This sermon was originally preached at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Cary, North Carolina, on Sunday, April 12, 2026.
Relevant lectionary readings can be found here.
Video of this sermon can be found here.
Note: I was at CTK to discuss possibilities for partnership in digital ministry. Part of the sermon references those possibilities specifically, but I encourage you to apply these thoughts to digital ministry more generally, in your own context.
Until this morning, the only truth the disciples knew was the horror they had witnessed with their own eyes barely 48 hours prior: their companion, their teacher, the one who had healed them, walked with them, risked everything with them, had been mercilessly executed as an Enemy of the State.
But not before they made an example of him first.
They arrested Jesus in the night, coming with torches and lanterns. He was beaten by the police, his bloody body marched through the streets toward the Place of the Skull. They hung him high, for everyone to see, sending a message.
“Know your place. This is what happens when you Disturb the Peace of Rome.”
He hung on the cross, The King of the Jews.
The disciples fled in fear. Well, most of the men anyway. The women remained, wailing below him, holding vigil in those final brutal moments.
And then his lifeless body was taken down off the cross by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus – one a member of the Sanahedrin, one a Pharisee – two elite, powerful men who use their wealth and privilege to give Jesus at least some semblance of a dignified burial, even if it is hurried by the coming Sabbath. Everyone pauses for a day, faithfully observing the Holy Day of Rest while anxiously waiting to do the work of grief and love and care for the body of their friend.
Until…you know this part…that’s why we are all here…Jesus is not there. The stone is rolled away! The tomb is empty! Jesus’ burial linens folded neatly where his body had been laid..imagine doing laundry as one of your first Resurrection acts!?
Mary Magdalene’s eyes, bloodshot from nightmare-interrupted sleep, are blurry with tears as she hysterically begs the gardener for answers. But its not the gardener. Or at least, not the type of gardener she thought at first. “Mary,” Jesus says, “Go. Tell.” And she does. The Apostle to the Apostles runs to tell them, “I’ve seen him! I’ve seen him!”
That…that was this morning. The morning of the day we pick up at in the Gospel reading today. Easter breakfast time. Maybe lunch. Brunch? It might have taken a minute to tell everyone. The author of John says the disciples had returned to their own houses. But Mary tells everyone and then, by dinner time, they are all gathered. Together again. Well, most of them, at least. They are there, the disciples. Locked. In a room. Huddled. Terrified.
Are they pacing? Are they holding one another? Are they whispering? Crying? Arguing about what to do next?
There’s something striking about the disciples locking themselves in, bracing behind closed doors, when even death could not contain him. The grave could not keep him in. And the locked doors..could not keep him out. Jesus appeared among them, wounds and all. Close enough to share his breath with them.
But Thomas wasn’t there. Man, can you imagine missing that? We don’t know where he was or why he wasn’t there. I have a couple of theories on why, purely speculative, based on what we know of him. But mostly they boil down to the idea that Thomas was incredibly clear-headed. And strategic. And practical.
Earlier in the Gospel of John, before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, Jesus tells the disciples that he is headed into Judea. Judea – the place where power lives, and where the religious aristocracy had already tried to stone him in John chapter 10. So in John chapter 11 when Jesus says his plan is to go back to Judea, the other disciples are like…”Um. You want to go back there? The place where they just tried to kill you?” And Thomas…Thomas says, “Let us go, also that we may die with him.” Thomas was loyal. Ride or die.
And then in John 14 when Jesus is giving his farewell speech to the disciples and tells them, “You know the way that I am going.” Thomas jumps in and asks, earnestly, “How can we know the way when we don’t know where you are going?” And that’s when Jesus says, “You know the way, friend. We’ve been walking it together all this time. I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
So we don’t know where Thomas was. But part of me thinks maybe he was drafting a plan, a way to continue on in Jesus’ movement of love and liberation. Maybe he wasn’t hiding in a locked room, afraid, because he had already made peace 9 chapters ago with the fact a revolutionary is a doomed man, that his loyalty to Jesus might be a death-mission.
Maybe it was dinner time, and Thomas was like, “I need to go figure out some food for us.” Maybe he was trying to figure out what comes next – how to keep them going.
We don’t know. All we know is that Thomas wasn’t there. And when he met up with everyone and heard this wild story – Jesus, untombed, comforting Mary, walking through locked doors – when he heard this wild story, Thomas wanted exactly what everyone else had already been gifted, which was to experience this story for himself. To touch the one he loved. To look him in the eyes. To be close enough to share his breath, too.
It’s a story too good to be true. A story too big for our minds. A story that needs to be felt, embodied.
And Jesus gives that to him. A week later, Jesus comes back to the same house where everyone is again gathered behind closed doors. And Jesus invites Thomas close. Jesus knows that believing in something like resurrection is vulnerable. It is scary to hope. And Jesus offers up his most vulnerable parts to Thomas, the place of his wounds. A move that is tender. Intimate.
