The room where fear met hope John 20:19-31
Fear and hope met together in the same room 2000 years ago. Jesus friends were living in fear when they met hope embodied in the person of Jesus.
The fear was thick enough for everybody in the room to feel it that day. It was fear that brought them upstairs to a locked room. And Jesus inexplicably stepped into the midst of this fear bound gathering. God does the same today. He meets us in our fears. He meets us in the hopeless moments.
The disciples knew fear on Good Friday
they were afraid that they might be next to die just like Jesus had just died.
they worried that they might have followed the wrong guy
because they had given up their own lives and their own reputations to follow Jesus.
The Easter Sunday evening meeting Jesus was a meeting that could only be imagined in hope. Jesus met his friends and greeted them with a word of peace. They heard him and they had hope; but they were still in fear. They told Thomas the news but he thought it was simply too good. “...he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)
The next week hope came again in the flesh and blood of Jesus. He came into a room locked because of fear. He again greeted his friends with peace and invited Thomas to touch him and know it was really him.
“Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” 28 Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” 29 Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” John 20:27-29
Jesus was there for all to see. The marks of the nails gave evidence of his suffering and death; but his words and actions were proof that resurrection had happened. Jesus came with the evidence of death; but his life was contrary. His followers come with the evidence of fear, but in Christ we meet hope who overcomes our fears calling us from death into life.
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