Transcript
Practice Resurrection: Peace
First Baptist Richmond, May 25, 2025
Sixth Sunday of Easter
John 14:23-29
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
My wife, Christy, is not here this morning. She’s on a mission trip to Malawi, Africa, where she serves as chair of the Girls Education subcommittee for an organization called Warm Heart International. This week she will be meeting the girls who receive scholarships from Warm Heart and encouraging them to work hard, to do well, and to stay in school. She might not tell you this, she’s very modest, but through her organization’s work the dropout rate for middle school girls in Malawi has fallen from nearly 75 percent to almost zero. But that’s not what I want to talk to you about. I want to talk to you about something Christy has been dealing with for more than thirty years. I asked her if I could and she said, “I won’t be there, so sure, go ahead.”
It started when I was a pastor in Wingate, North Carolina. Late one night Christy heard a knock at the back door of our little bungalow on Elm Street and got up to answer it. We had Venetian blinds on that door so we could shut out the afternoon sun. The blinds were closed, but Christy opened them so she could see who was out there, and when she did she saw a man with his nose pressed up against the glass, his eyes wide open, looking in. Their faces were less than six inches apart, and it startled her. She stepped back into the hallway and instead of telling her that she was safe on the other side of a locked door her brain told her
that she was trapped, and needed to find a way out.
She ran back to the bedroom and shook me awake. “There’s someone at the door!” she said. I could hear the panic in her voice. I got up, went to the door, looked out through the blinds and thought, “Oh, that’s Leonard.” I knew him. In fact he had been at my house the day before asking for money. I didn’t give him any, but I did make him a sandwich. He said he was hungry. So, I don’t know, maybe he had come back for more of the same but he shouldn’t have been knocking on my door in the middle of the night and I told him so. I told him to meet me at church the next day and I would see what I could do. And then I went back to bed thinking it was over.
But it wasn’t.
A few weeks later Christy and I were on vacation at Wrightsville Beach, one of our favorite places, and we went into town to tour the U.S.S. North Carolina, a battleship that’s docked there in Wilmington. It was a hot day, and when we got down into the deepest recesses of that ship it felt like an oven. We were walking along these narrow passages, in those confining spaces, when Christy stepped around a bulkhead and almost ran into a man who looked a whole lot like Leonard. Their faces were less than six inches apart. And that encounter from a few weeks before came rushing back. She felt a wave of panic wash over her, and with it that same feeling that she was trapped and needed to find a way out. She scrambled toward those upper decks like a woman possessed. I could hardly keep up. And when we got off the boat she said, “That’s the last time I need to do that.”
But now the trauma of that first event was linked forever to the circumstances of that second event, and whenever Christy found herself in a hot
place, or a dark place, or a confining place, she would feel the panic rising and start looking for a way out. In fact, we went to a store right after leaving the U.S.S. North Carolina and she could hardly go inside. When she did she searched out the location of every available exit; she did not want to get trapped inside that building. Things were better when we got back home. Everything was familiar to her and Leonard never showed up again. But then we moved to Washington, DC, and I still remember the day we tried to take the Metro.
We were in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, close to my new church. Our girls were with us. Someone had given us a ride there but we were going to take the Metro back to our home in Upper Northwest. Until the time came to actually do it and Christy looked down that long, long escalator that seems to disappear inside the bowels of the earth. She braced herself, took a deep breath, and stepped onto the first step but five seconds later she turned around and ran back up the escalator, and of course Ellie, and Catherine, and I ran with her. We all stood at the top panting for breath and she said, “I can’t do it. I can’t go down there!”
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” That’s what I wanted to say to Christy in that moment, and if I were a certain kind of Baptist preacher I might have wanted to say, “‘Do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid,’ John 14:27.” To which she might have wanted to reply, “You don’t understand, Reverend. My fears and anxieties are not something I can control. They are not rational, they are emotional. You can’t just talk yourself out of feelings. Feelings are, by definition, irrational.” But she didn’t say what she might have said if I had said what I might have said. She just stood there, looking a little shaky.
So, I did this. I told her that the escalator shaft and the train tunnels were carved out of solid rock, and that there was nothing safer or more secure. “In fact,” I said, “if our city were under attack, this Metro station would be a good place to go.” And that seemed to help. She stayed where she was a few more minutes and took a few more deep breaths, but eventually she was able to get on the escalator and go all the way down, to get on the train and ride all the way home. It took everything she had but she did it, and I was so proud of her.
I asked her just last week how she managed to cope with all those years of living in DC, riding the Metro as often as we did, and she said she had developed some coping strategies. Number one was prayer; she said lots of prayers in those days. Breathing was important; she always took a few deep breaths before getting on the escalator. She said it helped to visualize wide open spaces, as if she were standing on the beach, looking out at the ocean. Sometimes she would ask me to talk to her, to distract her with some other topic. But in the end the most helpful thing was knowledge; it helped her to know that that escalator shaft and those train tunnels were carved out of solid rock.