The resurrection is like that. It is personal. It comes into your home. It’s near enough to taste, to smell, to touch. It is held. It meets us in our rawness, in our vulnerabilities. It comes close.
And near as resurrection is, as personal and as intimate, as private as resurrection is, like a small, hushed tone, invitation-only gathering of friends…it is also public.
In Acts 2 we jump forward in the story about six weeks later. In John 20 the disciples are locked in a room, touching wounds, figuring out how to trust again. Then, over the next several weeks, they are encountering Jesus, being formed, being breathed into.
In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit descends on the disciples – including Thomas – and those gathered at Pentecost and people of all languages and backgrounds can understand each other clearly. And in response to this miracle, Peter makes this speech. The speech we read today.
This speech is a far cry from a Peter who denies Jesus at the cross or is huddled in a locked room post-resurrection. Peter raises his voice and says, “You saw Jesus of Nazareth lead a radical movement of love and liberation. You saw him proclaimed guilty by a Law and Order administration and you saw him sentenced to a bloody death. You saw him assassinated by the regime. But God did not accept Empire’s ruling. The systems that executed him are not ultimate. The violence we witnessed does not get the final word. When God wants people to be free, not even Death can stop it.”
Peter says all of this, out loud, in public, in Jerusalem. The same city where just weeks ago Jesus was killed by the same leaders who are still prowling around, trying to quell any uprisings. The Peter who denied Jesus out of fear for his own safety is now yelling about Jesus in the streets. Because that’s what encountering a resurrected Jesus does.
It takes about six weeks for the disciples to get from a locked room to a public witness – from touching wounds in private to telling the truth in the street. And then immediately after this speech, three thousand people joined the movement. Like, really joined the movement. As in, they sold everything they owned and shared it with one another, paying special attention to make sure the poor were cared for. They lived life together and ate together and prayed together. They built alternative networks of mutual aid outside the grasp of the Empire. A new economy built from each person according to their ability, and given to each according to their need. They continued Jesus’ movement for love and liberation. And it was threatening enough to Empire to get many of them killed. But not without changing the world forever.
Dr. Cornell West tells us that tenderness is what love looks like in private. And that justice is what love looks like in public.
We could say that about Jesus’ victory. John 20 shows us the private, intimate tenderness of love in the resurrection. And Acts 2 shows us the public, political, universal, cosmic implications of that same love, born of the same resurrection.
It’s why the writings of the mystics or the lyrics of hymns sometimes sound like romance poems of devotion to Jesus. And why the freedom songs of the Civil Rights era also derive their power from devotion to Jesus.
Christ the King is discerning right now about this really cool, really cutting-edge thing – the idea of, essentially, a digital church plant with its own digital pastor. It’s exciting to me because it’s innovative. And courageous. It is so much like the church of Acts who, in response to the resurrection said, “We are going to be brave and step out and do a new thing.”
Digital ministry is a new frontier. And it is, like Peter’s voice echoing in the streets of Jerusalem, profoundly public.
Digital ministry crosses geography.
It refuses the limits of a single building.
It creates spaces where voices can be raised, stories told, truth shared across distance.
It looks a lot like Peter standing up and saying,
“This matters. This happened. This changes how we live.”
And at the same time, digital ministry is, in its own way, a locked room.
People show up to church from their homes.
Streaming from hospital beds.
From couches in their pajamas.
From the closet.
With newborns in their arms.
From places shaped by exhaustion or distance or grief or past harm.
Digital ministry happens behind closed doors. Doors that are closed for real reasons.
And Christ meets people there.
Not after everything is resolved.
But in the middle of it.
With baby spit up on people’s shoulders or bad hangovers or time cards that just clocked out from an overnight shift or still healing scars from spiritual trauma.
Digital ministry, like the resurrection, is private and personal. It is public and communal. And it’s a risk. Whether I am your digital pastor or someone else is, it will be something very new. Like the work of the early church, it will require you to be brave.
And in that way, even though this ministry idea is very new, it is also very ancient. You will be walking in the steps of Mary Magdalene and Thomas and Peter and the disciples and everyone since then – leaving locked rooms and entering the streets in a new way. You will have the company of every faithful generation in every time and every place all over the world for millenia who looked at this world-altering story and asked themselves: what does the resurrection mean, not just for other people long ago and far away, but for US, here and now?
Where are the people who need this Good News? And how can we make sure it reaches them?
It takes about six weeks in scripture to get from a locked room to a public witness.
It might take us some time, too.
And if you’re feeling some hesitation –
some uncertainty about what this might become –
that’s okay.
That’s honest.
That’s faithful.
Because resurrection has always asked people
to trust something they couldn’t fully see yet.
Those first disciples didn’t have a plan.
They just knew something had happened –
something real enough
that they couldn’t stay where they were.
So they took a step.
Not because they were certain,
but because they had encountered Christ.
And that is still how the church is formed.
Not by certainty –
but by encounter,
and courage,
and small, faithful steps forward.
No matter what happens, I want you to know I believe in you. I am praying for you. I’m rooting for you.
Peace be with you.
Amen
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