . we (you and I) are sent by Jesus to preach mortal stability and spiritual sanity to the world, just as Jesus preached it:  to tell the world to love the Lord God Almighty with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul . . . and to love one another as you are loved by God, . . . not with a carnal affection, . . . but with a chaste love, a love full of simplicity, . . . detachment from the seductions of the world and of our own flesh and from the lies of the devil, . . . and a love which has the Lord God Almighty at its root to nourish it, . . . a love which is nourished by mortal stability and spiritual sanity.  Alleluia!