And speaking of that: for my birthday this year we headed west on Interstate 64 and stopped at the top of Afton Mountain, just past Charlottesville. We hiked a few miles on the Appalachian Trail near Humpback Rock, spent the night at the Grey Pine Lodge, and the next day we took the trail down to the West Portal of the Blue Ridge Tunnel, an old train tunnel that was carved out of solid rock before the Civil War—not the kind of thing you would think Christy would be up for. But we were just going to have a look. It’s not like we were going to walk through a nineteenth-century tunnel nearly a mile long with no electric lights and ground water trickling down the walls.
But when we got to the entrance we could see the light at the other end of the tunnel, and that made a difference. It’s that knowledge Christy told me about last week; somehow knowing that there’s a way out makes it easier to go in. And about that time some people came out who had walked through from the other end and they said it had been fun. I think we might have done it except that Christy had seen a sign on the way in letting us know that we might find some bats in the tunnel and she wasn’t too keen on that. But that light at the end: that was reassuring. That was like a promise that even if you found yourself in the deepest, darkest part of the tunnel there would be a way out.
And that brings me back to Jesus. Because on the night he told his disciples not to be anxious or afraid he was about to be betrayed. His betrayer, Judas, had already gone out to do the deed. Before the night was over Jesus would be arrested and tried before the Jewish religious authorities. They would condemn him to death and the next morning take him to Pontius Pilate, the Governor of Judea, accusing him of crimes against the state so that Pilate, too, would condemn him and turn him over to his soldiers who would actually carry out his execution. Jesus knew this. He knew exactly what was going to happen. He was in the deepest, darkest part of the tunnel. And yet he says to his disciples, “Don’t be anxious and don’t be afraid. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” You have to wonder: where did Jesus find peace in a moment like that?
When Christy and I moved to Richmond she applied for jobs in the public school system, but ended up working as a literacy specialist for an organization called Excel, where she spent her time teaching teachers. Some of her work was in Virginia Beach, and about once a month she would drive down there to spend a couple of days teaching. But maybe you know this already: there’s a tunnel
between here and Virginia Beach. It’s called the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel and it’s not one of those where you can see the light at the other end. No, what you see, just before you plunge underground, is this broad expanse of water as if you needed to take a deep breath, dive under the surface, and breast stroke to the other side. At least, that’s the way it looked to Christy.
But here’s the thing I forgot to tell you about Christy’s coping strategies, and it really might be the most important thing: whenever she had to do something that seemed difficult she would remind herself that it was worth it, that the thing she was trying to do was far more important than the momentary sense of panic she felt when getting on an escalator, or going through a tunnel, or taking a 14-hour flight to Malawi. And surely for Jesus that was one of the things that helped him through. The author of Hebrews suggests that this is why we look to him, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,” as an example. He was able, “for the sake of the joy that was set before him, to endure the cross, disregarding its shame” (12:2). With the importance of his mission in mind he was able to get to the other side.
But there was also that first thing I mentioned: knowledge. There’s a five minute video on YouTube that explains how the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel was built, and if you watch it you will learn that the tunnel is constructed of double-shell steel tube sections that were lowered into trenches on the sea floor, bolted together by divers, sealed with concrete and covered with a heavy layer of sand.i That tunnel is safer than any bomb shelter, and it’s not going to spring a leak. Simply knowing that made it a little easier for Christy to drive to Virginia Beach. When she was in the deepest, darkest part of that tunnel she could say, “Well, Jim says it’s not going to spring a leak,” and that relieved some of her fear
and anxiety; it gave her some semblance of peace.
But what about Jesus? He was getting ready to die, and beneath every other fear we may have is that one: the fear of death, whether it’s ours or someone we love. Because it’s not really tunnels that Christy is afraid of, it’s tunnels that collapse and kill everyone inside, it’s tunnels that flood and drown everyone in their cars. If you weren’t worried about that before you may be worried about it now. Death is our final enemy; it is the great unknown. And since we fear what we do not know, we fear death. None of us has ever been there before. There isn’t a five-minute video on YouTube that explains exactly what happens to you after you die. We believe we’re going to be all right. In fact, that’s probably why some of us are here this morning: to be reassured that when we die we’re going to heaven. But that’s faith, not knowledge. That’s a different thing.
Unless you’re Jesus.
You see, what I believe about Jesus is that he had been to the other end of the tunnel. He was like those people who came out of the Blue Ridge Tunnel when Christy and I were standing there at the entrance saying, “No, you should definitely do it. It’s fun!” I don’t think Jesus would say death is fun, but I think he might say, “Don’t be anxious, and don’t be afraid. Peace, I give to you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you, because the world doesn’t know what I know. I have been to the other end of the tunnel. In fact, I came from there. And now I’m going back to the place from which I came. Yes, the journey is going to be painful. It’s going to be excruciating. But it’s not going to last forever and I know what’s on the other side. That’s why I can be at peace in a moment like this. My peace, by definition, isn’t rational. It’s the peace that passes understanding. It’s being at peace when it doesn’t make sense to be at peace, and
that’s what I’m giving to you.”
So, the next time you’re getting ready to go through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, imagine Christy standing there with a sign that reads, “It’s OK. I’ve been to the other end.” And when you’re lying on your death bed, imagine Jesus sitting there beside you, holding your hand, and saying in his most soothing voice,
“It’s OK. I’ve been to the other end.”
—Jim Somerville © 2025
