JN 20: 19-31 

Jottings on John…2nd S. of Easter…Revised 2018. 

How Jesus 'broke into' that room isn’t nearly so important as how you & I break out from it. Are broken out! From behind whatever’s locking us in & preventing us becoming the person God knows we could become. Jesus, resurrected from behind that great rock door of Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb is our freedom, too, from our various prisons. Or, as Paul says, 'we are of all people most miserable'. Perhaps that's why so many of us are miserable today! Help is at hand!

‘Breaking & entering’ is an everyday crime these days. Cracks-people break in to steal things of value. Imagine God as the Great Cracks-person, though One who only has our well-being in mind! Breaking into Jesus’ tomb as He does; breaking Jesus out from death to new, raised life in a new dimension. God in Jesus then breaks into the room the disciples have shut themselves up in, & breaks them - or at least begins to break them - out from behind doubts & fears.

Another form of ‘breaking & entering’ today is ‘hacking’. Breaking into our computer programmes to steal personal information, including our credit card details! The programme we use will from time to time offer us ‘up-dates’, including ‘fixes’ for security issues; fixes that will keep us a step ahead of those who would break & enter our I.T. world. Imagine God as the Great Hacker, but only so as to be our spiritual up-date! 

God not only breaks & enters, hacks into Jesus’ tomb. God breaks into & hacks into Death itself! Plants a virus into its programme so its power to hold is destroyed. The disciples go on to be freed in a variety of ways, & raised to a new quality of life as a result. The same goes for us. Sure, we expect to be raised at that ‘Last Day’, but we don’t have to wait till then. Choose to be raised with Christ to a new quality, a new dimension of life, here & now.

No-one, says JN, could 'write down all the signs in this book'. Someone else, though, does choose to add another chapter later! Easter is both reminder, & opportunity, for us all to be writing new chapters of our own by becoming those new chapters as we’re all raised by the Spirit of Jesus.